Ascendancy (May 1940 - February 1941)

On September 13th, 1940, Italy launched the Tenth Army stationed in Libya in a 200,000 troop invasion into the British protectorate of Egypt and set up defensive forts at Sidi Barrani. But Italian Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, Governor-General of Libya, with little intelligence on the state of Allied forces there, chose not to continue further towards Cairo.

The Allied forces were outnumbered, 36,000 men compared to a total of 200,000. Nevertheless at the end of 1940 they launched a counter-attack, Operation Compass. It was more successful than expected and resulted in the destruction of most of the Italian Tenth Army, and the advance of the Allied forces to El Agheila. The stunning defeat did not go unnoticed and fresh Italian troops under Uldo Capzoni together with German troops, the Deutsches Afrikakorps under Erwin Rommel were sent in to reinforce the Italian forces in western Libya. At the same time the forces who had just routed the Italians were withdrawn from the Western Desert. An Australian infantry division was sent to reinforce the Greek armies fighting the Axis invasion of Greece while the 7th Armoured Division was sent to the Nile Delta to refit. They were replaced by the British 2nd Armoured and the Australian 9th Divisions.