The Moscow Option (7 page)

These may have been the General’s most pressing problems, but they were not the only ones. A caravan en route from Germany for his use was sunk crossing the Mediterranean, along with some forty per cent of the other goods sent across from Italy in the months June to September. The plan for the attack on Tobruk gathered dust in Rommel’s command vehicle as he waited for the arrival of the supplies necessary for its implementation.

Meanwhile, as Rommel well knew, supplies for the army facing his own were flowing into Egypt at a prodigious rate. An enemy attack could be expected sometime before the end of the year, and Rommel did not want the Tobruk garrison at his back when it came. He continued to prepare for its reduction, pestered OKH with complaints, and held on to his hopes that the British would not move first.

On 4 October General von Paulus arrived at Afrika Korps HQ with General Bastico, Rommel’s nominal superior in North Africa. He brought news of the Karinhall Conference, of the decision to commit greater forces in North Africa and to attempt the capture of Malta. Rommel was pleased; he had been advocating as much for several months. He doubtless also understood Paulus’s strict instructions not to risk Axis control of Cyrenaica, but was characteristically loth to abandon his intention of attacking Tobruk. Paulus did not specifically forbid him to do so, but in view of later events it seems certain that he reached the conclusion, during his two-day stay in the desert, that such an attack would constitute an unnecessary gamble. At any rate, three days after his visitors’ departure Rommel received a direct order from Halder not to attack Tobruk. He was to remain on the defensive. Halder, hitherto deeply involved with events in Russia, seems to have taken this opportunity to re-establish his authority over the errant Rommel, a general whom he neither liked nor respected. But whatever his motives the decision was a sound one, as was soon to become apparent.

III

For over a century Great Britain had been staking a claim to at least a shared control of the Mediterranean Sea. The interests at stake had changed as the years passed by, but whichever they were - the overland route to India, the Suez Canal, Middle Eastern oil - they were always deemed vital to the well-being of the Empire at peace or the Empire at war.

There was of course an element of the self-fulfilling prophecy in Britain’s Mediterranean obsession, the forces deployed there invited counter-concentration and hence needed reinforcement. But for all that there was little doubt in most British minds in the summer of 1941 that the defence of the Mediterranean/Middle East area came second only to the defence of the British Isles in the list of priorities. Perhaps the war could not be lost there, but it could hardly be won if the area fell to the enemy.

Whatever happened, it was likely to prove cumulative. In the worst instance the fall of Malta would herald the fall of Egypt, which in turn would lead to the loss of the Middle East oilfields. The strain on shipping resources, already heavy, would be stretched to breaking-point by the need to bring oil across the Atlantic from America. Only in Europe would the British be able to confront the Germans, and the ships which were to bring the wherewithal for a cross-Channel invasion across the Atlantic would be carrying oil instead. There would be little chance of victory.

In the best instance the capture of Cyrenaica would ensure Malta’s safety; the island fortress would continue to take a heavy toll of Axis shipping, prevent supplies reaching Rommel, and hence make possible the conquest of Tripolitania and Tunisia. Then Sicily could be attacked, and the Mediterranean opened to merchant shipping. The high number of ships employed on the long route round the Cape would no longer be necessary, and a good number could be transferred to the Atlantic for ferrying across the requisites of a Second Front in Europe. Victory would be assured.

Winston Churchill was fully alive to the possibilities inherent in these two scenarios, and was naturally determined to pursue the second, more amenable one, with all the considerable vigour at his disposal. He had been much cheered by O’Connor’s dazzling victory over the Italians in December 1940, and equally chagrined by the string of disasters that had followed on its tail. The Germany entry into Africa had seen all of O’Connor’s gains reversed, Greece had fallen with a whimper and Crete, if with more of a bang, had tumbled after it. Then the much-heralded ‘Battleaxe’ offensive had clattered to a pathetic halt after a mere two days. It was more than the Prime Minister could comfortably stomach. The heads of those responsible had to roll. Heads other than his own. In mid-June Wavell received the axe he had failed to administer to the Germans. He was ordered to exchange posts with the Commander-in- Chief India, General Auchinleck.

