The Western Desert Campaign was a theater of World War II which occurred from 11 June 1940 to 4 February 1943 as the Allies and Axis battled for control of Egypt and Libya. The campaign started when Italy entered the war in June 1940, leading to an Italian invasion of British-controlled Egypt. The British launched Operation Compass in late 1940 to drive the Italians out of Egypt, and the British advanced into Cyrenaica after capturing 130,000 Italian troops. The German dictator Adolf Hitler sent the Afrika Korps of Erwin Rommel to aid his struggling Italian allies, and the Germans would fight the British to a standstill, besieging them in Tobruk and forcing the British 8th Army to retreat to Egypt. The British and Axis fought a series of stalemate battles until October 1942, when the British general Bernard Montgomery defeated the Axis at the Second Battle of El Alamein. The Germans and Italians were forced back into Libya, and the British would advance through Libya and push the Germans and Italians back towards Tunisia as other Allied troops landed in Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch. The Axis forces, pressured from both east and west, were driven back to Tunisia by February, and the Axis would be forced to surrender at Cap Bon in March 1943.
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