Hitler evacuates his men in Tunisia

[Michele]

As long as the rear-guard action was fought in Tunisia, Mussolini remained the Duce of Italy.
On July 10, the Allies landed on the Italian homeland territory. On July 26, Mussolini was no longer the Duce. Rather quick an ousting.
While it took Badoglio some time to organize the great turning of the coat, the writing was on the wall, and anyway it took just slightly more than one month.
Had Badoglio not done a dog's dinner of this drill, the outcome might have been way worse for Germany, not only in Italy but in the Balkans and some Greek islands too.

The above alone is reason enough to try and delay the Allies in Tunisia rather than in Sicily (or Sardinia).

 

[ironram]

Whew! This is fun!

The Germans still have U-boats in the Mediterranean, and a quick augmenting of their numbers from squadrons in the Atlantic isn't out of the question (Gibraltar can't blow them away if they can't see them).
Besides, I don't think a gradual evacuation is going to be the slaughter many think it is.The Cigno Convoy sortie occurred in April 1943, the time period we're referring to here, and damaged a British destroyer and sunk another. So the Regia Marina is not out of the picture. That and CalBear said that the Allies have air superiority, not supremacy. This means the Luftwaffe is capable of effective interference. Besides, it could justifiably be said that the British evacuation of Greece was a "slaughter", but it was still certifiably successful and evacuated 50,000 soldiers to Crete under perpetual harassment from the Luftwaffe and German ground forces. In this scenario, the roles are reversed. If Germany can get only 50,000 Germans and Italians out, it's still a start. And the distance between Sicily to Tunisia isn't that much greater than the distance between Greece and Crete.

 

[thevaliant]

Upon reading Bevin Alexander's book How Hitler Could Have Won World War II, I came across a passage that essentially said that once the outcome of the Tunisian Campaign was no longer in any doubt, Hitler could have evacuated his 180,000 veteran German and Italian soldiers to Sicily where they could have put up a much stiffer resistance and possibly prevent the Allies from capturing the island. As we all know, Hitler didn't in OTL, but what if he grows a modicum of common sense and manages to ship his infantry to Sicily. Would it be enough to stop Operation Husky cold, and if so, keep Italy in the war longer?

If, by some miracle, these troops could be transported safely and if, again, they tipped the balance in Operation Husky, all that will happen is that the relative sizes of the DDR and BRD are reversed.

 

[Jozon]

@Death Demon:
He does say that the Afrika Korps could drive into the Middle East and force a decision with Turkey (either diplomatically or otherwise), but this is all given that Hitler actually pursues a Mediterranean strategy from the get-go and doesn't throw three million men at the Soviet Union. This includes taking Malta,

Which will be difficult enough given that it's a fortress, and would probably be quite capable of withstanding an airborne assault even if the Luftwaffe is hammering it every day.

reinforcing Rommel,

That's the problem right there: the transport network in Italian Libya simply couldn't handle any more troops.

and ignoring Crete.

Bye bye Ploesti!

 

[CalBear]

Whew! This is fun!

The Germans still have U-boats in the Mediterranean, and a quick augmenting of their numbers from squadrons in the Atlantic isn't out of the question (Gibraltar can't blow them away if they can't see them).
Besides, I don't think a gradual evacuation is going to be the slaughter many think it is.The Cigno Convoy sortie occurred in April 1943, the time period we're referring to here, and damaged a British destroyer and sunk another. So the Regia Marina is not out of the picture. That and CalBear said that the Allies have air superiority, not supremacy. This means the Luftwaffe is capable of effective interference. Besides, it could justifiably be said that the British evacuation of Greece was a "slaughter", but it was still certifiably successful and evacuated 50,000 soldiers to Crete under perpetual harassment from the Luftwaffe and German ground forces. In this scenario, the roles are reversed. If Germany can get only 50,000 Germans and Italians out, it's still a start. And the distance between Sicily to Tunisia isn't that much greater than the distance between Greece and Crete.

It does get interesting sometimes doesn't it?

One point that it appears to be underestimated here is Ultra. It is impossible to set up this sort of action without tons of prep and radio traffic. U-boat movement was especially vulnerable to this sort of eavedropping, as was the discussion of major shipping movements. The RN/USN have overwhelming superiority in surface combatants and even in Carrier Decks, although the USN was loathe to risk carriers in the Med. That superiority was available on demand by early 1943.

While my earlier posts stressed the impact of major surface units attacking an evacuation fleet, the impact of a half dozen Benson or Fletcher class destroyers would be almost as lethal, if less dramatic.

The same is true for any air evac attempt. The Allies did have more than enough fighter aircraft to devastate any air corridor that was attempted.

Problem is too many troops, too little lift and a bad balance of forces.

 

[chris N]

For this to work the decision to evacuate Tunsia would have had to have come much earlier. No latter than february or March of 1943. The flow of reinforcements would have had to end and the Italian Air Force combined with the Luftwaffe would have had to make an all out effort to protect the air and sea bridge to Sciliy. Timing would be everything and the best time would be after the Germans and Italians had given the allies a bloody nose.

It would have to be an evacuation that would withdraw both Geran and Italian forces and I dobt if any heavy equipment could be taken off. Thus the force that escaped would just have any weapons that could be carried with them-small arms, machine guns, mortars.

 

[PMN1]

Well, in the face of Allied air superiority.....



By September 1942 Me 323s were being delivered for use in the Tunisian campaign, and entered service in the Mediterranean theater in November 1942. The high rate of loss among Axis shipping had made necessary a huge airlift of equipment across the Mediterranean to keep Rommel's army supplied.


