by David Irving
Luftwaffe reports on June 21 suggested to Rommel that the British were so dazed by the speed of Tobruk’s collapse that they were no longer preparing to make a stand even on the Egyptian frontier.
Field Marshal Kesselring realized that Rommel would probably be tantalized by this situation and flew in to Tobruk at midday. According to Friedrich von Mellenthin, of Rommel’s staff, the smiling field marshal reminded the Panzer Army commander of the need to throw all their air strength into the Axis invasion of Malta, scheduled for August.
Until that island was captured, Rommel’s supply lines would always be exposed to air and sea attack. Rommel disagreed emphatically: “Now that we’ve got the British on the run, there is a unique opportunity for us to push right on to the Suez Canal.” Bayerlein, standing in for the injured Gause as chief of staff, later stated that Kesselring came around to Rommel’s point of view, adding: “We’ll organize supplies for you somehow.” Rommel did not really care what Kesselring thought anyway—he had already sent a member of his personal staff to Berlin with a private letter to Hitler seeking permission to invade Egypt. At once.
All afternoon German and Italian troops loaded up the booty of Tobruk. There was enough gasoline for hundreds of miles of advance. The Panzer Army had captured entire warehouses stacked with pure white flour, cigarettes, tobacco, foodstuffs, jam and clothing. There was beer galore—not the insipid liquid that masqueraded as beer in Britain, but brown, stubby bottles with the familiar blue Munich Löwenbräu labels! The British had bought it in Lisbon.
At four P.M. Bismarck wedged his Afrika Korps cap firmly onto his close-cropped head, mounted his Panzer IV and signaled the Twenty-first Panzer Division to drive east.
As the trucks—now more of British origin than German—fell in behind on the Via Balbia, there was cheering and laughter. Captured radio sets were tuned to music broadcasts and foreign stations. One Axis newscaster quoted yesterday’s Times of London: “Tobruk’s defenses are now stronger than ever before.” Another reported a New York radio station’s view: “Rommel and the tattered remnants of his defeated army may well be skulking somewhere outside Tobruk. But to talk of any possibility of his capturing the mighty fortress is plain absurd.”
To his secretary, Corporal Böttcher, Rommel had dictated an entreaty to his troops to destroy the British army. “During the days to come,” he ended, “I shall be calling on you all to make one last great effort to bring us to this final goal.”
Toward evening he made one more brief tour of the Tobruk battlefield and enormous captured dumps.
Then he returned to the hotel. “After all I’ve been through,” he wrote to Lucie, “I’ve just got to grab a few hours’ sleep.” Not since the capture of Lon-garone, twenty-five years before, had he felt as tired as this.
MUSSOLINI’S DIRECTIVE to Rommel in May of 1942 had given him authority to advance only as far as the frontier wire. Before he attempted to invade Egypt, two major problems—in the Italian view—needed tackling first: the Italian navy lacked fuel oil, and Malta was reviving after its ordeal of air attack and blockade. Although supply shipping losses in June were not much greater than in May, the lack of oil meant that Italian warships could escort fewer supply convoys. The disastrous result was that supplies to Libya dropped from 150,000 tons to only 32,000; and these were delivered to distant Tripoli, not the much nearer Benghazi. Marshal Ugo Cavallero, chief of the Italian High Command, drew the Nazis’ attention to these two problems in a letter that reached Hitler on June 21. Colonel Walter Scherff, historian for the German High Command, noted Hitler’s reaction in his diary: “The Führer’s attitude to Operation Herkules (the planned Axis invasion of Malta) is still hostile.”
Standing over the map table in the elegant surroundings of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, as a colonel deftly unrolled the charts of Nazi Germany’s spreading dominions, Adolf Hitler saw no need for a pedantic strategy. He had the British on the run, from the Arctic right down to Libya. His army was inflicting annihilating blows on the Soviet forces and advancing on the Caucasus. A letter had just come from Rommel emphasizing his Panzer Army’s sparkling morale and reporting the treasure troves of Tobruk, which would enable him to pursue the British deep into Egypt—provided Mussolini agreed.
