War of Shadows

by Gershom Gorenberg

  On the other hand, Churchill was informed that Bletchley Park was peeking over the shoulders of the German air force. Churchill had a passion for espionage, which was lacking in the generally less passionate prime ministers before him. Room 40, predecessor of GC&CS, was born when Churchill was first lord of the Admiralty at the start of the previous war. He believed in reading other people’s mail.16

  In Churchill’s terrible first weeks as prime minister, the secret intelligence success was a very rare encouragement.17 Publicly, the evacuation of nearly 340,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk was the single event to which he could point as a victory. He did not know that Rommel’s overstated report of Allied strength at Arras had contributed to the rescue.

  ROOSEVELT SENT A message to Mussolini to talk him out of war. Ambassador William Phillips was supposed to bring it to the Duce, but Mussolini refused to receive him, so Phillips came to Ciano. The message said that if Mussolini would “inform me of Italy’s legitimate aspirations” in the Mediterranean—meaning his demands for British and French colonial territory—Roosevelt would try to negotiate an agreement. Ciano told Phillips it was useless. “It takes more than that to dissuade Mussolini,” Ciano said, or so he wrote of his side of the conversation afterward. “In fact, it is not that [Mussolini] wants this or that; what he wants is war, and even if he were to obtain double what he claims by peaceful means, he would refuse.”18

  The French campaign had erased Mussolini’s last hesitations. He could not bear being left out. He summoned the chief of the general staff, Pietro Badoglio, and Italo Balbo, the governor-general of Libya, to his office and told them he’d decided to go to war.

  Badoglio tried one last time. “We have no arms, we have no tanks, we have no airplanes, not even shirts for our soldiers. It’s suicide,” he said.

  “You, marshal, are not calm enough to judge the situation,” the Duce said. “I can tell you everything will be over by September and that I only need a few thousand dead so as to sit at the peace conference as a belligerent.”19

  Mussolini ordered a blackout in Rome on the night of June 9, 1940. The next day, near sunset, he stepped onto the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia, the fifteenth-century palace where he had his office. Below him, filling the great plaza, thousands of Romans had gathered at his orders. They were the extras in the Duce’s drama. The location was a propaganda stage set, shouting the glory of Italy. On Mussolini’s right on a high marble plinth, the bronze image of Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of united Italy, frozen forever on horseback, rode toward him. Below the statue was the tomb of the unknown soldier, known as the Altar of the Fatherland. Next to the monument a wide avenue had been ripped through the city to the ancient Colosseum, so that Mussolini could see it from his balcony. The palace itself had once been the embassy of the proud republic of Venice, which for centuries had dominated the Mediterranean.

  “We go into the field against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the West, who have repeatedly blocked the march, and even threatened the existence of the Italian people,” he proclaimed. The war, he said, “is the struggle of a poor people against those who wish to starve us with their retention of all the riches and gold of the earth. It is a struggle of the fecund and young peoples against barren peoples slipping to their sunset.”20

  The crowd, as ordered, applauded.

  “I am sad, very sad,” Ciano wrote. “The adventure begins. May God help us.”21

  THE MESSAGE TO General Archibald Wavell came unencoded via the Cairo office of the Marconi Radiotelegraph Company of Egypt. It was from John Dill, chief of the Imperial General Staff in London. “Wish you and Jumbo [Wilson] and all under your command good luck in whatever may lie ahead,” it said.

  “Many thanks,” the commander of Britain’s small forces in the Middle East radioed back. “We will do our best.”22

  Act II

  THE WAGER

  1

  THE KEYSTONE IN THE ARCH

  Spring 1940. London–Cairo–Washington–Benghazi.

  “THE BATTLE OF France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin,” Winston Churchill told the House of Commons on June 18, 1940. “Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization,” he said.1

  Churchill was understating the war’s drastic transformation. The day before, the new French government under military hero Philippe Petain had asked Hitler for an armistice. Barely a week had passed since Mussolini spoke from his balcony. No longer was Britain part of a great-power alliance against Nazi Germany. It now stood virtually alone against both Germany and Italy. Western Europe was lost.

