THE STALINGRAD OF AFRICA

In 1943, Allied and Axis troops contested one of the most decisive campaigns of the Second World War. Saul David tells the story of the battle for Tunis – as hard-fought as the struggle for the Soviet city

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Early on 8 November 1942, Adolf Hitler's special train was en route from Berlin to Munich when it was stopped at a small station in the Thuring- ian Forest to receive an urgent message from the Foreign Office. A day earlier, Hitler's HQ staff had received a "very disturbing signal" from German agents in Gibraltar, informing them that a large Allied troop convoy had passed heading in an easterly direction. Most on the train assumed the convoy was bound for Libya, a colony of Germany's ally Italy since 1912. But its true destination was revealed by the Foreign Office commu- iqué: "A US expeditionary corps is disembarking in Algiers and Oran," ports in French-controlled Algeria.

Hitler was aghast. Aware that French North Africa (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, controlled by the collabo- rationist Vichy regime) was an area of the "greatest political and strategic importance", he asked his advisors what resources were available to meet the threat. The answer was: none.

Farther down the line, Joachim von Ribbentrop boarded the train. So concerned was the German foreign minister about the news coming from the Mediterranean that he urged Hitler to put out peace feelers to Stalin, hoping to free up German men and materials to be rushed to north Africa. The Führer refused: “a moment of weakness is not the proper time to negotiate with an enemy.”