Overall for the Allies, Operation Crusader was a success for the most part, as it achieved the main goal which was to relieve the fighting at Tobruk, but the victory came at a very heavy cost.With the Allies having around 17,000 men as casualties, and just under 300 tanks, which was strangely less of a percentage of the tanks they started with than the Axis forces. The Axis forces lost around 300 of their 400 tanks whereas the Allies only lost around 300 of their 700 tanks. Technically the Allies had secured the victory pushing Axis armies out of the Cyrenaica and relieving the fighting of Tobruk, but looking back on the battle and what happened after the Operation, Operation Crusader wasn't as successful as people put it out to be, as loosing 17,000 men as casualties and having over 300 tanks destroyed in just over a month is not exactly a success in terms of the overall campaign in North Africa. "This loss, however, was not the only spectre at the feast of victory. In February Eighth Army was back at Gazala, sadder but scarcely wiser and ready as ever to disperse its efforts, divorce its armour from its mobile infantry, and in other ways repeat the errors of its first campaign. There were therefore some at the table who felt that crusader had failed. The enemy armour, though badly battered, had not been destroyed, and the fertile slopes of the Green Mountain and most of the empty wastes of Cyrenaica had been returned to the enemy in a matter of weeks. In My and June of 1942 Eighth Army was defeated again, Tobruk was lost, and the Nile Delta gravely threatened." Murphy, W. E 'The Relief of Tobruk' (Wellington: Historical Publications Branch, 1961), 487. Murphy shows here that it wasn't just the fact that the Allies had so many casualties that proves that Operation Crusader was a failed operation, he says how only a few weeks after Operation Crusader, how the Axis forces had already pushed the Allies back to the Gazala line which Rommel had retreated from in late December. He also states that later in 1942 how the Allies had lost Tobruk again.
All of the ground that the Allies had gained in Operation Crusader was all lost within a few months, this again adds more the fact that Operation Crusader was not a success in the terms of the overall campaign in North Africa. It seems that all Operation Crusader did was reveal the strength of the Eighth army which led to Rommel getting more supplies sent over from Germany which would only extend the Allies stay in the terrible conditions of North Africa. Although Murphy. W. E shows that it may not have all been an utter failure. "The relief of Tobruk, then, became the reward of this desert campaign.crusader thus turned out to be defensive rather than offensive in its outcome; but if, instead of conquering half of Libya, it helped to save Egypt and Malta and gain time to redeploy against Japan, it was all the same a vital success." He states how in the long run, Operation Crusader may have helped the overall success of not just the North African Campaign, but the whole of the second world war.