Inferno - Max Hastings [69]
CHAPTER FIVE
THE MEDITERRANEAN
1. Mussolini Gambles
AT THE OUTBREAK of the conflict in 1939, Hitler had no intention of waging war in the Mediterranean, and asserted his determination not to commit German resources there. It was his fellow dictator Benito Mussolini who yearned to create an Italian lake, and on his own initiative launched the offensives which brought conflict to the region. In the year after the fall of France in June 1940, only in the African and Balkan theatres did Allied and Axis armies clash. Even after Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, the Mediterranean remained for three more years the focus of the Western Allied military contribution to the struggle against Hitler. All this was the consequence of Mussolini’s decision to become a protagonist in a struggle for which his nation was pitifully ill-equipped.
Hitler possessed in the Wehrmacht a formidable instrument for pursuing his ambitions. The Duce, by contrast, sought to play the warlord with incompetent commanders, unwilling soldiers and inadequate weapons. Italy was relatively poor, with a GDP less than half the size of Britain’s, and barely one-third per capita; it produced only one-sixth as much steel. The nation mobilised its economy less effectively for the Second World War than it had for the First. Even in the sunshine days of Mussolini’s relationship with Hitler, such was the Nazis’ contempt for their ally that 350,000 Italian workers in Germany were treated little better than slaves; Rome’s ambassador in Berlin was obliged to devote most of his energies to pleading for some amelioration of their working conditions. While Hitler cherished an enduring personal loyalty to Mussolini, whom he had once seen as a mentor, most Germans mistrusted and mocked Italy’s leader. Berliners claimed that whenever the Duce met the Führer, barrel-organ grinders played the popular tune “Du Kannst nicht Treue sein”—“You Cannot Be Faithful.” In 1936, when a foolish woman at a party asked Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg who would win the next war, he is alleged to have answered, “Madam, I cannot tell you that. Only one thing I can say: whoever has Italy on his side is bound to lose.”
There was a contemptuous joke in Nazi Party circles of Hitler’s lackey Wilhelm Keitel reporting, “My Führer, Italy has entered the war!” Hitler answers, “Send two divisions. That should be enough to finish them.” Keitel says, “No, my Führer, not against us, but with us.” Hitler says, “That’s different. Send ten divisions.”
In the early months of the war, there was a droll consensus between the Germans and British against initiating Middle Eastern operations. So weak was Britain’s global position that its chiefs of staff set their faces against committing forces there. Once Mussolini joined the Axis, the Mediterranean became valueless as a shipping route to the east, in the face of enemy air and naval dominance. The head of the British Army, Gen. Sir John Dill, preferred to dispatch to Asia such men and weapons as could be spared, to strengthen the empire’s defences against the looming Japanese threat. Churchill, however, would have none of this: since it was impossible to give battle on the Continent, he determined to do so in Africa. In the summer of 1940 he shipped precious tanks to Britain’s Middle East C-in-C, Gen. Sir Archibald Wavell. Other precautionary measures were adopted: 16,000 Gibraltarians—all but 4,000 of the Rock’s civilian population—were evacuated first to North Africa, thence to England. It was likely that seizure of the fortress at the gates of the Mediterranean would become an Axis objective, perhaps with the collusion of Spain’s dictator, Gen. Francisco Franco.
The Royal Navy had a relatively large Mediterranean fleet, but its C-in-C, Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham, recognised its vulnerability when almost bereft of air cover—as Churchill did not. For more than two years after Italy entered the war and France left it, Cunningham’s forces remained grievously disadvantaged by shortage of both carriers and land bases