At 7 a.m. on 9 December, the British began to attack Sidi Barani's outer defensive line, and by 1.30 p.m. they had conquered Nibeva, and then began their assault on the Tuma barracks, occupying the entire barracks in the evening, and Sidi Barani was surrounded.

At dawn on the 10th, with the strong fire support of the battleships, the Colstrim guard stationed in the port of Matru took the lead in launching an attack on Sidi Barani, and by the evening had completely routed the Italian army.

In the following days, the 16th Motorized Infantry Brigade and the 6th Australian Division began to pursue the Italian until they captured the entire coastal area of Buk Buk and Sidi Barani.

By 15 December, the British had cleared Egypt of all enemy forces, and most of the Italian forces remaining in Cyrenaica had retreated to the isolated Badia defensive positions.

The first phase of the Battle of Sidi Barani ended. In this battle, 5 divisions of the Italian army were completely annihilated, and more than 38,000 people were captured. The British suffered only more than 520 casualties and 8 missing.

On January 3, 1941, the second phase of the Battle of Sidi Barani began, and Badia became the primary target, and the British army engaged the 6th Australian Division, the 16th Infantry Brigade, the 7th Battalion of the Royal Tank Regiment, 1 machine gun battalion, 1 field artillery regiment and 1 medium-range artillery regiment.

In addition, the 7th Panzer Division was responsible for preventing the enemy from escaping from the north and northwest. The battle began in the early morning of January 3 and ended with the complete capture of Badia on the 5th, with 45,000 Italian troops captured and 462 artillery pieces captured.

Immediately afterwards, the British army began to attack Tobruk, first the British fleet carried out a fierce bombardment of Tobruk, and then the Royal Air Force bombed the Italian airfield, destroying hundreds of Italian aircraft.

The last Australian brigade broke through the outlying positions at Tobruk, followed by two other Australian brigades, entering the makeshift bridgehead and extending their gains to the left and right flanks.

The next morning, the Italian army completely stopped resisting, more than 30,000 people became British prisoners, and the British army captured more than 700 cannons, so that the battle of Sidi Barani was completely over.

Mussolini's urgent telegram for help was placed on Hitler's desk again, originally Hitler did not want to waste his troops in this stupid place in North Africa, he could even tolerate the loss of the whole of North Africa, but Italy's serious defeat in North Africa caused Hitler to panic.

He believed that the loss of North Africa would be militarily forgivable, but would provoke a strong psychological reaction in Italy, which would obviously be detrimental to the actions of the Axis powers as a whole, so he decided to send troops to North Africa.

In January 1941, Hitler decided to send troops to Libya to aid the Italian army, but he planned to consolidate the defense in North Africa instead of an offensive, and Mussolini begged Hitler to send Rommel and the Seventh Panzer Army to Africa.

Rommel only spent a month in Paris, France, before receiving an order from Hitler to reinforce Africa, and the era of Rommel finally came.

Rommel fought in the First World War, where he led his troops to the Arli region, the Romanian region, and Italy, where he was wounded twice, and was awarded the Iron Cross and the Order of Merit, the highest rank.

During World War I, he served as a regimental officer and served in the General Staff, and at the outbreak of World War II, he served as the commander of the 7th Panzer Division, which took part in the war against France, and his division received the nickname "Devil's Division" for its valor, and was the vanguard of the breakthrough of the Maas River.

During the six-week battle, Rommel's troops suffered only 2,400 casualties and captured more than 97,000 Allied troops, and Rommel was awarded a samurai-level Iron Cross for his victory.

Rommel had one principle in operation:

"In a battle between two armies, whoever suppresses the other side first with firepower will win the battle, and those who wait for the development of the battle situation when they are still will often be defeated by the other side."

Rommel was also good at using mobile troops, and he was good at quickly reorganizing his troops after a campaign to win a new victory.

He was also a brilliant military gambler, adept at mastering supply issues, and defied difficulties and fought zealously to move forward.

Churchill had great respect for Rommel. He praised Rommel:

"A very brave and warlike opponent, a great general if I may put aside the devastation caused by war".

Due to the rout of the Italian army, and the arrival of large German forces, the British withdrew their trump card, the 7th Panzer Division, known as the "Desert Rat", to Egypt for rest and replenishment.

Its theater of operations was replaced by a part of the 2nd Panzer Division, which had only been transferred from China and was full of new recruits, and the 6th Australian Division was also transferred to the 9th Division, and some of this division had not yet reached the front line due to supply difficulties.

Although Churchill and the country expressed concern about the British army's approach, it did not attract the attention of the British Middle East Command, and it was the blind optimism of the British army that doomed them to defeat in the ensuing battle.

……

Since Rommel received the order to send troops to Africa, he immediately stepped up preparations, first of all, the desert camouflage paint of various weapons and equipment, Germany's previous silver-gray livery was no longer suitable for the desert environment, and it had to be changed to the desert camouflage camouflage that adapted to the desert camouflage.

The second step is to let Speer, the French vice-governor, continue to organize the upgrading and transformation of French military enterprises, and Rommel set the goal of Speer by the end of 41 years to complete the upgrading of all military enterprises in France and the three Low Countries.

As long as the military industrial enterprises of France and the three Low Countries are upgraded, at least two or three million of Germany's long-term and protracted war consumption can be satisfied, and there will be no problem with the consumption of Rommel's armored corps in Africa.

(At the beginning of World War II, France alone had 6 million troops, not counting the troops of the three Low Countries - Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.) ）

The third step is the drilling equipment that Rommel has been collecting for a long time, Speer found more than ten sets of drilling equipment, Rommel felt that these drilling equipment was a bit small, and ordered more than a dozen sets in the factory in France.

Rommel now has the ability to drill more than 30 oil wells at the same time, and the oil deposits along the Mediterranean Sea are relatively shallow, with an average depth of about 1,200 meters, which takes about three or four months to drill.

Is there oil in Italy-occupied Algeria and Libya? Germany's fatal shortcoming is poor oil, and Rommel was very concerned about the oil situation around Germany, so he remembered the oil fields in Africa.

The Hasime-Saoud oilfield, one of the world's 10th largest oil fields, is located in the northeast of Algeria, at the northern end of the Sahara Desert. Crude oil has low sulfur content and good quality, and the recoverable reserves of crude oil are 1.56 billion tons.

Libyan oil and gas fields are mainly distributed in the Siirte Basin in the north, with proven recoverable reserves of 5.681 billion tons, ranking 9th in the world and first in Africa, and remaining proven recoverable reserves of natural gas of 1.4 trillion cubic meters, ranking 21st in the world.

As long as Germany firmly occupies Algeria and Libya, and then exploits these two oil fields, will Germany still be short of oil? Of course not, this oil is enough for the whole of Europe for a hundred years.