The battle of the Mareth Line (20-26 March 1943) was the Eighth Army's last major setpiece battle in North Africa, and saw Montgomery force the Germans and Italians to retreat from their last significant defensive position in southern Tunisia. The battle also showed that Montgomery could be a flexible commander - after his initial plan for a breakthrough on the coastal front failed, he turned his attention to a wide outflanking movement that forced the Axis troops to retreat.
Background
At the start of his retreat after the second battle of El Alamein Rommel may have been considering attempting to defend a position in Libya, but after the Allies landed in French North Africa (Operation Torch), he realised that the only way to save his army was to retreat into Tunisia, to join up with the new army being built up around Tunis and Bizerte, and ideally use the bridgehead to evacuate the army from North Africa. Mussolini was understandably unwilling to abandon the last part of his African empire without a fight, and attempted to force Rommel to defend a series of defensive positions. The first of these was at El Agheila, the same place where Rommel's First Offensive had begun early in 1941, and his Second Offensive had begun in 1942. Montgomery was aware of this history, and was determined not to give Rommel the chance for yet another comeback. He made sure that his leading troops were well supplied and well organised (not the case for his predecessors in 1941 or 1942), and prepared for a full scale attack on the El Agheila line. Montgomery was aware that he had inherited an army with fairly fragile morale, after the heavy blows it had suffered at Rommel's hands in the past, and was careful to make sure that the army didn't suffer any setbacks that affect its morale.
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