ljadw wrote:In april and may,the Germans evacuated 25000 men .Why not more ?
My guess :not only the allied air and naval forces were hindering the evacuation,but,also,the front was collapsing .
By that time the Allied air forces were effective. The losses to Italian ships were the largest of the war thus far. At the start of the 2d quarter 1943 Ellis shows a avg of 290,000 tons dispatched & 210,000 tons arriving in Tunis. During april & May the quantity arrived vs embarked plunges to under 50%. That does not reflect losses on the docks before & after embarck/disembarkation. Ellis hints at that, showing that embarkation of material drops below 150,000 tons for the 2d quarter.
There is a remaining widow for evacuation January - Febuary, but the losses then are likely to be larger than a early Tripoli evacuation in 1942. Also, a Febuary evacuation implies some sort of build up of Axis forces in Tunisia & expendenture or combat losses. A early evacuation avoids that loss. The trade off is a early evacuation from Tripoli allows the Allies to advance their operations elsewhere in the Med.
A alternate course is if the Axis conducts a only a delaying action in Tunisia. That is a holding force is established to deny the Allies the Bizerte/Tunis ports and the all weather airfields there as long as practical. That costs far less in manpower & material, the Axis forces in Lybia can still be evacuated in part in 1942, and the Allies advance their operations by only a month or two.