In the Battle of Kasserine Pass, the U.S. forces were forced to retreat by German troops.
The Battle of the Kasserine Pass was a confrontation that took place in February 1943 during the Tunis Campaign of World War II. This battle took place at the Kasserine Pass, which is a 3.2 km wide gap in the Atlas Mountains in western Tunisia.
In it the Axis forces, led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel with the Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK), two panzer divisions of the 5th Panzer Army commanded by Hans-Jürgen von Arnim and one part of the 131st Centaur Armored Division of the Regio Esercito of Italy in charge of the General Carlo Calvi di Bergolo and the allied forces directed by the American General Lloyd Fredendall with the II Corps of the Army of the United States, the 6th British Armored Division led by Major General Charles Keightley and the First British Army led by Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson.
The battle was the first major clash between US forces and the Axis forces in the North Africa Campaign during World War II. The inexperienced and misdirected US troops suffered heavy casualties and were quickly turned down more than 80 km from their initial positions west of the Faïd Pass. This confrontation left huge sequels in the American forces, although the complete disaster had been avoided, the Battle of the Kasserine Pass was a humiliating defeat for the US forces in their first major clash with the Germans.
This battle was one of the last victories of Rommel in North Africa, but the weakness of the Italian-German forces in Tunisia prevented them from taking advantage of this victory.