Hitler sent a telegram to Mussolini. In it, Hitler described Rommel’s victory as a “turning point” in Africa. “The Goddess of Victory approaches commanders in battle only once,” he advised. “If they do not clutch her then, she often never again comes within their reach.”
It was now June 22. The whole Nazi Reich was intoxicated with the news from Africa. A new bridge was named after Rommel. From gauleiters and generals alike the congratulations poured into Lucie’s house at Wiener Neustadt. General Streccius, commandant of nearby Vienna, purloined Hitler’s own title by writing to Lucie: “Rommel’s name will be ranked among those of the Greatest Warriors of All Time!”
Lucie’s home was “awash with flowers.” She spent that evening with neighbors—the Furstenbergs—and a dozen other friends listening to the special broadcast of recordings flown direct from Tobruk.
There was Army Specialist Lutz Koch, Rommel’s personal war correspondent, broadcasting his own eyewitness description of the fall of Tobruk; and then Lucie heard the general himself, speaking from the battlefield. She would have preferred to listen alone to his sonorous voice coming from so far away—it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for her too. Then the program ended and Herr Furstenberg stood up and switched off the radio set, and went downstairs to get champagne.
Hitler too had sat with Goebbels and his personal staff around a radio set that evening. As the program ended, Goebbels commented on the quality of the material: “There’s hardly any other general so imbued with the vital importance of combat propaganda as General Rommel. He’s a modern general in the best sense of the word.” At the word “general” Hitler raised his hand for silence and pointed with a knowing grin to the loudspeaker. Trumpets were sounding a fanfare. There was going to be a special announcement. “From the Führer’s headquarters, June twenty-second . . .” began the voice.
In his trailer, 1,500 miles away, Rommel slept. He had been too tired to join his staff as they clustered around the radio in Lieutenant Berndt’s car, tuned to the special broadcast from Berlin. At a quarter to ten, Rommel was suddenly wakened by whoops of delight. A fanfare had sounded from the loudspeaker, and the announcer had said: “From the Führer’s headquarters, June twenty-second. The Führer has promoted the commander of Panzer Army Afrika, Colonel General Rommel, to the rank of field marshal.”
Field Marshal Rommel! “To have become a field marshal is like a dream to me,” he confessed to Lucie in his next letter. “All these mighty events of the past weeks trail behind me like a dream.”
It was the ultimate honor for a soldier. No one could rise above that rank— unless his name was Hermann Göring, of course. (A special rank had been created to please his vanity.) In Prussia, field marshals could never retire or be dismissed—they remained that rank for life, entitled to a secretary, a horse or car, a driver and other perquisites. It was the traditional tribute to a warrior who had conquered a great fortress or won a great battle. To become a field marshal was to become an immortal.
Rommel was to the manner born. That afternoon, before the conferring of his immortality and without permission from Hitler or Mussolini, he had taken it upon himself to issue marching orders to the Afrika Korps. Both panzer divisions had started rolling at 7:30 P.M., to circle around the frontier defense line to the south. The panzers had seen no sign of the enemy yet—but the night sky above them was frequently pierced by the glare of parachute flares, so the enemy evidently knew what Rommel was up to. His interpreter, Lieutenant Armbruster, caught the excitement in his diary: “June 22. . . . We are moving on again and won’t give the Tommies any peace. They believe we are going to need four or six weeks first, but our big attack begins—tomorrow! Let’s hope they don’t duck out. This is our unique chance. We may
even make it to Cairo. . . . Huge supply dump at Capuzzo.” Later: “In the evening we tuned in to the special announcement. We’re all delighted and Rommel too—like a small boy.”
Rommel slept like a log but was up again at six to brief the Ninetieth Light at Bardia for its rapid advance through the wire into Egypt. “Our attack began at two P.M.,” wrote Armbruster. “We drove a long way south, then turned east. The Italians [Twentieth Corps] and Ninetieth Light unfortunately lagged a bit. But at 7:22 P.M. we crossed the wire on the frontier of Egypt and here we spent the night. There are only very few of us.” The Rommel diary also recorded that moment: 7:22 P.M.—the moment when the new field marshal began his attempt to conquer Egypt.
