This acquiescence to Italy was not the only fatal weakness in pre-war British strategy. Indeed, there was a more significant and fundamental flaw, albeit one that could not reasonably have been anticipated. Anglo-French conversations were held between the two military staffs in London at the end of March 1939, resulting in the announcement that security guarantees would be given to Poland in the face of a continuing increase in bellicose German actions.66 In terms of East Africa, the two partners agreed that a priority would be to secure the Red Sea route and isolate Italian territories, so as to tighten the pressure and deprive their armed forces of reinforcements and supplies. This meant controlling sea communications in the Gulf of Aden and here the responsibility would clearly fall on the British, who had by far the greater regional resources to carry out this task. On land the aim would initially be to defend British and French territory while also now, at last, seeking to promote an effective and more widespread rebellion in Italian East Africa. Whilst these were seen as the two most achievable objectives, the intention was that, when resources and manpower allowed, an offensive would be started that would advance through Eritrea and into Ethiopia in the direction of the capital. The best base from which to launch this would be French Somaliland, referred to by the British as Jibuti (Djibouti), with its excellent port and rail links which in 1916 had reached Addis Ababa. Ensuring its security was therefore considered to be of great importance. Both militaries also agreed on the strategic importance of Egypt; British forces already in the country, reinforced by troops from Palestine, would be used to hold off any initial attacks. Further reinforcements would, however, be needed, and with the potential closure of the Mediterranean, they would have to travel from Britain via the Cape: this extended journey time meant it would be at least seventy days before they arrived.
Although this was the broad strategic appreciation, at the regional level the primary objective for British and Commonwealth forces in East Africa was to secure the lines of communication with Egypt. For the rest of the area the Chiefs of Staff in London thought defensively. The garrison in the Sudan was too small to defend any significant portion of the border, but it was thought capable of defeating raiding columns, considered to be the most likely form of attack. They believed that, elsewhere, little more than delaying actions were the best that could be achieved as the defending forces fell back in the face of superior numbers. In May, more than twenty senior British and French officers, including representatives from across the region, gathered in Aden for a further meeting to refine and co-ordinate these regional plans.67 Four committees were formed to discuss naval, military, air and intelligence matters and these merely served to confirm the earlier decisions. It was deemed vital to control the Red Sea for supplies and reinforcements, and French Somaliland as a potential base for operations, although it was now accepted that insufficient forces were available for the latter’s defence if the Italians attempted an advance through British Somaliland. Finally, it was agreed that, whilst there were not enough troops to consider instigating any form of advance, with some additional equipment and manpower provided from London and Paris, it might be possible to support a rebellion.
This series of discussions in early 1939 highlighted both the vagaries of the strategic thinking and how little depth there was to the conclusions being reached in London. It also reiterated the comparative lack of interest that continued to exist in regard to East Africa’s security, and confirmed that the focus had not moved from farther north. During these discussions an interesting reference was made to the garrison in the Sudan. Like Kenya and the other British regional territories, this remained a largely unknown part of the British Empire. As late as November 1940, a former civil servant in the Sudanese government described in The Listener how the Sudan was governed as a ‘condominium’, what he termed a ‘typically British improvisation’.68 This had developed following the 1898 Anglo-Egyptian expedition and the subsequent Battle of Omdurman which had recovered Khartoum from the Mahdi and his followers and was an established part of Britain’s imperial history. This vast territory covered almost exactly a million square miles; except for the narrow Nile valley and tropical forest, the north was bare desert with swamp and heavy bush in the south. In the middle there was scrub and enough rainfall to grow good crops and maintain livestock. What was perhaps most significant from the perspective of the Anglo-French planners was the Sudan’s 1,200 miles of shared frontier with Italian East Africa and its resulting potential to become a transit route up the Nile valley and on to Egypt and the Mediterranean. With the scarce resources available to the Allied and military planners, it was this which at this stage gave it something of a priority over Kenya.
