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

The Italian failures in Greece and Africa, along with Franco’s refusal to attack Gibraltar, forced a considerable rearrangement of Hitler’s plans. In the space of two weeks (December 7-21, 1940), Franco flatly refused to execute Operation Felix (December 7th), and, accordingly, this project was canceled (December 11th); Italy decided to ask for German and Bulgarian aid against Greece; the Nazi-Soviet rivalry in Bulgaria and Finland came to a head; and three new war directives were ordered by Hitler, operations Attila, Marita, and Barbarossa.

Operation Attila (December 10th) sought partial compensation for the abandonment of Operation Felix by ordering an immediate occupation of all Vichy France, with a special effort to capture elements of the French fleet in Toulon, if French North Africa rebelled against the Vichy government. This plan was carried out when the Western Powers invaded North Africa in November 1942.

The Italian appeal to Germany for aid against Greece (December 7th) led to a transformation of the relationship between the two Powers: Italy’s status changed from that of an ally to that of a satellite. On December 19th Hitler promised to attack Greece from Bulgaria, but not before March 1941, at the earliest. He rejected a detailed Italian request for raw materials, on the ground that he had no way of knowing how these would be used; instead he suggested that large numbers of Italian laborers should be sent to Germany and there work up the raw materials into finished products which could then be sent to Italy to be used according to the advice of German “experts” stationed in Italy. For the immediate relief of Italy’s military problems, Hitler refused to send any forces to Albania to fight Greece, but instead offered an armored force, under General Rommel, to fight in Libya, and a German air fleet (of about 500 planes) to be stationed in Sicily to protect Fascist convoys to Libya and to disrupt British convoys through the Mediterranean.

The German intervention in the central Mediterranean in the early months of 1941 was a great success on the ground and in the air, but was not able to prevent the British from strengthening their position on the water. The first Malta convoy of 1941 was badly battered by the first intervention of the Luftwaffe; Britain’s sole aircraft carrier in the eastern Mediterranean, Illustrious, was damaged so badly that it had to limp to the United States (by way of Suez and around Africa) for repairs; no other British convoy got through the Mediterranean for four months. On the other hand, Rommel’s force was transported to Libya without loss.

These two blows to Britain were somewhat balanced by a British naval victory over the Italians off Cape Matapan on March 28-29, 1941. With the loss of one man in one plane, Britain sank three cruisers and two destroyers and damaged a battleship. This battle is notable for the first use of radar-controlled gunnery at sea. With this innovation, at night, the opening salvo of six 15-inch guns by Warspite scored five hits; earlier in the engagement, in the daylight, the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto fired more than ninety 15-inch shells without a hit. As a consequence of this battle, Mussolini ordered the Italian fleet not to operate beyond the range of Italian land-based fighter planes until an aircraft carrier could be built. Accordingly, the Italian Navy played no role in the subsequent struggle for Libya, Greece, and Crete.

Rommel’s arrival in Libya reversed the situation in North Africa. He had tanks and good air support against British forces which had been largely depleted by sending an armored division to Greece (landed at Piraeus on March 7th). This division and three infantry divisions were sent to Greece over the objections of the very able Greek commander in chief, General Alexander Papagos, who “thought that withdrawal of troops from success in Africa to certain failure in Europe was a strategic error.” Striking at El Agheila with a German armored division supported by two Italian divisions on March 31, 1941, Rommel reached the Egyptian frontier on April 11th.

In the meantime, Ribbentrop was engaged in involved diplomatic maneuvers. The Tripartite Pact of September 1940, in spite of Russia’s suspicions, was really intended to frighten the United States to abstain from interference in the tumults of Eurasia. To strengthen this threat, Ribbentrop sought to obtain Russia’s adherence to the Tripartite Pact and a Soviet-Japanese nonaggression pact which would free Japan in Asia to allow it to strike southward against Singapore. These maneuvers were a disaster for Germany. Futile efforts to obtain Soviet adherence to the Tripartite Pact merely succeeded in revealing the bitter German-Soviet rivalry in Bulgaria and Finland, while the successful Soviet-Japanese Nonaggression Pact of April 13, 1941 made it possible to withdraw Soviet troops from the Far East in sufficient numbers to save Moscow from Hitler’s attack on that city in November.

During Molotov’s visit to Berlin on November 12-15, !940, Germany offered the Soviet Union a worldwide division of spheres of influence among the aggressor states: Italy would take North and East Africa; Germany would take western Europe, western and central Africa; Japan could have Malaya and Indonesia; while the Soviet Union could have Iran and India; Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union would pursue a cooperative policy in the Near East to free Turkey from its British connections and obtain for Russia freer access to the Mediterranean through the Dardanelles. Hitler offered Molotov a picture of a brilliant, if remote, future:

“After the conquest of England the British Empire would be apportioned as a gigantic world-wide estate in bankruptcy of 40 million square kilometers. In this bankrupt estate there would be for Russia access to the ice-free and really open ocean. Thus far, a minority of 45 million Englishmen had ruled 600 million inhabitants of the British Empire. He [Hitler] was about to crush this minority. Even the United States was actually doing nothing but picking out of this bankrupt estate a few items particularly suitable to the United States. . . . He wanted to create a world coalition of interested powers which would consist of Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Soviet Russia, and Japan and, would to a certain degree represent a coalition—extending from North Africa to Eastern Asia—of all those who wanted to be satisfied out of the British bankrupt estate.”

Molotov was only mildly interested in these grandiose schemes about spheres of interest, and seemed to have no ambitions in respect to the British Empire. Instead he wanted detailed answers to specific questions: Why were German troops stationed in Finland? Could not an accurate demarcation between Soviet and Nazi interests be drawn in Finland? Why could not the Nazi guarantee of Romania be balanced by a Soviet guarantee of Bulgaria, or, failing in this, the Romanian guarantee be canceled? What were the exact limits of Germany’s New Order in Europe and of Japan’s East Asian Sphere?

After hours of discussion, during which the Germans evaded Molotov’s questions about Finland and Bulgaria, Ribbentrop offered Russia a protocol covering five points: (1) the Soviet Union would join the Tripartite Pact; (2) the four Powers would “respect each other’s natural spheres of influence”; (3) they would “undertake to join no combination of Powers and to support no combination of Powers which is directed against one of the Four Powers”; (4) the four respective spheres of influence would follow the vague German suggestions; and (5) the three European Powers would seek to detach Turkey from British influence and to open the Dardanelles to the free passage of Soviet warships.

Molotov immediately presented Germany with additional proposals drawn up in a formal draft protocol. These added to the German suggestions five other points: (1) that German troops be withdrawn from Finland immediately, (2) that Bulgaria sign a mutual-assistance pact with the Soviet Union and hand over to it a base from which Russian naval and air forces could defend the Dardanelles, (3) that the area from Batum and Baku to the Persian Gulf be recognized as “a center of Soviet aspirations,” (4) that Japan yield to the Soviet Union its oil and coal concessions in northern Sakhalin, and (5) that the prospective agreement with Turkey be expanded to include a Soviet military and naval base “on the Bosporus and Dardanelles” and a guarantee of Turkish independence and territorial integrity by all three Powers.