Rommel now feinted with Africa Corps toward El Mechili, eighty miles northeast of Msus across the chord of the Cyrenaican bulge. Since Rommel had used this route in his first offensive in April 1941, Ritchie took the bait and concentrated all his armor to meet it. Instead, Rommel rushed 90th Light along the coast to Benghazi, where it captured mountains of supplies and 1,000 men from the 4th Indian Division. The victory brought promotion to colonel general from Hitler, but no additional troops.
The men of the Panzer Group were at the end of their strength. When Ritchie withdrew to Gazala, only forty miles west of Tobruk, and began building a new defensive line, all the Germans and Italians could do was to come up on the line on February 6, 1942.
Once more, Rommel had gained much with little. At Gazala, he was positioned to resume the attack as soon as he could rebuild his army.
12 NO CHANGE IN STRATEGY
WITH THE ENTRY OF THE UNITED STATES INTO THE WAR, A WHOLLY NEW STRATEGIC challenge faced Germany. The potential power of America was immense. But its application lay in the future. Hitler had to decide between two alternatives: Should he continue the attack on the Soviet Union, or should he go on the defensive there and concentrate on keeping American and British forces away from the continent of Europe?
For Admiral Erich Raeder, the choice was easy. On February 13, 1942, he proposed that Germany’s primary military tasks should be for Rommel to drive through Egypt to the Middle East, while the army in Russia did only two things: capture Murmansk and close that ice-free port to Allied convoys, and drive into the Caucasus to seize Soviet oil wells. After that the way would be clear to cross into Iran, close off that supply line to Russia, and join up with Rommel. Meanwhile, German war production should be shifted over predominately to the navy and air force to build more submarines and other vessels and aircraft to interdict the flow of supplies from America.
Two days later, an airplane brought Rommel to Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia. Rommel pressed hard for more forces, three more divisions, to double the German troops he possessed in North Africa. With these, he said, he could smash the British, capture Egypt, drive the Royal Navy out of the Mediterranean, and press to the oil fields of Iraq and Iran.
Rommel’s proposals strengthened Raeder’s argument for a sea change in German strategy—away from Russia and, at long last, aimed at the British and their new American allies. Despite the terrible losses suffered in the Russian campaign—more than a million men had been killed, wounded, or captured in eight months of fighting, one-third of the entire German army in the Soviet Union—Raeder’s and Rommel’s proposals still could have saved the war for Germany.
Much would be gained if North Africa and the Middle East were finally captured, the remaining strength of the German army largely preserved, and an all-out campaign undertaken to stop the flow of supplies across the Atlantic. Because of Japan’s advances, it would be a year, at least, before the United States could exert any substantial strength beyond the Pacific, and more time would go by before it could build enough ships, landing craft, air fleets, and armies to invade western Europe. When the time came, Germany might be much stronger and much more able to resist.
But at this moment Adolf Hitler made the final decision that closed off any hope of reaching a negotiated settlement. He refused to consider Raeder’s and Rommel’s proposals. He made it clear that he wanted first to destroy the Red Army and eliminate its sources of strength. After that, other courses might be followed. But for now, the Ostheer—or army in the east—was to receive priority, and the German economy was to be directed at rearming this army, not at building a great U-boat fleet and air force, and not at reinforcing Rommel.
Consequently, as the year 1942 opened, Hitler continued to avert his strategic gaze from the west and maintained his fixation on destroying the Soviet Union. The British and the Americans didn’t know it yet, but they had been granted a long reprieve and a great opportunity to build their power.
The defeat at Pearl Harbor had so shocked and angered the American people, however, that it was an open question whether they would turn on Germany before they had smashed the Land of the Rising Sun. Prime Minister Churchill, fearful they might choose Japan over Germany as the major enemy, traveled to Washington only days after the Japanese attack.
With Churchill on the battleship Duke of York was a large entourage to work out a joint strategy with the United States. These talks, code-named Arcadia, led to reaffirmation of the “Germany first” policy established in the British-American ABC-1 meetings in the winter past and to the formation of the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee (CCSC), a joint authority to direct the war made up of the heads of the armed services of both countries.
