GAMBLE IN NORTH AFRICA

MUSSOLINI'S VENTURE - HITLER'S INTERVENTION

On June 1940, when Mussolini at last cast his hand for war, Italy had already in North Africa some 236,000 troops, over 1,800 guns, 150 aircraft and some 340 light tanks. These were divided as the Italian 5th Army to the West of Libya, and the 10th Army to the East, the two together amounting to a total of 14 Italian divisions. Ranged against them, but not yet in action, were eight French and five British divisions, the British under the command of General Sir Archibald Wavell. Of the 100,000 British troops, only 36,000 were in Egypt and ready to fight if their positions were attacked. The remainder were to the rear.

The armistice with the French at the end of June altered the balance significantly, taking the French army out of the calculation, and, on the other side of the coin, destroying the Italian commander Marshal Balbo's hopes of taking the Tunisian port of Bizerta to simplify his line of supply. To keep the Italians at a disadvantage, the British 7th Armoured Division began to make daily armoured raids across the Libyan frontier, the success of which, although in fact due to superior British training and discipline, was interpreted by the Italian Army as being the result of the inferiority of Italian weapons.

On June 28th, when it became clear that French North Africa would remain loyal to the Vichy government of Marshal Petain, the Italian Supreme Command ordered Balbo to invade Egypt. On the same day, having not received the order, Balbo suffered a fate that justified the Germans' worst fears about their tempestuous allies - he was shot out of the air over Tobruk by his own anti-aircraft gunners and killed. This was neither the first time nor the last that the Italian forces employed the "own goal" as a technique in warfare, but it was the only occasion when they used it to dispose of their own Commander in Chief.

Balbo's command was assumed by Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, and the date for the invasion was set for July 15th, 1940. The difficulties presented by the enterprise were formidable. There was but one supply route available across the desert from the Libyan frontier to Alexandria, and that route included two British bases, Sidi Barrani and Mersa Matruh. Graziani, sensibly, decided he was not prepared to begin the advance until he had sufficient trucks and water transport to keep his forces supplied. He asked approval to defer the assault until October 1940. Mussolini, predictably, refused to countenance such a practical suggestion. Knowing that Hitler intended to invade Britain on the 15th September, he was determined that Italy should take Egypt from Britain on the same day. Throughout July and August there were fierce disputes, inflammatory telegrams and endless problems between Mussolini and the Supreme Command, and between Mussolini and Graziani.

Eventually, still ill-prepared, Graziani was obliged to launch the might of Fascist Italy's 10th Army on the pitifully small British defending force on September 13th. Four divisions and an armoured group under General Bergonzoli advanced slowly across a hostile landscape in temperatures of up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius), succeeding in covering only some 12 miles a day. On September 16th, the crack "23rd of March" Blackshirt Division occupied Sidi Barrani, the 7th Armoured Division having been ordered to fall back before the advance. The Italians were now 60 miles into their 315-mile journey to their objective, Alexandria. Mersa Matruh lay 75 miles ahead.

To Mussolini's intense chagrin, Graziani, who was a veteran of desert operations, decided to pause, rapair the damage done by the retreating British Army, set up a fresh water pipeline and stock Sidi Barrani so that it could be effective as a forward supply base. Wavell, like Mussolini, was disappointed, although for different reasons. He had hoped to see the Italians overextend their line of supply. Graziani knew that his equipment was inadequate, that he had too few men for the assault with which he had been entrusted, and that unless he ensured adequate support, his army would stand no chance at all in the latter stages of the advance. Had Mussolini not retained in Italy for his forthcoming assault on Greece most of the troops that had recently been in action in the Alps, things might have been very different.

Graziani's pause lasted into October. At the Brenner Pass Conference on October 4th, at which Hitler, Mussolini, Ribbentrop and Count Ciano met to discuss strategy, the possibility of eventually sending a German armed detachment to North Africa was discussed, but Mussolini made it quite clear that Italy could handle North Africa alone for the time being without German assistance. In Mussolini's opinion, German Panzer support would be required only when the third stage of his conquest of Egypt was reached, the advance from Mersa Matruh to Alexandria. By October 21st, Mussolini was warning Graziani in some exasperation that, if the march on Mersa Matruh did not commence shortly, Graziani's resignation from his command would not come amiss. Graziani, who had been waiting for the arrival of three motorised battalions, armoured cars and additional water trucks, was not disposed to put his troops at risk. Because of the imminent Italian campaign in the Balkans, there was little prospect of either of those reinforcements arriving, or of the request for Graziani's resignation being enforced. Mussolini had other things on his mind.

