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The record · Kasserine Pass, 1943
Kampfgruppe DAK
Kampfgruppe DAK was the German-Italian assault group Rommel built around the headquarters of the Afrika Korps for his February 1943 offensive. It took Gafsa, Fériana and Thelepte, broke through the Kasserine Pass on 20 February and was stopped short of Tébessa at Djebel el Hamra two days later.
Illustration A neutral marker made for this site, not a unit emblem.
An assault group, not a corps
The Deutsches Afrikakorps had fought in Libya and Egypt since 1941. By February 1943 its two panzer divisions were badly worn after the retreat from El Alamein. On 4 February Rommel proposed to the Italian high command, the Comando Supremo, that while part of his German-Italian Panzer Army held the Mareth Line against the British Eighth Army, its mobile units would strike north at Gafsa. At a meeting on 9 February the plan changed: von Arnim’s Fifth Panzer Army would attack first at Sidi Bou Zid, and Rommel’s part, Operation Morgenluft, would follow with an assault group drawn from the Afrika Korps (Howe, ch. XXI; Chapter 4).
Howe lists the group’s German core as the Afrika Korps headquarters, Panzer Grenadier Regiment Afrika, two weak battalions of the 1st Luftwaffe Jäger Brigade, a tank battalion of the 15th Panzer Division with 26 tanks, the 33d Reconnaissance Battalion, two artillery battalions, a rocket-projector battery, an engineer company, an antitank company and the headquarters of the 135th Flak Regiment with seven antiaircraft batteries. The Italian Centauro Armored Division added two infantry battalions, two artillery battalions, a motorized Bersaglieri battalion, a tank battalion with 23 tanks and a battery of assault guns: about 49 tanks in all, a small fraction of the armor committed at Sidi Bou Zid (Howe, ch. XXII, n. 6).
Gafsa, Fériana and Thelepte
The group moved north from the Gabès area cautiously. Rommel was worried about his lack of reserves and overestimated the Allied strength around Gafsa. The Americans and French had already left; Axis troops found the town empty on 15 February and occupied it that evening (Howe, ch. XXII). Rommel’s aim of destroying the Allied forces in the Gafsa basin had slipped away.
On 17 February the group came up the road to Fériana. The Allied rearguard pulled out at about noon after a short engagement, and the group pushed on to the Thelepte airfields, which the American XII Air Support Command had evacuated that morning. On the way Liebenstein’s vehicle hit a mine; he was wounded, and Generalmajor Karl Bülowius, the senior engineer officer of Rommel’s army, took over the group. The Americans had burned or blown up what they could not fly out, and Howe judged that the demolitions left the base “with little of military value.” A German radio message of 19 February nevertheless reported that the Afrika Korps had salvaged 20 tons of aviation gasoline and 30 tons of lubricants there (Howe, ch. XXII, n. 35). On 18 February the group’s reconnaissance entered the undefended village of Kasserine, captured about sixty French soldiers, and met a reconnaissance unit of the 21st Panzer Division coming from Sbeitla (Howe; Chapter 4).
The pass, 19–20 February
Rommel first tried to take the pass by surprise. At daybreak on 19 February the 33d Reconnaissance Battalion attacked and was stopped by fire from tanks, infantry and tank destroyers. Panzer Grenadier Regiment Afrika under Col. Otto Menton then attacked on both sides of the river and took Hill 974 on Djebel Semmama. Bülowius told Rommel he expected to win the pass before the end of the day and committed Group Stotten, the 1st Battalion, 8th Panzer Regiment. Its afternoon attack up the Tébessa road ran into the 19th Engineers’ minefield, where five German tanks were knocked out. By dusk the group had taken about 100 American prisoners, but the pass still held (Howe; Chapter 5). After dark a detachment of Menton’s 2d Battalion climbed to Hill 1191, which overlooks the whole floor of the pass.
On 20 February, reinforced by a Centauro tank battalion, the 5th Bersaglieri Battalion and a battery of rocket launchers, Bülowius attacked again at 8:30 a.m. The defense on the Tébessa side broke just before noon. Rommel then ordered a single coordinated attack for 4:30 p.m. by Kampfgruppe DAK and the leading troops of the 10th Panzer Division, supported by five battalions of artillery. The British detachment called Gore Force forced Bülowius to commit his tanks on the Thala road, and it lost all of its own. By evening the Axis held the pass. Howe records that the Germans “were amazed at the quantity and quality of the American equipment captured more or less intact” (Chapter 5).
