Operation Compass - Aftermath

Aftermath

After ten weeks, the Italian Tenth Army was no more. The Allied forces had advanced 800 km, destroyed or captured about 400 tanks and 1290 artillery pieces, and captured 130,000 Libyan and Italian prisoners of war besides a vast quantity of other war material. Their prisoners included 22 generals. The Italian general staff on the other hand records 960 guns of all types lost. The British and Commonwealth forces suffered 494 dead and 1,225 wounded. The issue of Life Magazine that went out on 10 February 1941 included a story entitled: "Mussolini Takes a Bad Licking in Africa."

On 9 February 1941, as the British advance reached El Agheila, Churchill ordered that it be stopped and troops be dispatched to defend Greece. The Greeks were already in a war with the Italians and a German attack was soon expected.

The British advance stopped short of driving the Italians totally out of North Africa. While only about 32,000 demoralized Italian troops escaped the disaster in Cyrenaica, Italy still had the 5th Army and its four divisions in Tripolitania. In readiness for additional British advances, the Italians reinforced the Sirte, Tmed Hassan, and Buerat strongholds. The 17th "Pavia" Infantry Division, the 25th "Bologna" Infantry Division, the 27th "Brescia" Infantry Division, and the 55th "Savona" Infantry Division had contributed much equipment and most of the better artillery to the divisions lost in Cyrenaica but reinforcements continued to arrive from Italy. Several of the infantry divisions in Tripolitania were "motorized" in theory, but much of the motor transport had been contributed to the 10th Army.

Among the recently arrived units were the reformed 60th "Sabratha" Infantry Division (the original being lost at Derna), the 102nd "Trento" Motorised Division and the 132nd "Ariete" Armored Division (minus the armour lost at Beda Fomm). This brought the total of Italian soldiers in Tripolitania to about 150,000. The Italians had already lost almost as many soldiers in Cyrenaica and most of the better equipment and armour available, but fresh equipment and armour continued to arrive from Italy.

On 11 January 1941, HMS Illustrious had suffered a crippling dive-bomber attack from Italian Stukas (called Picchiatello in Italian service). This loss allowed the first troops of the German Africa Corps (Deutsches Afrikakorps, DAK) to begin arriving in Tripolitania. On 11 February, as part of Operation Sonnenblume ("Sunflower"), elements of DAK started to arrive. With the arrival of DAK, commanded by General Erwin Rommel, the desert war would take a completely different turn.

On 25 March 1941, General Italo Gariboldi replaced Marshal Rodolfo Graziani. Graziani had requested to be relieved and was granted his request. By 19 July, Gariboldi himself was relieved because of his alleged lack of cooperation with Rommel.

Towards the end of April, the Italian divisional commanders reviewed the Italo-German forces. A German officer shouted: "At the beginning of Italian-German cooperation on African soil, we swear to make the greatest effort for a joint victory for Great Germany and Great Italy. Long live Great Italy! Long live Great Germany!" The assembled troops roared: "We swear it!"

Given other setbacks suffered during the early war years, the Allied troops of Operation Compass were highly publicized and became known as "Wavell's Thirty Thousand," which was used as the title of a 1942 British documentary chronicling the campaign.