  In America, still neutral, the black-and-white newsreel pictures of smoke rising from cities suddenly seemed to be in sharper focus, and the wind carried a harsh scent, still distant but hard to erase.

  And already the contagion had spread beyond Europe. Italy’s entrance extended the war beyond the lands of “Christian civilization” to Africa and the Middle East.

  In Cairo, British ambassador Miles Lampson suffered in the ferocious, sand-heavy, late-spring wind from the desert as his mood about Egypt’s king and government inched downward.2

  Italy declared war on a Monday.

  On Wednesday, Lampson talked with General Wavell. Egyptian prime minister Ali Maher hadn’t broken relations with Rome or expelled Italy’s ambassador in Cairo, Serafino Mazzolini. Wavell proposed sending “troops to surround the [Italian] legation” to force the ambassador to leave. Lampson—uncomfortable with Wavell’s military directness, still seeking a subtle form of imperial rule—said such a public display was perhaps “a little hasty.” He’d talk to Maher.

  By Friday, Lampson dictated into his diary, “There is no doubt to my mind whatsoever that this man [Maher] is double-crossing us.” In parliament, Maher had said that an Italian invasion was reason for Egypt to go to war—but he also said that an attack on British airfields in Egypt was not cause to join the war. A pro-British prince of the royal house, commander of Egypt’s single armored brigade, came to Lampson to warn that “the rot was spreading fast and it was only a step to [the] Egyptian Army refusing to fight on the side of the Allies.”

  (Lampson’s suspicions that Maher was conspiring against Britain had a more solid basis than he knew. A month earlier, Italy’s Mazzolini had reported to Rome that the prime minister supported Italy’s claims on the French protectorate of Tunisia. Egypt would stay out of the war, Maher had told Mazzolini, as long as Italy didn’t directly attack it.3)

  Meanwhile, Wafd leader Mustafa el-Nahas was “genuinely convinced of Italian peril, hates totalitarianism and, I believe, looks upon Great Britain as Egypt’s only hope.” So Lampson wrote to the Foreign Office. In fact, Nahas was the most popular politician in the country precisely because he and his party represented Egyptian nationalism, born of the passion to be rid of England. Nahas, clear-eyed, was willing to postpone that fight in the face of a greater danger. Opposing Italy did not hurt his public standing—not after the Italian atrocities in Libya, not after Italy’s conquest of Muslim Albania.

  On the day France’s Petain asked for an armistice, Lampson met Farouk at a royal palace on the Alexandria shore, told him that “we were in deadly earnest” about having a friendly prime minister, and warned that General Wavell “was anxiously awaiting my return.” Farouk was supposed to understand how the general would deal with a misbehaving boy king. Farouk—possibly having heard the news from France—told the ambassador, ominously, that “it was his duty to keep his people out of war on the losing side.”

  Lampson flew back to Cairo, where he first heard of France’s capitulation. In the privacy of his residence that night, the imperious ambassador considered the news, and wrote a melancholy telegram wondering whether Britain could hold Egypt after France had “run out.” Italy no longer needed to defend Libya’s western border with French-ruled Tunisia. Now it could turn all of its “250,000-odd” troops in Libya eastward against Egypt.

  Lampson decided it would be
best to wait until the morning before sending such a text. In the morning, it seems, he thought better of sharing those thoughts with his superior, Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary. Sharing them with Farouk never crossed his mind.

  Lampson and Halifax had actually agreed that they could accept Egypt not declaring war. What they wanted was an Egyptian government they could trust to support the British war effort—and that they did not suspect of covert collusion with Italy. The British war cabinet approved Lampson’s plan: If the king did not appoint such a government, Lampson would threaten to use military force. Then either Nahas would replace Maher—or, if Nahas refused to become prime minister, “we should have to administer the country under martial law.”4

  Lampson went to see the king again. Farouk seemed compliant. He said he’d form a new cabinet based “entirely on what England thinks is good for both countries.” Then again, he said that France and King Leopold of Belgium had been right to surrender. They ended the meeting, Lampson recorded, by joking about Farouk’s obesity. (The thin, handsome king of 1936 had seemed to inflate physically as his popularity waned.)