The next day, June 24, Rommel heard a sound he had not heard for a week—enemy aircraft engines. The RAF’s Desert Air Force had resumed operations, on a terrifying scale. At six P.M. fifteen Boston bombers attacked in formation. Rommel dived for cover, and most of the bomb load fell around his combat squad. Almost at once, enemy fighter planes streaked in, their machine guns spewing fire. Armbruster, still shaking, jotted in his diary: “A fighter plane has just flown over R.’s car, only twenty feet up. I thought it was curtains.” There was no sign of the Luftwaffe—by invading Egypt, Rommel had caught Waldau’s squadrons on the wrong foot. His Panzer Army’s advance far outpaced the rate at which Waldau could move forward his airfield organization.
Sidi Barrani was occupied without trouble, but the little port was in ruins. The next morning the enemy bombers returned. There were eight separate raids on the Afrika Korps. Over the following days the air raids multiplied. The Italian armored corps commander, General Baldassare, and several of his officers were killed. But Rommel believed he had the British on the run and he refused to be alarmed by this loss of air supremacy. His optimism was infectious. He assured Marshals Cavallero, Kesselring and Bastico when they flew in to see him on June 26, “If my Panzer Army succeeds in breaking through the enemy’s line today, by June 30 we’ll be in Cairo or Alexandria.”
But now there were new factors operating against Rommel. He was venturing into a terrain where no Axis soldiers had yet set foot. And General Sir Claude Auchinleck had taken personal command of the Eighth Army and reversed the plans that had been laid for a last-ditch British stand at Mersa Matruh. Thus when the big port fell into Rommel’s hands early on June 29, the haul of prisoners was disappointing—only about 2,000. From a radio intercept, Rommel learned that the British were now slipping away to the east. “Catch them!” he radioed to the Afrika Korps. This was easier said than done. The retreating British had laid all manner of obstacles to trip Rommel’s advance. “East of Rahim Duweiry three minefields block the highway,” said the Rommel diary. “Ground to left and right of the highway is mined. After several trucks have already hit mines on the road and roadside, C in C and Lieutenant Berndt personally clear the mines away. After 200 mines have been lifted, the road is free again and the advance is rapidly resumed. At dusk C in C halts six miles west of El Daba. In El Daba itself there are gigantic explosions—we can feel the blast wave from six miles away. The sound takes thirty or forty seconds to reach us.”
Rommel did not know it, but the Panzer Army had neared its limit. There were signs that day, June 30, that his troops were almost finished. Sometimes his infantry fell asleep in broad daylight and were wakened by the enemy. The Twentieth Corps reported at 8:50 A.M. that it had only fifteen tanks left and was being blocked by eight enemy tanks. Rommel loosened his collar and scribbled a rude reply on a message pad. The air that day was hot and full of flying grit, and by afternoon a full sandstorm was howling. Twice Rommel’s clutch of trailers, trucks and headquarters cars was bombed and strafed, twice he ordered them moved 1,000 yards—and still the enemy air force came back for more.
He looked beyond the momentary difficulties to the glorious objective: the capture of Cairo. Just 100 more miles to Alexandria, and then . . . “Perhaps I can get away to Italy in July,” he wrote longingly to Lucie. “Get passports!!!” He studied his maps. Ahead of his forces the British had withdrawn to a line extending inland from a grubby railroad stop near the coast, El Alamein. Rommel knew it was the enemy’s last defensive position of any consequence before the river Nile.
That afternoon, Rommel called his generals to his command post—now concealed among sand dunes. He announced that he was going to attack the enemy before dawn the next day, July 1. The conference was abruptly ended by another bombing raid. “Took cover with C in C in a hole,” says the Armbruster diary. “Corporal Günther [Rommel’s orderly] injured. Windshield shattered. Terrific sandstorm all evening, and still another air attack on the road. Zero hour is three A.M. tomorrow.” The pendulum of conflict in the desert had now halted. The impetus of Rommel’s Panzer Army was almost gone.
