Operation Mercury (2 page)

Germany's failure to crush Britain presented the Nazi high command with a limited range of strategic options. To all intents and purposes the war in the west was won, as Hitler intimated when writing to Mussolini.
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All that remained was the final push against a moribund and defeated England. Similar assurances were offered to the Russians who appear to have been more sceptical. The key question for Berlin was whether they could afford to turn the swollen and victorious Wehrmacht east to settle with Russia while the British Empire, technically at least, was still in the ring.

 

War on two fronts was the strategic nightmare which had haunted German military planners since the end of the nineteenth century. The opening moves of the Great War, in the late summer of 1914, had been carefully choreographed to achieve a swift victory in the west before the Kaiser's legions had to turn and face the slower but monolithic threat from Russia. Hitler was in no doubt that, to achieve the eastern border of his greater Reich, he would have to deal with Stalin and the Red army; it was merely a question of when.

Hitler, therefore, had to decide if he could afford to leave an impotent but undefeated Britain in his rear or should he bide his time, consolidate his resources, particularly in the air, so he could finally crush the RAF and make the prospect of invasion real enough to force Churchill to negotiate a peace.

Nor was east the only direction which counted; Hitler had, yet, hopefully through diplomacy, to ‘sell' the concept of greater Germany to the world at large and particularly to America. He was obviously aware that Britain's hope of any renewed offensive capacity lay with the United States and Russia, the unlikeliest of bedfellows.

Even before the aerial defeat of the Luftwaffe in the summer skies, in July 1940, Hitler had laid out his reasoning to his generals:

Admiral Raeder, who headed the Kriegsmarine, put forward another option which was to attack Britain and bring her finally to her knees, not through an assault on England but by striking at her empire. The string of defeats in Norway and France had convinced the Axis powers that the British Empire was a rotten hulk, a bankrupt corporation, just waiting for the receivers to move in:

With the collapse of France the strategic position in the Mediterranean had changed significantly. It was French naval power that would have secured the western end and the position of the colonies in North Africa and, particularly, Syria was now critical. Would Vichy remain neutral or align with the conqueror thus exerting further pressure on the overstretched British?

The Tripartite Alliance which linked Japan's far eastern power to the Axis and which was agreed in September 1940, would, in Ribbentrop's confident assertion, keep America firmly focused on the Pacific and deter any overt intervention in Europe. With Raeder's concept in mind Hitler made overtures both to Franco in Spain and to Petain.

After a tortuous nine hour meeting with the Spanish Generalissimo at Hendaye, the Führer declared that he'd rather have several teeth removed than repeat the experience. Franco was lukewarm and expected any commitment to be rewarded by the distribution of French colonies in North Africa. This was not something calculated to appeal to Vichy.

If it was made known that their participation in a combined attack on British interests would result in a hiving off of territory to fascist Spain, then where was their incentive? Hitler, showing no great enthusiasm himself, could only suggest that the French could be compensated by the grant of captured British provinces. Franco, cannily, remained sceptical over Axis prospects of finally defeating Britain.

There was also the question of the oil which in war, as Clemenceau pronounced, ‘is as necessary as blood'.
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Without an adequate and continuous supply of crude oil no state could meet the huge demands of modern warfare. In 1939 Britain was importing some 9 million tons of crude, the bulk of which flowed from Iran, Iraq and the USA. By early 1941 oil reserves had fallen to alarmingly low levels; a failure of supply would force Britain to seek terms as surely as a renewed and successful air offensive.

It was estimated, by the Petroleum Board that between spring of 1940 and 1941 some 14 million tons of oil would be required – the USA could be counted on to supply less than half of this and the oil producers were not swayed by Anglophile considerations – they wanted cash on the barrel; precious dollars that Britain could ill afford to disburse.

The Shah of Iran had seized on the urgency to extort fresh concessions; supplies from the USA were subject to sickening wastage through U-Boat attacks. As the Vichy administration in Syria stood adjacent to the vital oilfields in the Middle East and the vulnerable, key refinery at Haifa, their sympathies were of some concern. In a memorandum of 3 August 1940 the Colonial Office provided a neat précis of the position:

This was hardly encouraging – if French naval power, based in the North African ports, was to be added to that of the formidable Italian fleet then the balance of naval power in the Mediterranean would be upset. The oil tankers sailing from Iran would be vulnerable and Britain's entire position in the Middle East under serious threat. Already Mussolini was massing troops in Cyrenaica for a thrust into Egypt, their numbers vastly exceeding those of the defenders.

In November 1940 the Fleet Air Arm sallied against Italian capital ships sheltering in Taranto and scored a signal success, a further engagement off Cape Spartivento on 27th of that month reinforced British superiority but the threat from a compliant Vichy remained.

Germany too, had concerns over its own supply of oil, every bit as pressing as England's. Lacking natural resources and the advantages of an established international network, starved of cash reserves by the crippling burden of war debt, she looked eastwards to the Balkans and the rich Romanian oilfields around Ploesti. By clever and ruthless economic manipulation Germany had succeeded in exerting a measure of fiscal control over her Balkan suppliers.

