The sudden Anglo-French-Australasian attack produced astonishing results.
Although the Germans had long been prepared for an Anglo-French counteroffensive, they had not expected it to be so ferocious. From the very beginning, it left the German defenders struggling to cope.
Moreover, with the Anglo-French-Australasian forces gathering large numbers of aircraft and warships to provide fire support, the Allied armies quickly broke through all the small towns in southern Tunis within just two days, pushing the front line right up to the outskirts of Tunis.
For the German Army at this point, the situation in North Africa had become completely beyond its control.
That was because the German Government was preparing to launch an attack on Stalingrad, a battle that would require at least two to three million German soldiers.
Although new recruits were already being trained at home, it would take at least half a year before their training was complete.
And what Germany needed most at that moment was time.
Thus, Germany could only place its hopes in its two seemingly unreliable allies.
Those two allies were naturally Spain and Italy.
Of course, this so-called unreliability was only relative to the great powers.
After all, the world was one enormous ramshackle stage. What the two sides were really competing over was who had made fewer mistakes.
Whether in history or at present, every country had made some mistakes in war.
Australasia alone had avoided any major problems so far, because Arthur had anticipated them in advance and because it had not paid too high a price in the war.
To make Italy and Spain willingly draw troops away and send them to North Africa, the Germans had paid a heavy price, directly using French colonies to tempt the two countries.
In truth, this temptation was indeed highly effective for Spain