Not liberation, but destruction: war damage in Tunisia in the Second World War, 1942–43

Abstract

The Allies under General Dwight D. Eisenhower fought a bitter air and land campaign in Tunisia against German and Italian forces for six long months between November 1942 and May 1943. Tunisian civilians, caught between the two sides, suffered tremendous human losses. Almost all of Tunisia's major cities and towns were destroyed or badly damaged and its economy wrecked. The end of the fighting did not lead to liberation for the Tunisians, but to renewed political repression and economic exploitation. Strangely, this initial campaign to defeat the Axis in Europe and the devastating civilian casualties and damage caused by the fighting have been ignored or forgotten, both by the participants and by historians. Among Tunisians, the memory of the war has almost disappeared. Historians and others interested in the dynamics of the post-war nationalist drive for independence must reconsider the physical and emotional impact of the Second World War on the decolonisation of Tunisia.

Keywords:

• collateral damage
• civilian casualties
• Tunisia
• decolonisation
• memory

Acknowledgements

The author is deeply grateful to Mark Kimble of York, Maine, Marion Girard-Dorsey of the University of New Hampshire, and Bill Quigley of The Governor's Academy, for their helpful insight and guidance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The most relevant archival resources are the collected papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Walter Bedell Smith held in the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Wichita, Kansas, and in the U.S. Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Also, U.S. Department of State correspondence relating to Tunisia in Records Groups 59 and 84, U.S. National Archives, College Park, Maryland, as well as relevant records of President Roosevelt and Admiral Leahy held at the FDR Presidential Library, Hyde Park, New York.

2. Hitchcock's chapter on the extended and bitter campaign in the Netherlands (pp. 98–122) may come the closest to capturing the experiences of Tunisia earlier in the war.

3. U.S. National Archives, College Park, MD (USNA), Records Group (RG) 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General Records, Box 25, File 850.9 Tunisian Detachment, 21 June 1943 Reber-Secstate dispatch no. 202 enclosing 2 June 1943 report by Lt. Col. Gerry.

4. USNA, RG 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General Records, Box 20, File 848 Relief and Rehabilitation, 15 March 1943 typescript ‘Tunisia Requirements for Relief and Rehabilitation.'

5. The official US account of the air war is presented in Craven and Cate (1949). Details on British air operations can be found in Playfair (2004). An abbreviated German perspective is presented in Kesselring (1988).

6. Information on the people seeking refuge from the Axis bombing of Medjez el-Bab came in a personal interview, 25 August 2009, al-Soukra, Tunisia.

7. The population estimates are based on a French census of 1926 and were found in the 1930 Le guide bleu: Algérie, Tunisie, Tripolitanie, Malte.

8. Students of Allied bombing policy should note that the RAF was apparently employing incendiary devices against a French civilian target as early as January 1943.

9. USNA, RG 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General Records, Box 25, File 850.9 Tunisian Detachment, 18 May 1943 Murphy-Secstate Despatch No. 157; Box 20, File 848 Relief and Rehabilitation, 25 May 1943 ‘Report on Activities (Relief and Rehabilitation) in Tunisia' by Fred K. Hoehler and Box 32, File 800 Tunisia, 8 February 1944 Military attaché report ‘News Summary 20 Jan. – 5 Feb. 1944, incl.'.

10. USNA, RG 59, 851S.00/250 Algiers-Secstate Cable No. 879 ‘For the President and Secretary from Murphy'.

11. USNA, RG 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General Records, Box 25, File 850.9 Tunisian Detachment, 6 May 1943 Murphy-Secstate Despatch No. 141.

12. USNA, RG 84, Tunis Consulate General, Classified General Records, Boxes 1–6, File 800 General Affairs, 3 July 1943 Doolittle-Secstate letter ‘Inspection Trip to Southern Tunisia'; USNA, RG 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General records, Box 32, File 800 Tunisia, 5 May 1944 Malige-Secstate Despatch No. 51 ‘Report of Study Trip to Central and Southern Tunisia'; U.S. Library of Congress, Veterans History Project, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/story/loc.natlib.afc2001001.09615, Paul Michael Schiltz, Memoirs (25 April 1997), p. 19.