  Lampson heard from “a confidential source inside the palace” of talk that “if things got to their worst, King F. will try to hop it to Italy” in a Hungarian plane. Wavell said it would be excellent to “let the boy go… thereby showing he was a poltroon… deserting his country.” Lampson answered that the Foreign Office orders were to prevent Farouk from reaching Italy, “where he would become pretender to the Egyptian throne,” a loudspeaker of Italian propaganda.

  Knowing just what was going on in the young king’s mind is difficult, especially because people often don’t know half of what is going on in their own minds. Farouk’s motive could have been sympathy with Italy inherited from his father, or personal pique with Lampson, or real preference for the Axis. It could have been an honest assessment that Britain might lose and that siding with the loser could be costly. He could have believed the Italian propaganda of the late 1930s that Mussolini was the “protector of Islam” and that Italy had “respect for the independence” of Arab countries.5 Wanting to be rid of Britain, Farouk might have believed that his enemy’s enemy was his friend, a bit of logic that ignores the possibility that your enemy’s enemy might be an even greater enemy. Very possibly, all these thoughts were jumbled in the mind of a young king who as a boy had been handed exam answers in advance and now was trying to find his way in a chaotic world.6

  At last, Mazzolini and his diplomatic staff of a hundred Italians left Egypt.7 At the end of June, Farouk suddenly told Lampson that he’d chosen a new prime minister, the former Egyptian ambassador to Britain, Hassan Sabry. Farouk’s move was meant to preserve his sense of being in charge while disarming Lampson. Sabry was known as pro-British. But the king had defied Lampson’s instructions to consult Nahas, Farouk’s rival for power and for the claim to speak for Egypt, on forming the new government.

  Lampson and Wavell’s plan to force Farouk to make Nahas prime minister unraveled. It depended on the threat of British military force. At the last moment, Nahas decided that he couldn’t come to power that way. Wavell and the local commanders of the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force also turned hesitant. They had too few forces, and now they had too many threats to face, as the French colonies in North Africa and the Levant declared allegiance to the new pro-Axis French government in Vichy. The map of the Middle East now showed a shrunken British realm squeezed between much larger Axis lands.

  Lampson and the king retreated into their corners with their half victories. Maher was out, as the ambassador had demanded. Yet Farouk had used his limited power to avoid committing Egypt to war against the Axis. In the hour of decisions, he had successfully evaded a choice.

  At the palace, Farouk held onto a small circle of Italian cronies to whom he’d granted Egyptian nationality, including Ernesto Verucci, the court architect he’d inherited from his father, and Antonio Pulli, who’d risen from palace electrician to Farouk’s closest companion, especially during the king’s increasing visits to Cairo night clubs. Pulli’s services to Farouk reputedly included procuring belly dancers who caught the king’s eye and bringing them to the palace.8 Of all Farouk’s commitments, his loyalty to pleasure couldn’t be questioned.

  THE THIRD AND last copy of Major Ralph Bagnold’s twice-rejected memo landed on Wavell’s desk shortly after Mussolini declared war. Bagnold now had a staff job in Cairo. In less than an hour, he was called to Wavell’s office, told to sit, and commanded, “Tell me more about this.”9

  Bagnold explained: small, specially trained units with desert-fitted trucks could cross the supposedly impassable Sand Sea, move anywhere in the Libyan desert, and watch for signs that the Italians were readying an attack on southern Egypt.

  “What would you do if you found no such preparations?” the stern, one-eyed general asked.

  “How about some piracy on the high desert?” Bagnold improvised.

  Wavell broke into a smile, and asked, “Can you be ready in six weeks?”

  Bagnold wasn’t ready for this question. “Yes, sir, provided…” he started.

