From the Allied point of view, 1941 and most of 1942 were the worst war years, while the Jewish Yishuv in Palestine was threatened directly by the tide of Erwin Rommel's victories in the North African desert war and the German advance toward the Caucasus. The landings in North Africa in November 1942, preceded by the British offensive at el-Alamein, aimed at the realistic and important drive to push the German and Italian armies out of a strategically important global crossroads containing the future reserve of the world's oil, and the growing role of Muslims and Arabs in this connection and in connection with strategic calculations regarding future Allied activities in Europe and in the Indian–Burmese theater were related to Allied domestic political considerations. The ensuing Tunisian campaign proved to be rather long – about seven months – and was crowned with the capitulation of the German and Italian armies in May 1943. But later, the battle over Sicily and the landings in southern Italy proved to be a bloody, long, and extremely difficult campaign along the Italian peninsula, which ended practically with the war's end two years later.

The Allies did not overcome the U-boat menace until May 1943 and at that time started to plan the landing in France, while in the meantime the bombing campaign against Germany was a substitute for operations on the European mainland.