The Second World War Read online

  21

  Defeat in the Desert

  MARCH–SEPTEMBER 1942

  After the humiliating retreat across Cyrenaica in January and February 1942, the Rommel myth, so fervently propagated by Goebbels, was also promoted by the British. The legend of the ‘Desert Fox’ was a very misguided attempt to explain away their own failures. Hitler was amazed and delighted by such hero-worship. It encouraged his belief that the British, after all their defeats in the Far East, were close to collapse.

  He was, however, prepared to rein in his favourite general to appease the Italians. Mussolini’s position was threatened by growing opposition within the Comando Supremo, whose members felt that the Duce was too much in Hitler’s pocket. And they had been affronted by Rommel’s arrogance and peremptory demands, to say nothing of his constant complaints about their failure to provide and protect the supply convoys he needed. In addition, Halder and the OKH were still resolutely opposed to reinforcing Rommel. They argued that the Suez Canal should be taken only after an advance through the Caucasus. The priority of the eastern front remained a powerful argument as they prepared their great offensive in southern Russia. Only the Kriegsmarine, which wanted a policy of defeating Britain first, supported Rommel’s ambitions.

  The island of Malta was in a desperate position after a renewed Luftwaffe bombing offensive against the airfields and the main harbour of Valletta. All five ships in a convoy in March were sunk and the troops and civilian population faced starvation. But in May a reinforcement of sixty Spitfires flown off the aircraft carrier USS Wasp and the arrival of a minelayer with supplies saved the island. Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, the German commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, had made plans for an airborne invasion of Malta, Operation Hercules, but these had to be put aside. Not only was Hitler dubious of success, but X Fliegerkorps was needed further east. Also the Italians demanded excessive support before committing themselves.

  Rommel once again ignored both his orders and his supply problems, and began to move the Panzer Army Afrika forward towards the Gazala Line. ‘The fighting has none of the horror, that indescribable misery of the Russian campaign,’ an Unteroffizier wrote home in April. ‘No villages and towns destroyed or laid waste.’ In another letter that evening, he wrote to his mother: ‘The Tommy out here takes everything in a more sporting way… Onwards to a decisive victory.’ Although Rommel’s soldiers were also afflicted by the mass of flies and the intense heat which baked their bread hard, they soon expected a victory from ‘the great offensive in Russia, then the Tommies here will be crushed from both sides’. They looked forward to visiting Cairo.

  The OKW then suddenly came round to the idea of Rommel’s dream of seizing Egypt and the Suez Canal. Hitler had begun to fear that American military support might arrive earlier than he had originally thought. Even an Allied attack across the Channel could not be ruled out. If Rommel could smash the Eighth Army, he reasoned, British morale would be shattered. Also the Japanese had indicated that they would advance westwards into the Indian Ocean only if the Germans took the Suez Canal.

  The first stage of Rommel’s invasion of Egypt, codenamed Oper ation Theseus, was to outflank the British defensive line. This extended in defended boxes from Gazala on the coast, some eighty kilometres west of Tobruk, southwards to Bir Hakheim, an outpost in the desert defended by General Marie-Pierre Koenig’s 1st Free French Brigade. There were seven boxes, each defended by an infantry brigade group, with artillery, barbed wire and minefields which extended down to the next box. To the rear, Ritchie had placed his armoured formations ready to make a counter-attack. Rommel then intended to seize Tobruk. The capture of this port was regarded as essential for resupply, otherwise it would take his Opel Blitz trucks fourteen days for each round trip up from Tripoli and back again.

  Operation Theseus should not have taken the British unawares since Bletchley had passed the relevant Ultra decrypts to GHQ Middle East. But the chain of command was reluctant to pass the information down, except to say that an attack was probable in May and that it might well take the form of a right hook from the south. The attack began on 26 May, with Italian infantry divisions advancing against the northern half of the line in a feint. To the south the Trieste Motorized Division and Ariete Armoured Division, together with the three German panzer divisions, moved deep into the desert. A sandstorm concealed their 10,000 vehicles from the eyes of the British. Then, during the night, Rommel’s main striking force outflanked the Gazala Line from the south.

