A World at Arms (70 page)

It was in this regard that the campaign in the Solomons proved decisive. Unable to drive the Americans out of Guadalcanal with the resources they were willing to commit to that struggle, and unwilling to give up trying, the Japanese found themselves in a battle of attrition which precluded implementation of the Indian Ocean strategy they had promised to the Germans. What is more, they found that they could not even maintain the allocation of submarines to the western Indian Ocean but had to recall these for use in the South Pacific.
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The long and bitter fight for Guadalcanal, which looked to many then and some since as a diversion from the Europe First strategy of the Allies, in fact had major positive implications for the European theater. In the critical months of the war in the Mediterranean, when Britain was on the ropes there, her forces could be reformed and rearmed to hold the German-Italian army on the approach to the Suez Canal on the basis of supplies sent across the Indian Ocean. Simultaneously, as the Russians battled to hold the German armies threatening to break into the Middle East across the Caucasus from the north, the supply line across Iran was also kept open. It is no coincidence that October 1942 was one of the two months during World War II that a majority of American supplies to Russia were carried across Iran.
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By the time the Japanese decided to evacuate Guadalcanal, the tide had turned in both North Africa and the southern section of the Eastern Front. The denial to Japan of opportunity in the Indian Ocean by the Solomons campaign could not be reversed. Those who fought and died in and around the island with the strange name could not know their place in the broader contours of World War II, but these become clear once the issue is placed in the perspective of global war. As the Germans and Japanese looked to the future, they could talk about what each would do, the Germans on the Eastern Front and the Japanese in the Pacific, but their hopes for a combined victory over their enemies still looked to
a meeting in the Middle East and the Indian Ocean,
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which had been blocked for the Japanese at Midway and in the Solomons as it was blocked for the Germans in North Africa and the southern part of the Eastern Front.

THE GERMAN DRIVE INTO EGYPT AND ALLIED STRATEGY

The possibility of a German-Japanese meeting in the Near East in 1942 appeared to be a real one, because the Japanese advance and potential threat from the east was likely to meet a German thrust from the west. Since the Italian position on the Indian Ocean in the Horn of Africa had been destroyed by the British conquest of that area in the winter of 1940-41, and the British had also closed off the German attempt to build up an alternative position in the Middle East by putting down the pro-Axis government of al-Gaylani in Iraq and defeating the Vichy French forces in Syria in May and June of 1941, the Germans could return to this part of the world only by striking from what was left of Italy’s colonial empire in Libya, by crossing Turkey, or by conquering Russia, with the last two closely interrelated. For a while it looked as if the first of these three avenues might work for them.

The transfer of the German 2nd Air Fleet from the Eastern Front to the Mediterranean in December 1941 and the exhaustion of the British army that had driven back Rommel’s North African army enabled the Germans to establish a line holding the western part of Libya in January 1942. Rommel was assisted in this by a series of Axis naval victories in which German submarines sank the British aircraft carrier
Ark Royal
and the battleship
Barham,
even as Italian mini-submarines seriously damaged two additional battleships in the harbor of Alexandria at a time when other British warships had to be sent East to cope with Japan’s entrance into the war. Furthermore, the constant bombardment of the British-held island of Malta by the German air force made it easier for the Germans and Italians to re-supply their army in North Africa almost without interference. Once again surprising the British (as well as the German and Italian high commands), Rommel struck on January 21, 1942, and quickly overran the advance British position. By the end of the month Benghazi had fallen to the Germans, but their offensive came to a temporary halt a week later because the Italians refused to participate. Both sides faced the question of what to do next.

The British were indeed planning an attack to drive the Germans back and hopefully complete the conquest of Italian North Africa. Such
an operation would relieve the dangerous situation of Malta, open the Mediterranean to at least some Allied shipping, and end the threat to Egypt from Libya once and for all. Furthermore, such an operation figured largely in the broader strategic concept of the British. As will be discussed subsequently in this chapter, the civil and military authorities in London had been thinking for some time of a landing in Northwest Africa in cooperation with the Americans. Such a landing would make possible the reopening of the Mediterranean and provide a base for assaults on Europe from the south in line with a broader strategy of defeating Germany by peripheral assaults that weakened her for the final blow. The disasters in the Pacific in the winter 1941–42 had forced the abandonment of such projects in early 1942, but Churchill hoped to revive them. A victory over Rommel in the spring of 1942 might pave the way for such a project, but the interrelation between the desert war and a possible landing in Northwest Africa would be very different indeed.

