1943 — Axis Forces Surrender in Tunisia

On May 13, 1943, the last Axis forces in Africa surrendered in Tunisia. Over 200,000 German and Italian soldiers laid down their arms, ending the North African campaign that had swept back and forth across the desert and drawn armies from around the world onto African soil for years of hard fighting.

It completed the turn Churchill named six months earlier, after El Alamein, as "the end of the beginning." The victory freed Allied forces for the invasion of Sicily and brought the fight to Europe's doorstep. For Africa, the surrender closed a chapter in which the continent had served as a battlefield for empires, even as its own peoples bore the cost of a war not of their making.