The Battle of Kasserine Pass was a series of battles of the Tunisia Campaign of World War II that took place in February 1943 at Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide gap in the Grand Dorsal chain of the Atlas Mountains in west central Tunisia.
The Axis forces, led by Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, were primarily from the Afrika Korps Assault Group, the Italian Centauro Armored Division and two Panzer divisions detached from the 5th Panzer Army, while the Allied forces consisted of the U.S. II Corps, the British 6th Armoured Division and other parts of the First Army.
The battle was the first major engagement between U.S. and Axis forces in Africa. Numerically superior but inexperienced and poorly led American troops suffered many casualties and were quickly pushed back over 50 miles from their positions west of Faïd Pass.