Rommel's Second Offensive
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, the Australian forces were withdrawn from the Western Desert to the Pacific theatre, while the 7th Armoured Division was withdrawn and 7th Armoured Brigade was transferred to Burma.
The relatively inexperienced British 1st Armoured Division, which formed the principal defence around El Agheila, were spread out rather than concentrating its armour, as more experienced units had learned from earlier campaigns. Rommel's Afrika Korps attacked on 21 January scattering the British 1st Armoured Division's units. The 2nd Armoured Brigade was also committed piecemeal and easily defeated by Rommel's more concentrated forces. Both units were forced back across the Cyrenaica line into eastern Libya, along with the 201st Guards Motor Brigade, in the process giving up both Msus and Benghazi to the German forces.
From February–May 1942, the front line settled down at the Gazala line, just west of Tobruk, with both armies preparing an offensive.
Rommel managed to get his offensive off first in June 1942. After a lengthy armoured battle, known as "the Cauldron", he defeated the Allies in the Battle of Gazala and captured Tobruk. Auchinleck fired Ritchie and took personal command of 8th Army, halting Rommel at the Alamein Line only seventy miles from Alexandria in the First Battle of El Alamein.
Read more about this topic: Western Desert Campaign
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