Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

In order to deter the United States from any intervention in West Africa, and in the belief that it would aid the anti-Roosevelt isolationists in the presidential election of 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed a military alliance on September 27, 1940. This Tripartite Pact, announced with great propagandist fanfare, provided that the signers would aid one another in every way if one of them was attacked by a Power not already involved in the European war or in the Sino-Japanese conflict. To aim this agreement more specifically at the United States, and to allay the natural anxieties of the Soviet Union, one clause provided that the new pact would not change the existing relationships of the signers with Russia. As we shall see in a moment, Ribbentrop’s efforts, in November 1940, to obtain Soviet adherence to the Tripartite Pact led to a turning point in the Nazi-Soviet collaboration.

As France was falling in June 1940, Spain assured Hitler that it would enter the war on Germany’s side as soon as it had accumulated sufficient supplies, especially grain, to be able to resist the British blockade. This assurance was repeated by Ramón Serrano Suñer, the Spanish foreign minister, brother-in-law of Señora Franco, in Berlin on September 17th. About the same time, Admiral Raeder spoke to Hitler about the need to exclude Britain from the Mediterranean by capturing Gibraltar and Suez. To these possible objectives Hitler added the idea of seizing some of the Canary or Cape Verde islands, or even one of the Azores, to be used as defensive points against any American attempt to land in French West Africa.

About the same time, in September 1940, under pressure from pro-German collaborators led by Laval, Marshal Pétain removed Weygand from his post as minister of national defense and sent him to Africa as coordinator and commander in chief of the French colonial possessions there. Fearful that Weygand might cooperate with an American landing, Hitler at the middle of October began serious efforts to settle the western Mediterranean situation, once for all, in cooperation with Vichy France and Franco Spain.

In anticipation of such an attempt, Britain in July 1940 had attacked and largely destroyed the major vessels of the French fleet at anchor at Mers-el-Kebir (near Oran, Algeria) and at Dakar (West Africa). With somewhat greater skill the French units at Alexandria, Egypt, were demobilized by agreement. These British attacks on French vessels and subsequent De Gaullist attacks with British support on Dakar (September 23rd) and elsewhere were probably unnecessary and served to drive the Vichy regime into the arms of the Germans. On June 24, 1940, the French Navy had been ordered to scuttle its vessels if there was any chance of their falling into control of foreigners (be they German, Italian, or British). The fact that Britain killed 1,400 French seamen by bombardment of anchored vessels greatly increased the normally anti-British bias of the Vichy regime and made it possible for the most anti-British members, such as Laval or Admiral Darlan, to eliminate the more moderate ones like General Weygand.

Hitler’s efforts to coordinate Fascist Italy, Franco Spain, and Vichy France in a single policy in the western Mediterranean was not an easy one, as Italy and Spain expected to satisfy their shameless ambitions at French expense, while Hitler trusted neither France nor Spain. On October 22, 1940, Hitler traveled by train to the Spanish frontier to confer with Franco and obtain a commitment to attack Gibraltar. Franco’s demands were not modest. He wanted French Morocco, parts of Algeria and French West Africa, about half a million tons of grain, and the motor fuel and armaments necessary for the capture of Gibraltar. For this, as Hitler bitterly told Mussolini, Franco offered Germany his “friendship.” Hitler also obtained Franco’s promise to enter the war on Germany’s side at some indefinite date in the future and to join the Tripartite Pact at once, if this could be kept secret.

Disappointed in the south, Hitler’s train returned northward across France. The following day, October 24, 1940, Hitler and Ribbentrop met Pétain and Laval at Montoire-sur-le-Loire and drew up a rather ambiguous agreement. This document proclaimed the signers’ joint interest in the speedy defeat of Britain and promised that France, in return for a favorable attitude toward the territorial ambitions of Italy and Spain, would be allowed to share in the booty of the disrupted British Empire at the end of the war so that the total overseas possessions of France would not be reduced in that area. Four days later, Laval was made foreign minister of the Vichy regime.

At this point Hitler’s disappointments began to flow over. Having just concluded unsatisfactory agreements with Spain and France, he received at Montoire a delayed message from Mussolini, forwarded from Berlin, announcing that Italy was about to attack Greece. Since Hitler and Ribbentrop had vetoed any attack on either Greece or Yugoslavia as early as July 7th, and had repeated this warning several times since, Hitler at once ordered his train from France to Florence to dissuade Mussolini from his projected attack on Greece. When the two leaders met in Florence, October 28, 1940, the Italian attack on Greece had already begun, so they restricted their discussion to other topics, such as the ingratitude of General Franco.

During the summer of 1940, Mussolini’s irascible disposition had not been improved by the failure of Italian ground forces against France, the meager results of the French-Italian armistice, the failure of the Italian Navy to disrupt British convoys to Malta and Alexandria, the complete collapse of the Italian Air Force, and a series of German vetoes against any Italian movement against Yugoslavia or Greece. The Duce’s efforts to attack Egypt overland from Libya were resisted by his generals for months. When Rodolfo Graziani finally attacked on September 13th, he advanced, without difficulty, a distance of seventy miles in five days, to Sidi Barrani in Egypt. There he stopped, and refused to go on.

Thirsty for some success to console his wounded ego, the Duce of Fascism decided to attack Greece. The German military occupation of Romania was the final straw which broke his imperious patience. “Hitler always faces me with a fait accompli, ” he told Count Ciano. “This time I am going to pay him back in his own coin. He will find out from the newspapers that I have occupied Greece. In this way the equilibrium will be reestablished.” The Italian generals were unanimously against the project, and had to be driven to it. In an outburst to Ciano, Mussolini threatened to go personally to Greece “to see the incredible shame of Italians who are afraid of Greeks.”

Unfortunately for Mussolini, his generals had better judgment than he had. The attack, which began from Albania on October 28th, was stopped completely within three weeks; the subsequent Greek counterattack carried deep into Albania, and Greek pressure continued throughout the winter.

As promised in the guarantee of April 1939, Britain joined Greece against Italy at once, but its own weakness did not allow any substantial increase in its forces in the area. On November 11, 1940, twenty-one British planes made a torpedo attack on the chief units of the Italian fleet in Taranto harbor and sank three out of six battleships at a cost of two planes and one pilot killed. A month later, on December 7, 1940, Graziani’s forces of 80,000 men in Egypt were suddenly attacked by General Archibald Wavell with 31,000 men and 225 tanks. In two months, at a cost of only 500 killed, Wavell captured 130,000 Italians with 400 tanks and 1,300 cannon, and advanced westward 600 miles to El Agheila. Shortly thereafter, in an equally brief period (February 11-April 6, 1941), Italian East Africa and Ethiopia were conquered and 100,000 Italian troops destroyed by a British imperial force which suffered only 135 killed.