But agreement on a broad plan to defeat Germany before turning full American power on Japan did not mean that the British and the American leaders saw eye to eye. It quickly became clear that the Americans—led by General George C. Marshall, U.S. Army chief of staff and principal military adviser to the president—wanted to strike directly at German power by crossing the English Channel, challenging the Germans in a stand-up fight on the beaches, then driving them back into Germany and destroying their army. The British, with far fewer men and much leaner resources, preferred an indirect approach through the Mediterranean, which Churchill characterized as “the soft underbelly of the Axis.”
There were arguments either way. A straight shot across the Channel would be a shorter route to the vitals of Germany. But the British believed that the long way around might be the shortest way home. Not only would a direct attack, being the most obvious, be the most heavily contested, and therefore the most expensive in men and materials, but it would also drive the Germans back on their reserves and supplies rather than cutting them off from their means to resist.
A Mediterranean strategy had the advantage of striking where the Germans were weak. No one had much concern for the Italians, whose weapons were so poor and desire for war so uncertain that they were likely to surrender at the first opportunity. On the other hand, a campaign up the boot of Italy would be extremely difficult, given the mountainous nature of the terrain, while an invasion of the Balkans would be far from the vitals of Germany, in a region laced with mountains and cursed with poor roads and insufficient rail lines.
The dispute over where to concentrate the blow was to consume a vast amount of time and cause much rancor between the British and the Americans.
At Arcadia, the British were able to get tentative agreement on an invasion of French North Africa (Operation Gymnast). This sort of diversion was precisely what General Marshall opposed. He and Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war, got Gymnast postponed in March 1942, but the victory was only temporary.
At the moment the Americans and British were most concerned with a new phase in the Battle of the Atlantic. German U-boats operating off the coast of the United States and in the St. Lawrence estuary in Canada sank 79 ships with 429,000 tons in March 1942, and two months later 123 ships and 569,000 tons.
For the first half of 1942 the threat of German submarines frightened American and British leaders badly. But it was only a passing phase. The Allies had two major assets of their own, and one given them by Hitler. Their assets were, first, the enormous productive capacity of the Allied, principally American, shipyards where seven million tons of shipping were being built, and, second, the slow but steady introduction of destroyers, destroyer escorts, corvettes, and escort carriers to shepherd Allied convoys and apply weapons like sonar and radar which located German U-boats in darkness and the worst of weather.
The gift of Hitler was to suppress the construction of U-boats. To counteract the launching of ships by the Allies, the Germans had to sink 600,000 tons of shipping a month. This required nineteen to twenty new U-boats a month to replace those lost. But Hitler’s decision to concentrate on the army eliminated any hope of U-boat construction reaching the necessary level. Consequently, Allied sailors slowly gained the upper hand, and, by mid-1943, had
won the Battle of the Atlantic.
For Adolf Hitler, the early months of 1942 closed off the last chance he possessed to change strategic direction. Even at this late date, he might have reversed the course of the war if he had gone over to the defensive in Russia, following the strategy the Germans adopted in World War I, and concentrated most of Germany’s resources on the Battle of the Atlantic and on helping Rommel capture Suez and the Middle East.
Franz Halder, the army chief of staff, wanted to revert to the defensive in Russia, and even opposed Admiral Raeder’s limited objectives for 1942—seizure of the Caucasus oil fields and Murmansk. But Halder and the Fuehrer’s remaining close military advisers never could see the opportunities still beckoning to them from the southern shore of the Mediterranean.
As Erwin Rommel wrote with great vexation:
It was obvious that the high command’s opinion had not changed from that which they had expressed in 1941, namely, that Africa was a “lost cause,” and any large-scale investment of material and troops in that theater would pay no dividends. A sadly shortsighted and misguided view! For, in fact, the supply difficulties which they were so anxious to describe as “insuperable” were far from being so. All that was wanted was a real personality in Rome, someone with the authority and drive to tackle and clear away the problems involved.
