Cold War Espionage - True Stories of the Central Intelligence Agency (1963)

 

 

At the height of the Cold War, there was no greater threat to American democracy and policy than the Soviet Union, once an ally during World War II. "Central Intelligence Agency True Stories," is an aptly acted dramatization of how foreign spies allegedly used blackmail during the 60s to coerce U.S. State Department employees into betraying state secrets. Fear, propaganda, and distrust, is a constant subtext which adds gravity and portrays the U.S. mindset of the 1960s anti-communist agenda.

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Cold War espionage descibes the intelligence gathering activities during the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Because each side was preparing to fight the other, intelligence on the opposing side's intentions, military, and technology was of paramount importance. To gather this information, the two relied on a wide variety of military and civilian agencies. While several such as the CIA and KGB became synonymous with Cold War espionage, many other organizations played key roles in the collection and analysis of a wide host of intelligence disciplines.

During World War II the various allied nations held a tenuous relationship with the Soviet Union, but cooperation persisted due to a common enemy. Never quite trustful of each other, this resulted in espionage of tactics and technology between the Western bloc and Soviet bloc. After World War II ended, the two sides became increasingly confrontational, culminating in the Cold War.

Intelligence Assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organisation, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership in order to inform decision making. Assessment may be carried out on behalf of a state, military or commercial organisation with a range of available sources of information available to each.

An intelligence assessment reviews both available information and previous assessments for relevance and currency, where additional information is required some collection may be directed by the analyst.

The Cold War (Russian: Холо́дная война́, Kholodnaya voĭna) was the continuing state from about 1947 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World -- primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies -- and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies. Although the chief military forces never engaged in a major battle with each other, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

After the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, the USSR and the US saw each other as profound enemies of their basic ways of life. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing some and maintaining others as satellite states, some of which were later consolidated as the Warsaw Pact (1955--1991). The US financed the recovery of western Europe and forged NATO, a military alliance using containment of communism as a main strategy (Truman Doctrine).

The US funded the Marshall Plan to effectuate a more rapid post-War recovery of Europe, while the Soviet Union would not let most Eastern Bloc members participate. Elsewhere, in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR assisted and helped foster communist revolutions, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back, with mixed results. Among the countries that the USSR supported in pro-communist revolt was Cuba, led by Fidel Castro. The proximity of communist Cuba to the United States proved to be a centerpoint of the Cold War; the USSR placed multiple nuclear missiles in Cuba, sparking heated tension with the Americans and leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, where full-scale nuclear war threatened. Some countries aligned with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and others formed the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Cold War featured periods of relative calm and of international high tension -- the Berlin Blockade (1948--1949), the Korean War (1950--1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959--1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979--1989), and the Able Archer 83 NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides sought détente to relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack, which would probably guarantee their mutual assured destruction with nuclear weapons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_war_espionage

Big Request of the Commander (1953) Counter-Intelligence Surveys, Security Clearances - CIA Archives

Experience the American Journey through our country's visual heritage in this historical recording provided by the National Archives of the United States. This U.S. Army film contains information on a counter intelligence survey, security clearances, and a file on a civilian employee, Margaret Gilmore.

MP4 - 66,2MB - 23m13s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/ZK30L4WWQW

Counter-intelligence or counterintelligence (CI) refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of nations, are vulnerable to attack. It is the role of intelligence cycle security to protect the process embodied in the intelligence cycle, and that which it defends. A number of disciplines go into protecting the intelligence cycle. One of the challenges is there is a wide range of potential threats, so threat assessment, if complete, is a complex task.

Military organizations have their own counterintelligence forces, capable of conducting protective operations both at home and when deployed abroad. Depending on the country, there can be various mixtures of civilian and military in foreign operations. For example, while offensive counterintelligence is a mission of the US CIA's National Clandestine Service, defensive counterintelligence is a mission of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), Department of State, who work on protective security for personnel and information processed abroad at US Embassies and Consulates.

