The fighting at the Kasserine Pass

On 19 February 1943 Erwin Rommel attacked the Kasserine Pass in western Tunisia. Within two days his troops had shattered the American defenders and broken out onto the plain beyond the pass, but there they stalled: at Sbiba, at Thala and at Djebel Hamra the British and Americans gathered enough troops and artillery to halt them. On 22 February Rommel abandoned the offensive, and by 24–25 February the Axis forces had left the pass. Some war chronologies date the start of the battle of the Kasserine Pass to 13 February, together with the German counter-attack at Sidi Bou Zid. The two events were linked but did not take place on the same day: the attack on Sidi Bou Zid began on 14 February, and the fighting for the pass itself on 19 February.

After Sidi Bou Zid

The defeat at Sidi Bou Zid and the loss of Gafsa and Sbeitla forced Major General Lloyd Fredendall’s US II Corps to fall back from the Eastern Dorsal to the western range of mountains, the Western Dorsal. Several passes led through this range, the most important being the Kasserine Pass near the town of Kasserine – a narrow valley about three kilometres wide between two mountain massifs, through which ran a road and a railway. Beyond the pass the road forked: west towards Tebessa in Algeria, where the Americans had their depots and airfields, and north towards Thala and Le Kef, in the rear of the British First Army. Some forty kilometres to the north-east the pass at Sbiba played a similar role.

On the Axis side the victory provoked a dispute. Rommel wanted to exploit the chaos in the enemy ranks and strike with all his armour at Tebessa, in order to seize supplies, destroy the airfields and force the Allies to withdraw from the whole of central Tunisia. General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, was unwilling to hand over his divisions and was contemplating an offensive of his own in the north. On 18 February Rommel presented his plan to Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who backed it and forwarded it to Rome. The reply of the Italian Comando Supremo reached Rommel on the afternoon of 19 February. It placed the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions under his command, but directed the attack not at Tebessa but through Kasserine and Sbiba northwards, towards Thala and Le Kef. Rommel considered this direction a mistake: the thrust would run straight into the British reserves, and dividing his forces between two passes exposed his flanks. Nevertheless, so as not to lose time, he set off at once. Arnim kept part of the 10th Panzer Division back with him in any case.

There was confusion on the other side too. The British General Kenneth Anderson, who coordinated the operations of all Allied troops in Tunisia, expected the main blow to fall at Sbiba and sent the fresh British 6th Armoured Division there. The Kasserine Pass was held by a scratch collection of American units: a battalion of the 26th Infantry Regiment; the 19th Engineer Regiment, which had never been in action and was thrown in as infantry; several artillery batteries and tank destroyers, supported by French and American units on the neighbouring hills. During the night of 18–19 February command over them was taken by Colonel Alexander Stark, commander of the 26th Regiment, and the group was named Stark Force after him.

The pass falls (19–20 February)

On the morning of 19 February a German reconnaissance battalion tried to rush the pass but was driven back by artillery fire. It was followed by the panzergrenadiers of the Afrika Korps battle group, who climbed the slopes on both sides of the valley, and at midday by tanks as well. The defenders held out all day. Meanwhile, at Sbiba, the 21st Panzer Division’s attack ran into minefields and the strong defences of the British 1st Guards Brigade, American infantry regiments from the 1st and 34th Divisions, and several artillery battalions. By 20 February the Germans had made no progress there and had to pull back.

During the night of 19–20 February German and Italian troops seized some of the American positions on the slopes overlooking the pass. On the morning of 20 February the attack was renewed in greater strength: alongside the Afrika Korps grenadiers, the Bersaglieri of the Italian 5th Regiment went into action, supported by tanks of the Centauro Armoured Division, and at around 1 p.m. Rommel committed two battalions of the 10th Panzer Division. The Italians paid a high price for their part – the Bersaglieri commander, Colonel Bonfatti, was killed in the attack – and German commanders later singled out their conduct. In the afternoon Stark’s defence collapsed. The engineers of the 19th Regiment were routed and the survivors fled in disorder across the mountains. A small British battle group sent to help from the direction of Thala – an infantry company, a squadron of eleven tanks and an artillery battery – fell back step by step and lost all its tanks.

On the evening of 20 February the German and Italian columns emerged beyond the pass. The Americans had left dozens of tanks, guns, lorries and half-tracks on the road, as well as considerable stocks of fuel and ammunition. The road to both Tebessa and Thala seemed to lie open. Rommel, however, who the next day rode in person with the vanguard of the 10th Panzer Division, was unsure which way to strike. He was short of fuel and ammunition, and the attack, advancing along two diverging roads, was losing momentum.

