Was the Desert War a mistake for Germany?

Kesserine pass was hard way to learn the art of mechanised war.

Italians did know how to fight. Problem was inadequate mechanisation (trucks, tanks...) needed in desert warfare and inflexibility of higher command (mussolini and higher ups messing into everything). Both were the sympthom of Italy being utterly unprepared for war materially and psychologicaly. Realisation of this had dire consequences on lower levels (i.e. morale of the troops sunk below the bottom). This in turn resulted in Italians surrendering en masse. One of the reasons for low morale of the troops was also mindset of majority of italian senior officers which was on the level of ww1 (with few exceptions)

Italy was prepered to fight the mid-30's war but by late 30's most of their eqipment (tanks, tanquettes...) were outdated. Some atribute the faliure to modernise to the high cost of Spanish civil war where Italy had large contingent of ground troops and air force (much larger than Germans in fact) and large amounts of equipment supplied (as help) to Franco. Combine that with the fact that Italy was never economicaly stable country with relatively little industry and with little of resouces.

 

You're quite right and that's the point of putting the "easy" in quotes. Still it was less difficult than most of Germany's other advesaries, and in a area with fewer implications for the allied cause.