  “Yes, of course,” Wavell said. He pressed a button on his desk that rang a bell. His chief of staff, Lieutenant General Arthur Smith, came in. “Arthur, Bagnold needs a talisman. Get this typed up,” Wavell said. “To all heads of departments and branches. I wish any request by Major Bagnold in person to be granted immediately and without question.” As for soldiers, Wavell said he’d talk to Jumbo Wilson—the commander of the British Troops in Egypt, who’d previously turned down Bagnold’s proposal. “You’ll find him very helpful,” Wavell said.

  Bagnold, stunned, left the office and got to work. He put out word to his old exploring companions. Pat Clayton, the surveyor who’d rescued the refugees from Kufra, came from Tanganyika in East Africa to become an officer in the unit. They scoured Egypt for the Chevrolet trucks they wanted to rebuild. Wilson, now cooperative, asked for volunteers for an “important but dangerous mission” from a newly arrived division of New Zealanders. Half the division volunteered; 150 men were chosen. They had to give up their boots for sandals. They had give up the brown felt slouch hats that made a man a New Zealand soldier, and instead wear kefiyyehs, borrowed from the Palestine police under a pretext, because nothing but the Arab scarf could protect them from sand “as fine as baking powder,” driven by wind, that could batter your face and invade your nose and mouth. They had very little time to learn how to drive trucks over dunes, to live on a meager water ration, to navigate in daytime by the sun and at night by the stars. In August, Clayton led the first foray of the Long Range Desert Group, otherwise known as Bagnold’s Boys, into Libya.10

  “PIRACY ON THE high desert” appealed to Wavell because an unexpected British attack on an outpost in the depths of southern Libya would give Italian commanders the impression that he had much larger forces than he did. Given the actual condition of his command, illusion was the most powerful weapon he had.

  The summer before, when Wavell was appointed head of the new and nearly theoretical Middle East Command, he gained responsibility for an area stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Western Desert of Egypt, and from Cyprus in the Mediterranean south to the Horn of Africa. He found himself begging for a modern airplane. The plane he originally had at his disposal took over three hours to make the 250-mile flight from Cairo to Palestine, one of the shortest hops in the region of his command.

  At scattered British headquarters, he found an “almost entire absence of any detailed and coordinated war plans… other than measures of pure defense.” In Egypt, the plan in case of invasion from Libya was to retreat eastward along the coast toward the Nile. General Wilson’s staff considered it “doubtful whether even [Mersa] Matruh could be held,” meaning that the defensive battle might be on the outskirts of Alexandria. Sudan, Kenya, British Somaliland, and the British colony of Aden at the south end of the Arabian Peninsula were all threatened by the Italian army in Ethiopia and Eritrea, w
hich meant that British access to the Red Sea was also in jeopardy.

  Politically, Wavell feared “the possibility of hostility of the Arabs in Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.” Palestine, at least, had calmed down after three years of Arab revolt. Wavell predicted that leaders of the Jewish minority would ask to raise their own armed force to protect Palestine, thereby freeing British troops for elsewhere. They had pursued the goal of a Jewish military, he wrote, “with their usual racial pertinacity for many years.” Short as he was on troops, Wavell opposed this. Moshe Shertok, head of the political department of the Jewish Agency, came to Cairo to make his case to Wavell. For practical purposes, Shertok’s title meant he was the foreign minister of the organized Jewish community in Palestine. Wavell told him that granting the request would probably have “political repercussions” in Palestine and the surrounding Arab countries that could “far outweigh the military value of such a force.”

  On the other hand, at the end of 1939 Wavell had asked the Imperial General Staff in London for “small amounts” of equipment for the Egyptian army even though it might be “wasted as far as waging this war is concerned.” There was, he explained, “a certain amount of intrigue in the Egyptian Army” against the British military presence, and denying equipment could make the Egyptians “sour and sulky.”

  In the conventions of his time and his class, Wavell didn’t stand out by talking of groups as races, by using adjectives for Egyptians that were fit for schoolboys, or by describing Jews as ill-mannered. His political logic, however, led to denying arms to committed allies against the Axis and providing them to uncertain partners.