There is much value in taking a broad look at CI. A few examples of national CI and CT structure are used examples here; see the separate article on Counterintelligence and Counterterror Organizations. Thoughtful analysts have pointed out that it may well be a source of positive intelligence on the opposition's priorities and thinking, not just a defensive measure. "Charles Burton Marshall wrote that his college studies failed to teach him about espionage, the role of intelligence services, or the role of propaganda. "States' propensities for leading double lives—having at once forensic and efficient policies, one sort for display, the other to be pursued—were sloughed over." This window into the "double lives" of states of which Marshall wrote is a less familiar dimension of CI work, one that national security decision makers and scholars alike have largely neglected.

From Marshall's remark, Van Cleave inferred that "the positive intelligence that counterintelligence may supply—that is, how and to what ends governments use the precious resources that their intelligence services represent—can help inform the underlying [national] foreign and defense policy debate, but only if our policy leadership is alert enough to appreciate the value of such insights." She emphasizes that CI is directed not at all hostile actions against one's own countries, but those originated by foreign intelligence services (FIS), a term of art that includes transnational and non-national adversaries.

After the Oklahoma City bombing of 19 April 1995, by Timothy McVeigh, an American, the CI definition reasonably extends to included domestically-originated terrorism. It is fair to say, however, that there are many definitions of terrorism, and, therefore, at least as many definitions of counterterrorism. Some countries assume terrorism is purely a method of non-state actors, where others do not restrict their definition, preferring to focus on the action rather than its sponsorship.

There is also the challenge of what organizations, laws, and doctrines are relevant to protection against all sorts of terrorism in one's own country. See Counterintelligence Force Protection Source Operations (CFSO) for a discussion of special considerations of protection of government personnel and facilities, including in foreign deployments.

In the United States, there is a very careful line drawn between intelligence and law enforcement. In the United Kingdom, there is a distinction between the Security Service (MI5) and the Special Branch of the Metropolitan police ("Scotland Yard"). Other countries also deal with the proper organization of defenses against FIS, often with separate services with no common authority below the head of government

France, for example, builds its domestic counterterror in a law enforcement framework. In France, a senior anti-terror magistrate is in charge of defense against terrorism. French magistrates have multiple functions that overlap US and UK functions of investigators, prosecutors, and judges. An anti-terror magistrate may call upon France's domestic intelligence service Direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST), which may work with the Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure (DGSE), foreign intelligence service.

Hypnosis Interview of Gordon Joseph Rayner on Undercover Drug Operations (1985) FBI Archives

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Hypnosis is a mental state (according to "state theory") or imaginative role-enactment (according to "non-state theory"). It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary instructions and suggestions. Hypnotic suggestions may be delivered by a hypnotist in the presence of the subject, or may be self-administered ("self-suggestion" or "autosuggestion"). The use of hypnotism for therapeutic purposes is referred to as "hypnotherapy", while its use as a form of entertainment for an audience is known as "stage hypnosis".

The words hypnosis and hypnotism both derive from the term neuro-hypnotism (nervous sleep) coined by the Scottish surgeon James Braid around 1841. Braid based his practice on that developed by Franz Mesmer and his followers ("Mesmerism" or "animal magnetism"), but differed in his theory as to how the procedure worked.

Contrary to a popular misconception -- that hypnosis is a form of unconsciousness resembling sleep -- contemporary research suggests that hypnotic subjects are fully awake and are focusing attention, with a corresponding decrease in their peripheral awareness. Subjects also show an increased response to suggestions. In the first book on the subject, Neurypnology (1843), Braid described "hypnotism" as a state of physical relaxation accompanied and induced by mental concentration ("abstraction").

There are numerous applications for hypnosis across multiple fields of interest including medical/psychotherapeutic uses, military uses, self-improvement, and entertainment.

Hypnotism has also been used in forensics, sports, education, physical therapy and rehabilitation. Hypnotism has also been employed by artists for creative purposes most notably the surrealist circle of André Breton who employed hypnosis, automatic writing and sketches for creative purposes. Hypnotic methods have been used to re-experience drug states, and mystical experiences. Self-hypnosis is popularly used to quit smoking and reduce stress, while stage hypnosis can persuade people to perform unusual public feats.

