The North African desert war
highlighted another British vulnerability: its reliance on Egypt and the Suez
Canal to reach its Asian interests, including food and raw materials from south
and southeast Asia and oil from Persia (Iran) and Arabia. Threatening Suez
meant threatening Britain’s ability to hold its own and keep fighting. But the
desert war exposed major weaknesses in the Italian part of the Axis equation
and also in blitzkrieg warfare itself, which proved inadequate over the long
empty spaces of Libya.
The struggle began in September 1940
with an attack from Libya into Egypt by the Italian army, a large but
ill-trained and immobile force with obsolescent tanks and aircraft. The British
had fewer troops and offered only modest resistance, but the Italians halted
after 60 miles to resupply and never resumed their advance. Britain scraped
together additional troops, including some armor, for a “5-day raid” that
turned into a major offensive. In 61 days the Desert Army advanced 500 miles
along the coastal roads of the great hump of Libya, captured 130,000 Italian
prisoners and mountains of supplies, occupied the key port of Tobruk, and pushed
the Italians past Benghazi.
Two events conspired to reverse
things. Churchill— alarmed that Hitler had drawn Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria,
and Yugoslavia into the Axis orbit and was preparing to help Mussolini in
Greece and Crete—ordered troops from North Africa to Greece, a move that failed
to hold Greece but weakened the Desert Army. Hitler meanwhile sent Erwin Rommel
with two crack panzer divisions and air support to bolster Italy in Libya. Ever
bold, Rommel immediately counterattacked, using vigorous flanking movements to
retake all the ground just lost and more, except for Tobruk, which grimly held.
In April 1941, having reached Egypt but with his fuel running low and defenses
stiffening, Rommel halted.
Britain took the field again in late
1941 with a new commander, an infusion of Lend-Lease equipment, and fresh
divisions. Rommel retreated to a point west of Benghazi, but the Desert Army,
weakened by its own supply problems and the diversion of forces to the Far East
to face Japan, could not follow through. Rommel was now avid to seize Suez, and
he was confident that he could outmaneuver the British on the southern end of
their defensive positions and stop their counterattacks by using the vaunted
88-mm antiaircraft gun as an antitank weapon. He therefore went on the
offensive, grinding out a major advance and finally taking Tobruk.
The British stopped the bleeding
only after fierce fighting at El Alamein, mere miles from Alexandria. The stage
was thus set for the sixth and final push in this strange seesaw war. This
began on October 23, 1942, when the British 8th Army, newly christened and
under yet another commander (Bernard Law Montgomery), jumped off for an
offensive that would ultimately clear Libya of Axis troops.
The Desert War revealed some hard truths
about armored warfare. Because the vehicles consumed fuel that had to be hauled
to the front, blitzkrieg worked best over short distances, as in Poland or
France. Over North African distances, the system did not work; the result was a
“rubber band” effect whereby armies stretched their supply lines to the
breaking point and then “snapped back” to their original position. Also,
blitzkrieg worked in Europe partly by sowing mass confusion among civilians,
who clogged the roads and prevented mobilization and movement. In a thinly
populated region such as North Africa, this did not happen, leaving enemy
communications and transportation strained but intact. And the Germans enjoyed
air superiority in Europe but not in the desert, partly because the Luftwaffe
was busy attacking the island of Malta.
Rommel was a tactical but not a
strategic or logistical genius. He did not have the strength or supplies to
seize and hold the Canal or link with German forces in Russia, and most General
Staff officers did not want him to try. In making the attempt, he exposed the
entire Axis position on the African continent.
Barnett, Corelli, The Desert
Generals (London, 1983)
Rommel’s North Africa Campaign:
September 1940-November 1942 by Jack Greene, Alessandro Massignani.