Totaler Krieg: Germany, 1943

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Totaler Krieg — KÜRZESTER KRIEG​

Total War – Briefest War

As of February, 1943, all was not well for the German war effort. Not only had the strategic goals of Fall Blau failed to be achieved, but the Red Army had also inflicted a serious defeat upon the Wehrmacht at the Battle of Stalingrad. In addition, in North Africa, the Desert Fox had been stopped at El Alamain and ever since had been in retreat against the Allies thus signalling what seemed to be the end of an Axis presence there. Though Germany still had the initiative in the Eastern Front and the Allies had yet to open a second front in Europe, the state of affairs was at a tipping point: if the Wehrmacht cannot achieve a successful offensive in the East while keeping the Allies at bay in '43 then the course of the war may irreversibly turn against the Axis. If this were to happen then all of Europe would be at the mercy of Stalin as the Soviets continue their invasion into Central Europe and this is something that the German Reich simply cannot allow. Therefore, the entire German nation must be mobilized for war and her entire purpose must be directed towards the single goal of defeating the Soviet Union.




Version: SF DiDay's I.C.E
Scenario: 1943
Difficulty: Normal
Style: This AAR shall be eclectic in its style with the style being dependent on what I want to communicate. Generally, history-book style shall be utilized in order to discuss the grand, strategic situation, and a narrative whenever I want to elucidate the action through the eyes of those on the ground. I do plan on using a character-based narrative during the primary German military operation of 1943 (not that I know what and when that will be when writing this), hopefully in a style much like Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising.

War Goals

Winter 1943
Prima Facie
Operation Little Saturn Pt. 1​

The Battle of the Atlantic​

Operation Little Saturn Pt. 2
Krieg Ohne Hass
The Crucible
At the MAN Factory​

Spring, 1943
The Edge of Disaster
Die Wolfsschanze
Unternehmen Zitadelle: Preparations
Unternehmen Zitadelle: Breakthrough
Order of Battle: North Africa; April, 1943
Fire in the Ukraine​

 

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Prima Facie

The state of Europe as of February 1, 1943​

Eastern Front
Although the Wehrmacht had suffered a defeat with the failure of Fall Blau, German armed forces were still deep in the Soviet Union and it seemed to most that the war these was still Germany's to loose. Nevertheless, the Red Army's success with Operations Uranus and Little Saturn had recovered the majority of the territory that the Wehrmacht had taken during Blau resulting in the encirclement of not only Field Marshall Paulus, the 6th Army and the 4th Panzer Army at Stalingrad, but also three separate pockets of Axis armies around Voronezh. Although Paulus' army at Stalingrad was a lost hope, hundreds of kilometers behind enemy lines and with the vast majority of his army incapacitated, breaking the encirclements around Voronezh will become a strategic goal in the coming weeks. In addition, Leningrad was still surrounded by Heeresgruppe Nord, though attempts to break the encircled defenders have failed, and the Wehrmacht was still not far from Moscow.

Generalfeildmarshall von Mainstein: Commander of the Eastern Front ​

Due to Hitler's favorable impression of his command in Fall Blau, Erich von Manstein was relieved by Guderian as the commander of Heeresgruppe Don and promoted to the commander of Oberkommando der Heer where he would help direct the war from Hitler's Wolfsschanze. There, Oberkommand0 decided that any planning for an offensive in the spring would have to wait in order to focus on defending against expected Soviet attacks around the Donets River and to plan an immediate relief effort of the surrounded divisions around Voronezh. Once the situation that the Wehrmacht will be facing in the spring and summer is known, then shall plans for an offensive shall be created, but until then fighting off Operation Little Saturn is Oberkommand's primary objective in the East.


Afrikakorps
Ever since the defeat at El Alamein situation in North Africa has gone from bad to worse and is now believed to be unsalvageable by Oberkommando. Rommel's Afrikakorps is now fighting for survival in Tunisia with an enemy having the advantage in both manpower and supplies advancing from both Algeria and Libya. Since there are valuable armored divisions in Tunis that could be reallocated to the Eastern Front it has been decided to evacuate as much of Afrikakorps as possible by air to Italy. Rommel has been given one last order as commander of the Axis in North Africa: hold the line for as long as possible while retreating panzer units to Tunis for evacuation. Hopefully this will be an order from the Führer that the Desert Fox will obey.

