Western Desert campaign

Western Desert campaign
Part of the North African campaign of the Second World War
British infantry in a re-enactment of their advance at El Alamein, 24 October 1942
Date 11 June 1940 – 4 February 1943 (2 years, 7 months, 3 weeks and 3 days) Location Western Desert, Egypt and Libya 24°N 25°E / 24°N 25°E / 24; 25 Result Allied victory
Belligerents
United Kingdom  India  Sudan  Southern Rhodesia  Palestine Libyan Arab Force  Australia  New Zealand  South Africa  Free France Greece Yugoslavia	Italy  Libya  Germany
Commanders and leaders
Archibald Wavell Claude Auchinleck Harold Alexander Richard O'Connor  Alan Cunningham Neil Ritchie Bernard Montgomery	Italo Balbo † Rodolfo Graziani Italo Gariboldi Ettore Bastico Ugo Cavallero Erwin Rommel Georg Stumme †
Casualties and losses
North Africa 220,000[1] 35,476 killed[1]	North Africa 620,000[1] 32,342 killed[1]

The Western Desert campaign (Desert War) took place in the deserts of Egypt and Libya and was the main theatre in the North African campaign of the Second World War. Military operations began in June 1940 with the Italian declaration of war and the Italian invasion of Egypt from Libya in September. Operation Compass, a five-day raid by the British in December 1940, was so successful that it led to the destruction of the Italian 10th Army (10ª Armata) over the following two months. Benito Mussolini sought help from Adolf Hitler, who sent a small German force to Tripoli under Directive 22 (11 January). The Afrika Korps (Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel) was formally under Italian command, as Italy was the main Axis power in the Mediterranean and North Africa.

In the spring of 1941, Rommel led Operation Sonnenblume, which pushed the Allies back to Egypt except for the siege of Tobruk at the port. At the end of 1941, Axis forces were defeated in Operation Crusader and retired again to El Agheila. In early 1942 Axis forces drove the Allies back again, then captured Tobruk after the Battle of Gazala but failed to destroy their opponents. The Axis invaded Egypt and the Allies retreated to El Alamein, where the Eighth Army fought two defensive battles, then defeated the Axis forces in the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. The Eighth Army drove Axis forces out of Libya to Tunisia, which was invaded from the west by the Allied First Army in Operation Torch. In the Tunisian campaign the remaining Axis forces surrendered to the combined Allied forces in May 1943.

The British Western Desert Force (renamed Cyrcom and later the Eighth Army) had been reduced in early 1941 to send units to Greece, rather than complete the conquest of Libya, just as German troops and Italian reinforcements arrived. British Commonwealth and Empire troops released after the conclusion of the East Africa Campaign were sent to Egypt and by summer, the surviving Commonwealth troops had returned from Greece, Crete and Syria. From the end of 1941, increasing amounts of equipment and personnel, including US supplies and tanks, arrived for the Eighth Army. The Axis never overcame the supply constraints limiting the size of their land and air forces in North Africa and the desert war became a sideshow for Germany, when the expected quick conclusion of Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, was not achieved.