  Rommel led his divisions rapidly round in a wide sweep, making use of the bright moon once the khamsin dropped. They were in position before dawn, ready to attack. Some thirty kilometres north-east of Bir Hakeim, the 15th Panzer Division clashed with the 4th Armoured Brigade, inflicting heavy losses on the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment and the 8th Hussars. Soon afterwards eighty British tanks counter-attacked the 21st Panzer Division. The Eighth Army now had 167 American Grant tanks. These were heavy, unusually tall and not very manoeuvrable when it came to firing, but their 75mm guns were far more effective than the pathetic two-pounders on the Crusaders.

  The 3rd Indian Motorized Brigade, to the south-east of Bir Hakeim, had meanwhile been hit at 06.30 hours on 27 May. Their commander radioed back that they were facing ‘a whole bloody German armoured division’, when in fact it was the Italian Ariete Division. The Indian troops destroyed fifty-two tanks, but they were overwhelmed once all their anti-tank guns had been knocked out.

  Koenig’s Free French brigade in their equally lonely position at Bir Hakeim knew what awaited them, having heard the sound of tank engines out in the desert during the night. In the morning, a patrol confirmed that the enemy was behind them and had cut them off from their supply depot. Koenig’s force of some 4,000 men included a half-brigade of the Foreign Legion, two battalions of colonial troops and marine infantry. They also had their own artillery support, with fifty-four French 75mm field guns and Bofors guns. Like the other boxes, their first line of defence consisted of minefields and barbed wire.

  The tanks of the Ariete Division now turned against them and attacked in a mass. French gunners knocked out thirty-two. Only six Italian tanks managed to break through the mines and wire, but French legionnaires destroyed them at close range. Some even climbed on to the Italian tanks and fired through slits and hatches. The attack was unsupported by infantry, and the French bravely fought off every wave, inflicting heavy losses and taking ninety-one prisoners, including a regimental commander. Skirmishes were also fought against the German 90th Light Division. ‘For the first time since June 1940,’ General de Gaulle later wrote proudly, ‘French and Germans were in action against each other.’

  To the north-east, the rest of the 90th Light Division attacked the 7th Motorized Brigade and forced the outnumbered British to withdraw. Its units then overran the 7th Armoured Division headquarters and took various supply dumps. Although the 90th Light advanced rapidly, Rommel’s two panzer divisions were hampered by counter-attacks and heavy artillery fire on their advance north towards the airfield at El Adem, which had been the scene of such heavy fighting the year before.

  Rommel’s daring plan had not succeeded as he had hoped. His forces were in a vulnerable position between the Gazala Line boxes and the remainder of the British armour to the west. Rommel had also expected the French at Bir Hakeim to be rapidly crushed, but they still held out. He was deeply worried and many of his officers thought that the offensive had failed. His chief of staff even suggested telling the OKW that the operation had merely been a reconnaissance in strength in an attempt to protect the Panzerarmee Afrika’s reputation. But they need not have worried. Once again the British had failed to concentrate their tanks sufficiently to make an impact.

  Rommel wanted to forge on north to the coastal road and break the British line there, so as to re-establish his supply line back to Tripoli. But from 28 May fighting became chaotic inside the centre of the Gazala Line. Rommel’s divisions were hampered by fuel and ammunition
shortages, but again he was saved by the slowness of British commanders to exploit their considerable advantage. Ritchie wanted to send in a major night attack, but his corps and divisional commanders argued that they needed more time. They thought that the Germans were trapped, but Axis troops had been making a gap in the minefield to the west and supplies began to come through. However, this passage was close to the 150th Brigade’s box, whose Yorkshire battalions suddenly provided Rommel with a major problem.

  At the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia, Hitler’s attention was not on North Africa. His Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, returned from a visit to Rommel to find a ‘very unpleasant situation’. On 27 May, Reinhard Heydrich had been attacked in Prague by young Czechs, equipped by the British Special Operations Executive. Heydrich was still just alive, but would succumb to infections from his wounds within a week. And on the night of 30 May the RAF had launched its first thousand-bomber raid against Cologne. Hitler was beside himself with rage, mainly directed against Göring.