There was a final consideration that should have featured in this already complex picture. One other key actor would emerge to take a leading role in subsequent events: the Union of South Africa, a member of the British Empire but a semi-autonomous one with the ability to develop its own potentially different approach to how it viewed the continent’s affairs.69 Explaining the relationship between the two countries prior to the outbreak of the Second World War has often proved complex, as the Union ‘occupied a unique position in British imperial strategy and imagination’.70 The threat of Italian expansion into the Sudan and Egypt, and Italy’s potential to take control of the Suez Canal or threaten Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda, had been of long-standing concern for many leading figures in both London and Pretoria. Prominent amongst these was Jan Smuts who had become one of the two senior political figures in what the British termed a ‘dominion’ following on from his eventual First World War success. He saw Italy’s campaign to conquer Ethiopia as ‘but the first step to an African policy which extended far beyond that corner of Africa . . . This large African policy is in line with the well-known German aim of a great Empire in Africa, of which Mussolini hopes to have a considerable share.’71 Later Smuts would clarify his thinking, referring to the threat to ‘the young democratic communities’ that were being established across Africa, presumably those that had emerged under British leadership. As he put it, ‘when the python starts swallowing one or more of them, none of them will be safe’, and the fate of Kenya and eastern Africa was therefore of great significance to him.72 Such were the political tensions that existed in South Africa that it was not certain if it would once again fight alongside Britain; and if it did, the authorities in London could easily find themselves faced with a complicated alliance to try and manage, much as had been the case during the previous war. Just how difficult this would actually prove only became clear later.
In the event of having to fight a war to defend East Africa, there was clearly a good deal of confusion about the strategy to be followed. The thinking of the few politicians in Whitehall interested in the subject, and within the regional governments, was flawed, with the dangers misunderstood or, more often, overlooked and ignored. Successive British governments showed no real sense of recognising that this could be an important wartime hub for raw materials and training. This was symptomatic of a more general lack of foresight regarding how the resources and manpower of the British Empire might best be used in the event of another global conflict. These significant failings were compounded by the failure of senior military officers to make a compelling argument about Italian intentions and the potential challenge these presented. While the Chiefs of Staff in London were right to assume that Mussolini would focus on Egypt, due to the vital importance attached to controlling the Suez Canal, they were wrong to conclude that he would enter the war at the first opportunity. The principals in London also gambled in presuming that East Africa would be a secondary theatre even though operations there could also threaten the flanks of the overall Middle East position. As one of the official historians later recorded, these conclusions were perhaps based more on the weakness of the British forces than on a considered review of Italian intentions.73 Much more serious than this, however, was the assumption that France would be in a position to co-operate fully; the altern
ative seems to have been dismissed, presumably because it carried such potentially worrying strategic limitations. Fortunately, when war did come in September 1939, Mussolini chose, at least initially, to wait and see what would happen elsewhere. This gave the political leaders in London a chance to review their thinking and correct the flawed strategy but, in the months that followed, there was little evidence to indicate that the opportunity had been taken or that anything was going to change.
CHAPTER 2
HOPING FOR THE BEST
AS THE SECOND global conflict of the twentieth century got under way, in some respects the British Empire’s position in East Africa remained politically unclear and militarily vulnerable. Since before the First World War there had often seemed to be a lack of conviction from successive governments in London as to the role this region played in their broader strategic thinking. This in turn had left a clear sense that whilst they and the regional authorities were undoubtedly hoping for the best in terms of local defence and security issues, they were failing to make any preparations for the worst. The lack of an appointment of a senior officer to take overall charge of the locally based armed forces had not improved matters and was indi-cative of how some viewed not just the role but the region. Previously there had been three separate military commands, one each covering Egypt, the Sudan, and Palestine–Trans-Jordan, added to which there was an Inspector General responsible to the Colonial Office for the various territories in eastern Africa as well as the KAR.1 At the time of the Munich crisis, General Sir Edmund Ironside, who had fallen out of favour and been passed over for appointment as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, was sent to Cairo in readiness to assume the post of General Officer Commanding-in-Chief Middle East. After a few weeks, and with the tensions in Europe dying down again, he was withdrawn to Gibraltar to continue his exile.2 For a time afterwards it was hoped that he might be available to return in an emergency, but instead he remained at what was actually a highly significant British outpost. This meant that the following year, as the security situation once again deteriorated and the decision was at last taken to appoint somebody to take the role permanently, in June 1939 Lieutenant-General Sir Archibald Wavell was selected instead.
The post was established formally on 2 August and, after some initial hesitancy on his part about whether to accept it or not, with the acting rank of full general the new commander set off for Cairo. The organisational structure which surrounded him was very simple in that he reported directly to the Secretary of State for War and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, but he had almost complete authority in terms of the planning and conduct of operations. His two most important senior colleagues sitting alongside him, and who he relied upon for collaboration, were Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, who represented the Royal Navy, and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Longmore, who acted as the senior air officer. He also had the support of four other generals who were appointed to command his forces spread across the vast region for which he was responsible. There was also one other important figure within his headquarters, who ran it for him: Brigadier Arthur Smith, who had been in Egypt since 1938 and who acted as Wavell’s chief of staff.
