The Moscow Option

by David Downing

  But the King was fooling himself. The only thing the Germans and Italians had yet found to agree on was the irrelevance of Ali Maher’s government. Both Axis partners hoped for an Arab revolt against the British east of Suez, and so loudly proclaimed their support for the ideals of Arab nationalism. But in reality, as their actions were to show, they cared as much for Arab liberation as they cared for a Jewish homeland. Words were one thing, the accelerating breakdown of the Egyptian economy, already heavily strained by years of British occupation, was something else entirely. Each ally took what he could lay his hands on before the other did. This race for booty both disenchanted the ‘liberated’ Egyptians and caused serious friction between the two Axis partners.

  By mid-June Rommel was sick and tired of the political squabbles resonating through Cairo’s new corridors of power, and of his souring relationship with Count Mazzolini, the new Italian Civil Commissioner. The Field-Marshal moved to new military headquarters at the abandoned British Tel el Kebir air-base, leaving the junior von Neurath to suffer in his place. Back in the desert Rommel hoped to be left alone by the politicians. He was to be disappointed.

  On 23 June a rather important visitor arrived at Tel el Kebir. Hajj Amin Muhammed el-Husseini had been one of Arab nationalism’s leading lights since the early 1920s, when he had played a large part in inciting anti-Jewish riots in the British mandate territory of Palestine. The British, with that priceless ambivalence which seemed to guide most of their actions in divided Palestine, first sentenced him to ten years in absentia and then appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the most senior religious position in the province. Husseini soon manoeuvred himself into the Presidency of the Supreme Muslim Council, and thus acquired control over extensive political and religious funds. In the next fifteen years he used these to plague the mandate territory with his own brand of opportunistic anti-Zionist extremism.

  The Palestine Arab Revolt, which began in 1936, forced him to flee the country, but he had already secured contacts in both the outside Arab world and the chambers of Axis power. Through 1940 and 1941 he played a significant role in fomenting the Iraqi rebellion, and after its failure he moved on to Tehran with similar schemes in mind. When the British and Russians moved into Iran two months later he fled to Turkey disguised as the servant of the Italian envoy. From there he reached Rome, and eventually Berlin. In the two Axis capitals he urged Axis-Arab collaboration in driving the British and the Jews from the Middle East.

  Eventually, in April 1942, Husseini reached Berchtesgaden and the Führer. Here his contacts with the Abwehr and the SS stood him in good stead. Hitler had already perused the Abwehr report on him, prepared by one Professor Schrumpf, an Alsatian doctor practising in Cairo. The Mufti, Schrumpf declared, was not really an Arab at all. He was a Circassian, an Aryan. ‘Owing to the operation of the Mendelian law and the inherited ancestral traits, Circassian blood began to predominate in his family . . . this is important from a psychological viewpoint since pure Arab blood could first of all not have been so consistent and systematic in the struggle against the English and the Jews; he would certainly have been bought off. What is more, that Caucasian or Aryan blood enables us to expect from the Mufti in the future the fitfulness of an ally of which pure Arab blood would be incapable.’

  This was all very impressive, particularly in view of the Arabs’ low rating in the Mein Kampf race hierarchy. Hitler was certainly impressed. In one of those rare sentences which say volume about the reasons for the Nazi failure, the Führer noted that the Mufti’s ‘exceptional cleverness’ made him ‘almost equal to the Japanese’.

  Hitler, however, was not one to let empathy get the better of him when German interests were involved. The Mufti’s request for German support to realise his dream - a united Jew-free Arab nation - could not be granted. Or at least not yet. Surely, Hitler argued, the Mufti realised the difficulties of the German position. There were the Italians, the French and the Turks to consider. When the war was over things would be different. But for the moment the most he could offer in public was a general statement of sympathy for Arab aspirations. In private he could promise the Mufti ‘the decisive voice in Arab affairs’ once the war had been won. When the German spearhead reached Tbilisi in the southern Caucasus, then ‘the hour of Arab liberation’ would be at hand. The volunteer ‘German-Arab Legion’, now training in the Ukraine, would join the German spearhead for the march on Basra. During that march it would swell into an enormous army of liberation.