On April 22 1943 a formation of 27 fully laden Me 323s being escorted across the Sicilian Straits by Bf 109s from JG 27 was intercepted by seven squadrons of Spitfires and P-40s, with the loss of 21 Me 323s.[3] Three of the P-40s were shot down by the escorts.


Same goes for naval superiority, look what Force K did until it rand into the mines in December 1941.

 

[chris N]

Which is why I said that it would require an all out effort by the Luftwaffe anf Italian air force as well as the Italian navy and Kreigsmarine units that were in the med. This means an all out effort with all of the risk that that would entail.

 

[Jozon]

Which is why I said that it would require an all out effort by the Luftwaffe anf Italian air force as well as the Italian navy and Kreigsmarine units that were in the med. This means an all out effort with all of the risk that that would entail.

But even with that all out effort, it probably still fails. You can't just wave your hand, say they have to make an all out effort without specifying, and then say they might pull it off.

The all out effort would still fall well short of the capabilities the allies would be able to bring to bear, be it in the air or on the seas; and, as said before, the allies have the benefit of ULTRA, which will make any German surprise move impossible.

And even if, by some stroke of luck, the Germans do manage to evacuate a few thousand souls, what does that help them? The planes lost in the operation would have been a lot more helpful to them in the war than a few thousand soldiers without heavy equipment.

 

[chris N]

Actually, the soldiers would be of a lot more use as they had the one thing that new soldiers lacked combat experience. They also had experience working in an enviorment in which the Luftwaffe did not have control of the air.

Of cource the best thing would have been to start evacuating axis personnel from North africa the moment that the allies landed in French North Africa. While the equipment lost would be a bad loss the saving of the personnel would give the Italians and Germans more options.

 

[Michele]

I can only say - please read message #21. Think about hte political implications.

 

[chris N]

A key reason that Mussoloin fell from power was the fact that all of those men and equipment was lost in North Africa. It helped to seal his fate.
However, if he had been able to save most of the forces from North Africa the morale of the Italian military might not have been so bad.

Neither Italy nor Germany had the resources in 1943 to keep Tunisia supplied and the decision to shift forces to North Africa is what helped to doom the German forces in Stalingrad. At this point Germany needed every trained and experience soldier that it could get saving the experienced Afrika Korp cold have been a great help.

 

[Michele]

A key reason that Mussoloin fell from power was the fact that all of those men and equipment was lost in North Africa. It helped to seal his fate.

I don't think so, and I'm Italian.
Mussolini had already lost hundreds of thousands of men who were by then POWs in Allied camps. And had not fallen.
Certainly the definitive loss of North Africa was perceived as an additional defeat in a long string of ones, but a withdrawal of some troops and the loss of that territory anyway would still be perceived as a defeat; and anyway, what really made it was the presence of enemy troops in metropolitan Italy, a war being fought in the homeland.

 

[mattep74]

Wounder what the guys that sat out the rest of the war in POW-camps was best. Beeing in a POW camp run by the westernallies or beeing evacuated and risk beeing sent to the Russian front

 

[Kome]

beeing evacuated and risk beeing sent to the Russian front

There not that stupid they need them to defend italy.

 

[CalBear]

There not that stupid they need them to defend italy.

They WERE that stupid (they being Hitler. et al) because they sent them to Africa in the first damned place, left them there after the battle in the Western Desert had been lost, and then sent REINFORCEMENTS after the Allies completed Operation Torch. Stupid doesn't even BEGIN to cover it.

As far as the PoWs, those who would up in the U.S. were probably very happy indeed, with those who found their way to the UK being only slightly less pleased (although many who were held in the UK, including many leaving U.S. camps post war, were kept in England for up to two years post war to repair war damage, something that I doubt gave them the warm & fuzzies).

Unfortunately for the prisoners, a good number of them were left in North Africa under the tender mercies of the French Colonial authorities and their Arab subjects. The Germans among these unfortunates were far from happy as the North African camps were much less pleasant than those in the UK/U.S.

 

[catboy637]

Scicly was an important foothold, so the Germans keeping might cause a problem. However, if the Allies got bombers near the island, they could bomb them out. But, as if suggested by others, they went by sea (getting rid of any strategic intelligence) they would be wasting 180,000 men.

 

[Grimm Reaper]

The Axis lost more than 180,000 on Sicily OTL, so this doesn't stop the Allied advance, and does advance the Allied time table, if it can be done at all which remains most doubtful It does, however...

1) Set a precedent for Hitler abandoning territory, a wonderful signal to send Italy and Germany's other allies, not to mention the internal German hysteria when Hitler insists that he doesn't want to withdraw for strategic purposes from ----- as he did from Tunisia.

2) Tell the Italians that their colonial empire is utterly lost, the Allies have scored a massive victory and Hitler is cutting his losses so that the next battle may be less disastrous. Of course, Hitler is also guaranteeing that the next battle will be on Italian soil.

 

[chris N]

Let me remind everyone that the Italian colonial empire was lost the minute that the Axis forces withdrew from Libya. Tunisia as a Vichy French Colony.
As for withdrawal if Hitler had seen reason he would have pulled out all of his forces out of North africa the minute that the allies landes in North Africa.

It was his constant demand to stand fast and not yield an inch of terriotry to the allies that cost Germany terrible loses in manpower and equipment. Germany needed experince troops even more than equipment to strenghtn its defends and help to stop the constant bleedinging on the eastern front.

As for the Italians the majority of the divisions that were inplace on Sicily were Coastal defense disivions man by poorly trained and illequipped Italian force with little or no combat experience. Thus the addition of thousands of troops from Tunsia would have gratly strengthen Italian Defences.