Inferno - Max Hastings [71]
Yet in 1940 Germany’s leaders were not much interested in Muslim revolts, less still in Arab freedom. Moreover, at this stage they conceded to Italy the principal diplomatic role in the region. Mussolini’s ambitions for extending his African empire were wholly incompatible with local peoples’ aspirations: in pursuit of them, his generals had already massacred many thousands of Libyan and Abyssinian tribesmen. Only in 1941 did the Germans engage with Arab nationalists, notably in Iraq and Iran. Their attempted interventions there were late, halfhearted, and easily frustrated by forces dispatched to reassert British hegemony.
In Egypt in September 1939, Britain invoked a clause of its treaty with Farouk which obliged him, in the event of a war, to provide “all the facilities and assistance in his power, including the use of ports, aerodromes and means of communication.” Thereafter, the British treated the country as a colonial possession, governed through their ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson. They based their Mediterranean Fleet at Alexandria, and in February 1942 deployed troops in Cairo to stifle a nascent Egyptian rebellion. In the course of the war, desperate hunger among the peasantry caused several food riots; the plight of the Egyptian felaheen contrasted starkly with the sybaritic lifestyle of the British military colony centred upon Middle East headquarters, Shepheard’s Hotel, the Gezira Sporting Club and a nexus of barracks, supply and repair bases throughout the Nile Delta, where contempt for “the wogs” was almost universal.
American visitors were dismayed by the lassitude and imperial condescension of the British in Egypt, who seemed to regard the conflict being waged in the western wilderness as a mere event in a sporting calendar. This perception was unjust to those doing the fighting and dying: it failed to recognise the British Army’s tradition of seeking to make war with a light heart. But a core of truth about the North African campaign was that the British role until late 1942 was characterised by an amateurishness that was occasionally inspired but which more often crippled its endeavours.
So large was the paper strength of Mussolini’s armies that in the summer of 1940 it seemed possible they would expel the British from northern and eastern Africa. There were 600,000 Italian and colonial troops in Libya and Abyssinia, confronting fewer than 100,000 men under Wavell’s orders in the Middle East, Kenya, Sudan and Somaliland. In August, to Churchill’s fury the Italians seized Somaliland almost bloodlessly. Mussolini’s people had little stomach for hard fighting but a hearty appetite for victories. During the brief period when cheap African conquests seemed in prospect while the Luftwaffe’s efforts against Britain were visibly flagging, an Italian journalist wrote proudly, and with an earnestness that reflected his people’s genius for self-delusion: “We want to reach Suez with our own forces alone; perhaps we will win the war and not the Germans.” But Mussolini’s operations were handicapped by his confusion about both means and purposes: at home, he demobilised part of his army to bring in the harvest. Ignoring the vital principle of concentration of force, he prepared to launch an invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. He failed to exploit a critical window of opportunity to seize Malta. In North Africa, his commanders lacked equipment, skill and resolve. In September 1940, in a gesture symbolic of