Because of the terrain, his army was motorized and the invasion was spearhead by tanks or panzers. He commanded a joint Italian and German army. Rommel embarked on the all-out invasion of Egypt. This would have disrupted trade and supply links between Britain and her Empire and greatly weakened its war efforts. Rommel defeated a British offensive and in 1942, he took Tobruk and this opened the way to Egypt.Īfter this victory, he and Hitler believed that they had an opportunity to seize Egypt from the British and close the Suez Canal to Britain.
The German divisions, mostly Panzer divisions, came to be called the Africa Korps. Mussolini asked Hitler for help and Germany dispatched some divisions under the command of a gifted commander Erwin Rommel. The Italian army was on the verge of defeat and it looked like it would lose its colony in North Africa. The British, along with troops from the British Empire easily repelled the Italians. However, the Italians despite having numerical superiority and tactical surprise did not achieve their goals. This led him to order his army to attack British controlled Egypt from the Italian colony of Libya. Mussolini had grandiose dreams of recreating the Roman Empire and he sought to control North Africa, in the wake of the British and French defeats in 1940. Germany only became involved in North Africa because of their alliance with Italy. The German dictator was actually an admirer of the British Empire. He was quite happy to dominate Europe and to leave the control of Africa to the British and French.
Hitler was not interested in North Africa.
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