The last of Rommel's Afrikaners in Tunisia​

North Atlantic
Another important area of operations is the North Atlantic. The U-Boat campaign against the UK has so far been rather successful in its unconventional war against British shipping. This war is based off of Döntiz's concept of a “Tonnage War”: the idea that the Allies have a limited quantity of convoys and a limited capability of replacing sunk ships, so to defeat the Allies' capability to supply the British isles, the U-Boats must sink a higher quantity of tonnage than they can build. As of now, Dönitz has twenty-three U-Boat flotillas, of those six are the state-of-the-art Type VIIA Class, and a squadron of naval bombers with which to wage his tonnage war with hree more modern U-Boat flotillas being built for this important effort.

Dönitz and his flotilla of Type VIIA U-Boats​

Economics and Logistics
Though the tactical situation of the German Wehrmacht is, without a doubt, of great importance, an evaluation of the German war effort cannot fully capture the situation without an analysis of the logistics of the situation.

Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.​

Among the most important economic concerns are the strategic advantages given by the DiDay's Mod for the control of certain regions, and Germany enjoys four different strategic benefits:

These will go a long way in assisting the war effort.

As far as resources are concerned, Germany has plenty of sources of energy, metal and rare materials to be able survive on them, as of now, but the lack of a large source oil may very well become a potential Achilles' heel of the mechanized Wehrmacht since stockpiles are being consumed. While the Ploiesti oilfields will greatly aid the ability of the Axis to fuel their armies, they cannot be expected to be enough to sustain all of the oil-hungry divisions. Therefore, throughout the winter months, the newly created Benzinausschuss, a committee created by the German government in response to this need for petrol, will attempt to estimate how much longer the stockpiles can last. It would not be surprising if the post-1943 strategic goals were to be dominated by the concerns of both fuel-conservation and conquering new sources oil. Otherwise the mighty Wehrmacht may very well be defeated by simple logistics rather than the Bolshevik scourge.

The amount of manpower at the Wehrmacht's disposal must also be watched. With the failure of both Barbarossa and Blau, Germany had failed to bring a quick end to the war so it is almost certain that this war will take more than one offensive to end. Ergo, it is expected that battlefield casualties will tax the pool of manpower available so attention must be given to ensuring that the supply of able-bodied men is kept well-stocked for the German war-machine.


Government
The reality of the failure of Fall Blau, especially the loss at Stalingrad, has resulted in a reshuffling of the German government. Among the new appointees were Albert Speer, who will lead Germany's new commitment to total war, Joseph Goebbels, who will serve as minister of security in order to ensure that all of Germany stands behind the war effort, von Manstein, who will also serve as Hitler's chief of staff while at the Wolfsschanze in addition to his normal command-duties, and Karl Dönitz, who was appointed head of the Kriegsmarine so that all of Germany's naval resources may be devoted to the U-Boat campaign in the Atlantic.

At first sight, the German nation is a capable war-machine that has suffered set-backs, but has yet to be wounded in a serious-enough fashion to destroy its fighting capabilities. The question now becomes will the Reich be able to make 1943 the year that the Axis secured their eventual victory?

 

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looks good keep it up

 

[Cybvep]

It's a challenging scenario. Always nice to see AARs starting in post-1936

 

[unmerged(205323)]

It's a challenging scenario. Always nice to see AARs starting in post-1936

Agreed

 

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Operation Little Saturn
Part I​

The first days of February saw Soviet attacks on positions across the entire span of the Eastern Front as the Red Army continued Operation Little Saturn. In fact, Oberkommando was almost overwhelmed with reports of attacks on the front.

The situation Oberkommando was faced with February 1st.​

The two hardest-hit army groups were Heeresgruppe Mitte outside of Moscow, and Heeresgruppe B in the open plains of the Denets river basin. Despite the theater-level size of the attacks, Heeresgruppe Nord was lucky and had yet to be attacked despite the fact that it was encircling Leningrad. In addition, the German capability to fight off the Soviet offensive was greatly hindered by the terrible logistic situation that had been plaguing the Wehrmacht in Russia ever since Barbarossa. Many divisions simply did not have the necessary ammunition to either stage a fully functional defense or to counterattack against attacking Soviet divisions in order to assist enveloped division. The situation that the Wehrmacht's infantryman was faced was grim and once again the Russian winter proved to be a worthy opponent for the mighty Axis.