But no one could alter Hitler’s fixation on destroying the Soviet Union. Admiral Raeder was not going to get his submarines. And General Rommel, Germany’s unrecognized military genius, had to be satisfied with the three German and the three Italian armored or motorized divisions allotted to him if he was going to alter the course of history. In the campaign about to unroll, he very nearly did.
13 THE DRIVE TO EL ALAMEIN
FOR NEARLY TWO YEARS, THE AXIS POWERS HAD SQUANDERED A SPLENDID strategic advantage in the Mediterranean. While British ships had to take a 12,000-mile journey around the Cape of Good Hope, the Italians and Germans had only a 300-mile passage across the Sicilian Narrows between Sicily and Tripoli.
Yet the British had built up a seven-division army in eastern Libya, all motorized, with twice as many tanks as the Axis, and were about to embark on a major offensive with the intention of driving the Axis out of Africa.
The Italians and Germans had not even eliminated the British base of Malta, which lay smack in the middle of the Axis sea lanes between Italy and Tripoli, and from which British planes, ships, and submarines constantly sank Axis supply vessels.
It’s no wonder that Erwin Rommel was so exasperated by the failure to seize Malta that he offered “to have this pleasant task entrusted to my own army.” But he was turned down.
Rommel was also exasperated by the refusal of Adolf Hitler to give him more than three divisions. Mussolini sent only one motorized and two armored divisions, and Italian tanks were so inferior they could not stand up in tank-to-tank battles. All the rest of the Italian forces in Libya were foot-bound infantry who were more a liability in desert warfare than an asset.
Thus, for the want of resolve, not strength, the Axis position in the Mediterranean was on the threshold of being ripped away.
Yet the seemingly inevitable British victory did not come about in the spring and summer of 1942 because of the intervention of a single mind: Erwin Rommel’s. This officer took the poor hand dealt him and played it with such skill that he nearly won a total victory.
The world can be thankful that Adolf Hitler was so preoccupied with his obsessions and hates that he did not see what Rommel was achieving, and did not give him the modest additional forces he needed. If he had, Hitler could have ridden Erwin Rommel’s military genius to a negotiated peace, even in the summer and fall of 1942, when Germany’s position in the Soviet Union was collapsing.
Hitler’s principal concern in the Mediterranean was to keep Mussolini in the war. He sensed that the Italian people were hunting for any excuse to withdraw, and, late in 1941, sent into the Mediterranean 2nd Air Corps from Russia and twenty-three U-boats from the Atlantic. Although his aim was to help Mussolini, they eased Rommel’s supply situation dramatically.
U-81 sank the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal and U-311 the British battleship Barham. Also the Italian submarine Scirè grounded the last two battleships in the Mediterranean Fleet, the Queen Elizabeth and the Valiant.
The 2nd Air Corps and some Italian aircraft commenced heavy bombardment of Malta. Supplies of food, water, and munitions declined. German bombers destroyed aircraft flown in from carriers. The 10th Submarine Flotilla was forced to depart the island. Rommel began to receive adequate supplies.
The Italian supreme commander, General Ugo Cavallero, started planning an air-sea assault on Malta (Operation Hercules). But the Italians were relying on German assistance, and though Hitler approved the idea at first, he soon backed out, suspecting the Italian navy and air force would leave German parachute troops in the lurch if they landed on the island. He moved 2nd Air Corps back to Russia.
By the spring of 1942, the British concentration of seven motorized divisions at Gazala, two of them armored, with about 900 tanks, and more in reserve, added up to a striking force about twice that of Rommel’s Panzer Army. Rommel had 560 tanks, but 50 were Mark IIs and 240 Italian models that could not stand up to British tanks.
