Winston's War_ Churchill, 1940-1945 - Max Hastings [218]
Hitler sent a congratulatory message to his Aegean commanders which was, for once, entirely merited: “The capture of Leros, undertaken with limited means but with great courage, carried through tenaciously in spite of various setbacks and bravely brought to a victorious conclusion, is a military accomplishment which will find an honourable place in the history of war.” The British on Leros had advantages—notably that of holding the ground—which should have been decisive, even in the face of enemy air superiority. It was shameful that the German paratroopers were able to overcome larger numbers of defenders who knew that they were coming.
Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham, now first sea lord, castigated the army: “I am still strongly of the opinion that Leros798 might have been held,” he wrote later. Brigadier Tilney, a German POW until 1945, became principal scapegoat for the island’s fall. Blame, however, properly ran all the way up through the chain of command to Downing Street. It was no more possible in 1943 than in 1941 for warships to operate successfully in the face of enemy air superiority. German aircrew were more proficient at attacking shipping than their British counterparts. British troops on Leros, as so often earlier in the war, showed themselves less effective warriors than their opponents. Far from being an elite, the 234th Brigade was a second-rate unit which conducted itself as well as might have been expected in the circumstances. The best apology that can be made for its performance is that it would have served little purpose for men to display suicidal courage, or to accept sacrificial losses, in a campaign which was anyway almost certainly doomed, and at a time when overall Allied victory was not in doubt.
If the defenders of Leros had repulsed the German assault in mid-November, British prestige might have profited, but the balance of power in the Aegean would have remained unchanged, and the agony would have been protracted. The Royal Navy would still have been left with an open-ended commitment to supply Leros under German air attack. As long as Rhodes remained in enemy hands, the British presence in the Dodecanese was strategically meaningless. Far from Leros offering a launching pad for a prospective assault on Rhodes, as Churchill insisted, it was merely a beleaguered liability. The Royal Navy suffered much more pain than it inflicted in the Aegean campaign, and achieved as much as could have been expected. In all, four cruisers, five destroyers, five minesweepers, two submarines and assorted coastal craft were sunk or badly damaged. The RAF could not be blamed for the difficulties of conducting operations beyond the range of effective air cover, but its performance in the antishipping role was unimpressive. Some 113 aircraft were lost—the Beaufighter squadrons suffered especially heavily, losing 50 percent of their strength. Once the airfields on Kos were gone, and with them any hope of operating single-engined fighters, the British should have cut their losses and quit.
In London, the news from the Aegean caused dismay and bewilderment in what was otherwise a season of Mediterranean victories. Cadogan at the Foreign Office wrote on November 16: “Bad news of Leros799. Talk of, and plans for, evacuation brings back the bad days of ’40 and ’41. But it’s on a smaller scale of course.” A Times editorial