The supply lines of the Eastern Front.​

To make matters worse, Soviet partisans rose-up throughout the occupied territories not only disrupting the logistical network that kept the Wehrmacht fed, clothed and armed, but also tying up reserves in an effort to stop the rebellions before they threatened front-line operations. As February continued, the threat of partisan uprisings uniting with the advancing Soviet army around southern Belorussia became real and to adequately deal with the threat, that area of operations was reassigned to Heeresgruppe Nord and thus leaving Heeresgruppe Mitte with defending the line around Moscow and securing its southern flank. This defense by would become an important keystone of Oberkommando's primary strategic goal of the winter: remaining within quick striking distance of Moscow. Though no rumors about the planning of the spring offensive had escaped the Wolf's Lair, many of the officers within the Wehrmacht felt that Oberkommando's insistence on the importance of Heeresgruppe Mitte's defense pointed towards the importance of that area as a staging ground for a renewed attempt to take Moscow.

Some of the most important battles in the defense of Mitte's holdings were at Orel and Mosal'sk. Mosal'sk was an important sector close to Moscow because its loss could not only open a possible breakthrough, a slight but very real possibility, but The first part of the Battle of Mosal'sk was won by the Wehrmacht after a counterattack against one of the attacking divisions forced the Red Army to stop its attack. However, they returned days later to begin renew their attempt to break German forces there thus restarting the battle and this time no counterattack could be organized due to shortage of ammunition. The Battle of Orel was fought within the city of Orel itself and though it was not close to Moscow, the city held importance as having one of the only airbase that was close enough to base Stukas that could support that sector of the front. Furthermore, being a city with a river serving as the boundry between the German and Soviet positions, it was great defensive position that Oberkommando did not desire to relinquish without a fight.. As the battle raged with Orel itself, the Wehrmacht could do nothing to prevent the Red Army from taking ground to its north thus threatening an envelopment of General Lemelson's defenses in Orel. Accepting this risk, Oberkommando ordered the Luftwaffe squadrons based in both Opel and Kiev to bomb the attacking Red Army divisions both day and night in order to assist the defense of Orel. However, this was not an easy mission for Richthofen and Sperrle's squadrons for the skies there were full of enemy fighters and every bombing-run incurred heavy casualties because of that. Nevertheless, Orel had to be supported, so the bombers had to continue their operations.

German soldiers around Mosal'sk in winter-camouflage.​

Heeresgruppe Don in the Denets river basin faced some attacks, especially a strong Russian attack against the city of Rostov-on-Don. Though the Russians were able to make some headway in the attack, mostly due to the fact that Rostov had served as a headquarters for division-commanders within H. Do and at first the Russians faced mains headquarters units. However, once the city was reinforced by both two divisions of Romanian infantry as well as the S.S. Division “Wiking,” the Battle of Rostov was easily won by the Axis. Though a couple of positions had to be retreated from in the wake of Operation Little Saturn, mostly in order to get behind the Donets river and to enjoy the increased defensibility of such positions, the Axis still held on to their possession along the Donets. There were setbacks for Heeresgruppe Don during the first weeks of February though, among them being the fact all three encircled battalions around Voronezh had been eliminated much to the horror of many within Oberkommando. Despite the set-back that loosing so many soldiers meant, it did mean that the Wehrmacht would not have to make an offensive there to rescue those pockets thus enabling a more open-ended long-term strategy for operations in '43 so there is some silver-lining to those three incredible defeats.

As the second week of February ended, Wehrmacht reserves finally began to defeat the insurgents who had succeeded in disrupting Axis supply-lines across Russia, and the Second Battle of Mosal'sk and the Battle of Orel raged. Though there were other smaller engagements up and down the front, those two battles were critical for holding precious German gains. While a strategy of elastic defense had secured positions more defensible positions elsewhere, the loss of either Mosal'sk or Orel would drastically weaken the defensibility of positions in Heeresgruppe Mitte and the strategic positioning of the Axis in the east. Therefore, the Wehrmacht would fully commit to those two battles and, knowing very well all that was at stake, to not merely to delay, but to break the Russian attacks.