The day alter Churchill had dispatched the relevant telegrams Hitler’s armies had rolled across the Soviet frontier and created a new long-term threat to the British position in the Middle East. The military seers in London had little faith in the Red Army’s capabilities; rather they saw the German progress through Russia as a long approach-march aimed on the oilfields of the Caucasus, Iran and Iraq. The distances involved promised a few months grace, but not much more. The newly-named Eighth Army would have to defeat Rommel in the Western Desert, secure North Africa, and be available for redeployment in northern Iraq before the first panzers came rumbling across the Caucasus mountains. Churchill made this very clear to the newly-appointed Auchinleck in a telegram of 19 July:

“If we do not use the lull accorded to us by the German entanglement in Russia to restore the situation in Cyrenaica the opportunity may never recur. A month has passed since the failure at Sollum (‘Battleaxe’), and presumably another month may have to pass before a renewed effort is possible. This interval should certainly give plenty of time for training. It would seem justifiable to fight a hard and decisive battle in the Western Desert before the situation changes to our detriment, and to run those major risks without which victory has rarely been gained.”

But, much to the Prime Minister’s dismay, it soon became apparent that Auchinleck had some ideas of his own. If both wished for a swift victory over Rommel, Auchinleck doubted whether the swiftness Churchill had in mind would produce victory at all. When the Prime Minister pointed to the unprecedented level of forces now flowing into Egypt, his resident C-in-C stressed the need for more, and the time it would take to absorb and condition the ones already arriving. This Churchill saw as excessive caution. He also criticised, on political grounds - there were not enough British troops fighting in the ‘British’ desert army - Auchinleck’s deployment of British troops in Cyprus. This Auchinleck saw as excessive meddling, ‘I hope you will leave me complete discretion concerning dispositions of this kind,’ he tartly replied, presumably more in hope than expectation.

Auchinleck was called to London at the end of July, and subjected to the military grilling of the Chiefs of Staff and the personal magnetism of Britain’s War Lord. He came out of both intact, though firmly resolved not to go through the latter again if it could possibly be avoided. He also secured sanction for delaying the long-awaited offensive against Rommel until November 1. Churchill had reluctantly concurred in the face of united military opposition.

Once back in Egypt Auchinleck got down to the more agreeable business of preparing ‘Crusader’, the offensive his superiors expected would drive Rommel out of Cyrenaica and perhaps Africa as a whole. They were living in a dream. Certainly Eighth Army’s strength in men and arms was growing, but men and arms do not an army make. It is the relationship between them which wins or loses battles, and in Eighth Army it was a far from satisfactory one.

Tanks were being hoisted out of ships’ hulls in Suez harbour, but the savoir faire necessary for their effective use was harder to come by. Few British generals had grasped the principles of tank warfare, most of those that had were either dead or in POW camps. Auchinleck ignored the few that were still available. To command Eighth Army, against the wishes of Whitehall, he chose General Cunningham, recent victor in the Abyssinian campaign, who knew as much about tanks as Rommel knew about prudence.

Some of Cunningham’s corps and divisional commanders thought they understood tank warfare, but unfortunately they were under the sway of ideas propagated by the British tank enthusiasts of the ‘30s. This group, led by Hobart, had received so little support or understanding from other branches of the service that they had decided, in effect, ‘to hell with the rest of you’, and developed a theory of armoured warfare whereby tanks would operate, and win, completely on their own. The German notion of the armoured division as an all-arms formation centred around the mobility of the tank was not understood at all.

So, aware of the existence of such problems but not of their precise nature, Auchinleck and Cunningham set about planning ‘Crusader’. They supervised the building of the necessary infrastructure - water pipelines, extension of the railway, the creation of supply dumps, etc. - and the organization and training of the growing army at their command. By the end of October Eighth Army had a better than three-to-one superiority in armour and a two-to-one superiority in aircraft over the enemy.

