Saturday, June 21, 2008
This Day in the History of Bleak Days for the British
On this day in 1942, the British South African Division (with some Indian troops) surrendered the Lybian port of Tobruk to the Afrika Korps along with nearly 30,000 Commonwealth troops. Then the only thing between Rommel and the Suez Canal was the British 8th Army, whom he had defeated nearly every time he took them on. Bleak days indeed. Had the Afrika Korps taken the Suez (and set up coastal guns in Morocco opposite Gibraltar) then the Mediterranean would have really been their ocean and victory in North Africa would have been a lot harder.
Labels: North Africa, WWII history; European theater
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 11:18 AM 
