There was always the chance that such a retreat would not prove necessary. Eighth Army, though weak in the all-important armour, was drawing back in good order to the Alamein line. The 2nd New Zealand Division was already there, having arrived from Palestine the previous week. The 10th Armoured Division, though lacking tanks and training, was on the way. These movements naturally left the ‘northern front’ thin to the point of invisibility, but the Germans had not yet renewed their advance in Russia and more divisions were expected from England. The risk had to be taken.
The Prime Minister, whose political position in London was showing signs of deterioration as the military disasters accumulated, fully backed Auchinleck in his resolve to stand and fight at El Alamein. He further suggested, in a typical telegram, that the troops should be given a firm order to ‘stand or die where they stood’. This he thought would inspire them. Brooke, though naturally sharing the sentiment, thought that such a categorical order might well cost Britain the entire Eighth Army, which was considerably more precious than Egypt. He approved Auchinleck’s policy of demanding the best while preparing for the worst, and won Churchill round to his point of view.
In Washington, Roosevelt shared his ally’s alarm. When Churchill asked for help he immediately ordered that 300 new Sherman tanks, one hundred self-propelled guns and a considerable number of aircraft be sent forthwith to the Middle East. If Egypt fell while they were en route, then they would be unloaded at Aqaba or Basra rather than Suez.
In Rome the Duce was eagerly anticipating the triumphal march into Cairo that his ally’s army had made possible. It had long been agreed that Egypt, and indeed the whole of the Middle East, was in the Italian ‘sphere of influence’, and Mussolini intended to make the most of it. Accordingly, in the staterooms of the Foreign Ministry, Count Ciano was supervising his staff- in the difficult task of preparing a declaration of Egyptian independence which legitimised a virtual Italian annexation. The Rome newspapers were full of the ‘two thousand year friendship between Rome and Egypt’. Cleopatra’s problems with Octavian were not mentioned.
The Germans, while happy to reaffirm their ally’s primacy in public, were hard at work subverting it in private. The Italians had not been told of the Abwehr’s contacts with Farouk and Ali Maher - both detested them - and were not to be granted the singular authority they wanted in Cairo. Instead there was to be a German military government headed, for the moment, by Rommel, and an Italian civil government. Naturally, while the war lasted, the former would have priority powers. The latter, on the other hand, would carry the can for the Egyptian economy, itself unlikely to be strengthened by the German refusal to accept any agreement on either the division of war booty or the control of resources. Given that both Germans and Italians recognised that their good behaviour in Egypt might well prove the key to a decisive Arab uprising against British rule east of the Suez Canal, these ‘arrangements’ showed a characteristically remarkable lack of political acumen. Once again the arrogance and the greed would prove too strong, and the ideological poverty of the ‘New Order’ would prove its own undoing.
Still, the Axis leaders were never noted clairvoyants, and in the early summer of 1942 the bright glow of military success blinded them to all else. The Führer, arriving at the Wolfsschanze to preside over the new campaign in Russia, told Jodl that he would make Rommel a Field-Marshal on the day his forces entered Cairo.
VII
On the afternoon of 22 May the leading echelons of Panzerarmee Afrika loomed out of a sandstorm in front of the El Alamein ‘line’. Rommel was determined to attack on the following day, regardless of the fact that most of the Italian infantry and armour was still strung out along the two hundred miles of coast road from Sidi Barrani.
He had problems with the German armour as well. The two Afrika Korps had started the frontier battle with 665 tanks, and had lost over 150 in the process of winning it. More disturbing, a further 90 had broken down in the succeeding pursuit, leaving around 430 for the conquest of Egypt. Supplying even this number was subject to growing difficulties as, for reasons best known to the Italian supply organisations, fuel and ammunition was still being unloaded at Tripoli and Benghazi rather than the much closer Tobruk. Consequently both were short. Only water was plentiful, following 90th Motorised Division’s opportune capture of the British supply point at Habata.
The speed of the advance was also causing difficulties. The armour had outstripped its air cover. But Rommel, who wished to slice through the Alamein position before Eighth Army had time to compose itself, had no intention of slowing the pace. If the panzers had to fight for a day or two under an enemy-held sky then so it would have to be. Such problems tend to solve themselves when an army is going forward.