Djebel el Hamra, 21–22 February
With the pass open, Rommel sent the 10th Panzer Division toward Thala and Kampfgruppe DAK west toward Djebel el Hamra and Tébessa. He hesitated on the morning of 21 February, expecting an Allied counterattack, and the group left Kasserine only at 2 p.m. In the late afternoon it ran into Lt. Col. Henry E. Gardiner’s tanks and the guns of Brig. Gen. Paul Robinett’s Combat Command B. After about an hour of long-range fire it broke off, still about four miles short of the passes (Howe, ch. XXIV; Chapter 6).
Rommel then approved a night march by Panzer Grenadier Regiment Afrika around the American left. In rain, fog and darkness the grenadiers lost their way, and at daylight on 22 February they came out seven miles southeast of their objective. They still captured the five 105 mm howitzers of Battery C, 33d Field Artillery Battalion, and took Hill 812 near Bou Chebka, but there they were stuck, unable to advance and unable to retreat across a plain under American artillery fire. An attack by the 1st Battalion, 8th Panzer Regiment, and Italian assault guns against Robinett’s line was stopped between 10:30 and noon. At 4 p.m. the 3d Battalion, U.S. 16th Infantry, with tanks of the 13th Armored Regiment, retook Hill 812 and the captured guns; Robinett’s tanks caught the 5th Bersaglieri Battalion as it tried to get away. More than 400 prisoners were taken (Howe; Kelly, as cited in Wikipedia). The Germans had come within about two miles of Djebel el Hamra and about 23 miles of Tébessa, and no closer.
That afternoon Kesselring and Rommel agreed to end the offensive. The withdrawal began on the night of 22–23 February, and Kampfgruppe DAK went south to relieve the Centauro Division at Fériana and Thelepte. Bülowius’s command of the group ended on 25 February (Howe; Wikipedia, “Karl Bülowius”).
The record
The chapters of this collection found no specific war crimes recorded against Kampfgruppe DAK in these days; the record of the February battles is of a hard but conventional fight. The great crime of the occupation of Tunisia in the same months, the persecution of the Jews, was the work of the SS Einsatzkommando under Walther Rauff, carried out behind the front the German army held. German records cited by Howe give 201 killed, 536 wounded and 252 missing for the whole offensive of 14–22 February (Howe; Chapter 9).
Bülowius was captured by American troops on 9 May 1943. He took his own life on 27 March 1945 in the prisoner-of-war camp at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, and is buried in Chattanooga National Cemetery. Liebenstein was captured in May 1943 and later served in the West German Bundeswehr (Chapter 4).
Timeline
- Kesselring, Rommel and von Arnim settle the plan: Frühlingswind first, then Rommel’s Morgenluft.
- The group enters an empty Gafsa in the evening.
- Fériana and the Thelepte airfields are taken; Liebenstein is wounded by a mine and Bülowius takes command.
- Its reconnaissance enters Kasserine village and meets the 21st Panzer Division.
- Attacks in the pass are held; five tanks are knocked out at the American minefield.
- The defense breaks at noon; a coordinated attack clears the pass by evening.
- The group advances toward Djebel el Hamra and is stopped by Combat Command B.
- Hill 812 is taken in the morning and lost at 4 p.m.; Kesselring and Rommel agree to withdraw.
- The group withdraws south to Fériana and Thelepte; Bülowius’s command ends on the 25th.
- Bülowius is captured by American troops.
Read the full story
- Chapter 4: Sbeitla, Gafsa, Fériana and Thelepte: The Long Retreat
- Chapter 5: The Pass: The 19th Engineers and Stark Force, 19–20 February
- Chapter 6: Thala and Djebel el Hamra: Where Rommel Was Stopped
- The Kasserine Pass collection and atlas
By the numbers
Kampfgruppe DAK by the numbers
What the February offensive cost the Germans
German losses for the whole Axis offensive of 14–22 February 1943, of which Kampfgruppe DAK was one part, as recorded in German returns
Source: George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (1957), chs. XXII–XXIV; Chapter 9
Prisoners, both ways
Men captured in the group’s fighting, as recorded in the U.S. Army official history (approximate)
Source: George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (1957), chs. XXII–XXIV; Orr Kelly, Meeting the Fox (2002)
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
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Sources
- George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957), chapters XXI–XXIV, including chapter XXII, note 6, on the composition of the group.
- Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. II, Europe: Torch to Pointblank (University of Chicago Press, 1949), chapter 5, on Thelepte.
- Mike Phifer, “Panzer Strike at Kasserine Pass,” Warfare History Network; Mark T. Calhoun, “Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory,” The National WWII Museum (2023); Orr Kelly, Meeting the Fox (Wiley, 2002), as cited in Wikipedia.
- Wikipedia, “Karl Bülowius,” citing German personnel records.
- Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (1967); B. H. Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers (1953).