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

The island of Malta, situated in the middle of the Axis supply line from Italy to Africa, was pulverized from the air for more than nineteen months (until October 1942), and all vessels, even submarines, had to be withdrawn from its harbors. Efforts to replenish its supplies of food and ammunition became suicidal, but had to be continued, as its civilian population stood up magnificently under the pounding and could not be left without supplies by the fighting services. For months at a time, no convoys could get through, but each time supplies approached exhaustion, fragments of a convoy arrived with enough to keep the island fighting a little longer. In June 1941 ten merchant ships from Alexandria and six from Gibraltar were sent simultaneously in order to divide the enemy; although protected by a battleship, two carriers, twelve cruisers and forty-four destroyers, only two of the sixteen cargo vessels arrived at Malta, at a cost of three destroyers and a cruiser sunk and many others damaged. Two months later, when Malta had only a week’s supplies left, fourteen very fast merchant vessels were sent from Gibraltar with an escort of two battleships, four carriers, seven cruisers, and twenty-five destroyers. Five badly damaged merchant ships reached Malta with a naval loss of a carrier, two cruisers, and a destroyer sunk, another carrier and two cruisers badly damaged.

This severe fighting in the central Mediterranean arose from the vital need, by both sides, to control the communications of that area. The northern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, from west to east, was controlled by Franco Spain, by Vichy France, by the Axis, and by Turkey.

Spain was pro-Axis but unable, through economic weakness, to intervene in the war until Britain was thoroughly beaten; Vichy France remained ambiguous and a major leak in the economic blockade of Europe until November 1942; Turkey was pro-British but unable to offer anything more than benevolent neutrality. On the southern shore of the Mediterranean, Libya (consisting of Tripolitania in the west and Cyrenaica in the east) was in between Egypt and French North Africa, and could be used as a base to attack either, because of the Axis supply lines from Italy and Sicily. These lines were greatly strengthened by the Axis conquest of Greece and Crete in May and June 1941.

From this base in Libya the Axis struck at Egypt three times, and were answered by three British counterattacks. These provide the historian with an amazing sequence of movements in which the battle lines surged across Africa between Egypt and French Tunis, a distance of 1,200 miles. The real struggle was for control of Cyrenaica, and especially for its seaports strung like beads from Benghazi eastward 270 miles by way of Derna and Tobruk to Solium on the Egyptian frontier. If the Germans could control this stretch, they could use Tobruk as a supply port free from interference from Malta, while, if the British could control it, they could provide air cover for Malta from African fields.

The first Axis advance, by the Italians under Graziani, went no farther than Sidi Barrani in Egypt, 50 miles east of Solium (September 1940). This was repulsed by an amazing British advance of 500 miles from Sidi Barrani to El Agheila, 150 miles beyond Benghazi (December 1940-February 1941). It was to stop this Italian retreat, early in 1941, that the Nazis intervened with an air fleet of 500 planes, under Kesselring, and the famous Afrika Korps, under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Rommel, a tactical genius, had three German divisions (two armored and one motorized) supported by seven Italian divisions (six infantry and one armored). By a series of smashing blows, Rommel advanced eastward to Egypt, destroying most of the British armor on the way, but his advance stopped at Solium in April 1941. Hitler held up most of the supplies going to Rommel because he needed them in Greece, Crete and, later, in Russia. The supply routes to Rommel were very precarious because of British naval attacks out of Alexandria, only 250 miles to the east, and because of an Australian division left in Tobruk, that, although surrounded by Rommel and besieged for months, denied him the use of its port.

While Rommel’s supplies were dwindling and the British Navy was being driven from the central Mediterranean by Axis air power and submarines, the defense of Egypt was being built up by the circum-Africa supply line. Over this 10,000-mile route came 951 light tanks and 13,000 trucks, many of these under Lend-Lease, by the end of 1941. With this equipment General Claude Auchinleck attacked Rommel in November 1941 and in two months relieved Tobruk and forced the Germans back to El Agheila (January 1942). Within a week Rommel counterattacked and advanced eastward, being stopped forty miles west of Tobruk (mid-February 1942). Both sides rested there, while the Western Powers feverishly built up their supplies in Egypt. At the end of May 1942, Rommel struck again; this time he captured Tobruk and was finally stopped at El Alamein, only sixty miles short of Alexandria, after five days of furious fighting at that point (July 1-5, 1942).

In August, General Bernard L. Montgomery, later Field Marshal and First Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, replaced General Auchinleck. His forces were equipped with every piece of armament that could be spared from the United States, including 700 two-engine bombers, 1,000 fighting planes, over 400 M-4 Sherman tanks, 90 new American self-propelled guns, and 25,000 trucks and other vehicles. On October 23rd, while Rommel was absent in Germany, Montgomery attacked the Axis forces at their strongest point, along the coast road, and after twelve days of violent combat broke through the German position. Rommel returned, but could not stop the rout. By November 20th he had lost Benghazi and was still retreating. Worse than that, on November 8th, only four days after El Alamein, Rommel heard that a large-scale American invasion of French North Africa had already landed at three points. These had to be hurled backward, for the German forces could be cut off if the Americans passed Tunis.

The American invasion of North Africa on November 8, 1942 (Operation Torch) arose as a compromise of quite dissimilar strategic ideas in Moscow, London, and Washington. Stalin was insistent that the Anglo-Americans must open a “second front” in western Europe in 1942 in order to reduce the Nazi pressure on Russia. He was completely unreasonable in his attitude, going so far as to taunt Churchill with cowardice at the Moscow Conference in August 1942. In London there was, indeed, great lack of faith in any possible invasion of Europe; instead, there was hope that the Germans could be brought to terms by air attacks and economic blockade after perhaps ten years; Churchill went a little further by speaking of a possible invasion of the Continent from the Mediterranean through what he mistakenly called the “soft underbelly of the Axis.” In Washington the military leaders were convinced, from the earliest stages of the war, that Hitler could not be beaten without a full-scale invasion of western Europe. As early as April 1942, Harry Hopkins and General Marshall appeared in London with plans for an invasion of western Europe by thirty American and eighteen British divisions. The British were very reluctant, but, as Stalin kept insisting on a “second front” in 1942, Roosevelt, on July 25th, obtained, as a compromise, an agreement to invade French North Africa in the autumn of 1942.

There was hardly time for adequate planning, and no time for adequate training, before the landings were made on November 8th. Although the operation was a joint British-American venture, the British role was little publicized to avoid antagonizing French—especially French naval—feelings, which were still hostile because of the British attacks on Dakar, Oran, and Syria. In addition, a difficult problem arose about the question of political cooperation with the French authorities in North Africa. The British had placed most of their faith in General de Gaulle, but it soon became clear that he had very little support in North Africa, and was too difficult and uncooperative personally to be made part of the invasion plans.