The problems confronting Auchinleck, whose army was going backwards, were of an altogether more serious nature. Eighth Army had lost more tanks in battle and retreat than the Panzer Army. 7th Armoured Division, now comprising 4th and 1st Armoured Brigades, had only 235 runners, and over two-thirds of these had been ‘borrowed’ from the now-skeletal 8th Armoured Brigade in reserve. 1st Armoured Division had only 135 tanks, 95 to 2nd and 40 to 22nd Armoured Brigades. For the first time in North Africa the British armour was outnumbered.
In infantry it still possessed a small numerical superiority. Four under-strength divisions were in the line. The greatly depleted 50th Division was inside the Alamein perimeter with the twenty-five tanks remaining to the 1st Army Tank Brigade. One brigade of the 2nd New Zealand Division was manning the Deir el Shein ‘box’ some fifteen miles inland from the coast; the other two were further back in the area of Alam el Onsol. The 1st South African Division held the Bab el Qattara and Deir el Munassib ‘boxes’ ten miles further south. At the far southern end of the line the weak 5th Indian Division was deployed in and behind the Naqb Abu Dweis position, a mile or so north of the cliffs which tumbled down into the Qattara Depression. All these units, with the exception of the New Zealanders, were weak in anti-tank guns and heavy artillery and low on morale. They had become somewhat accustomed to defeat.
Auchinleck, expecting Rommel to break through his right centre, had placed his armour behind and to the north of Ruweisat Ridge. He hoped to use it against the flank of a northward German swing to the coast. He had also formed the 5th and 6th New Zealand brigades into mobile battle-groups on the German pattern - lorried infantry with anti-tank guns capable of all-round defence. The relative success of this measure in the days to come would serve to emphasise the poverty of British tactics in the preceding months, and again bring into question Auchinleck’s perseverance with the unfortunate Cunningham.
Rommel’s hunger for speed precluded adequate intelligence of the British dispositions. He had to guess, and he guessed wrong. Unaware that he was now facing Auchinleck rather than Cunningham he expected the British armour to be further south than it was, ready to block a right hook by the panzer divisions. But Auchinleck had guessed his adversary’s intentions correctly, and the two Afrika Korps, advancing along either side of Miteiriya Ridge on the morning of 23 May, soon ran into unexpectedly stiff resistance. II Afrika Korps, trying to work its way around the Alamein perimeter towards the coast, ran headlong into the New Zealand battle-groups and the Grants of 2nd Armoured Brigade. The German advance slowed dramatically. Further south 15th Panzer spent the whole day overcoming the 4th New Zealand brigade in the Deir el Shein ‘box’, while 90th Motorised and 21st Panzer attempted to envelop the southern half of the British line from the rear. After brushing aside 4th Armoured Brigade’s weak attack on their left flank the two divisions came up against the South Africans on the ridge above Deir el Munassib. Night fell without the decisive breakthrough which Rommel had expected.
The major source of this relative failure seems to have been the over-confidence of the Panzer Army commander, and his consequent launching of the attack with inadequate air support. During the first thirty-six hours of the battle the efforts of the Desert Air Force provided vital compensation
for the inferiority of the British armour. But this situation could not last.
On the following morning Auchinleck played his only trump, directing the strong 1st Armoured Division against the right flank of II Afrika Korps and the much weaker 1st Army Tank Brigade against the left flank. For a few hours the Germans were in trouble, for while 14th Motorised was blithely making headway towards the coast the two panzer divisions were under attack from both sides by marginally superior forces. For once the British had managed to concentrate against a dispersed enemy.
If Auchinleck had been prone to euphoria - which he was not - these few hours would have been his last chance for indulging in it. For by early afternoon Rommel had brought 15th Panzer forward to support the other two divisions, the Luftwaffe was at last beginning to make its presence felt, and the British attack was beginning to wilt. At 16.00 Auchinleck received the distressing news that 14th Motorised had reached the coast. 50th Division was now cut off inside the Alamein perimeter, and between the Germans and Alexandria the road was virtually empty. This was the moment of decision. Should Eighth Army fight gallantly on to probable extinction, or should it break off the battle and withdraw to the Delta and perhaps beyond?
