Read "American Military History, Volume 2" by Richard W. Stewart online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Rommel, recoiling from the defeat at El Alamein and aware of the allied landings to his rear in November, withdrew his German-Italian army by January 1943 to the Mareth Line, old French fortifications near the southern border of Tunisia. There, he confronted Montgom- ery's Eighth Army while more than 100,000 enemy troops under Gen- eral Juergen von Arnim faced westward against General Eisenhower's Allied force. Although the Italian high command in Italy exercised loose control, the Axis nations failed to establish a unified command over these two forces.
The Allied plan to defeat Rommel by converging attacks having been foiled, General Eisenhower had no choice but to dig in to defend in the Tunisian mountains until he could accumulate enough strength to attack in conjunction with a renewed strike by Montgomery against the Mareth Line. Before this could be accomplished, Rommel on February 14 sent strong armored forces through the passes in central Tunisia against the U.S. II Corps, commanded by Maj. Gen. Lloyd R. Fredendall. Rommel planned to push through the Kasserine Pass, then turn northwestward by way of an Allied supply base at Tébessa to reach the coast and trap the Allied units.