Reserve troops—or lack thereof—have played a significant role in battles and campaigns throughout history, especially in the twentieth century. Nazi Germany deployed reserves from France and southern Europe to Tunisia, averting collapse in the wake of Operation Torch, and later to Italy, assuming control over most of that country after the Allied landing and the Italian surrender. Conversely, the lack of reserves to deal with the Allied landings in Sicily compelled the Germans to shift forces away from the Eastern Front, hampering the 1943 Kursk offensive, and the expenditure of their last reserves in the Battle of the Bulge contributed heavily to the general German collapse in 1945.