There was really no choice. Auchinleck ordered 50th Division to break out of its encirclement that night; the 5th Indian and South African divisions, now under pressure from both north and west with the belated arrival of the Italian armoured corps, were ordered to fall back to the north-east. The British armour would once again fight a delaying action, this time between the coast and Alma Haifa Ridge.
It was easier to issue these orders than to ensure that they were carried out. The battlefield between El Alamein and El Imayid was, by early evening on 24 May, a confused swirling mass of men and vehicles. Darkness fell with the forces of the two sides leaguered in promiscuous profusion across the desert. Soon after midnight 50th Division made its bid for freedom, its columns crashing eastwards through friend and foe alike. Most of the artillery was lost, but the majority of the men made it through to the greater safety of El Imayid.
Rommel too was having his problems turning desires into reality. The RAF had taken such a toll of his supply columns the previous day that yet again the panzer divisions were thirsting for unavailable fuel. It was not until evening on the 25th that he could unleash II Afrika Korps along the coast road towards Alexandria, some twelve hours behind the retreating British. Meanwhile the South African and 5th Indian divisions had somehow failed to receive the order to withdraw issued on the 24th, and by the next day the coast-road option was closed. They pulled back across the open desert towards El Faiyada. Eighth Army, though not destroyed, was now split in two.
Not so Panzerarmee Afrika. On the night of 25/26 May the two Afrika Korps rolled east under the moon on the trail of the British. Rommel already had his plan of campaign for the conquest of the area west of the Suez Canal worked out. 20th Panzer, supported by the Italian armour, would drive north-east to encircle Alexandria. The rest of the German armour would strike out east and south-east for the Delta region and Cairo.
Through 26 and 27 May the two armies drove east, their respective columns often intermingling on the same tracks and roads. Many minor actions were fought as commanders suddenly realised that the motley collection of British and German trucks running alongside them belonged to the enemy. But nothing occurred to stop the relentless march to the east. By evening on 27 May 20th Panzer had contemptuously pierced the virtually non-existent Wadi Natrun-Alexandria line and reached the coast four miles east of the city. Alexandria was cut off.
Of militarily greater significance, at around 18.00 the same evening, an armoured column approaching the vital Nile Bridge at Kafr el Zaiyat was mistaken for a British column by the engineers detailed to destroy it. It was in fact the leading column of 14th Motorised, largely equipped with British and American trucks. The bridge was taken intact, and the Germans were across the Nile.
Sixty miles to the south the tanks of I Afrika Korps were approaching the outskirts of Cairo. In the city itself sporadic street-fighting was in progress between the British military police and a few Egyptian Army units which had answered the Free Officer’s call to revolt. Farouk had disappeared as promised. Egypt was slipping swiftly from the British grasp.
On the morning of 28 May units of 90th Motorised seized, with Egyptian help, one of the Nile bridges in Cairo. This, for Auchinleck, was the final straw. He had been in touch with Brooke, and had been given carte blanche to save Eighth Army. The seizure of the Nile bridges and the speed of the panzer advance had ruled out the defence of any line short of the Suez Canal. It was certainly too late to mount any defence of the Delta, as had once been envisaged. Auchinleck took the logical step of sanctioning the retreat to the Canal which was already underway. The South African and 5th Indian divisions, which had lost the race for Cairo with I Afrika Korps, were ordered up the Nile valley. Cairo was abandoned to the enemy.
On the afternoon of 28 May 90th Motorised drove through the centre of the capital to a rapturous reception from its more vocal inhabitants. The Free Officers, whose belated but significant contribution had made them national heroes, were much in evidence. Less heroically, but right on cue, King Farouk and Ali Maher emerged from hiding.
The panzer divisions rolled as fast as fuel supplies would allow along the Suez and Ismailiya roads to the Canal. Rommel was still with them, having declined a room in the famous Shepheard’s Hotel booked for him by Egyptian admirers. He had driven past the Pyramids on the previous day - ‘larger than I imagined’ as he wrote to Lucie - but sightseeing in general would have to wait. That day he received news of his promotion to Field-Marshal.