 

[unmerged(223024)]

looks good keep it up

Thank you!

It's a challenging scenario. Always nice to see AARs starting in post-1936

Indeed, hopefully I will be able to contradict the scenario's name and make 1943 yet another year of Axis dominance. But if not, there's a certain character of games that are defeats that make them worth playing.

 

[KLorberau]

Nicely written and well done. Looking forward to following your AAR.........

KLorberau

 

[Viking_Manstein]

This mod looks cool I will be following this AAR, perhaps I can pick up some tips

 

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The Battle of the Atlantic

Without the ability to launch Operation Sea-lion and with a Luftwaffe barely able to run interceptions above the skies of the Lowlands, the Kriegsmarine, now under the command of Admiral Dönitz, was the primary weapon that the German war-effort would muster against the Allies. Once the war began in 1939, the Kriegsmarine immediately went to work in raiding British shipping and their efforts were greatly aided after the fall of France in 1940. The U-Boat campaign had sunk thousands of tons of shipping with little losses by 1941 and the entry of the United States into the war further widened the prowl of the submarines into American waters as well. The U-Boats were not the only weapon in the Kriegsmarine's arsenal for not only were long-range bombers used against Allied convoys, but also surface ships like the Bismarck and Scharnhorst had participated in raiding convoys both in the Atlantic and in the Arctic. However, by 1943 the Allies had secured great victories in what was to be called the “Battle of the Atlantic” and not only did improved ASW-tactics greatly hinder the U-Boats' ability to hinder the flow of convoys across the Atlantic, but the British success in sinking the Bismarck resulted in the “Channel Dash” and the withdrawal of all German surface ships from the waters of the North Atlantic.

The Bismarck burning on the horizon after a British scramble to sink her.​

Despite this, the U-Boat campaign was still successfully sinking convoy shipments by the ton and the appointment of Dönitz to Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine meant that all the resources available to the navy would be placed behind his wolf packs.

U-Boat flotillas were stationed in the Atlantic waters to the Southwest of the United Kingdom, within the Bay of Biscay, and off the coast of the Azores. The goal for the first U-Boat group was to attack general shipping on its way to the United Kingdom. That for the second was to disrupt the United Kingdom's capability of supplying its colonies and military in Africa and within the Mediterranean; towards this end Oberkommando is also going to place the new U-Boat flotillas being produced off the coast of Portugal. The third group's goal was both for the sake of reconnaissance and for convoy-raiding; Dönitz needed to know the waters that it would be worthwhile to send U-Boat patrols into and the Unterseebootflotille Azoren served as his antennae in those waters. So far, that flotilla has found ample convoys to sink, but after a couple month it shall be renamed and moved to another part of the Atlantic to see if the hunting there is more favorable. It is also of note here that there are also U-Boats patrolling the arctic waters above Norway in hopes of sinking Soviet shipping to and fro Arkhangelsk. There has so far been one engagement with an American fleet in the middle of the of Atlantic resulting in a single U-Boat flotilla being badly damaged and having to return to the pens in order to repairs what U-Boats survived and replace those that have been sunk. Nevertheless, the larger flotilla was able to continue its mission. This one battle has not deterred Admiral Dönitz, but the Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine certainly recognizes the danger of more such engagements, knowledgeable of the fact that his U-Boats simply cannot contend in a conventional naval battle against the ASW fleets the Americans and British have assembled.

The area of Unterseebootflotille patrols in both the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.​

The goals of the Unterseebootfeldzug, U-Boat campaign, would be not only to split the British Isles off from the rest of the empire, but also to tax the Great Britain's will to continue the war. Even though the Allies were on the verge of evicting the Axis from North Africa, it was a small victory compared to everything that the Allies had lost and so Oberkommando held hope that, given enough time, the Allies' will to continue the war can be chiseled away. To assist this goal, German spies in the United Kingdom would be tasked with disrupting the British willingness to fight by not only supporting anti-war movements, but also through campaigns of disinformation about the Axis' military might.