The Germans and Italians had to choose between staying in place, a renewed attack in Libya toward the Suez Canal, or an invasion of Malta to close the Central Mediterranean to the Allies and open it for themselves, so that a major sustained offensive into the Middle East could be carried out.
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The first alternative, that of simply holding with minimal forces, was ruled out by the fact that over time the British might accumulate overwhelming force in the theater; unless the Japanese and German navies closed the supply route through the Indian Ocean to Egypt, the Allies could always replenish their forces there, even if it took a lot of time. The second and third possible courses – Malta and a direct attack into Egypt-were closely related. Having failed to seize Malta by a quick stroke in 1940, the Italians had lost their best chance. In 1941, the Germans had opted for an airborne assault on Crete rather than Malta; they had the resources for only one at that time, and Crete had appeared to be the more profitable objective. But the heavy casualties incurred in that campaign had left the German high command and most definitely Hitler himself very leery of the idea of an airborne assault on a defended island.
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The Italians had come to think that seizing Malta was absolutely essential for continued operations in North Africa and were making preparations for an assault. Later this came to be planned as a joint German-Italian operation, code-named “Hercules,” which was supposedly to be ready in July. Unwilling to wait until that time for any offensive at all, the Germans proposed and the Italians agreed on a compromise: the Axis would attack in late May and drive to the Libyan-Egyptian border; then would come “Hercules;” and finally there would
be the invasion into Egypt which could be adequately supplied after the capture of Malta and could therefore be sustained all the way to the Suez Canal.
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The British had superiority in numbers by late May 1942 but the leadership was exhausted and ineffective, much of the equipment inferior to that of the Germans, cooperation between the land and air forces poor and, above all, the tactical dispositions which invariably stressed breaking up divisions into pockets hopelessly defective. To make things even worse for the Allies, with Italian assistance the Germans had broken the code of the United States military representative, Colonel Bonner F. Fellers, and could follow the British plans and dispositions by reading his detailed and accurate reports.
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British intelligence did decypher enough of the relevant German radio traffic to warn Cairo of what was coming but was not believed until too late. On May 26 Rommel struck a few days ahead of the British 8th Army.
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The battle usually referred to as that of the Gazala line was a bitter slogging match in which the Germans and Italians crushed the British 8th Army. Over a two-week period, the British armored units were battered to pieces and their major defensive positions seized one by one. By mid-June the German units were about to cut off Tobruk for a second time and the British were preparing for a second siege. But the 1941 experience was not repeated. This time the Germans’ armor quickly penetrated Tobruk’s defenses, received the surrender of over 28,000 soldiers, and seized enormous stores that could keep them supplied for an advance to and even into Egypt. This spectacular German victory and British disaster had major repercussions for both Axis and Allied strategy in the war.
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The Axis powers could not at first agree on a course to follow. The Italians, though agreeable to an advance to the Egyptian border, wanted the Malta operation to go forward. Rommel, however, wanted to push on into Egypt right away. In this he had the support of Hitler, who had always had his doubts about the assault on Malta and now saw the opportunity to demolish the whole British position in the Middle East, in the days when the German summer offensive on the Eastern Front was, in his opinion, about to open the door to an invasion across the Caucasus from the north in a gigantic pincer. With control of Egypt dangling before Mussolini as a reachable prize, Berlin and Rome agreed to skip the “Hercules” operation and put all their resources – including those set aside for the landing on Malta – into the effort to seize Egypt.
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They promised in public to respect the independence of Egypt while planning secretly that it would be controlled by Italy.
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In that country, as in other parts of the Middle East, they found some who believed the
promises and ignored the realities of Axis imperialism.
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Relying on air attacks to contain the role of Malta in interfering with their supplies and on control of Crete as an alternative base for shipping supplies and reinforcements, the Axis forces stormed into Egypt, reaching within 60 miles of Alexandria by the end of June, a mere ten days after the capture of Tobruk. All appeared to be going their way, and contact with Japan looked like a realistic goal.
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The immediate repercussions for the Allies were grim; the long-term ones of perhaps even greater importance. The obvious need was to stem the German advance. In desperate fighting, the British 8th Army held the Axis onrush at the El Alamein position, picked because it was short and practically impossible to outflank through the Qattara Depression to the south. Assuming personal command of the battle, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck fought the German-Italian forces to a standstill but could not dislodge them from their advanced positions.
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The July struggles ended in stalemate at the El Alamein line with both sides hoping to go on the offensive again, the Germans to drive all the way to the Canal, the British to prepare the coordination with a landing in Northwest Africa. With both Churchill and Brooke on the spot, the whole British command was now changed. Auchinleck was replaced by Alexander, who was to have commanded the British part of the Northwest African landing, while General Montgomery, who was originally to take Alexander’s place in Northwest Africa, was called out to take over the 8th Army, whose newly designated commander, General William Henry E. (Strafer) Gott, was killed before he could assume command.
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The new team quickly put an end to the attention being lavished on elaborate withdrawal and denial plans, which included everything from retreats up the Nile and into Palestine and the evacuation of Palestine-leaving the Jews there to be slaughtered by the Germans – to the destruction of the oil fields in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere lest they fall into Axis hands ready to utilize them.
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A new spirit began to be infused into the British forces as Alexander’s calm combined with Montgomery’s relentlessly driving professionalism.
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Reinforcements and supplies were rushed to the scene by the British and Americans; some of the most critical items were even flown in.
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The Germans and Italians could send only limited reinforcements to Rommel at a time when the fighting on the Eastern Front absorbed their energies, and the British were once again rebuilding the Malta air force.

A revived 8th Army beat back what would be Rommel’s last big offensive in the Battle of Alam el Halfa.
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From August 30 to September 5 the Germans assaulted the British positions, now far more carefully prepared and forewarned by excellent intelligence. The two sides were for once evenly balanced in numbers of tanks, but the 8th Army’s revived spirits, tactical surprise on the battlefield and excellent ground-air cooperation in the face of Axis superiority in aircraft numbers enabled the British to defeat the Afrika Corps. During the very days of this fighting, the first 200 new Sherman tanks from the United States arrived for the counter-offensive to drive Rommel back. Their arrival must be seen in the broader context of Allied strategy as changed by the Tobruk disaster; the decision to send them had been made in Washington on June 21, the day that news of the surrender of Tobruk was flashed to the American capital.

The Allied reaction to the Tobruk disaster must be fitted into their prior discussion of plans for the war against Germany. At the conference in Washington in December 1941-January 1942, the Americans and British had not only reviewed the disastrous situation in East Asia and the measures which might be developed to contain the Japanese flood but had reaffirmed their belief in the need to defeat Germany first, and had developed the staff structure of the Combined Chiefs of Staff and the war materials production and allocation system to implement that strategy. But all this left open the way in which Germany might best be defeated, and on this point there were very great differences of opinion between the two Western Allies.
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