Prelude to El Alamein
ROMMEL IS NOW ONLY loo miles from the powerful British naval base at Alexandria. To the British it seems quite possible that he will overrun Egypt, and his adversary, General Auchinleck, has drawn up a long list of demolitions in case this should happen: radio stations, telegraph and telephone systems, oil and gasoline installations, transport and power supplies. Defenses are being built near the Pyramids. In the Egyptian capital, a state of emergency has been declared, agents inform Rommel; British troops have taken over Cairo to maintain civil order. Rommel’s fame has gone before him. He knows that the Egyptians, tired of British rule, are awaiting his arrival with barely concealed excitement. He hopes that the ensuing riots against the British will seal the Eighth Army’s defeat. From his special radio truck, in permanent contact with Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry, a signal has gone to Berlin: “Field Marshal Rommel requests soonest use of active propaganda in Egypt.”
In London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill is fighting for his job. The fiery Welsh Member of Parliament, Aneurin Bevan, has commented once before that Churchill has won one debate after another—but lost one battle after another too. Now members of Churchill’s own Conservative Party have tabled a “motion of censure” against him and his conduct of the war. Sir John Wardlaw-Milne rises and challenges him: “It is surely clear to any civilian that the series of disasters of the past few months—and indeed of the past two years—is due to fundamental defects in the central administration of the war.” He is seconded by Admiral Keyes, whose son has died in the futile commando attack on Rommel’s headquarters at Beda Littoria. Lord Winterton supports the motion. “Who is the minister who practically controlled the Narvik operation?” he asks Churchill. “It is the present Prime Minister, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. . . . We never had anything in the last war comparable with this series of disasters. Now see what this Government gets away with: because ‘the Führer is always right.’ ”
The next day, July 2, 1942, the parliamentary attack on Churchill mounts in fury. A member blames Britain’s defeats on the army’s classridden mentality. “In this country there is a taunt on everyone’s lips that if Rommel had been in the British army he would still have been a sergeant.” When Churchill rises, however, he shifts the blame squarely onto his generals—Klopper, Ritchie and even Auchinleck. It is all brilliant oratory. He then describes the defeat in North Africa, sparing no melancholy detail: “If there are any would-be profiteers of disaster who feel able to paint the picture in darker colors, they are certainly at liberty to do so,” he observes. Churchill goes on to attribute the Eighth Army’s misfortunes directly to Rommel’s own ability. Thus Churchill survives the day.
In Germany, his discomfiture has evoked hoots of derision. The Berliner Börsenzeitung headlines its report: “Churchill Says—Blame Rommel!”
In distant East Prussia, Hitler stabs at his unappetizing vegetarian supper and reflects on Churchill’s tactical error in boosting an enemy general like that: “People frequently ask how it is that Rommel enjoys so great a worldwide reputation,” he says. “Not a little is due to Churchill’s speeches in the House of Commons in which the British Prime Minister always portrays Rom
mel as a military genius.” He chuckles. “The mere name suddenly begins to acquire a value. Imagine what would happen if we kept on plugging the Soviet marshal Timoshenko. In the end our own soldiers would come to regard him as some kind of superman.”
AS THE MEMBERS of Parliament filed into the voting lobbies, Rommel’s troops were deadlocked with Auchinleck’s. The Panzer Army had reached El Alamein’s defenses with only fifty-five German and thirty Italian tanks. The troops were almost prostrate with fatigue, tortured by sun and thirst. Rommel had allowed himself the luxury of two sea baths, but the water was too warm to be refreshing. When the Ninetieth Light Division pleaded for permission for its riflemen to do the same, Rommel refused and relentlessly pushed them on toward the new battlefield.
Three hours past midnight on July 1, the riflemen, machine gunners and other troops of the Ninetieth Light climbed back into their trucks and moved off in broad formation against El Alamein. Blinded by a sandstorm, Rommel’s troops blundered right into the enemy defenses. For the first time the word “Panic” figured in a German division’s diary. Sections of the Ninetieth Light crumbled away and fled to the rear. Their commanders forced them back onto the battle lines and they dug in. Later Rommel himself drove up to get the attack moving again and promptly felt the lash of the enemy artillery on his own little force of twenty trucks and armored cars.
“It was terrible,” wrote Armbruster that evening. “A shell detonated just six feet away from the C in C’s car. Under heavy fire we madly dug holes and had to keep our heads down for the next three hours. It was dusk before we could extricate ourselves.” To add to their misery, by nightfall it was raining hard and nonstop air attacks had begun.