The Moscow Option

by David Downing

  Talks had been proceeding in Tokyo and Berlin, and though, as Raeder had to admit, no concrete plan of action had yet been agreed, there seemed every possibility that the two great Axis powers could join hands ‘in the Arabian area’ some time that summer. Already the Japanese were expressing interest in Ceylon and Madagascar, and Raeder’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Fricke, had dispatched all the information the Germans possessed with regard to suitable landing points. It was quite possible that the Japanese intended first to crush the Americans in the Pacific before turning west, but this would present no problems. Admiral Oshima had assured him that such an operation would still allow adequate time for the planned summer rendezvous in the Indian Ocean.

  Hitler was greatly taken by the ‘Grand Plan’ - it appealed to his sense of drama - and he told Raeder how impressed he had been by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It was unfortunate that Germany’s other ally lacked a similar sense of resolution. Hitler then talked at length of the Japanese national character - a subject of which he had his usual cursory acquaintance - and explained to the captive Admiral how Pearl Harbor exemplified the ‘devil’ tactic in kendo, a surprise thrust followed by lightning retreat.

  Raeder eventually steered his Führer back to more pressing matters, and outlined the latest developments in the Atlantic. He did not trouble Hitler with Doenitz’s fury on learning that twenty per cent of his available U-boats were being transferred to the Mediterranean, but contented himself with reciting the latest encouraging statistics. Hitler was apparently not much interested, in either the Mediterranean or the Atlantic. He merely seized on the westward drift of the conversation to pour scorn on the American declaration of war. How, he asked, could the United States, led by Roosevelt and his Jewish financiers, expect to wage war on the German Reich? It was ridiculous.

  The British, of course, were another matter. But the Karinhall decision-makers had, unwittingly, hit on their Achilles heel. This was not, he assured Raeder, the Suez Canal. It was the Persian and Iraqi oil-fields. With the capture of these and the Caucasian fields neither Britain nor the Soviet Union would have sufficient oil to sustain their hopeless struggles. The British might try to bring oil across the Atlantic, but the U-boats would make mincemeat of the tanker fleets. ‘It is the economic aspects which are crucial in war,’ he told the Grand-Admiral.

  He told the same thing to Brauchitsch three days later, and accused the hapless Army Commander-in-Chief of almost destroying the Russian campaign by attacking Moscow, ‘a mere geographical concept’. The Army had been fortunate to take the more vital Donbass region before the winter set in. As it happened the ordinary German soldier had saved the day. But what really mattered, what lay at the root of the Army’s strategic errors, was the lack of National Socialist spirit at the highest levels. This would have to be put right in the coming year. In the meantime Hitler wished to know the Army’s intentions for the spring campaign in the East. He did not tell Brauchitsch that General Jodl, back with his old master, was already drawing up a plan to Hitler’s specifications for future comparison. The Commander of the all-powerful German Army left, as usual, with his tail firmly between his legs.

  On ‘Heroes Memorial Day’, 16 March, Hitler spoke to a larger audience, addressing the German nation for the first time in eight months. He thanked destiny for his miraculous recovery from a ‘serious accident’, seeing in the former - the recovery, not the accident - further evidence of Fate’s interest in the mission he and the German volk were struggling to fulfil. As regards the Russian war - ‘we have succeeded where another man failed one hundred and thirty years ago’. The war would be over this year. Russia would be crushed without mercy; Britain would come to realise the futility of continued resistance. The United States was no military threat. Hitler derided the ‘Victory Programme’ - ‘these people who think they can buy strength, who think they can mass-produce will-power’. Forgotten, apparently, was the dictum that in war the economic aspects were crucial.