Wilhelm Canaris' report to Oberkommando on the state of the United Kingdom.​

Without the means to successfully defeat the Allies conventionally, Oberkommando placed their hope upon the twin pincers of the Unterbootfeldzug and the cloak-and-dagger underworld of espionage in order to bring the United Kingdom to her knees while praying that a second front would not be opened following Allied successes in North Africa.

 

[Enewald]

Now that looks awful!
How many men can you save in the east?
To better lines or not?

 

[unmerged(223024)]

Now that looks awful!
How many men can you save in the east?
To better lines or not?

It is awful enough that playing more than a couple days a session is exhausting. I must say that I.C.E. really improved the AI, I did a test with the same scenario on vanilla and the AI attacked me perhaps ten times the entire month unlike the massive offensive I am facing in I.C.E..

As far as the other two points, once I can properly supply my soldiers, a front can be secured but until then the mighty Wehrmacht will be retreating with its tail behind its legs and German soldiers will be in season throughout Russia.

 

[NERFGEN]

i'm subscribed.

I'm thinking of downloading ICE so that's one reason. But the main reason is: 'you're making this a very gripping AAr already'

Only one thing to say atm: let's get it on!

 

[unmerged(223024)]

I'll have another chapter posted in the coming days though I must admit that I lowered the difficulty to normal in order to give the Wehrmacht a chance against not only the Red Army, but also the hyperactive partisans that have been frighteningly close to the front.

 

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Operation Little Saturn
Part II

A lone German Landser gazing upon the front.​

As late February approached, the Soviet offensive in the east, known to Oberkommando der Wehrmacht as “Little Saturn,” continued to bear down upon the German lines come mid-February and the Wehrmacht had had barely any success in stopping its advance. Battles up and down the front were lost and those few precious battles that had been won resulted in exhausted divisions that were incapable of most combat operations. The partisan situation was also critical as not only did Russian saboteurs manage to harass the precious supply lines that kept the front lines as combat ready as possible, but armed uprisings had also managed to “liberate” large sections of territory behind the front. To make matters even worse, the supply situation showed no signs of being mollified and so a large amount of Wehrmacht divisions had barely enough supplies to hold the line. There seemed to be nothing that could weaken Operation Little Saturn and atmosphere was grim in the Wolf's Lair as it seemed Oberkommando could do little against it.

The Wehrmacht had committed to the defense of the city of Orel and the snowy fields of Mosal'sk, lead by Lieutenant Generals Lemelsen and Fink respectively, hoping that those two battles could be decisive enough to stop the Soviet offense. So far Lemelsen's defense of the Orel had been destroyed by not only a enemy with numerical superiority, but also adequately supplied for their task – unlike Lemelsen's, many of whose Landsers been forced by necessity to continue fighting with captured Soviet Mosin-Nagants.

Bitter defeat in a distressful winter.​

Lt. General Fink had succeeded in fighting the Soviets to a stalemate, but the unspoken truth was that the Wehrmacht was taking casualties faster than the Red Army and many officers wondered, with full knowledge that Soviet manpower levels were higher than German ones, whether continuing the defense was strategically sound. Furthermore, the Soviets were winning battles throughout the front covered by Heeresgruppe B and these included battles around not only Orel, but also to the east of Kharkov. The only thing that kept entire divisions from being captured by the advancing Red Army around Orel and elsewhere were timely counterattacks against advancing Soviet units that bought time for German divisions to race the advancing armies to the new German lines. Though these attacks were at time halted due to lack of supplies, the Heer was very lucky that the attacking units were more often than not equipped well enough to be able to counterattack. Had that not been the case then tens of thousands of brave Germans would have been captured by the advancing Red Army and damned to an unknown fate in Siberia.

