 Starting on 31 March 1941, a Wehrmacht offensive drove the British out of Libya and into Egypt.As 95% of Egyptians live in the Nile river valley, the fighting in the Western Desert only affected the Bedouin nomads who lived in the desert.At the same time in 1941 that Rommel was inflicting a series of defeats on the British in the Western Desert, Farouk wrote to Hitler promising him that when the Wehrmacht entered the Nile river valley, he would bring Egypt into the war on the Axis side.