These figures, in Auchinleck’s opinion, were subject to qualification. The tanks were mechanically unreliable, the men insufficiently trained in their use. Churchill preferred to play down the problems. While the army in North Africa trained and complained, the German armies in Russia had been closing in on Moscow. If the Soviet Union was defeated before Eighth Army so much as made a move, not only a golden chance would have been forfeited but Britain’s credibility would have suffered a shattering blow. When Auchinleck asked for a further fortnight’s postponement of the offensive he was refused. If the water and rail lines were not yet ready, if some of the armour had arrived without the necessary desert modifications, well, that was just too bad. Churchill noted the German successes in Russia, and he noted the quantitative disparity of forces in North Africa. He had allowed Auchinleck to wait this long only with the greatest reluctance; there could be no further extensions. The Chiefs of Staff agreed with him. Auchinleck was dissuaded from resigning by the Minister of State in Cairo, Oliver Lyttleton. 1 November it would be. The stage was set for a bigger and more disastrous ‘Battleaxe’.

IV

By prohibiting the attack on Tobruk Halder had made it possible for the Panzer Group leadership to concentrate its attention on the matter of the enemy’s forthcoming offensive. In mid-October air reconnaissance noticed the frantic work devoted to the extension of the railway west from Matruh and the build-up of supplies in the forward areas. The Italian intelligence network in Cairo confirmed that a major offensive was imminent.

But from 27 October onwards low cloud hindered air reconnaissance and the sparse pickings of the German wireless intercept service were all the Axis command had to go on. Rommel accordingly deployed his forces to meet the likely eventualities. The mass of the Italian infantry remained in the siege lines around Tobruk and behind the frontier defences between Solium and Sidi Omar. The Italian armoured and motorised divisions -
Ariete
and
Trieste
- were held back to the west between Bir Hacheim and Bir el Gubi. The German light infantry ‘Afrika’ division (otherwise known as 90th Light) was stationed at Sidi Rezegh, ready to block either a move to relieve Tobruk from the south-east or to counter a break-out attempt by the beleaguered garrison. The two panzer divisions - the core of Rommel’s striking force - were deployed a short distance apart on the Trigh Capuzzo, ready to intercept either of the likely British moves. They could fall on the right flank of a drive on Tobruk or the left flank of a British attempt to encircle the frontier positions.

Having organised his forces in such a way, Rommel waited. On 31 October it was noticed that the enemy was observing complete radio silence, and the Axis forces were placed on full alert.

At dawn the following day ‘Crusader’ began. Led by the five hundred tanks of the 7th, 4th and 22nd Armoured Brigades a huge column of transport rolled across the frontier between Gasr el Abid and Fort Maddalena. This was 30th Corps, under General Norrie; its task was to seek out and destroy the German armour and then proceed to the relief of Tobruk. On its right flank the 13th Corps, mostly made up of infantry formations, was to pin down and then envelop the enemy troops holding the frontier positions.

This may have looked good on the map-table, but if so it is hard to believe there was a map on it. For one thing the two corps were pursuing separate objectives on diverging axes, for another 13th Corps, with very little armour of its own, was dependent on the disappearing 30th Corps for flank support. The result should have been predicted. The British armour was doomed to dispersal.

Unaware of what the fates had in store, through 1 November the British armoured brigades advanced steadily across the desert wastes and into the enemy rear without meeting any resistance. German reconnaissance patrols were sighted slipping away to the north. By evening 30th Corps had reached the vicinity of Gabr Saleh, on a front thirty miles wide facing north-west. Here the plan began to go awry. The low cloud still hindered air reconnaissance, and Cunningham had little idea of the whereabouts of the German panzer forces marked down for destruction. It had been assumed that they would find him, but they hadn’t. By morning on the following day there were still no dust- clouds on the horizon, and the British commander was in a dilemma.

It had been foreseen, and a dubious contingency plan prepared. Norrie, Cunningham’s one commander with experience in handling armour, had doubted whether Rommel would seek battle at Gabr Saleh. If not, he had argued, the British should drive on to Sidi Rezegh, the key to Tobruk. Then the Axis commander would have no choice.