A counterattack to delay an advance of the Red Army for retreating Wehrmacht divisions.​

In late February, the Red Army had staged an offensive across the Seversky Denets River along three sectors of the front: Prokhorovoka, Belgorod, and Liptsy. While the defense of Prokhorovoka went well for the German and Hungarian defenders, who had the strength of four fully manned battalions, the defenses of both Belgorod and Liptsy did not go so well. At Belgorod the single Hungarian division under command of Major General von Bierderman, whose command during the defense would be referred to as “incompetent” by his superior the General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, was in dire straights. However, the S.S. Panzerkorps, lead by Lieutenant General Paul Hausser, was being held as reserves in the neighboring city of Kharkov and two divisions of the élite unit, “Das Reich” and “Leibstandarte AH”, were sent to reinforce von Bierderman's defense. However, the Hungarians were overrun before the two panzerkorps could bolster their lines; nevertheless, they were able to take control of the sector before the bulk of the Soviet force could cross the Seversky Donets and were able to then successfully defend Belgorod. This successful combat-operation, despite many opinions that Belgorod was lost after the Hungarians retreated, was received with much celebration by Hausser's SS-Panzerkorps and the officers within the Wolf's Lair as not only an example of victory being seized from the jaws of defeat, but also of an instance of the successful use of mobile tactics. The joy of the victory of Belgorod was tempered days later by the news that the German defenders at Liptsy had been overwhelmed and that the Red Army had gained a bridgehead across the Seversky Denets there within striking distance of Kharkov.

Lt. General Paul Hausser, whose actions during the Battle of Belgorod won him recognition throughout the Wehrmacht and beyond.

Heeresgruppe B at the end of February with the Soviet bridgehead across the Seversky Denets.
​

As a result of these developments in the east, Oberkommando, under the prerogative of Chef des Generalstabs des Heeres Erich von Manstein, had decided that a strategic, rather than purely tactical, response to Little Uranus was necessary. Within days, a plan was quickly drafted in order to consolidate as much of the front as possible behind the defensible Seversky Donets and to retreat Heeresgruppe A beyond the Sea of Azov in Crimea. To make the area around Kerch, where the Wehrmacht would defend Crimea against any Soviet attacks across the Sea of Azov, it was decided that fortifications would be built there, with no officer within von Manstein's staff expecting a renewed attempt to attack the Caucasus. The purpose behind both of these retreats was to free up divisions that could be used as reserves in both Heeresgruppen B and Mitte to bolster their inadequate defenses. However, this entailed handing over the Denets Basin to the Red Army and veterans of the Wolfsschanze were fretful about briefing the Führer with these plans knowing for well that officers had been placed on leave for suggesting giving up land that the Wehrmacht had fought hard for. Despite this, von Manstein briefed Hitler on this operation, emphasizing the fact that reinforcements are needed in order to hold German positions across more critical sectors of the front, and received his approval on the condition that Generaloberst Jodl be placed in command of the first reinforcements to be sent to Heeresgruppe B. That night, the plans for code-name Fall Landschildkröte were flow to Guderian of Heeresgruppe Don and von Kleist of Heeresgruppe A for immediate implementation.

Partisans!​

By the end of February, the partisan uprisings that had flared-up throughout eastern Russia and Latvia, putting an even greater weight upon the already taxed German supply-line in that critical region, were had essentially been neutralized. This was a great relief to Oberkommando since the unexpected tenacity of the partisans were one of the factors that had weakened the Wehrmacht's capability in the east. During the partisan-hunting operations, German divisions also learned that the Soviet Union, after seeing the disruptive effects of partisans on the Wehrmacht in February, had begun to mobilize more support for them.

 

[darthkommandant]

Good luck. You seem to have an adequate challenge on normal. Hopefully you will be able to stabilize the lines with those reinforcements.

 

[Enewald]

Partisans never do anything, except annoy honest invaders.

 

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Krieg Ohne Hass​

Ever since the decisive battle of El Alamein ended in October of 1942, Rommel's Afrikakorps had been in retreat pursued by an enemy with a vastly superior logistical capacity first to Fuka and then across all of Libya into Tunisia. Due to Hitler's “Victory or Death” order had resulted in the loss of Rommel's non-motorized infantry to the British offensive, he would later write that his one regret of the entire battle is that he did not circumvent the order twenty-four hours earlier explaining that he could have saved all of the army, but in disregarding it when he did, unlike Paulus at Stalingrad, he was able to salvage much of his Afrikakorps. Despite the victories that the Desert Fox had won at Tobruk and Gazala, the initiative had passed to the British after his failed attempt at a breakthrough at the Alamein Line and by February of 1943, the Afrikakorps was trapped in Tunisia between two advancing Allied armies: an American approaching across Algeria and a British across Libya.

Although OKW desired to evacuate as much as possible from what its staff officers considered to be an inevitable death-trap, once JU-52 transports were sent to Tunis it was discovered that their cargo holds were not large enough to carry any cargo worth hauling back to the Reich. With the Mediterranean sea-ways all but closed, the Allies having secured total air superiority, and the enveloped situation of the Tunisian front, it was clear that Afrikakorps' defeat was only a matter of time. Nevertheless, Afrikakorps , doomed as it may be, still served an important strategic purpose and that was to tie-up the Allied war-effort for as long as possible in order to keep the war with the Allies on the peripheries of the Axis rather than in Europe. Thus OKW conveyed Generalfeldmarshall Rommel with the order to pursue a war of delay in Africa focused on simply lengthening the Allied campaign there as long as possible rather than on defeating them.

Rommel and Bayerlein speaking to their Afrikaners in Tunisia - note the captured M3 half-track, by this period of the African campaign, much of the Axis motorized forces were forced to use captured Allied vehicles due to supply shortages.​

The month of February began with an assault against the Allied positions at the Kasserine Pass, which had the effect of pushing the American sphere of operations away from southern Tunisia. This was important because of the fact that it meant the Allies could not envelope the German and Italian positions around the fortress of Gabés, where the Italian Commando Supremo much to the vexation of Rommel's staff and without care for the OKW's own objectives in Africa, had hoped to stage a decisive defensive against the British offensive. Instead, the only means for the Allies to take Gabés after the German victory at Kasserine was a singular front from the direction of Libya. In addition a French attack on the German positions at Bizerte was repulsed by a timely counterattack by a neighboring panzerkorps on the French positions once again proving the superiority of a defense supported by mobile units capable of counterattacking compared to a line of purely static entrenchments.

A Tiger of the Schwere Panzer-Abteilung 501 in the Kasserine Pass​

The German and Italian defenders in the south, though, could do nothing against the British attacks against them – the British superiority in numbers and the importance of preserving the combat-readiness of the few panzerkorps that Rommel still had meant that any counterattacks on British positions was an unfeasible option. By the third week of February, the British divisions were launching their attack on Gabés where Il Duce, not only overconfident of the situation in North Africa but also under the influence of the same Italian commanders who were responsible for the debacle in Libya before the arrival of Afrikakorps, commanded the Italian divisions to hold the line. For five long days, Rommel waited in Tunisia for the Italian lines to crumble as they attempted to fight the British at their own game: a battle where rigid coherence to the plan was an advantage rather than a liability. In the assault of Gabés there was no fighting in the open desert, rather it was an attack on a static position so the British military's propensity to plan their attacks in advance and to then obey that plan to the letter faced little unknowns that could introduce unforeseen factors in the battle. The Italians also faced the massive disadvantage of being placed against the superb British artillery equipped with obsolete guns. As seen in battles before, this was simply not the means of opposing them and the Italian army paid the price for their superiors' incompetency.

The British attack into Tunisia from what was once Italian Libya.​

Even though the fall of Gabés meant that there were only a couple hundred kilometers of desert between the city of Tunis, the only port large enough to support the Axis' operations these, it also meant that there were a couple of hundred kilometers of desert to use mobile tactics to delay the Allied advance. The shortening of the front also meant that the élite German panzerkorps, veterans of hundreds of desert battles across Libya and Egypt, were also in a position to be quickly deployed to either the western of southern fronts to deliver quick counterattacks. The last stand of the Afrikakorps would be not only on the same type of terrain as it had won astonishing victories on, but it would also be on a front small enough that the Allied advantage in numbers could be neutralized by swift maneuvers.

The extent of Axis holdings in Tunisia by the end of March.​

 

[Enewald]

Evacuating with what means?
Transports safe on the Mediterranean?

 

[unmerged(223024)]

Evacuating with what means?
Transports safe on the Mediterranean?

Evacuation by means of JU-52 transport planes since I have no transports in the Mediterranean. Sadly my weight 15 motorized units would not fit in them, even though their statistics say that they hold 15 weight. However, Afrikakorps has been a source of some victory for me so, in hindsight, I am quite happy that they are stuck where they are.