Inferno - Max Hastings [240]
In the town of Derna, 400 miles west of Alamein, one November day a party of Italian soldiers hungry for information met some Germans, one of whom who spoke good Italian. This man was a proud Nazi who insisted that the Axis would achieve victory in 1943. He had just been listening to the radio, he said, which announced Germany’s capture of Stalingrad. That obviously meant the end of the Russians. The Italians were in no mood to be so credulous. “We hope he is right,” wrote one, “but find his optimism unconvincing.” Their scepticism was soon vindicated.
During the early stages of the North African campaign, U.S. commanders feared a possible German intervention through Spain. Once this failed to materialise, the invaders were securely ashore and the Vichy French abandoned resistance, the Allies anticipated swift clearance of the entire littoral. In this they were confounded. Hitler made an unexpected decision to send more men to North Africa. After twenty months in which he had denied Rommel support that might have yielded victory, the Führer now chose to reinforce failure. By air and sea, 17,000 German troops and supporting armour moved from Italy into Tunisia, with the acquiescence of its Vichy French resident-general. The Allies still had numerical superiority, but all the American troops and many of the British were green. The Luftwaffe provided effective air support to the German ground forces, led locally by Gen. Jürgen von Arnim.
Vittorio Vallicella and his comrades of Italy’s dwindling desert contingent spent Christmas 1942 on the Tunisian shore, nursing homesickness and sheltering from British bombs: “At midnight mass, I gaze upon sad faces. The English upset us by launching an air raid, and everyone rushes to their posts. It is thus that we spend Christmas Eve rather than eating the feast Doliman”—their hugely admired cook—“had promised.” Next day, however, matters improved: the master chef prepared for them pasta with ragù, boiled potatoes, a slice of meat, and—to their astonishment—panettone, “never seen in these parts.” Doliman proudly showed them its box: “Panettone Motta.” Their Christmas lunch was washed down with half a litre of wine and half a mess tin of brandy. “Never has a meal been so good. We end the day swimming naked in the Mediterranean while our loved ones are almost certainly immersed in fog.” Vallicella had the good fortune to be taken prisoner by the French soon afterwards, and spent the next three years as an agricultural labourer in their hands; he did not return to his beloved homeland until 1947.
Amid winter rain and mud, the Germans were able to frustrate Allied efforts to rush Tunis: in a series of January offensives, von Arnim’s formations drove back ill-equipped French forces and held open the supply line to the Afrika Korps farther east. In February, they achieved a series of smashing successes against the Americans, destroying two tank, two infantry and two artillery battalions of Lt. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall’s corps in a single forty-eight-hour operation. Rommel then launched an attack through the Kasserine Pass, which drove back Eisenhower’s forces in humiliating disarray. The Americans learned lessons, often forced upon the British before them, about the quality of enemy armour, the speed of the Germans’ actions and reactions and the ruthlessness with