‘Archie’ Wavell was born on 5 May 1883 and both his father and grandfather had been professional soldiers. Aged just eighteen, he himself entered the Royal Military College Sandhurst, where he was commissioned into the Black Watch. The experience he gained during the Anglo-Dutch war at the turn of the century and his subsequent staff training left him well prepared for the First World War. He lost his left eye on the Western Front, but his gallantry was rewarded with the Military Cross. Despite the reduced prospects for promotion that followed the war, his previous performance and widely recognised potential meant that, as the next major conflict approached, he was one of the British Army’s most senior officers. One of his postings between the wars had been in Palestine where he gained an invaluable knowledge of the Middle East, its people, the terrain and geography, and its history and culture. It was based largely on this experience that Wavell eventually decided to accept the offer made to him in the summer of 1939, as he correctly assessed that it would prove to be a genuinely independent command where he would have a lot of freedom.
Wavell was an individual who was widely respected by his peers not just for his previous military record but for his inspiring leadership skills and resolve.3 Audacity and forward thinking were his trademarks, along with a sense of daring that saw him taking often significant but calculated risks to achieve victory.4 He was both a commander who ‘always kept his finger upon the pulse despite distance and the many demands upon his time’, yet who also gave his subordinate commanders plenty of opportunity to conduct operations without distraction.5 In the Middle East and eastern Africa this would prove a critical attribute. His tremendous intellect was perhaps his greatest strength, incorporating a knowledge of history, litera-ture, geography and contemporary affairs.6 According to another of those officers who knew him well, Wavell had an extremely quick and logical brain which he used to solve problems as they emerged, while at the same time thinking in great detail about what might lie ahead. This process required ‘a concrete problem to chew’, and during periods when Wavell was quiet – when he was described as being ‘in one of his dumb moods’ – his friends recognised that this meant he was working through one.7 For some, however, he ‘was taciturn to the point of using words as if they cost a guinea each’, and, despite his very considerable abilities which made him one of Britain’s leading military commanders in the eyes of many of his senior colleagues, as he departed for Egypt he was largely unknown to either the press or the public at home.8
Wavell’s command area covered Egypt, the Sudan, Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Cyprus, expanding once war was declared to include Aden, Iran and, later, British Somaliland. Over the months that followed he would become the most significant figure involved not just in the fighting that took place in North Africa and the Middle East, but also in the battles which developed during the course of the East Africa campaign. Yet, initially, he had barely any fighting forces to command. In a treaty ratified in December 1936 it had been agreed that there would be no more than 10,000 British troops stationed in Egypt. In addition to these men, at the war’s outbreak Wavell had approximately the same number in Palestine, slightly fewer in the Sudan guarding its long frontiers, 8,500 predominantly African troops in Kenya and a further 1,500 in British Somaliland. This represented virtually all of his available manpower, and the outlying territories under his control were left with token forces consisting largely of locally raised volunteers and police. He had been closely connected with pre-war studies on the role of tanks and had an armoured division with him, although this lacked two of its regiments; his artillery units were incomplete and with often antiquated weapons; and his aircraft were equally obsolete: twenty-eight squadrons had to cover more than 4 million square miles. To compensate for his obvious and potentially overwhelming numerical inferiority, Wavell’s approach was ‘to puzzle and confuse, and to keep the enemy guessing as to where and when they might be attacked’.9 The standing order issued early on in the war was therefore entirely appropriate: ‘make one man appear to be a dozen, make one tank look like a squadron, make a raid look like an advance’.10
Despite their weakness, as one contemporary observer later noted, when hostilities began the British and Commonwealth forces actually appeared almost to hem in the enemy, to the extent that this could be done with an opponent consisting of several hundred thousand troops.11 It was as much a defence based on bluff as anything else and Wavell demonstrated a real talent for playing this particular game. In terms of overall strategy, his main effort remained exactly as the planners had dictated throughout the inter-war period: the defence of Egypt. Faced by a larger and better-equipped force, however, he quickly realised that, while small-scale skirmishes and border clashes were highly effective, he was not in a position initially to think about any large-scale offensive. This would require his forces to be
much increased and far better trained and equipped if they were to operate effectively in the demanding desert environment. He had studied the disasters suffered by his predecessors during the last war and had no wish to see any repeat of Kut and Gallipoli, humiliating military losses for the British Empire which had fundamentally stemmed from insufficient preparation and ineffective efforts to keep the forces involved supplied and able to fight.12 The early policy adopted by the commander in Cairo was therefore aimed at making full use of the region’s geographical advantages in tying down Italian forces that might otherwise be used against him.
The First Victory Page 4