In fact, the blame for the defeat at Sidi Barrani that was inflicted by Wavell on December 9th should not be laid entirely at Mussolini's door. The Italian 10th Army was deployed, in a manner that had obvious and exploitable weaknesses, in two separate groups fifteen miles apart with an undefended gap between. Two Libyan native divisions under Graziani's command were holding positions along the coast, and the 4th Blackshirt Division was to the rear of Sidi Barrani.

The British plan for the attack was daring. Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O'Connor's Western Desert Force was to penetrate the gap between the two halves of the 10th Army, and attack the coastal units from the rear, while the British 7th Armoured Division would advance towards Buqbuq to cut Italian communications and prevent reinforcements reaching the army under attack. An additional secondary brigade-strength attack under Brigadier Selby was to keep the coastal camp at Maktila busy. All told, only 36,000 British troops were taking on a force of almost five times as many men.

The attack on December 9th came as a surprise to the Italians, who had wrongly interpreted aerial reconnaissance information that British troops were on the move as evidence of a weary army being relieved. The 4th Indian Division, and the Matilda tank battalion, together part of O'Connor's force, attacked Nibeiwa, and took 2,000 prisoners for the loss of 56 men. The 7th Armoured division reached the sea by evening, and cut off the retreat of the 2nd Libyan Division. Graziani ordered XXI Corps to withdraw to the frontier, and one division made it without difficulty. The other, the "Catanzaro" Division, was less fortunate, and was almost annihilated. In a few short hours the Italian army had lost 38,000 prisoners, 237 guns and 73 tanks, against British losses of 624 dead.

At this crucial stage, General O'Connor had the victorious 4th Indian Division taken from his command for action against the Italians in Eritrea, and was awarded the 6th Australian Division as a replacement. He decided not to wait, and instead gave chase to the disorganised and humiliated Italians. On December 14th, O'Connor crossed the Libyan frontier at Capuzzo, swung north and attacked Bardia, defended by 45,000 Italian troops and 430 guns. On the 18th December, General Mackay and the Australian 6th Division arrived, ready for a fight. They celebrated the New Year with another victory. Bardia was captured on January 5th. The Italians lost a further 45,000 men as prisoners, and saw another 130 of their tanks captured.

By now Hitler was becoming increasingly worried at the antics of Mussolini, who had during the autumn launched his ill-prepared armies upon Greece without first advising Germany of his intentions, and was now about to improve British morale and ruin the image of the all-victorious Axis with a devastating defeat in North Africa. In preparation for German intervention, Luftwaffe X Fliegerkorps was sent to Sicily at the end of December 1940, and by February 6th, after the fall of Tobruk to O'Connor's all-conquering 7th Armoured Division, General Erwin Rommel was being briefed by Field Marshal von Brauchitsch to command the Afrika Korps , scheduled to land in North Africa by mid-February.

In Libya, O'Connor had, even before the fall of Bardia at the beginning of the month, detached the 7th Armoured Division to cut the communications of Tobruk, a vital deep-water port capable of providing a far more efficient means of landing supplies for the Allied force than the long overland route from Alexandria. At dawn on the 21st of January, a full-scale-attack on Tobruk was mounted by the 6th Australian Division, who, because they were down to only 12 Matilda tanks, put captured Italian M-13/40 light tanks into action against their former owners. By the following afternoon, 22nd January, O'Connor was embarrassed with a further 25,000 Italian prisoners and had added 208 guns, 23 medium tanks and 200 trucks to his growing arsenal of alien equipment. Because of the speed of the advance, the Allies captured the vital sea-water distillation plant intact, and the port installation was sufficiently little damaged to be operating again within four days. In addition to the port of Tobruk, the victory brought the bonus of the airfield at El Adem, another vital link in the supply chain which, like Tobruk, was to be in the news more than once in the months to come.

Graziani now set about a half-hearted defence of, and retreat from, Cyrenaica, the desert area that lay between O'Connor's forces and Benghazi, the next target that would be on the Allies' shopping list. Despite Mussolini's instruction to defend it, Graziani was more concerned to fall back to what he considered to be a defensible position. By January 27th, the 7th Armoured Division was at Mechili, some 140 miles from Beda Fomm, near the Gulf of Sirte, South of Benghazi. In appalling conditions, as the Italians retreated along the much lengthier but better coast road, the Via Balbia, the 7th Armoured cut straight across the desert towards the coast. By 3pm on February 4th, the 11th Hussars were at Msus, some 60 miles from the Via Balbia , and at noon on the 5th they reached Beda Fomm, half an hour before the Italians retreating from Benghazi down the Via Balbia . By February 7th, Generals Cona and Babini had been captured, General Tellera was dead, and O'Connor had another 20,000 Italians to look after. The British had also reached El Agheila at the foot of the Gulf of Sirte, a position commanding the 15-mile-wide access to the sea from the desert. The British were poised to invade Tripolitania. And Rommel was about to arrive in North Africa.