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Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War, Episode 239, North Africa

1940 Part 3, Italian Attacks. This week, a big thank you goes out to

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One of the major differences between the North African theater

when compared to other areas of the war that we have discussed so far

is the fact that when the war started,

neither side was ready to launch some kind of offensive.

For the Italians and British,

their immediate focus was still on

France, with the collapse of French resistance being a very real concern for the British,

and seen as a major opportunity for the Italians to attack into southern France. This meant that

for the first months of the war, neither side was going to launch any kind of large attack in the desert,

and any major effort would take months to prepare for, for either side. There would be some

fighting in the early weeks and months, but these were limited to smaller raids and were

mostly designed to be a nuisance to the enemy, rather than to decisively change the overall

situation in North Africa.

This episode will cover these smaller efforts before discussing the first major Italian

attacks of the war, which would go well, but were limited in their ability to advance across

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