The Italians had only advanced within 50 miles of Egypt before stopping at Sidi Barrani, and on 9 December 1940 the British launched an offensive that drove the Italians back into Libya. In response, in January 1941, German forces were dispatched to the Mediterranean to assist the Italians and on 12 February 1941, the Afrika Korps under the command of Erwin Rommel arrived in Libya. 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. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that the fact that Farouk wanted to see his country occupied by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany was not a sign of great wisdom on his part and that he never understood "...that Axis rule of Egypt was likely to be far more oppressive than British".