  And not only forgotten in speeches. Hitler might belittle Roosevelt’s efforts, but had Germany been engaged in such a thorough-going armaments programme of her own there would have been more solid grounds for the Führer’s confidence. The one visitor whom Hitler did not enjoy receiving was Dr Todt, the Minister of Armaments and Munitions. He brought only problems to the Berghof, problems that were not only of little interest but that also seemed to admit of no instant solutions. Which was very unfortunate, not to say profoundly irritating. Hitler - and here he exemplified the essence of that ideology he thought he had created - thought in terms of weeks or in terms of decades. In both cases he could make instant decisions, on the one hand shifting a platoon in southern Russia, on the other peopling the empty Ukrainian steppe with sturdy German settlers. But the space in between the present and the distant future interested him not at all. Planning for the coming year or the year after that - the sort of timespan relevant to armament production - was always conspicuous by its absence. Hence the decisions that had not been taken in 1939-40 were, by 1941-2, coming home to roost. There were no long-range bombers for attacking the new Soviet centres of industry east of the Volga, not enough U-boats for winning the Battle of the Atlantic, not enough production capacity in the artillery, tank and ammunition sectors.

  It was the low production which most worried Dr Todt, and which most irritated Hitler. It was the Armament Minister’s responsibility to secure the necessary capacity and materials, Hitler told him. Yes, said Todt, but the Reich Marshal had taken most of everything for the Luftwaffe and his Four-year Plan. Could not Hitler intervene to put matters right?

  But Hitler was reluctant to enter the jungle he had created, and which he preferred to rule from the outside. There was no need to worry, he told Todt. The war would soon be over, and there was sufficient strength to bring it to its victorious conclusion. Why worry about 1943? Then they would be rebuilding Berlin, not waging war. Todt was sent away to muddle on as best he could.

  Only in one respect did Hitler concern himself with the intermediate future. Only one programme was planned meticulously in advance. At the end of March SS ReichsFührer Himmler visited Hitler at the Berghof. He recounted the successes of the einsatzgruppen in occupied Russia, the deadly blows they had dealt the Jewish menace. Hitler was not overly impressed; his brush with death had convinced him that this programme, his greatest contribution to the purity of humankind, should be accelerated lest Fate should take a further hand. He ordered Himmler to step up the exterminations in eastern Europe, and to prepare new squads of einsatzgruppen for action in North Africa and Palestine in the coming summer. There would of course be no point in transporting these Jews back to Europe; facilities for their disposal would have to be created on the spot.

  The Führer was back at his blood-stained helm.

  London

  In January Churchill had been hoping that time, British advice and a few more unexpected jolts would help his American allies down the road to realism. In the matter of the jolts he was not to be disappointed. Through February and March they came thick and fast as the Japanese contemptuously shrugged aside Allied resistance in South-east Asia. The pitiful remnants of Western naval power were crushed in the Battle of the Java Sea, and the islands of the South China Sea dropped one by one into the Japanese hand. Singapore, with its impregnable defences facing south, was taken from the north. The US Army in the Philippines was herded into the Bataan peninsula for a long, heroic and futile siege. Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, Java, Timor, Wake, Guam - one after another the sparks of resistance were extinguished. In Burma General Iida’s Fifteenth Army took Rangoon on 8 March and pursued the retreating British northwards towards Mandalay.

  Four thousand miles further west Auchinleck was attempting to shore up the British position in the Middle East. The forces holding the northern front in Iran and Iraq were still negligible; no units could be spared from the Western Desert, particularly now that Rommel had received large panzer reinforcements. On Malta the population suffered fr
om shortages and the almost hourly attentions of the Luftwaffe. There seemed little chance of a convoy getting through, every chance of an Axis invasion.

  As March gave way to April the situation looked profoundly ominous. Wherever the Western allies looked they saw the growing strength of the enemy and the inadequacy of the forces ranged against him. If to those who strolled through London’s St James Park the air was redolent with spring, to those in the war-rooms below-ground nearby the new season offered only a drying of the ground in Russia and blues skies and calm seas in the Mediterranean. New blows were about to fall, and there was precious little with which to blunt or avert them.

  In the Indian Ocean Kido Butai was nearing Ceylon; in the Mediterranean the signs of an invasion force being readied for an assault on Malta were unmistakeable. In the Arctic Ocean the days grew relentlessly longer, endangering the convoys which struggled to meet the desperate needs of the Soviet Union. In the Atlantic the toll exacted by Doenitz’s U-boats had still not reached its awesome peak. In India the Congress Party rejected the British offer of post-war independence; it was, said Gandhi, ‘a post-dated cheque on a falling bank’.