On the east bank of the Canal the British were siting their guns, scanning the western horizon for the dust-clouds thrown up by the advancing Germans. In London the dreadful news was being digested. The battle for North Africa was over. The battle for the Middle East would soon be underway.
Chapter 7: Tsushima Revisited
Well, if she gets insulted just because I insulted her!
Groucho Marx
I
In the distant Pacific the two warring navies prepared for what both believed would be the decisive confrontation. In Hiroshima Bay the Japanese admirals bent over maps in the Yamato operations room, and worked out the details of Kuroshima’s new plan. Haste was the order of the day.
It was a brilliant plan, which for sheer lethal simplicity could only be compared to Manstein’s plan for the invasion of France. It is one of the great ironies of the Second World War that both were second-best plans, only adopted when details of the preferred plans became known to the enemy. Both plans also made use of this fact, of the enemy ‘not knowing that we knew that he knew’. Both were the product of a gifted professional strategist’s dissatisfaction with the predictability of a tradition-bound plan. Both were cast to give full rein to the revolutionary possibilities inherent in new weaponry by men not professionally associated with those weapons. Kuroshima was no more a ‘carrier man’ than Manstein was a ‘panzer man’, but both had received support from those who were associated with the new weaponry, in the one case Yamaguchi and Genda, in the other Guderian.
There were also differences of emphasis. Kuroshima’s plan perhaps relied more on the ‘double-bluff’ aspect. The original plan would serve as a feint for the new one, and to this end the broken code was continued in use throughout the month of May. Naturally the information transmitted was somewhat selective. Kuroshima knew that the Americans would expect Nagumo’s carriers north-east of Midway, and it was intended to satisfy this expectation. This time, however, the main battle-fleet would be in close attendance. The Americans would also expect a diversion in the Aleutians and a convoy of troopships for the seizure of Midway. Both of these would certainly be at sea, but the first without the carriers Junyo and Ryujo and with severely limited objectives, the second with orders to assault the island only after the decisive naval engagement had been fought.
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p; On the other hand, the Americans would not be expecting Nagumo to take his carriers south of Midway Island, in the general direction of the Hawaiian group. This would pull the American carriers south, towards the greatest surprise of all, a second carrier force under Vice-Admiral Takagi moving northwards on an interception course in complete radio silence. If, as seemed possible to Kuroshima, the American carriers retreated to the east rather than seek battle with Nagumo’s powerful force, then Takagi’s force would be in position to cut them off. Whatever happened the US carriers would find themselves outnumbered and outmanoeuvred, and swiftly dispatched to the ocean floor. And then nothing would stand between the Imperial Navy and the West Coast of America but a few planes on Oahu and a bevy of obsolete battleships in San Francisco Bay.
If Yamamoto’s haste was one side of the Pacific coin, an American need to temporise was the other. The ‘Two-Ocean Navy’ programme, which was designed to give the US Navy preponderance in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, had only been set in motion in late 1940, and the first of the new ships would not be leaving the stocks until the coming autumn. For the next six-nine months the new Pacific C-in-C, Admiral Chester Nimitz, would have to hold off the Japanese with what he had. If he could do so - hold Hawaii and its Midway sentry, keep open the route to Australia - then the balance would begin to swing faster and faster in America’s favour. But it would not be easy.
The Japanese preponderance in all classes of warships has already been noted; the American admirals were as aware of this basic fact as the Japanese themselves. The American public - or, to be more precise, the American press - was a different proposition. The pre-declaration of war attack on Port Arthur in 1904 might have been greeted by the American press as a ‘brilliant and bold seizure of the initiative’, but the identical attack on Pearl Harbor had not been viewed quite so magnanimously. It had been a ‘Day of Infamy’ and infamy, as all Hollywood western addicts will know, is always the work of the weak and the cowardly. The Great American Public clamoured for some decisive punitive action against these insolent little yellow men.
The Moscow Option Page 14