Dispatches from Allied headquarters revealed last week that Field Marshal Albert Kesselring has for some time been in supreme command of Axis forces in Tunisia. He is nicknamed Smiling Albert. If he was smiling last week, it was not because the news of his front was good. He and his men were cornered for fair.
The Axis forces had been driven into a great beachhead, about 100 miles long and 50 miles deep. Inside that beachhead, Albert Kesselring had 18 airfields, two cities with radiating roads, many good heights, some fixed fortifications, plenty of guns, and perhaps 175,000 men. He had Rommel, a proved master of battle, and Arnim, an aristocratic technician. And he had orders.
What use was he going to be able to make of all these things?
His Terrain. The Axis beachhead in Tunisia is not wholly a fortress. Much of it is country which favors defense, but there are vulnerable spots.
The strongest areas lie on the flanks. From Sedjenane to Djebel el Ang on the northeast, and from Enfidaville to Djebel Sefsouf on the southwest (see map), the mountain chains are steep, and provide a natural defense in depth. But in the center there are two areas where the fortress walls are weak. These are the broad valleys of Tunisia's two main rivers: the Medjerda and the Miliana."
The most logical threats to the fortress, therefore, lay from the directions of Med-jez-el-Bab and Pont du Fahs — and last week Field Marshal Kesselring could see that his adversaries were aware of the logic. They seemed to be clearing the way, patiently and fiercely, for drives up Tunisia's center alleys. They spent the week clearing the outer walls of the alleys. French troops took Djebel Sefsouf on the one hand. British troops took Djebel el Ang on the other—a hill from which, on clear days, Tunis is visible 35 miles away. Kesselring, seeing the danger, took the hill back; the Allies retook it and held.
Field Marshal Kesselring could and probably did expect the Allies to take other commanding heights (such as the beachhead's highest hill, 4,250-ft. Djebel Zaghouan) and then, when artillery and lookouts commanded the lesser places, to drive up the broad valleys. Doubtless he had concentrated in those valleys the things which General Eisenhower last week said had become, not just an obstacle, but a weapon in Tunisia—the land mine. On the hills Kesselring was deeply dug in, with plenty of the 81-mm. mortars which have always been a weapon but are especially an obstacle in Tunisia.
His Men. The exact number and condition of the Axis force in Tunisia is known, probably, to only a few Germans. The Allies announced that 30,000 prisoners had been captured in all Tunisia since the breaching of the Mareth Line, and unofficial estimates placed Axis battle casualties in the same period at 10,000. The Italian Vittorio Veneto Division was said to have been virtually destroyed. These were losses for Kesselring, but not cataclysmic ones. His remaining force of approximately 175,000 was outnumbered by perhaps 2-to-1. But, considering its advantageous positions, it was by no means broken. It contained crack Austrian and Italian mountain troops.
His Generals. The outside world already knew plenty about Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Of Colonel General Jürgen von Arnim, much less was known.