Talk to me about the North African Campaign
>How did it start?
>What was the end game?
>How did it end?
I know a pretty decent amount about the Eastern Front, but the African campaign has always seemed boring in comparison.
It can be summed up just like the Greece campaign.
Italy fucks everything up and Germany has to bail them out
The African campaign was a no win scenario for the axis. They would have loved to take the Suez, but without naval superiority or really naval presence in a significant way at all their logistics would always be strained.
Rommel did better than most could be expected to in his situation, hence why Africa and his action in France made him so famous, to the eternal buttdevastation of some. That isn't to say he didn't make mistakes but there's a good reason the guy's do famous.
>>1250662
>How did it start?
Italy entered the war. At that point, Italian Libya and British Egypt were right next to each other, and Mussolini thought he could get an easy win by just rolling across the border and squashing a force he outnumbered heavily, at least on paper.
>What was the end game?
I'm assuming that by this you mean that what were the various plans people had in place:
Italy, at least at the outset, was looking to conquer Egypt. That turned out to be a pipe dream, and from the end of the Compass counteroffensive, their goal was simply to hold onto Libya as long as possible.
Britain's goals were to create a front that they could fight on on terms of relative advantage, and ideally conquer/liberate North Africa from the Italians, and use it as a launchpad for further assaults, as well as to exert control directly over the Mediterranean.
Germany got involved in early 1941. Their goal was initially to prevent a collapse of Italian forces in Libya. In fact, the General Staff's goals stayed at that for pretty much the duration of North Africa as a theater. Rommel had different ideas though, and he wanted to drive the British into the sea.
>How did it end?
Eventually, the British gained the upper hand in the Egypt/Libya section, and the Americans landed in Vichy French North Africa on the other end. They squeezed the Germans and Italians back all the way to Tunisia. (Originally a Vichy French possession, but the Germans just grabbed it when it became strategically useful). They hold out for a little while in a succession of fortifications around Mareth and Tunis itself, but just get smothered by superior forces, culminating in a huge capture of forces at Tunis, something like 300,000 soldiers.
>>1250713
>couldn't tell if picture is sand or snow.
>>1250713
>So it really does come down to Italy being shitalians?
To some degree. But in all fairness, if ITaly doesn't enter the war, then the British can use the Mediterranean more or less as they want, which isn't great for the Germans. Radar and fighter coverage was way less in their allies in places like Romania and Hungary than it was off the northwest parts of Germany, and it would be real bad if a big gang of Avro Lancasters flew over Ploesti a couple of times.
> I was always curious about the whole Oil supply thing since they were also pushing for the oil fields in Ukraine.
North Africa wasn't really about oil. For starters, It was a long way to what oil there was in Iraq and Iran. Iran at least had a pretty significant secondary line of defense ever since the Soviets "Reluctantly took over internal management of the affairs of Persia" And in any case, oil production in that part of the world wasn't nearly as big of a deal as it is now. Romania was exporting more oil than Iran and Iraq combined.
At least from the German point of view, the most important thing about North Africa is that paradoxically it's your best line of defense. Sure, the desert has no natural barriers, but it's so hard logistically to commit forces down there that it means you can hold the front with a minimal commitment which allows you to commit maximum forces elsewhere.
Rommel's initial deployment (counting Germans only) was 2 divisions, later upped to 3 in 1942, and up to 9 when they were on full defense mode after El Alamein.
When the Allies invaded Italy, suddenly they needed 26 divisions just to hold down the Italian peninsula, and another 18 needed to reinforce places in southern France, southern Yugoslavia, and Greece, to stop Allied attacks that might materialize.