Thala and Djebel Hamra (21–22 February)

On 21 February Rommel divided his forces. The main group of the 10th Panzer Division headed north towards Thala. Its way was barred by the British 26th Armoured Brigade together with the remnants of the American 26th Infantry Regiment. The British, equipped with obsolete Valentine and Crusader tanks, fell back from ridge to ridge all day, losing several dozen vehicles, but in the evening they stopped the Germans a few kilometres short of Thala. That same night the artillery of the American 9th Infantry Division reached the town – 48 guns which had covered some 1,300 kilometres from Morocco in a few days. Anderson wanted to send it on to Le Kef, but General Ernest Harmon, whom Eisenhower had sent to the front as an observer and adviser, kept it at Thala.

The second group – the Afrika Korps battle group with Italian units – turned west along the valley of the Hatab river towards Tebessa. On 21 February, at Djebel Hamra, it ran into Combat Command B of the American 1st Armored Division under General Paul Robinett and the 16th Infantry Regiment of General Terry Allen’s 1st Infantry Division. This time the Americans held good positions, had artillery support and could not be dislodged. On 22 February the Axis attack on the Bou Chebka pass collapsed, and in the afternoon the Americans counter-attacked, taking several hundred German and Italian soldiers prisoner.

On the morning of 22 February at Thala, the British and American artillery gathered during the night, directed by General Stafford LeRoy Irwin, smothered the German positions with fire before the Germans could renew their attack. The commander of the 10th Panzer Division’s battle group decided to wait and regroup, while more Allied reinforcements kept arriving at the front.

Rommel withdraws

On 22 February Rommel concluded that his forces were spent. At Sbiba, at Thala and at Djebel Hamra the offensive had stalled, fuel and ammunition were running low, and in the south, before the Mareth Line, Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army was massing. Rommel preferred to return south and strike at the British before they completed their preparations. Kesselring, who flew to his headquarters near Kasserine with his chief of staff, General Siegfried Westphal, tried to persuade him that success was still possible, but Rommel would not budge and Kesselring finally gave way. Comando Supremo formally called off the offensive, and the Axis forces began to withdraw during the night of 22–23 February.

The withdrawal went smoothly. The Germans and Italians mined the roads, blew the bridges and pulled back through the pass, harried by Allied aircraft, which in improving weather mounted heavy raids on the pass on 23 February. The Allies followed cautiously. By 24 February they had retaken the Kasserine Pass, and in the following days Feriana, Sbeitla and Sidi Bou Zid. The Faïd Pass and Gafsa remained in Axis hands for the time being. On 23 February Rommel took command of the newly formed Army Group Africa, to which both Arnim’s army and the German-Italian army on the Mareth Line were subordinated.

Losses

The casualty figures given in the literature vary depending on whether they cover only the fighting for the pass or also the earlier engagement at Sidi Bou Zid. According to the most frequently cited figures, the US II Corps lost some 300 killed, 3,000 wounded and 3,000 captured or missing in the February fighting, as well as 183 tanks, more than 200 guns and several hundred vehicles. In a summary report of 24 February the Germans counted more than 4,000 Allied soldiers taken prisoner. German losses are put at just under 1,000 killed, wounded and missing and some 20 tanks; Italian losses were smaller but are not always included in the tallies. The British and French also lost many men and much equipment, especially in the fighting at Thala.

Significance

The Battle of the Kasserine Pass was the US Army’s first major battle against the Germans in the Second World War and its heaviest defeat of the campaign. Years later General Omar Bradley called it the worst performance by that army in its entire history. Strategically, however, Rommel gained little. He took neither Tebessa nor its depots, he did not force the Allies out of Tunisia, and his troops returned to their starting positions weakened. The Allies, by contrast, had an almost unlimited flow of men and equipment and could make good their losses quickly.

The lessons mattered more. Dwight Eisenhower, since 11 February Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in North Africa, took part of the blame upon himself but also changed his commanders. The Allied intelligence chief, who had wrongly predicted the direction of the attack, was dismissed, and on 6 March General George Patton replaced Fredendall at the head of II Corps, with Bradley as his deputy. As agreed at Casablanca, on 20 February, while the fighting was still going on, General Harold Alexander took command of the new 18th Army Group, which brought together the First and Eighth Armies. The Americans stopped scattering their divisions in isolated detachments, improved cooperation between infantry, tanks and artillery, and placed tactical aviation under a joint command. The artillery, whose concentrated fire had stopped the Germans at Thala, became from then on one of the US Army’s greatest strengths.

Rommel struck once more – on 6 March, against the Eighth Army at Medenine – and was defeated. A few days later he flew out of Africa, never to return. The Americans who had fled the Kasserine Pass in February fought at El Guettar and in northern Tunisia in the spring, and in May 1943 took part in the capture of Bizerte and the final victory of the Tunisian campaign. The defeat at Kasserine, painful though it was, prepared them for the fighting in Sicily, Italy and France.