This dependency was not lost on Britain whose own experts had forecast a crisis of supply. At the outbreak of hostilities Germans had reserves totalling some 3 million tons of crude, yet demand over each of the following three years was predicted to nearer 10 million tons. To avoid shortfalls the Germans were obliged to increase imports from Russia and to make use of captured stocks.

The possibility of a British attack on the Ploesti oilfields was a tactical nightmare which loomed large in the minds of German planners – such an offensive had been considered but the practical difficulties were considerable. To facilitate aerial bombardment the British would need to utilise forward bases located on either Greek or Turkish soil.

It is highly probable that Hitler, at this stage, was not seeking any direct military involvement in the Balkans. The area had no immediate strategic importance beyond the need to secure Germany's oil supply and the Führer was reluctant to become embroiled in the morass of Balkan politics at a time when his attention was fixed on the east.

Added to the traditional swirl of antipathies were the fresh sores opened by the re-drafting of the maps, undertaken by the victorious allies in 1918, dividing the carcass of the old Habsburg Empire. Yugoslavia was a composite state comprising a mix of races and faiths and dominated by the Orthodox Serbs; Hungary smarted from the loss of Transylvania, ceded to Romania from whom the Soviets also sought to recover Bessarabia.

Rising tensions between Hungary and Romania so alarmed Hitler that he became personally involved, bullying the squabbling parties into acceptance of German arbitration. The resulting enforced settlement, the Vienna Award, cost the Romanians dear but restored some semblance of calm. The Nazis refused to take chances, however, and from September 1940 their military presence around the vital oilfields, with the acquiescence of a compliant regime, was steadily increased.

No sooner has the hapless Romanians been stripped of territories in Transylvania than the Bulgarians began pestering for the acquisition of Southern Dobrudja. Once again Hitler obliged Bucharest to submit though he did, this time, offer the guarantee that no further limbs would be shorn from Romania's reduced torso.

Such arbitrary re-drawing of Balkan borders naturally antagonised the Russians who were accustomed to reserving this for themselves. The Russian Foreign Minister Molotov was quick to reprove the German ambassador for a perceived violation of their Non Aggression Pact. The very last thing Hitler sought, at this point, was to provide the Soviets with a casus belli – war there would be, but only when Germany was ready and fully deployed.

Aside from possible British aggression, the other fact which alarmed Hitler was the likely intentions of his Italian ally. Il Duce was steadily becoming disaffected with the relegation of his country's role in the war. Where were the great gains he had hoped for, the triumphal marches of fascist armies through captured Allied dependencies? Now very much the junior partner in the Axis Alliance, Mussolini was hungry for spoils.

The relationship between the two states was further strained by a clear element of mistrust; the Germans, or at least elements of the high command, were deeply suspicious of their ally's competence in the intelligence war, to the extent that outright treachery was mooted.
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Aware that Italy was looking covetously at Greece, Hitler took pains to ensure his fellow dictator was aware that Germany was steadfastly opposed to any military adventure. In August 1940 von Ribbentrop had warned the Italian ambassador that Greece was not on anyone's agenda. Despite this, suspicions persisted, all too well founded as it turned out, in the face of a string of bland denials.

In all of this the attitude of the Americans was crucial. President Roosevelt was convinced of the evils of fascism and the need to sustain the British war effort. Initially the majority of the electorate was, at best, lukewarm and opposed to any firm commitment. The President was constrained to keep most of his discussions with Churchill out of the public arena, especially as he was obliged to fight an election in the autumn of 1940.

Despite the abundant and growing evidence of Nazi tyranny and wholesale oppression, Germany still enjoyed the support of a vociferous minority in the USA. The aviator Charles Lindbergh acted as the focus for a group styled ‘America First' – fiercely isolationist and dismissive of British prospects, it openly advocated an accord with Hitler and the Nazis. Joseph Kennedy and the Irish lobby within Roosevelt's own party were rabid Anglophobes.

As ambassador to St. James, Kennedy was less than a popular success, seeking to gain personal business advantage as a condition precedent to continued aid and openly touting for an armistice. The president was considerably embarrassed and recalled Kennedy. Repellent as his attitude and conduct were, he was not, by any means, in a minority; many US industrialists shared his leanings.

Gerhard Westrick, a German agent with a trade attaché cover, liaised with numerous leading figures from the sphere of business and commerce, offering significant trading opportunities for US businesses with the Greater German Reich. A number of key industrial figures appeared convinced by his blandishments.
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By the close of 1940, a year of serial disasters for England, livened only by the twin deliverance of Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain, the war cabinet was desperate for US support, the continuance of which was beyond the beleaguered and depleted capital of the state and its Empire. Churchill penned an eloquent and detailed essay to Roosevelt, stressing the need for unencumbered aid: