The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean 1935–1949

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On the day Sollum fell, Churchill lamented that the future was quite unclear. Hitler might involve himself with the Balkans, but Churchill thought that this was unlikely. He might take over the Italian war effort, unlikelier still since ‘that would not be a victory for him’. Churchill’s best guess was that the Germans would come to the Mediterranean to take over French North Africa.

(#litres_trial_promo) In fact Hitler’s mind was elsewhere: he was busy issuing the order for ‘Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

(#litres_trial_promo) Two days after the Barbarossa decision Mussolini reluctantly admitted to his confederates that, sooner or later, they were going to have to ask for Germany’s help.

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FIVE (#ulink_d15b5710-5fe6-5e48-8da3-c82c160396db)

Mediterranean Eden (#ulink_d15b5710-5fe6-5e48-8da3-c82c160396db)

The Mediterranean image of early 1941 was columns of marching men. They wore Italian uniform and they were walking towards Egypt in great snakes of humanity. They did not come as victors but as the defeated. Hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers trudged towards captivity, their journey immortalized by eager pressmen. Wavell’s ‘raid’ just kept heading west. On 4 January 1941 Wavell’s forces captured Bardia. Eighteen days later they reached Tobruk. Wavell had given his field commander, General O’Connor, two divisions for the campaign. They faced up to ten Italian divisions. The numbers of tanks possessed by each side was more even. Indeed the British and Italian tank forces were roughly equivalent both in terms of numbers and quality. The Italian tanks were grouped together in the elite Brigata Corazzata Speciale commanded by General Babini. At Tobruk O’Connor split his forces, sending the 7th Armoured Division towards Mechili, inland, where he believed that the main body of Italian tanks was deployed. His Australian infantry carried on along the coast towards the town of Derna. On 24 January 1941 the two tank forces ran into each other near Mechili. The battle itself was indecisive. The Italians lost nine tanks, the British seven. Some of the Italian tankers believed that they had done enough damage to start a counter-attack. Graziani, however, would not hear of it. The battle was no more than a delaying action. On 3 February he withdrew from Benghazi. He told Mussolini that they would have to abandon Cyrenaica altogether. His aim was to send his forces to the end of the Balbia. They would hold the Sirtean desert as the forward defence line for Tripoli. There were rumours of much greater (and non-existent) British tank forces on the way.

Accordingly, Babini disengaged his force and retreated to the west. He and O’Connor still had equal numbers of ‘cruiser’ tanks. It was thus with some trepidation that O’Connor put forward a daring plan for the next stage of the advance. Instead of reuniting his forces he would send the armoured division south-west on a short-cut across the desert. They would try to cut the Balbia far to the south of Benghazi, rather than following the coast, taking each town in turn. Wavell and O’Connor met at Tmimi on the road to Derna on 4 February 1941: Wavell approved the plan. Thereafter events moved with great speed.

The reconnaissance elements of the 7th Armoured Division spotted Graziani’s 25,000-strong force retreating along the Balbia on 5 February. By the evening the tank forces themselves had reached the road near the small settlement of Beda Fomm. From a small hill by the roadside, known as ‘the Pimple’, they could survey a fourteen-mile stretch of road. They had reached ‘the Pimple’ before the Italians and thus cut off their line of retreat. It was up to Babini’s tanks to force a way through. The Italian tank force advanced with elan only to run into the dug-in British tanks. The Italians took heavy casualties. Nevertheless, about thirty tanks managed to force their way onto the road south of ‘the Pimple’. The Italian force was thus split. Most of the troops were stuck north of ‘the Pimple’. A powerful independent force of tanks was to the south of the hill, their escape route blocked only by a battalion of the Rifle Brigade supported by a battery of the Royal Horse Artillery. The next day the Italian tanks tried to make their breakthrough. The British gunners held firm, however, continuing to fire until the last of the desperate tanks stopped short of their line. By nine o’clock in the morning of 7 February 1941 it was all over. The Italian main force, deprived of its tanks, and with the Australians coming up behind them on the Balbia, surrendered. ‘Fox killed in the open,’ the triumphant British field commander signalled Wavell.

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In Rome they could barely believe what was happening to the ‘fourth shore’. The intelligence system that had once proved so adept at extracting juicy morsels from diplomats, failed to keep pace with the battle. The Fascist elite was reduced to listening to BBC radio broadcasts. First, news would arrive of defeat. Then garbled accounts of brave resistance would take its place. Mussolini made the final arrangements for his tryst with Hitler only when he had convinced himself that the defence of Bardia would restore honour to Italian arms. Surely, he would wail to his advisers, the generals would stop the English. The ‘heroic infantryman’ or the ‘king of artillery’ would find a way If not the generals, then the fortifications would delay the advance. If the fortifications failed, then the very land would provide succour. The British could not fight their way through desert and along coast. The task of working up and down the cliffs would prove too much. Finally, the full scale of defeat would become clear and recrimination would follow. At that moment news would arrive of yet another humiliating defeat by the Greeks.

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To make matters worse, the British could not help crowing over their victories. It was not their fault that they were useless, Churchill told his Italian listeners. The disasters they were now enduring were the responsibility of one man, the Duce.

(#litres_trial_promo) He had ‘ranged the Italian people in deadly struggle against the British empire’. He alone had created defeat; if he were to be removed then the Italians would be absolved both of crime and cowardice. ‘There stands’, they should cry, ‘the criminal who has brought the deed of folly on our land.’ The message was in a sense well judged–there were plenty in Mussolini’s own intimate circle who heard Churchill and agreed with him.

(#litres_trial_promo) The cost of such barbs was nevertheless high. For years afterwards Churchill’s words would provide the constant alibi for Fascists and their friends. Yet at the time there were no Italians with either the will or the power to overthrow Mussolini. The threat itself put Mussolini on his guard. It also resonated with Churchill’s avid listeners in Germany. The idea that Mussolini must be ‘saved’ from the Italians entered the Führer’s table talk.

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He had, Hitler told his courtiers at Berchtesgaden, reconsidered the situation. The previous month he had ordered the Luftwaffe to teach the Mediterranean Fleet a lesson.

(#litres_trial_promo) At the beginning of January 1941 the first Stukas had touched down in western Sicily. As Hitler addressed his generals they were going into action for the first time. The Mediterranean Fleet played into German hands with a display of the very arrogance that Hitler was determined to humble. The victor of Taranto, Illustrious, was sent through the Sicilian Narrows so that it might cover a convoy bringing crated fighters from Gibraltar to Malta. Many officers had a bad feeling about the operation, but Cunningham waved aside their objections. Illustrious was the talisman of the fleet, everyone felt better when she was around. She proved, however, the perfect target for German bombs. The Italians, too, played their part.

(#litres_trial_promo) Even though they had but a few days to prepare, the two air forces choreographed a complex aerial ruse. Italian torpedo-bombers flew a decoy mission to draw off the Illustrious’s fighters. Once she was denuded of protection the dive-bombers attacked. ‘The dive bombing attacks’, Cunningham ruefully admitted, were most efficiently performed and came as a most unpleasant surprise.’ The carrier was hit six times. The only consolation for the British was that there was no killer blow. The crippled ship was able to get into Malta harbour without being sunk. She brought with her the first concentrated German air raids over the island, as for days afterwards the Stuka crews tried to finish off their prey. As Cunningham said, a ‘potent new factor in Mediterranean war’ had arrived. No one doubted what had happened. Large British ships had been chased from the waters surrounding Sicily and Malta.

(#litres_trial_promo) The passage of even smaller ships had become deeply problematic.

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The battle prompted another Mussolinian mood swing. This example of the two air forces working in such close harmony had cheered him to the extent that he was looking forward to his own visit to Berchtesgaden.

(#litres_trial_promo) He would have been less cheerful if he could have heard what those already there were saying. The Italians had shown ‘matchless amateurism’ according to Hitler.

(#litres_trial_promo) The war in Libya was a piddling and unimportant affair, but the Führer took seriously Churchill’s words. Italy must be saved from itself. A small armoured force sent to Tripoli should do the trick.

(#litres_trial_promo) The Italo-German effort on Sicily, the offer of forces for Tripoli, and Hitler’s promise that the pesky Greeks would be humbled come the spring yielded a surprisingly cordial meeting of the two dictators. They toasted the ‘absolute solidarity between the countries of the Axis’. It was time for them to ‘march together’. Of course, many at the time and since doubted this togetherness. Italian diplomats warned that the Germans intended to displace Italian power rather than come to its aid. The contrast between the confident swagger of the German generals around Hitler and the cowed mien of Italian officers, small of stature and sporting hair dyed jet black, was palpable. Mussolini had come to Hitler as a supplicant and had left a client. Nevertheless, a deal of sorts was done that allowed for cooperation against mutual enemies over the next few months.

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Churchill might boom his voice in the Mediterranean, but in the inner councils of the British war machine he complained that no one seemed inclined to do much to counter this new threat. A formal decision was made in London to aid Greece against a new Italo-German invasion. The view from Alexandria, however, was that the Sicilian Narrows were now closed and that opening them, whilst defending Malta, should have the highest priority. The view from Cairo was that if any aggressive military operations were to take place in the Mediterranean–other than in Libya–they would best be directed against ill-defended small Italian islands in the far east of the Sea. No one appeared to be responding to the Prime Minister’s ideas and demands. Each of the military commanders, Wavell, Cunningham and Longmore, had become used to the semi-independence granted by difficult communications. There was no instrument on the spot capable of enforcing Churchill’s will.

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There was, as it happened, a member of Churchill’s government travelling around the Mediterranean at the very moment of decision. But he was a man whom one would least like to see hove over the horizon in such circumstances. ‘I adore Cairo,’ Chips Channon wrote upon his arrival, ‘it is everything I like, easy, elegant, pleasure-loving, trivial, worldly; me, in fact.’

(#litres_trial_promo) The private secretary to the under-secretary of state was at the very bottom of the Foreign Office food chain. He had arrived in Cairo on a ‘secret’ mission in which no one in London had any faith. Chips’s dearest friend, from their idyllic days as undergraduates, was Prince Paul of Yugoslavia. Since Mussolini had arranged the assassination of King Alexander in 1934, Paul had acted as Regent to his young nephew Peter. Mussolini had long wished to predate the Yugoslavians. As Hitler’s interest in Greece rose, their role became pivotal. The Yugoslavs might join the Greeks as victims. Just as likely they could join with the Germans against the Greeks in return for territorial gain and protection from the Italians.

(#litres_trial_promo) The lure of a Serbo-German alliance warred with Paul’s natural Anglophilia.

In his moment of crisis Paul called out for Chips, and Chips came. As Hitler plotted in the Berchtesgaden, Chips crossed the Mediterranean from Cairo to Athens. He dropped in on another dear friend, King George of Greece. Paul and George, royal cousins, had last met at Chips’s opulent house in Belgrave Square. Now they phoned each other each night, mainly it seemed to complain about the iniquities of their English friends. George warned Chips that beastliness was afoot. It was grim up north. ‘I am already against the Balkans,’ Chips lamented, ‘and long for Cairo.’

(#litres_trial_promo) Next day he hopped on the train from Athens to Belgrade, surrounded by kissing Greeks celebrating their victory over the Italians at Klisura.

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Chips’s welcome in Belgrade was everything he might have wished. His familiar bedroom in the Palace of Beli Dvor awaited him. He was surrounded by the many precious bibelots with which he had showered the beloved Prince down the years. Then they were together, half-dressed, and Yugoslav prince and British politician cast aside the cares of office and ‘fell into each other’s arms’. Their joy was short lived. Barely had Paul had time to curse the entire German race, explain that no one gave the British any credence whilst they were so weak, and beg Chips to ensure that no aid should be sent to Greece, when the true voice of British officialdom arrived to inform the reunited friends that Chips had already been superseded. Wavell had been ordered to take time away from garnering victories in Africa to visit Athens. There he would exhort ‘First Peasant’ Metaxas to prepare to fight the Germans with British aid. ‘Treachery and foolishness,’ cried the two friends.