  From 31 May, during the scrappy battle which the British called the ‘Cauldron’ and the Germans ‘the sausage pot’, Rommel then threw his forces against 150th Brigade’s position. The onslaught, with tanks, artillery and Stukas, was massive. The brigade fought to the end with great courage, winning the admiration of the Germans. But the continuing failure of British commanders to counter-attack in force from the west was one of the least impressive examples of generalship in the war. Rommel then ordered the 90th Light Division and the Trieste Division to destroy the French at Bir Hakeim, so that he could start to break up the Gazala Line from the south.

  On 3 June, Koenig’s men fought off the overwhelming force attacking them. The British sent a relief force, but it ran into the 21st Panzer Division and pulled back. No other attempt was made to relieve the French garrison, partly because the counter-attack further north on 5 June collapsed due to the incompetence and timidity of formation commanders reluctant to risk their tanks against the Germans’ 88mm guns. Some supplies got through. The RAF provided as much support as possible, helping to break up attacks and fight off the Stukas and Heinkels. French colonial troops made short work of any Stuka pilots who parachuted down. Koenig’s men, suffering in the intense heat and dust from thirst and hunger, dug their foxholes deeper, waiting for a greater onslaught. By holding on, they knew that they could greatly aid the withdrawal of the Eighth Army.

  Exasperated by the tenacity of the French defence, Rommel took command himself. On 8 June, German artillery and Stukas began to pound the position again. One bomb killed seventeen wounded in the dressing station. The determination of the defenders never slackened. One officer saw the sole survivor of a guncrew, a legionnaire with a hand blown off, reload the 75mm by ramming home the shell with his bloody stump. On 10 June the French defences were breached. The defenders of Bir Hakeim had no more ammunition.

  That night the British 7th Armoured Division, the only formation which might have saved them, withdrew. Koenig was ordered to pull back. He led most of his remaining men out through the German encirclement in the dark, at first undetected and then under heavy fire. He was accompanied by his courageous English driver and mistress Susan Travers, who was later made a warrant officer in the French Foreign Legion. Rommel received an order from Hitler to execute any captured legionnaires, whether Frenchmen who should be treated as insurgents, or anti-fascist Germans, or citizens of other Nazi-occupied countries. To his credit, he ensured that they were treated as ordinary prisoners of war.

  When General de Gaulle heard from General Sir Alan Brooke, the chief of the imperial general staff, that Koenig and most of his men had escaped back to British lines, his sentiments were so intense that he had to shut himself alone in a room. ‘Oh, the heart beating with emotion, sobs of pride, tears of joy,’ he wrote later in his memoirs. This moment, he knew, marked ‘the start of the resurrection of France’.

  Further north, the battle of the Cauldron continued, with the British and Indian brigades fighting stubbornly in defence, but the Eighth Army still remained incapable of launching an effective counter-attack. On 11 June, just after the fall of Bir Hakeim, Rommel ordered his three German divisions to destroy the remaining British positions, including the ‘Knightsbridge’ box held by the 201st Guards Brigade and 4th Armoured Brigade. They were then to seize the Via Balbia. This prompted a sudden withdrawal on 14 June, when the South Africans and the 50th Division near the coast were ordered to pull back to the Egyptian frontier to avoid being cut off. An undignified general retreat ensued, which became known as the ‘Gazala gallop’.

  Tobruk was left exposed, and the Italian infantry advanced to encircle it from the east. Rommel brought up his German divisions, although 21st Panzer was severely mauled in the process by RAF Hurricane and P-40 Kittyhawk fighter-bombers. Air Vice Marshal Arthur Coningham’s Desert Air Force was improving its techniques all the time, and without its support the fate of the Eighth Army might have been catastrophic.

  Churchill sent orders to Auchinleck that Tobruk had to be held at all costs. But Tobruk lacked sufficient troops and guns, and many of the mines from its defences had been taken to strengthen the Gazala Line. On 17 June, Rommel began his assault with a feint against one corner of the perimeter, while secretly preparing to attack elsewhere.

