Key battles in WW1/WW2

Seige of Tobruk

The seige of Tobruk was a small port town on the coast of North Africa in Egypt. However after a series of back and forth attacks between the British and Axis the German and Italian troops had pushed across the border of Egypt for the second time that year. And their was a small port town that was under siege and was a famous seige because it defended the Allies from getting attacked further eastwards towards the middle east and the Nile river. But let's see how this started...

After the defeat of France in August 1940, the Mediterranean was now firmly in Axis influence however in North Africa, Britain and its empire were the last threat to German power. And Mussolini the Facist leader of Italy. Decided to attack Britain as he believed the country and its empire was severely weakened by the defeat of France. However when the campaign started, the resistance was much greater than they expected and they were stopped relatively close to the Egyptian border. And after the British had sent reinforcements of Commonwealth forces like Indian and Australian troops. Who were specialists in desert combat theirselves. They were pushed back over the border back into it's own colony of Libya.

After being on a constant retreating path, the British and its commonwealth forces cut off the path of retreat and many of the Italian soldiers there had surrendered and there was 150,000 lost as POW, killed, wounded or missing. After seeing the disaster of the campaign Mussolini had to look up to his sugar daddy or also known as Hitler. Who gave him some highly skilled troops and many armoured divisions. And even gave him one of his best commanders Erwin Rommel the Desert fox. And with Axis troops being strengthened, they went back to the front and inflicted a major defeat on the British and its commonwealth allies and they kept retreating until they crossed the Libyan Egyptian border.

And this is where we start the seige of Tobruk. As they were retreating the Australian part of the commonwealth forces was out flanked by German armoured divisions and they were cut off from the retreat path and were forced to dig into defensive positions around the port town of Tobruk. And holding a port, the British could send much supplies to support the defenders. And the Australian troops held out for many weeks. With the port in Allied hands the Axis couldn't advance any further because of oil and fuel shortages and they needed that port to import feul and resources to North Africa. But with the Australian troops both superior weaponry and defensive positions around Tobruk. The Axis powers failed to take the port town properly. Which then allowed the British to counterattack and push the Germans and Italians back across the border once again.

What made this battle so significant was that the Australian troops were able to hold onto their defence around Tobruk for such a long time. Since they had the port they gave supplies by sea and the Australians were better supplied and denied them any ground any closer to Tobruk because not even the Tank divisions were able to counter the tough fortifications as anti tank mines proved effective against the Axis onslaught. And this then allowed the British to push back the poorly supplied Axis troops and turn it into their favour for some time to come ahead.