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Poor Paul, Chips had never had anything to offer other than love and diamond-encrusted knick-knacks. The British government had ignored his Mediterranean progress and had then brushed it aside. Chips’s very pointlessness was not, however, without ultimate effect. ‘This stinks’, the Regent had shouted in a moment of rage, ‘of Anthony.’ The name of the villain that rang around the Palace was not Churchill but his newly appointed Foreign Secretary, their old undergraduate sparring partner Anthony Eden. Many in the Mediterranean attributed to Eden more power than perhaps he ever possessed. Eden was not unhappy to play upon this impression. He wanted to make a splash as soon as possible. Churchill was keen that his choice should have a chance to show his quality, and what better stage than the Mediterranean. Nothing could be achieved with an effete nobody like Chips, but perhaps an effete somebody could transform the situation. Eden, it was agreed, should not just issue instructions to the Mediterranean but should take himself there for as long as was necessary to enforce the government’s will.

The mission was attractive. Eden would be greeted with the bouquets of victory. Somerville was ordered to take Force H and bombard the Italian mainland. He laid a bet. If the mission was a success Churchill and Eden would take the credit, if the Italians sunk one of his capital ships the fiasco would be blamed on the incompetence of the navy in the Mediterranean. It was a win-win bet. His unseen approach on Genoa was a masterpiece of naval operational art. The bombardment of the city was indeed claimed as triumph of political daring in London.

(#litres_trial_promo) The impression was not much different in Rome and Berlin. The general whom Hitler had dispatched to lead his forces in Tripoli, Erwin Rommel, arrived in Rome as the British shells hit Genoa.

(#litres_trial_promo) ‘The Duce’s popularity is approaching zero level,’ went back the word to Germany.

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At the same time as the navy landed a direct blow on Italy, the army maintained their extraordinary progress along the coast of Cyrenaica. Tobruk, Derna, Benghazi: in each of the fortified Italian coastal towns the pattern was the same. Imperial troops would breast a rise to see a neatly whitewashed settlement set against the sea. They would admire the skill of the Italian artillerists who opposed them, then the defence would crumble. Within the day the town would be in their hands, albeit thoroughly looted by the indigenous population. It was thus settled that Eden would ‘stop at Benghazi and run over to the Balkans’. What he would do when he reached the Balkans was less clear. Some, such as his travelling companion, the CIGS, Sir John Dill, thought his mission was to persuade Turkey into the war. Others argued that the mission was all about Greece. The dictator Metaxas had listened sceptically to Wavell’s blandishments but had then unexpectedly keeled over, dead. Greece’s confused politicians might now be biddable. Eden was told to fly in, scout out the situation and try and make the best of it.

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In the end Eden didn’t make it to Benghazi. Flying into a headwind his plane almost ran out of fuel. It landed on Malta in the middle of an air raid, diverted to Crete and finally touched down outside Cairo on 19 February 1941.

(#litres_trial_promo) Despite the difficult journey, Eden came down the steps ‘in his usual excellent form. He had every right to feel cheerful–his timing seemed impeccable.

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As Churchill had suspected, the arrival of Eden in Cairo made it very difficult for the military commanders to object too vociferously to the idea of cashing in on the gains made in Cyrenaica. They signed up to the idea of projecting British power north across the Mediterranean. Wavell, Cunningham and Longmore each said a piece on the practical difficulties involved, but lodged no objection in principle. There was none of the outspokenness to which more junior visitors had been treated. When Channon had been in Cairo, Longmore had described Churchill as an adventurer, criticized his grasp of strategy and had ascribed their success up to that point to a mixture of luck and bluff.

(#litres_trial_promo) Eden, on the other hand, was able to report a remarkable degree of unity amongst all the political, diplomatic and military leaders gathered in Cairo. They agreed that they would look north instead of south-east, towards Abyssinia, or west, towards Tripoli. They agreed that if they were looking north it should be towards Greece rather than towards Turkey The dream of whipping up the Turks remained strong for some, but the consensus was that the Turks would do what they always did, make nice noises but play the sides off against one another. In any case there was a limit to the military aid that could be sent north and Greece, unlike Turkey, was under immediate threat. They signed up to the statement that if everything was thrown into assisting the Greeks as quickly as possible then there was a ‘fair chance’ of preventing the country being overrun.

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