  Unlike the Australians who had defended Tobruk so doggedly the year before, the 2nd South African Division commanded by Major General Hendrik Klopper was inexperienced. In any case, Admiral Cunningham was well aware that he did not have the ships to supply Tobruk through another siege. The 33,000-strong garrison included another two infantry brigades and a weak armoured brigade with obsolete tanks.

  At dawn on 20 June, Kesselring sent in all the Stuka and bomber groups available in the Mediterranean supported by squadrons of the Italian air force, the Regia Aeronautica. This was accompanied by a concentrated artillery bombardment, while German pioneer battalions cleared a route through the minefields. The 11th Indian Brigade was shocked by the unprecedented onslaught, and by 08.30 hours the first panzers were through the outer defences. In the course of a single day, as columns of smoke rose into the sky from the battered town, the Germans advanced all the way to the port, cutting the twenty-kilometre-long fortress position in two. It was a bewilderingly swift victory.

  General Klopper surrendered the following morning, before the port and many of the supply dumps had been destroyed. Four thousand tons of oil fell into Rommel’s hands, the best gift he could have hoped for. His hungry soldiers, whose clothes were almost in rags, became ecstatic at the booty. ‘We’ve got chocolate, tinned milk, canned vegetables and biscuits by the crate,’ an Unteroffizier wrote home. ‘We’ve got English vehicles and weapons in vast quantities. What a feeling to put on English shirts and stockings!’ Italian soldiers did not get to share in the rich pickings. The same Unteroffizier acknowledged that ‘they have it harder than us, with less water, less food, less pay and not the same equipment as we have’.

  Mussolini tried to pretend that the capture of Tobruk was an Italian victory, so to emphasize the truth Hitler immediately promoted the forty-nine-year-old Rommel to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall. This promotion produced a good deal of jealousy and resentment in the highest levels of the Wehrmacht, which Hitler no doubt enjoyed. On this, the first anniversary of Operation Barbarossa, the German dictator was overjoyed in his certainty that the British Empire had now begun to disintegrate as he had claimed. And in a week’s time Operation Blue was to be launched in southern Russia to seize the Caucasus. The Third Reich once more appeared invincible.

  On that June day, Churchill was in the White House with Roosevelt when an aide came in and passed a slip of paper to the President. He read it and then passed it to the prime minister. Churchill felt sick with disbelief. He asked General Ismay to check with London whether Tobruk really had fallen. Ismay returned to confirm that it was true. The humiliation at such a moment could not have been greater. Churchill later wrote: ‘Defeat is one thing; disgrace is an
other.’

  Roosevelt, showing his most generous instincts, immediately asked what he could do to help. Churchill requested as many of the new Sherman tanks as the Americans could spare. Four days later, the American chiefs of staff agreed to the despatch of 300 Shermans as well as a hundred 105mm self-propelled guns. It was an act of great selflessness, especially since the Shermans had to be snatched back from US Army formations, which had been longing to replace their obsolete vehicles.

  Deeply depressed and shocked, Churchill returned to face a motion of no confidence in the House of Commons. He put most of the blame on Auchinleck, which was hardly fair. The Auk’s main mistake was to have appointed Ritchie. The acute shortage of competent and decisive commanders at the most senior levels in the British army clearly had a terrible influence on its performance. Brooke ascribed this to the deaths of the best young officers in the First World War.

  An equally crippling handicap was the long-standing disaster of the arms procurement system. Unlike the RAF, which had attracted the most talented designers and engineers in an age when aviation was exciting, the army accepted armaments which were already obsolete and then continued to mass-produce them, rather than go back to the drawing-board. This cycle had begun with the loss of so much equipment at Dunkirk and the need to replace weapons rapidly, but had not been broken.

  Some of the new six-pounder anti-tank guns had been used with good effect in the Gazala battles, but to send badly designed tanks with two-pounder guns into action against the Panzer IV, and especially the 88mm gun, was like sending up Gloster Gladiator biplanes against Messerschmitt 109s. One can only admire the bravery of crews going into the attack well aware that their own tanks were virtually useless, except against infantry. The British did not produce a truly battleworthy tank, the Comet, until the very last days of the war.