I've heard two pretty simplistic stories on the North African theater. Story one is that it was a very important area of operations, where a German victory threatened the whole Allied war efforts, up to and including an Axis takeover of the Middle East and a threat to India.

The other story, which seems to come from the Soviet perspective, is that the North African front was a piddling little thing that was of negligible importance and hardly a rounding error in terms of men and equipment lost.

The first story strikes me as a bit over the top, maybe coming out of overestimations about the capacity of German forces, while the second one seems to ignore the strategic role control of Northern Africa had for control of the Mediterranean/Southern Europe and perhaps overemphasizes purely materials concerns. What are some of the views that modern scholars have regarding the value of the theater?