Desert War Comes to an End

Like the First World War, the majority of fighting that took place was on the Western and Eastern fronts. The fighting in France and Russia consumed the majority of war materials for the last five

years. For the Allies, millions of men had been deployed and lost on the western front, trying to keep the Germans at bay, and for the Germans, the majority of their men had been lost in a crippling defeat against the Soviet Union. While the entire continent of Europe was engulfed in war, there was another front occurring in the Deserts of North Africa and the Middle East. The First World War had shown both sides how important oil was as fuel to allow their dreadnoughts and planes to function. Now, since the world had become more and more mechanized, planes, ships, and vehicles all relied on the precious black gold buried in the desert. The Italians had conquered some of Africa prior to the war (Libya, Abyssinia), and used these strategic colonies for oil. The Germans had assisted Italy in the desert, sending their finest men; the Afrika Korps. For years in the desert, the Americans, under the leadership of General Montgomery, and the Germans, under the leadership of Rommel, fought each other. The leaders of their respected armies were equal in skill and tactics, and this resulted in a war where both sides did not advance much due to the stalemate created from similar minds. The fighting between these intelligent generals went back and forth for years before the Germans were decisively defeated at El Alamein, Egypt. After the defeat in Egypt, Rommel's men were pushed further and further back through Libya and finally into Tunisia. It was there that the Axis Powers surrendered on this day in history, in 1943. The Allies then invaded the south of Italy from Tunisia, but the surrender of the Korps in North Africa signalled the end of the fighting in the Desert Theatre.

The surrender of the Afrika Korps in North Africa was an important event because the Nazis had lost their invaluable oil supply, and combined with a defeat on the Eastern Front, and an invasion force preparing to land at Normandy within one year, the Germans were on their heels. They had lost their oil, and now they were dependent only on what they had left. On May 13th, 1943, the desert war came to an end.