Some people have drawn analogies between certain aspects of hypnotism and areas such as crowd psychology, religious hysteria, and ritual trances in preliterate tribal cultures.

Many famous sports figures like Tiger Woods have used hypnosis to gain an edge on their competition. This is accomplished by accessing an athlete's altered conscious state and incorporating a different way of processing information.

A recently declassified document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act shows that hypnosis was investigated for military applications. However, the overall conclusion of the study was that there was no evidence that hypnosis could be used for military applications, and also that there was no clear evidence for whether 'hypnosis' actually exists as a definable phenomenon outside of ordinary suggestion, high motivation and subject expectancy. According to the document, The use of hypnosis in intelligence would present certain technical problems not encountered in the clinic or laboratory. To obtain compliance from a resistant source, for example, it would be necessary to hypnotise the source under essentially hostile circumstances. There is no good evidence, clinical or experimental, that this can be done.

Furthermore, the document states that: It would be difficult to find an area of scientific interest more beset by divided professional opinion and contradictory experimental evidence...No one can say whether hypnosis is a qualitatively unique state with some physiological and conditioned response components or only a form of suggestion induced by high motivation and a positive relationship between hypnotist and subject...T.X. Barber has produced "hypnotic deafness" and "hypnotic blindness", analgesia and other responses seen in hypnosis—all without hypnotizing anyone...Orne has shown that unhypnotized persons can be motivated to equal and surpass the supposed superhuman physical feats seen in hypnosis.

The study concludes: It is probably significant that in the long history of hypnosis, where the potential application to intelligence has always been known, there are no reliable accounts of its effective use by an intelligence service.

Research into hypnosis in military applications is further verified by the MKULTRA experiments, also conducted by the CIA. According to Congressional testimony, the CIA experimented with utilizing LSD and hypnosis for mind control. Many of these programs were done domestically and on participants who were not informed of the study's purposes or that they would be given drugs.

Espionage Techniques and Technology - The Corona Program - Military History, Satellite Imagery (1972) CIA Archives

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From the Central Intelligence Agency's declassified film archive comes this collection of 1950s and 1960s archival footage of spy techniques and technology. This volume includes a documentary on the Corona program, the CIA's first photo-reconnaissance satellites, produced by the CIA and featuring footage of Richard Helms, Director of Central Intelligence from 1966-1973. The documentaries continue with a look at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, their recordkeeping, fingerprint operations, lab operations, and field agent training. In addition, a film on anti-communist propaganda campaigns in Eastern Europe, with an examination of Radio Free Europe.

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The Corona program was a series of American strategic reconnaissance satellites produced and operated by the Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Science & Technology with substantial assistance from the U.S. Air Force. The Corona satellites were used for photographic surveillance of the Soviet Union (USSR), the People's Republic of China, and other areas beginning in June 1959 and ending in May 1972. The name of this program is sometimes seen as "CORONA", but its actual name "Corona" was a codeword, not an acronym for anything.

The Corona project was pushed forward especially following the shooting down of a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union in May 1960.

The Corona satellites were designated KH-1, KH-2, KH-3, KH-4, KH-4A and KH-4B. KH stood for "Key Hole" or "Keyhole" (Code number 1010), and the incrementing number indicated changes in the surveillance instrumentation, such as the change from single-panoramic to double-panoramic cameras. The "KH" naming system was first used in 1962 with KH-4 and the earlier numbers were retroactively applied. There were 144 Corona satellites launched, of which 102 returned usable photographs.

The procurement and maintenance of the CORONA satellites was managed by the Central Intelligence Agency, which used cover arrangements lasting from 1 April 1958 to 1969 to get access to the Palo Alto plant of the Hiller Helicopter Corporation for the production. In this Advanced Project Integration Facility, the CORONA second rocket stage Agena, Itek cameras, Eastman Kodak Cooperation films, and General Electric reentry capsule were assembled and tested before shipment to Vandenberg AFB. In 1969, the program was relocated to the Lockheed facilities in Sunnyvale, CA.