  Amidst this situation of escalating danger, Harry Hopkins and General Marshall visited London with American plans for the continued prosecution of the war. These showed a remarkable lack of realism. Eager to get into the fray, the US Chiefs of Staff had set their hearts on an invasion of continental Europe in 1943, to be preceded by ‘raids’ in the second half of 1942. They admitted that the necessary American troops could not reach England before September, but asked for a binding statement of intention from their British allies. This way a ‘dispersion of Allied strength’ could be avoided.

  Churchill was naturally reluctant to contradict flatly the ally he had so long awaited, but his ‘acceptance with qualifications’ of the ‘broad principles’ of the American plan was further qualified by the less diplomatic British Chiefs of Staff. They patiently explained to their American guests that the ‘dispersion’ of British strength served a valuable purpose, that of containing the enemy. Holding the ring had to have priority over all other considerations. If the Axis powers could be successfully contained through the coming summer, then, and only then, could serious attention be paid to the possibilities of a cross-Channel assault. Naturally such an operation would have to be undertaken at some time, but putting a date to it was neither practical nor useful at the present time.

  The Americans were not happy with this ‘over-cautious’ approach. They considered Britain’s problems in India, which were much in evidence during these days, to be caused purely and simply by the British desire to hold on to an outdated Empire. They doubted the possibility of that German-Japanese link-up in the Indian Ocean which the British feared so much. They stressed the need to relieve Russia’s burden by landing troops in France. Above all they wanted action.

  They would soon have it. The storm was about to burst. On the evening of 12 April, as Hopkins and Marshall were sipping their pre-dinner cocktails at Chequers, a message was handed to the British Prime Minister. German parachutes were opening in the skies above Malta.

  Chapter 5: The Fall Of Malta

  There I was, trapped. Trapped like a trap in a trap.

  Dorothy Parker

  I

  At three o’clock in the afternoon of Sunday 12 April one Lieutenant Johnston, commanding an anti-aircraft battery in the outskirts of Kalafrana on Malta’s south-eastern coast, was the first British soldier to see the armada of Ju52 transport planes approaching the island from the east. Like all of Malta’s defenders he had been vaguely expecting such a sight for several weeks, and definitely awaiting it since noon on that day. But still, somehow, it was a surprise. ‘There were so many of the wretched things. And for those of us who’d been in Crete it was like having the same ghastly dream all over again.’

  Lieutenant Johnston’s battery claimed one of the low-flying transports but there was no time for rejoicing. Scores of others flew overhead as the accompanying fighters zoomed down on the British anti-aircraft positions. Had Johnston and his comrades had the time to watch, they would have seen the lines of paratroopers tumbling from their planes and floating down to the ground in the two miles of countryside stretching west from Hal Far airfield. Other British gunners stationed around Hal Far could not believe how low the Ju52s were flying. ‘They were barely three hundred feet up. The parachutes hardly had a chance to open before the Jerries hit the ground.’

  But hit the ground they did, in most cases safely. The area chosen was sparsely defended, and the troops had time to regroup and recover the weapons containers that were parachuted down amongst them. In Crete the dropping zones had been badly chosen, and the troops had been spread out too widely. As a result many had been dead before they reached the ground. But on Malta the drop was concentrated, the zones chosen well. The vanguard fallschirmjager of 7th Airborne Division unpacked their heavier guns and mortars and prepared to move off towards their pre-assigned targets. They laid out large swastika flags on the ground as markers for the planes still to come. The invasion of Malta was underway.

  II

  This airborne assault was the culminating blow of a campaign that had already lasted four months. It had begun with the virtual doubling of Luftwaffe strength in the Mediterranean at the end of the previous November. Luftflotte X, whose responsibilities covered a vast area - including supporting Rommel, protecting the Axis Mediterranean supply-route, protecting Italian oil shipments en route from Roumania through the northern Mediterranean, and attacking the British rear areas in Egypt - had been joined by Luftflotte II, fresh from its successes in the skies above Moscow. The new Air Fleet, mustering some 325 planes, was deployed exclusively in Sicily, with orders to neutralise Malta’s capacity to interfere with Axis shipping and to weaken the island’s ability to withstand the planned invasion. It comprised five bomber groups of Ju88s, one group of Stukas, one of Me 110s and four of Me 109Fs.