Moreover, the British deployed 170 decidedly superior tanks, American Grants, carrying a side-mounted high-velocity 75-millimeter and a turret-mounted 37-millimeter gun and 57 millimeters of armor. The British had 230 more Grants in reserve. The Grant’s disabilities were a high silhouette and a limited traverse of the 75-millimeter gun. The closest German competitors were nineteen new Mark III Specials mounting a long-barreled, high-velocity 50-millimeter gun and 50 millimeters of armor. Older Mark IIIs, armed with a short-barreled 50-millimeter gun, and Mark IVs, mounting a short-barreled 75-millimeter gun, made up the bulk of Rommel’s strength. They could be shattered by the Grant’s gun at ranges beyond either tank’s capacity to penetrate the Grant’s armor.
The British also armed their motorized infantry with the new six-pounder (57-millimeter) antitank gun, possessing 30 percent more penetration than the German 50-millimeter AT gun. The German 88-millimeter AA gun remained the most formidable tank killer on either side, but Rommel had only forty-eight of them.
The Germans assembled 542 aircraft, the RAF assembled 604. But, with improved Me-109 fighters that outclassed the British Hurricanes and American-built P-40E Kittyhawks, the Luftwaffe was dominant in the early stages of the campaign.
The British position rested on a heavily mined fifty-mile-long defensive line of 13th Corps, now commanded by Lieutenant General W.H.E. “Strafer” Gott. It ran from Gazala on the Mediterranean to Bir Hacheim, where the 1st Free French Brigade of 4,000 men, plus a small Jewish Brigade, held a strongly fortified “box,” or defensive “hedgehog” perimeter.
For ten miles on the north the 1st South African Division manned a firm sector. Below it, however, the three brigades of the British 50th Division occupied widely separated defensive boxes, flanked only by minefields. Two boxes were most exposed: the division’s 150th Brigade at Got el Ualeb, half a dozen miles south of the east-west Arab caravan route Trigh Capuzzo, and, sixteen miles farther south, the Free French box at Bir Hacheim.
Some thirty miles southeast of Gazala and twelve miles east of the 150th Brigade box was Knightsbridge box, held by the 201st Guards Brigade, at the junction of the Trigh Capuzzo and a north-south Arab trail. About twenty miles east of Knightsbridge and seventeen miles south of Tobruk was the El Adem box, garrisoned by parts of 5th Indian Division.
The Gazala line evoked memories of powerful defensive positions along the western front in World War I. It was a product of the close association of British generals with infantry, not mobile, warfare. But a static defensive line was bound to lead to disaster in desert warfare. As Rommel pointed out, any position in North Africa had an open desert flank on the south and could always be turned. To be successful, defense in the desert had to be conducted o
ffensively.
The boxes also might be bypassed or surrounded and forced to surrender. An added problem was that the new British forward railhead and supply base was only forty-five miles east of the Gazala line at Belhamed. The vast supplies there made British commanders hesitant to maneuver armor in any way that might uncover Belhamed.
Behind the Gazala line the British had a mobile reserve: the 1st and 7th Armored Divisions in 30th Corps, still under Lieutenant General C. W. M. Norrie, with three brigades of cruiser tanks (including the Grants). However, the British continued to divide their armor, leaving two brigades of “I” (infantry) tanks (mostly Matildas) posted in support of the 1st South African and 50th Divisions.
German intelligence had clear signs that the British were building up for an offensive. Since the southern flank lay wide open, a bold British armored strike around it into the rear against the Axis supply line could force Rommel’s army to abandon the field. Retreat would be fraught with difficulties, because most of the Italian divisions were nonmotorized.
“But the British were not to have the chance of exploiting their opportunities,” Rommel wrote, “for I had decided to strike first.”
Generals Auchinleck and Sir Neil Ritchie, commanding 8th Army, were not ready to commence their offensive, and posted their armor defensively in case Rommel did attack. Oddly, Auchinleck thought Rommel was not likely to strike around the undefended southern flank, but would drive into the center along the Trigh Capuzzo. He advised Ritchie to concentrate his two armored divisions along this trail, so that he could move against a thrust along it or meet a turning move around the flank if it did come.
How Hitler Could Have Won World War II Page 15
