From Sidi el Barrani to Beda Fomm 1940-1941 - Mussolini's Caporetto: an Italian perspective: 49 (Storia)

(Telegram from Gen. Richard O'Connor, commander of the XIII Army Corps, to Gen. Archibal Wavell, commander of the British FFAA in the Middle East, February 8, 1941) The defeat suffered in Egypt and Cyrenaica by the army of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani by the Western Desert Force, which culminated in the annihilation of the 10th Army at Beda Fomm in February 1941, constitutes the most serious defeat of the Italian army in the course of its history, even worse than that which occurred on 24 October 1917 in the battle of Caporetto: an army of 150,000 men left 133,298 prisoners, 420 tanks, 845 guns and 564 airplanes in the hands of an enemy of only 36,000 units in exactly two months, from 9 December 1940 to 9 February 1941, undergoing its strategic initiative and moral superiority. For Italy, the defeat in Cyrenaica meant a severe downsizing and the end of the parallel war, with strategic subordination to the German Reich. But as for Caporetto, the Royal Army, far from being defeated, immediately recovered also and above all thanks to the help of the Third Reich and the example provided by the units of the Deutsches Afrika Korps. The volume analyzes the forces in the field, the political pressures made by Rome on Graziani to push him to attack, and the military operations, from the Italian invasion of Egypt to the Compass operation with which Wavell and 'O Connor repelled the Italians in Cyrenaica. until the decisive battles of Bardia, Tobruk, el Mechili and Beda Fomm.