The Air Force credits the Onizuka Air Force Station as being the "birthplace of the Corona program."

The Corona program was officially classified top secret until 1992. Then, on February 22, 1995, the photos taken by the Corona satellites, and also by two contemporary programs (Argon and KH-6 Lanyard) were declassified under an Executive Order signed by President Bill Clinton. The further review by photo experts of the "obsolete broad-area film-return systems other than Corona" mandated by President Clinton's order led to the declassification in 2002 of the photos from the KH-7 and the KH-9 low-resolution cameras.

The declassified imagery has since been used by a team of scientists from the Australian National University to locate and explore ancient habitation sites, pottery factories, megalithic tombs, and Palaeolithic archaeological remains in northern Syria.

The 1963 thriller novel Ice Station Zebra and its 1968 film adaptation were inspired, in part, by news accounts from April 17, 1959, about a missing experimental Corona satellite capsule (Discoverer II) that inadvertently landed near Spitsbergen on April 13 and was believed to have been recovered by Soviet agents.

In the 1995 Anime film Memories the deep space salvage freighter used by the astronauts in the short Magnetic Rose is called Corona and is similar in style to the satellites.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_satellite

Mission Mind Control (1979) CIA MKULTRA

Experience the American Journey through our country's visual heritage in this historical recording provided by the National Archives of the United States. Uncovering government agencies (especially the CIA) that secretly tested the effects of LSD on humans.

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http://www.multiupload.com/VIO2MUYNCT

There have been numerous experiments performed on human test subjects in the United States that have been considered unethical, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the test subjects.

Many types of experiments have been performed including the deliberate infection of people with deadly or debilitating diseases, exposure of people to biological and chemical weapons, human radiation experiments, injection of people with toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation/torture experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of others. Many of these tests were performed on children and mentally disabled individuals. In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor racial minorities or prisoners. Often, subjects were sick or disabled people, whose doctors told them that they were receiving "medical treatment", but instead were used as the subjects of harmful and deadly experiments.

Many of these experiments were funded by the United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency, United States military and federal or military corporations. The human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed.

The ethical, professional, and legal implications of this in the United States medical and scientific community were quite significant, and led to many institutions and policies that attempted to ensure that future human subject research in the United States would be ethical and legal. Public outcry over the discovery of government experiments on human subjects led to numerous congressional investigations and hearings, including the Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, and Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, amongst others.

In 1953, the CIA placed several of its interrogation and mind-control programs under the direction of a single program, known by the code name MKULTRA, after CIA director Allen Dulles complained about not having enough "human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques." The MKULTRA project was under the direct command of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb of the Technical Services Division. The project received over $25 million, and involved hundreds of experiments on human subjects at eighty different institutions.

The project's intentionally oblique CIA cryptonym is made up of the digraph MK, meaning that the project was sponsored by the agency's Technical Services Division, followed by the word ULTRA (which had previously been used to designate the most secret classification of World War II intelligence). Other related cryptonyms include MKNAOMI and MKDELTA.

A precursor of the MKULTRA program began in 1945 when the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency was established and given direct responsibility for Operation Paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a program to recruit former Nazi scientists. Some of these scientists studied torture and brainwashing, and several had just been identified and prosecuted as war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials.

Several secret U.S. government projects grew out of Operation Paperclip. These projects included Project CHATTER (established 1947), and Project BLUEBIRD (established 1950), which was renamed Project ARTICHOKE in 1951. Their purpose was to study mind-control, interrogation, behavior modification and related topics.

Headed by Sidney Gottlieb, the MKULTRA project was started on the order of CIA director Allen Dulles on April 13, 1953, largely in response to alleged Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean use of mind-control techniques on U.S. prisoners of war in Korea. The CIA wanted to use similar methods on their own captives. The CIA was also interested in being able to manipulate foreign leaders with such techniques, and would later invent several schemes to drug Fidel Castro.

Experiments were often conducted without the subjects' knowledge or consent. In some cases, academic researchers being funded through grants from CIA front organizations were unaware that their work was being used for these purposes.

