Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0372/03724.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 28KB | 450 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03724}
$Pretitle{289}
$Title{Tunisia
Chapter 1D.   France, Italy and WW II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert Rinehart}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{french
tunisia
bourguiba
france
tunisian
independence
government
assembly
party
bey}
$Date{1986}
$Log{}
Country:     Tunisia
Book:        Tunisia, A Country Study
Author:      Robert Rinehart
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1986

Chapter 1D.   France, Italy and WW II

France and Italy

     The "Tunisian question" had remained alive as an issue in Italy after
1881. Although Italy reluctantly acquiesced to the French occupation of
Tunisia, a country that it also coveted, Italian public figures periodically
gave voice to a lingering resentment of France for having "cheated" them of
Tunisia. Complaints by Italian settlers against the French administration were
a continuing irritant in relations between France and Italy, but Italians
retained a special position in Tunisia, operating a separate school system
sponsored by the Italian government. Italy's occupation of Libya in 1911 gave
it a common colonial border with the French in Tunisia. France and Italy were
allies in World War I, but relations steadily deteriorated after the rise of
Benito Mussolini's fascist regime in Italy in 1922. Italian settlers in
Tunisia came to be viewed as a potential security threat.

     Legislation in 1921 provided that all Europeans born after that date in
Tunisia would automatically have French nationality. Protests were lodged by
both Italy and Britain against compulsory naturalization, which would entail
liability for conscription, and in 1923 the British put the matter before the
Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague. The court found that
Tunisian-born children of British subjects-the Maltese-would be entitled to
reject French nationality, although that right could not be applied to
succeeding generations. Some Italians, made uneasy by the rise of fascism in
their homeland, voluntarily sought and received French citizenship, however.
As a result, the 1924-25 period marked the point at which for the first time
French citizens accounted for more than half of the European community in
Tunisia, numbering nearly 200,000. Italians were also under economic pressure
to become French citizens, which made them eligible for better
pay-particularly in public utilities, where many of them were employed.

     In 1935 Mussolini, who was anxious to ensure French noninvolvement in his
Ethiopian campaign, agreed to a treaty proposed by French premier Pierre Laval
that would have gradually rescinded the special legal status of Italians in
Tunisia and phased out their autonomous school system. The treaty also
determined that after a 30-year transitional period, all Tunisian-born
offspring of Italian parents would become French citizens. It is doubtful if
Mussolini, who at that time already had reason to anticipate a radical
alteration of the balance of power in Europe, considered these concessions to
be permanently binding.

     While on tour in Libya two years later, Mussolini proclaimed himself the
"Sword of Islam" and offered Italy as the protector of Muslims under French
and British rule. Italy became more reckless in putting forward its claim to
Tunisia-as well as in citing its irredentist aspirations for Corsica and
Nice-and in 1938 openly denounced the French protectorate. Frightened at the
prospect of an Italian invasion, Tunisians rallied behind France as Europe
moved toward war, and they demonstrated their support on the occasion of
French premier Edouard Daladier's visit to Tunis in January 1939.

World War II

     After the fall of France in June 1940, Tunisia's border with Libya and
the large naval base at Bizerte were demilitarized. Tunisian ports and
airfields were used, however, to give logistical support to Axis forces in
Libya. The French colons were generally sympathetic to the Vichy regime, and
Mussolini's Fascists had for years been building areas of support in the
Italian community. Shortly after the French surrender, a pro-Vichy naval
officer was appointed resident general in Tunis and given broad
responsibilities for defense.

     Allied landings in Algeria and Morocco in November 1942, code-named
Operation Torch, had as an objective the speedy occupation of Tunisia, with
the cooperation of French authorities and armed forces there. Admiral Jean
Darlan, the French high commissioner in North Africa, who had initially
offered resistance to the landings, ordered a cease-fire when word reached him
that the Germans had moved into Vichy-controlled France, and he surrendered
Algiers to Allied commander Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In Tunis
the resident general hesitated to act on Darlan's orders and awaited
confirmation from Vichy. His delay allowed quick-moving German forces to
relieve the French garrisons and occupy key positions in Tunisia ahead of the
Allies.

     American airborne units took Gafsa in mid-November, but Allied attempts
to mount a concentrated drive on Tunis before German reinforcements could be
introduced failed. Allied air and naval power cut off supplies to the Axis
forces by sea, but between December 1942 and March 1943 more than 40,000
German and Italian troops were ferried by air from Sicily to Tunisia.
Supported at one point during the campaign by an estimated one-quarter of the
total German tactical air force, they held nine American, British, and Free
French divisions along a line that stretched from the north coast down the
spine of the Eastern Dorsale to the desert, while 14 divisions of General
(later Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps retreated westward across
Libya and into Tunisia before the advancing British Eighth Army (see fig. 6).

     In January Rommel hurled an armored attack at the untried United States
II Corps and broke through at the strategic Kasserine Pass, throwing Allied
forces to his rear offbalance while the Afrika Korps prepared to defend the
Mareth Line in the south. The Mareth Line was a 35-kilometer-long defense
system constructed by the French before the war against the threat of an
Italian invasion. When frontal assaults against the Axis positions were turned
back, Eighth Army commander Bernard Montgomery sent the New Zealand Division
on a wide end run around the German defenses, attacking through the narrow
defile at Djebel Tebaga and compelling General Jurgen von Armin, who had
succeeded the ailing Rommel in command of the Afrika Korps, to abandon the
Mareth Line in March. Early in April, units of II Corps advancing from the
west linked up with the Eighth Army at the Wadi al Akarit. Von Armin's skill
full withdrawal, however, saved the bulk of his army to take up the defense of
Tunis along a new line at Enfidaville. The Enfidaville front held firm, but at
the end of April the Allies opened an offensive from the west. On May 7 the
British took Tunis and II Corps entered Bizerte, trapping tens of thousands of
Axis troops between their pincers. Meanwhile, a British sweep through Cape Bon
cut off the remaining Germans and Italians facing the Eighth Army at
Enfidaville. Axis resistance in Tunisia ceased on May 13, and the North
African phase of the war was brought to a close. Fewer than 700 of the 250,000
German and Italian troops engaged in the battle of Tunisia escaped death or
capture. Control of air bases in Tunisia and the naval facility at Bizerte was
crucial to the success of the subsequent Allied invasion of Sicily and the
mainland of Italy.

Bourguiba's Tunisia

     When it was dissolved for the second time in 1938, the Neo-Destour Party
had an active membership of approximately 100,000. Its underground activities
were directed after Bourguiba's imprisonment by an executive committee, the
Political Bureau. Some nationalists at the lower level of party echelons urged
support for Germany in 1939, contending that "the enemy of my enemy is my
friend," but their enthusiasm for the Axis waned when Italy, which had
annexatio