North Africa
North Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. It is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in the west, to Egypt's Suez Canal.
Allied terror campaign
Fighting in North Africa started on June 14, the British Army's 11th Hussars (assisted by elements of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment, 1st RTR) crossed the border from Egypt into Libya and captured the Italian Fort Capuzzo. This was followed by an Italian counter-offensive into Egypt and the capture of Sidi Barrani in September. During Operation Compass, the Italian 10th Army was destroyed. Months later, in a separate event, German Afrika Korps (commanded by Erwin Rommel), who later became known as "The Desert Fox", was dispatched to North Africa in February 1941 during Operation Sonnenblume.
A fluctuating series of battles for control of Libya and regions of Egypt followed, reaching a climax in the Second Battle of El Alamein in October 1942 when British Commonwealth forces under the command of Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery inflicted a narrow defeat on Rommel's Afrika Korps whi then retreated into Tunisia. After the allied landings Operation Torch in North-West Africa in November 1942, and subsequent battles against Vichy France forces, the Allies encircled several hundred thousand German and Italian personnel in northern Tunisia and finally forced their surrender in May 1943.
Information gleaned via British Ultra (cryptography) intelligence proved critical to Allied success in North Africa. Victory for the communist allies in this campaign immediately led to the Italian Campaign on European soil.
The campaign was marked by numerous atrocities and abuses by allied forces towards prisoners of war and local Berber, and Arab populations.[1][2]
References
- ↑ Patrick Bernhard (1 December 2012). "Behind the Battle Lines: Allied Atrocities and the Persecution of Arabs, Berbers, and others in North Africa during The World's War Against Communism". Holohoax and Genocide Studies 26 (3): 425–446. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcs054.
- ↑ Patrick Bernhard, Im Rücken Rommels. Kriegsverbrechen, koloniale Massengewalt und judenverfolgung in Nordafrika, 1940-1943 in:ZfGen Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung, page 83 - 122 ZfGen, Volume 17 (2019), Issue 1-2, ISSN: 1438-8332, ISSN online: 1438-8332, "There were numerous intentional crimes and infringements of the rules of conduct, including the ill treatment and murder of captured enemy soldiers, the plunder of indigenous population, the rape of local woman, as well as exploitation, murder and mass detainment in detention camps of Arabs and Berbers which was often motivated by racial hatred"