In 1964, the project was renamed MKSEARCH. The project attempted to produce a perfect truth drug for use in interrogating suspected Soviet spies during the Cold War, and generally to explore any other possibilities of mind control.

Another MKULTRA effort, Subproject 54, was the Navy's top secret "Perfect Concussion" program, which was supposed to use sub-aural frequency blasts to erase memory, however the program was never carried out.

The Enemy Agent and You (1964) CIA Archives

This U.S. Army film discusses security awareness and responsibilities in relation to overseas travel.

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An Agent is someone that has been authorized to function on behalf of another. There are several types of agent in use today.

* Double agent, "is a person who engages in clandestine activity for two intelligence or security services (or more in joint operations), who provides information about one or about each to the other, and who wittingly withholds significant information from one on the instructions of the other or is unwittingly manipulated by one so that significant facts are withheld from the adversary.

Peddlers, fabricators, and others who work for themselves rather than a service are not double agents because they are not agents. The fact that doubles have an agent relationship with both sides distinguishes them from penetrations, who normally are placed with the target service in a staff or officer capacity."

* Re-doubled agent, an agent who gets caught as a double agent and is forced to mislead the foreign intelligence service.

* Unwitting double agent, an agent who offers or is forced to recruit as a double or re-doubled agent and in the process is recruited by either a third party intelligence service or his own government without the knowledge of the intended target intelligence service or the agent. This can be useful in capturing important information from an agent that is attempting to seek allegiance with another country.

The double agent usually has knowledge of both intelligence services and can identify operational techniques of both, thus making third party recruitment difficult or impossible. The knowledge of operational techniques can also effect the relationship between the Operations Officer (or case officer) and the agent if the case is transferred by an Operational Targeting Officer to a new Operations Officer, leaving the new officer vulnerable to attack. This type of transfer may occur when an officer has completed his term of service or when his cover is blown.

* Triple agent, an agent that is working for three intelligence services.

* Intelligence agent: Provides access to sensitive information through the use of special privileges. If used in corporate intelligence gathering, this may include gathering information of a corporate business venture, stock portfolio, or the creation of a new menu item at a restaurant.

In economic intelligence, "Economic Analysts may use their specialized skills to analyze and interpret economic trends and developments, assess and track foreign financial activities, and develop new econometric and modeling methodologies." This may also include information of trade or tariff.

* Access agent: Provides access to other potential agents by providing profiling information that can help lead to recruitment into an intelligence service.

* Agent of influence: Someone who may provide political influence in an area of interest or may even provide publications needed to further an intelligence service agenda. I.e. The use of the media to print a story to mislead a foreign service into action, exposing their operations while under surveillance.

* Agent provocateur: This type of agent will instigate trouble or may provide information to gather as many people as possible into one location for an arrest.

* Facilities agent: A facilities agent may provide access to buildings such as garages or offices used for staging operations, resupply, etc.

* Principle agent: This agent functions as a handler for an established network of agents usually Blue Chip.

* Confusion agent: May provide misleading information to an enemy intelligence service or attempt to discredit the operations of the target in an operation.

* Sleeper agent: A sleeper agent is a person who is recruited to an intelligence service to wake up and perform a specific set of tasks or functions while living under cover in an area of interest. This type of agent is not the same as a deep cover operative who is continually in contact with their case officer in order to file intelligence reports. A sleeper agent will not be in contact with anyone until activated.

* Illegal agent: This is a person who is living in another country under false credentials that does not report to a local station. A non official cover operative is a type of cover used by an intelligence operative and can be dubbed an "Illegal" when working in another country without diplomatic protection.

At the Front in North Africa with the U.S. Army (1943)

MP4 - 155MB - 41m29s - Youtube rip

http://www.multiupload.com/DURHB939IR

Experience the American Journey through our country's visual heritage in this historical recording provided by the National Archives of the United States. This film from the CIA Film Library covers activities during World War II relating to tank forces, troop review, artillery, Prisoners of War and the care of wounded in the area of Sidi Bel Abbes and the city of Algiers. This historical recording from the National Archives may contain variations in audio and video quality based on the limitations of the original source material. The content summary for this DVD is adapted from an historical description provided by the government agency or donor at the time of production release.