  This formidable force got off to an unfortunate start in January and early February, mostly due to the employment of mistaken tactics. Field-Marshal Kesselring, in overall command of the Mediterranean Luftwaffe formations, ordered continuous raids by small groups of planes. Such tactics, he felt, would give the defenders no rest. But Kesselring overlooked the fact that it would also give them the chance to concentrate their forces. German losses suddenly climbed alarmingly.

  Nor were the raids doing much damage. Malta’s defences were highly dispersed, and the prevailing Luftwaffe gospel of pinpoint bombing ensured that each target destroyed exacted an inordinate cost in planes.

  New tactics were called for, and in early February Luftflotte II’s Chief of Staff, Air-General Deichmann, decreed a changeover to area bombing by massed bomber formations. The areas chosen were not particularly large, but they were hard to miss. The first chosen were the Grand Harbour, with its naval installations, and the three principal airfields at Hal Far, Luqa and Takali. For three weeks practically the entire Air Fleet was engaged in attacking these targets.

  The new tactics worked well. Enormous damage was inflicted, yet the cost to the Luftwaffe was negligible. The last remaining seaworthy ships were forced to evacuate Malta; the submarines had to remain submerged through the daylight hours. Dockyard work was brought to a virtual halt; even in the underground workshops it was continually interrupted by power breakdowns and light failures. The airfields were kept barely functional by civil labour and the local troops, but in any case the planes which used them were being slowly consumed by the battle above.

  During the last fortnight of March the German bombers shifted their attentions to secondary targets - camps, barracks, store depots and roads. Anti-aircraft positions were subject to almost continuous attack, particularly those in the south-eastern corner of the island. It seemed to the Maltese garrison and population that the sky was rarely clear of the enemy for more than ten minutes.

  The scale of the air assault, and the losses involved, naturally created enor
mous difficulties for the island’s political and military leaderships. None of the losses could be replaced. Not one convoy had docked in Valletta’s Grand Harbour since the previous September. Cunningham’s failure to win back the Cyrenaican airstrips in ‘Crusader’ had led to the cancellation of the convoy planned for early January; only one merchant ship, the Breconshire, had tried to slip through unescorted at the end of the month with a cargo of much-needed fuel oil. Caught by German bombers operating from those very airstrips, the ship had been severely disabled and now sat, leaking oil, in Tobruk harbour.

  In mid-February another attempt had been made, this time involving three merchant ships, but it was no more successful. Mercilessly attacked by German planes from Crete and Cyrenaica for over four hundred miles, the three merchantmen went down one by one, leaving Admiral Vian’s destroyers to guard an empty sea.

  By this time the situation on the island was serious, and was recognised as such in London. Churchill, as we shall see, was reluctant to pester Auchinleck into a desert offensive, but was ready to order Admiral Cunningham (the General’s brother) to push through a convoy ‘regardless of the cost in naval vessels’. This was easier said than done, though Cunningham was characteristically willing to try. The next convoy, containing six merchantmen and aptly-code-named ‘Essential’, would be protected by virtually the entire Mediterranean Fleet. Not that this, in March 1942, amounted to very much. Only three cruisers and seven destroyers could be found to protect the convoy against the battleships of the Italian Navy and the might of the Luftwaffe.

  It was not enough. The Italian Fleet put in an appearance, but failed to bring the inferior British force to battle. Vian’s destroyers cloaked the convoy with smoke, and Admiral lachino, not for the first time, refused to expose his capital ships to the dangers of a British torpedo attack. The Luftwaffe was not so easily deterred. Once again the merchantmen succumbed to its bombs as their escort pumped flak into the clouds. The first ship was sunk due south of Cape Matapan, the last eighty miles short of Malta. A British destroyer went down with them. At nightfall on 17 March a disconsolate Cunningham turned back for Alexandria.