One month later, June 26, 1943, the day lasted for more than two months and finally came to an end.

In February 1943, Rommel's troops were forced to retreat into the Maret line in Tunisia, and the German army in Tunisia was strategically trapped by the Allied forces on both sides of the east and west.

In many previous battles, the German and Italian army suffered heavy losses in their troops and technical equipment.

As the British and American Air Forces have fully controlled air supremacy and the British and American navies have complete control of the Mediterranean, the German and Italian troops have many difficulties in supplying and replenishing personnel.

The army group received only a small number of aircraft support, with 16 destroyers and 21 submarines from the Italian Navy, and 22 German submarines coming to support.

After being unable to gain a foothold in Libya, the German and Italian troops could only continue to retreat and occupy the existing position of the "Maret" fortification line and defend the last landing ground in Africa.

But in Rommel's eyes, this was the only chance for the African Legion to turn the tables.

On the one hand, after retreating into Tunisia, the German army was in the inside advantage, and Rommel's supply line was greatly shortened, while the Allied supply line that pursued from the east was greatly lengthened.

On the other hand, the two most powerful military groups in Africa, Rommel's African Armored Army and Anim's 5th Armored Army finally joined forces in Tunisia.

If the two armies can cooperate effectively, they may work together to defeat the 1st Allied Army in the west before the Allied forces arrive.

Later facts also proved that Rommel, who is known as the "Desert Fox", is not a false reputation. The German army fought extremely beautifully in the last counterattack and achieved extremely successful victory.

During this German counterattack, the US 2nd Army alone lost 6,300 people, which is not counting the more than 4,000 American and British soldiers captured by the German army, while the German army only paid more than 1,000 casualties.

Afterwards, the counterattack caused the Allies to lose supplies even more than the sum stored in Algeria and Morocco.

But is such a record happy or sad for the future of the African army?

Obviously, the answer is no!

It was precisely because the initial victory of the Battle of Tunisia that dazzled the German generals and gave them a dose of heart-warming agent.

After that, from Kesseling to the head of state of Tunisia, he became blindly optimistic. Not only did he not try his best to withdraw his troops from Africa, but he instead used his energy to transport various supplies to Africa.

However, when the German army did not possess the Mediterranean sea and air supremacy, the consequence of this could only be that such a heavy army group would be destroyed in the African battlefield and consumed the German army's strategic materials greatly.?

Due to the huge gap in technical equipment between the two sides, the German army had an advantage in this battle but eventually failed. The German army's efforts to repeat the second "Tannenburg" in Tunisia eventually became a bubble.

During the entire Tunisian battle, the Allied Army had a total of 1.03 million troops, 6,241 Allied Air Force combat aircraft, the Allied Mediterranean Navy had 3 battleships, 15 aircraft carriers, 8 cruisers, 40 destroyers, 23 minesweepers, and 14 small combat ships.

Compared with the German army, the Allied forces have an absolute advantage: 1.5 times infantry, 3 times artillery, 4 times tanks, and more than 10 times aircraft. Only German submarines pose a slight threat to the Allied forces.

It was not until June 20, 1943 that after a series of arduous and bloody battles, the Allied forces launched another general attack after artillery fire preparations, and the German and Italian troops were forced to retreat to Bangkok, attempting to withdraw from North Africa by sea.

Unfortunately, before the battle officially started, the Allies had completely blocked the sea and air routes and would not give the German and Italian troops a chance to withdraw to Italy.

On June 28, 1943, Anim led the remaining German and Italian troops to surrender, and the war in North Africa ended here.

After the Battle of Tunisia, the German-Italy African Army Group was completely annihilated.

The army group lost more than 700,000 people in Tunisia, including about 540,000 captured, including 425,000 German troops.

The allies captured the entire North African coast of the Mediterranean, thus ensuring the safety of Mediterranean transportation lines and creating favorable conditions for attacking Sicily and the Apennine Peninsula.

The Allies gained valuable experience in Tunisia in carrying out large-scale offensive campaigns to break through the enemy's pre-prepared defense, as well as using heavy air force to support the army's offensive, and paved the way for a future counterattack against Europe.

Once the news of a great victory in the Battle of Tunisia was announced, it caused great shock around the world. The camp of the Allies was cheering and the hearts of the military and the people were once again rising!

On the Axis Alliance, there was a wailing sound, and once again, the footsteps of failure were approaching.

More than ten days later, African Allied troops began to pursue the victory and launched the Sicily landing war, one of the largest landing operations in World War II.

Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and is a territory of Italy. The entire island is triangular, with an area of ​​25,700 square kilometers and a population of about 4 million.

The island is 300 kilometers long from east to west and 200 kilometers widest from north to south. The terrain is mainly mountains and hills, and the height is Mount Etna.

The northwest corner of the island is the Port of Palermo and the northeast corner is the Port of Messina. It is only a narrow Strait of Messina from the Italian city of Calabria, and the Port of Siracusa is located in the southeast corner. The entire island is easy to defend and difficult to attack.

In order to obtain a forward base to attack Sicily, the Allied forces first carried out landing operations on Banterelia Island between Sicily and North Africa.

The landing operation was very smooth. The Allied forces broke through Banterella Island in one go and captured more than 11,000 Italian troops, thus opening the prelude to the Battle of Sicily.

Immediately afterwards, the Allies carried out large-scale strategic bombings on Sicily and Calabria before landing.

The Allied forces dispatched more than 5,000 aircraft to carry out uninterrupted bombings on the airports and facilities on Sicily for several days and nights before landing.

On July 12, after a long period of large-scale air raids, the Allied forces obtained absolute air supremacy in Sicily and southern Italy, and more than 1,000 combat aircraft of the German and Italian Air Force were forced to retreat to southern central Italy and Sardinia.

On July 16, the Allied Attack Fleet set off from six ports including Oran and Algiers in North Africa, and carried troops to Malta to meet.

At the same time, the British Navy dispatched 7 aircraft carriers, 6 battleships and other large warships to cover the attack fleet.

Late at night on July 19, the Allied fleet gathered on the east and west sides of Malta Island. When preparing to land, the weather suddenly changed. The waters of Sicily became violent and violent, and the waves were surging. The German and Italian troops relaxed their vigilance.

However, the Allied forces did not change their plans because of this. At 2:40 am, the airborne troops first launched an attack.
Chapter completed!