13. USAAF Commanding General Hap Arnold reveals these common phenomena in the story he heard at a dinner hosted in England by Eighth Air Force commander Ira Eaker: ‘Of the 338 B-17's dispatched to hit the VKF ball-bearing plant at Stuttgart, not one saw its assigned target.' There was a lot of overcast, but 46 of the first crews saw the centre of the city and dropped their loads there. ‘Most of the rest attacked “Targets of Opportunity” on the way back – Karslruhe, Baden-Baden, Chartres, Wasselone, a number of unidentified targets, some airfields and marshalling yards in France.' Arnold noted that these details had not been included in the after-action reports sent up through channels. Arnold, Global Mission, pp. 449–50.

14. The maps in Atkinson, Army at Dawn, are the clearest and most accessible way to understand the scope of ground combat operations, particularly the map on p. 302.

15. For a veteran soldier's perspective on the realities of warfare in the twentieth century, see (Fussell 1989).

16. U.S. Army Military History Institute, Carlisle, PA, Chester B. Hansen collection, Series II Official Papers, Box 4, War Diaries 20 Feb 1943–31 Oct 1944, Folder 1 20 Feb – 1 May 1943; and Star and Stripes (Algiers edition), 5 May 1943, p. 1

17. USNA, RG 84, Tunis Consulate General, Unclassified General Records, File 822, 16 June 1943 Doolittle-Pence letter and 29 June 1943 French Residency-Doolittle letter.

18. USNA, RG 84, Tunis Consulate General, Classified General Records, Boxes 1–6, File 800, 9 March and 24 March 1943 Utter-Murphy letters.

19. USNA, RG 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General Records, Box 25, File 850.9 Tunisian Detachment, 22 April 1943 report by US Treasury representative Joseph H. Murphy.

20. Khlifi details the bey's opposition to Vichy French anti-Jewish policies prior to the arrival of German troops in Tunisia and his later effort to prevent forced labour requisitions of Muslims. US Consul General Doolittle reported in a similar vein on Moncef's resistance to anti-Jewish policies and to forced labour requisitions in his first dispatch to the State Department upon returning to Tunis: USNA, RG 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General Records, Box 20, File 840.1 Natives, 1 June 1943 Doolittle-Secstate dispatch no. 1 ‘French Arab Policy'.

21. On the wave of arrests and executions, see a series of reports in USNA, RG 84, Tunis Consulate General, Classified General Records, File 800, particularly 14 June 1943 Doolittle-Murphy letter, 3 July 1943 Doolittle-Secstate letter ‘Inspection Trip to Southern Tunisia', and 18 September Cole-Secstate airgram. Resident General Mast told US Consul General Malige that 8,000 Arabs had been arrested on suspicion of aiding the enemy, reported in 5 May 1944 Malige-Secstate Depatch 51 ‘Report of Study Trip to Central and Southern Tunisia'. Al-Habib Nouira gives a graphic description of his own arrest as a young teenager and the terrible conditions he suffered in one French prison in his memoir Dhikrayaat, pp. 82–5

22. Some of Atkinson's examples occurred in Algeria near the border, probably reflecting practices inside neighbouring Tunisia.

23. USNA, RG 84, Consulate General Tunis, Unclassified General Records, file 822, 12 July 1943 Mast-Doolittle letter; USNA, RG 84, Political Advisor to AFHQ, General Records, Box 32, file 800 Tunisia, 24 April 1944 Tunis-Secstate airgram no. 36. The claim that 1500 US soldiers were murdered by Tunisians for their clothes and equipment is almost certainly a gross exaggeration that echoed the kind of fear-mongering scuttlebutt that made the rounds among GIs, with the effect of justifying cruel treatment of Tunisians: see Atkinson, Army at Dawn, p. 229.

24. Air force commanders ordered a detailed study of bombing results in Pantelleria in an effort to demonstrate the ability of aerial bombing to win the war without ground troops. No such study appears to have been done for the Tunisian campaign.

25. These statements are based on research in the archives mentioned in note 1 in this paper in addition to the memoirs and histories already referenced. The debate on the advisability of bombing civilian facilities in Italy and France is summarised in Crane, Bombs, Cities, and Civilians, pp. 42–7 and 94.