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During the Second World War, the North African Campaign took place in North Africa from 10 June 1940-16 May 1943. It included campaigns fought in the Libyan and Egyptian deserts (Western Desert Campaign, also known as the Desert War) and in Morocco and Algeria (Operation Torch) and Tunisia (Tunisia Campaign).

The campaign was fought between the Allies and Axis powers. The Allied war effort was dominated by the British Commonwealth and exiles from German--occupied Europe. The United States entered the war in 1941 and began direct military assistance in North Africa, on 11 May 1942.

Fighting in North Africa started with the Italian declaration of war on 10 June 1940. On 14 June, the British Army's 11th Hussars (assisted by elements of the 1st Royal Tank Regiment [1st RTR] ) crossed the border into Libya and captured the Italian Fort Capuzzo. This was followed by an Italian offensive into Egypt and the capture of Sidi Barrani in September 1940 and then in December 1940 by a Commonwealth counteroffensive, Operation Compass. During Operation Compass, the Italian Tenth Army was destroyed and the German Afrika Korps, commanded by Erwin Rommel, was dispatched to North Africa, during Operation Sonnenblume, to reinforce Italian forces in order to prevent a complete Axis defeat.

A see-saw series of battles for control of Libya and parts of Egypt followed, reaching a climax in the Second Battle of El Alamein when British Commonwealth forces under the command of Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, delivered a decisive defeat to the Axis forces and pushed them back to Tunisia. After the late 1942 Allied Operation Torch landings in North-West Africa, and subsequent battles against Vichy France forces (who then changed sides), the Allies finally encircled Axis forces in northern Tunisia and forced their surrender.

The Axis, by fighting against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, provided relief for the British and later American forces fighting in North Africa. Information gleaned via British Ultra code-breaking intelligence proved critical to Allied success in North Africa.

Following the Operation Torch landings, (from early November 1942), the Germans and Italians initiated a build up of troops in Tunisia to fill the vacuum left by Vichy troops which had withdrawn. During this period of weakness, the Allies decided against a rapid advance into Tunisia while they wrestled with the Vichy authorities. Many of the Allied soldiers were tied up in garrison duties because of the uncertain status and intentions of the Vichy forces.

By mid-November, the Allies were able to advance into Tunisia but only in single division strength. By early December the Eastern Task Force, which had been redesignated British First Army under Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson, was composed of British 78th Infantry Division, 6th Armoured Division, 1st Parachute Brigade, 6th Commando and elements of U.S. 1st Armored Division. But by this time, one German and five Italian divisions had been shipped from Europe and the remoteness of Allied airfields from the front line gave the Axis clear air superiority over the battlefield. The Allies were halted and pushed back having advanced eastwards to within 30 km (19 mi) of Tunis.

During the winter, there followed a period of stalemate during which time both sides continued to build up their forces. By the new year, the British First Army had one British, one U.S. and one French Corps (a second British Corps headquarters was activated in April). In the second half of February, in eastern Tunisia, Rommel and von Arnim had some successes against the mainly inexperienced French and U.S. Corps, most notably in routing the US II Corps commanded by Major-General Lloyd Fredendall at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass.

By the beginning of March, the Eighth Army, advancing westwards along the North African coast, had reached the Tunisian border. Rommel and von Arnim found themselves in an Allied "two army" pincer. They were outflanked, outmanned and outgunned. The British Eighth Army bypassed the Axis defence on the Mareth Line in late March and First Army in central Tunisia launched their main offensive in mid April to squeeze the Axis forces until their resistance in Africa collapsed. The Axis forces surrendered on 13 May 1943 yielding over 275,000 prisoners of war. This huge loss of experienced troops greatly reduced the military capacity of the Axis powers, although the largest percentage of Axis troops escaped Tunisia. This defeat in Africa led to all Italian colonies in Africa being captured.

After victory by the Allies in the North African Campaign, the stage was set for the Italian Campaign to begin. The invasion of Sicily followed two months later.