  This, the Mufti agreed, was an exciting prospect. But would it not be better to move this unit to North Africa? When Egypt was liberated the volunteers could be used to excellent effect in Palestine.

  Hitler thought not. ‘The supply channels to North Africa are already over-loaded,’ he told Husseini. This, though true, was not the only reason for Hitler’s refusal. He wished to keep the Legion in Russia, where it would be more firmly under his control. The Mufti left Berchtesgaden with no more to show for his Circassian blood than longterm promises.

  But he had not given up hope. Reaching Egypt soon after Mussolini he eventually secured an appointment with the reluctant Rommel. At Tel el Kebir he explained his desire that the Arab Legion fight alongside Rommel’s legendary Panzer Army. The Legion’s presence, he told the Field-Marshal, would do much to ease the Panzer Army’s passage through Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. Perhaps Rommel would take it up with the Führer, perhaps even recommend such a course?

  Rommel was polite. He would mention it, he said. In fact he did nothing of the kind. He did not like the Mufti - ‘a tricky sort of customer,’ he told Lucie; ‘I didn’t trust him an inch’ - and he had enough trouble coping with the allies he already possessed. A military man to his bones, Rommel was as averse to thinking about such things as most members of his dubious profession. He was interested in military problems, in getting his army moving again, in leaving Egypt behind. And this was proving difficult enough.

  The basic problem, as usual, was supply. There were seven basic necessities: food, water, fuel, ammunition, repair facilities, human replacements and mechanical replacements. Food and water presented no problems as long as the Panzer Army remained in Egypt, but the other five were all in short supply. The British, thanks to Auchinleck’s insistent thoroughness, had left little behind them intact.

  They had also effectively denied the Axis partners the use of Alexandria’s port. Three weeks before Egypt’s fall, Auchinleck, with exemplary foresight, had ordered the finding and preparing of a blockship to sink in the harbour entrance. This has been accomplished, and the last of the port facilities destroyed, the day before Balck’s panzers had encircled the city. Since Port Said had also been badly damaged, and was still under British fire, Axis supplies continued to be unloaded at Benghazi and Tobruk for transportation along the long desert coast-road. The distance involved and the shortage of motor transport made this a slow and agonising process for the impatient Rommel.

  It was not his only problem. OKH informed him that only one more infantry division could be sent to Egypt. There would be only a few new tanks, and no replacement engines. The little armour the chaotic German armament industry could manage to produce was all earmarked for the Eastern Front. The 400 tanks remaining to Panzerarmee Afrika after the victorious but costly conquest of Egypt would have to suffice for the breakthrough to the Persian Gulf. Fuel was also in short supply; most of the Reich’s precious reserves were being used to eat away Russian miles. It would be ironic, Rommel told his Chief of Staff, General Bayerlein, if lack of oil prevented them from reaching the oilfields.

  But there was nothing one could do about such things, other than send demand after unanswered demand to the desk-bound generals at Lotzen, and undertake a fruitless trip to Rastenburg in early July. On that occasion Hitler listened patiently, recited a string of uncheckable statistics, presented Rommel with his Field-Mairshal’s baton, and sent him back to Egypt. The only consolation was a week spent with Lucie at their Heerlingen home.

>   Back at Tel el Kebir Rommel waited for the supply problems to sort themselves out and. worked on his plans for the continuation of the advance. The Panzer Army’s objective was obvious enough - the head of the Persian Gulf. The problem was how to get there. There was a limited choice of routes once Sinai had been traversed, either the Haifa-Baghdad road or the Aleppo-Baghdad railway. But this could be decided later. First the Suez Canal had to be crossed. The bridging equipment was expected to arrive shortly, and it was not thought that the British would make a determined effort to hold the eastern bank. They were only deploying a skeletal force; the Sinai roads could not supply a larger one. The British would make their stand on the other side of the desert, at the gates of Palestine, where the Axis supply routes would be stretched.

  There was one way round this desert bottleneck: a seaborne assault on the Levant coast. But this would have involved the prior seizure of Cyprus and the full participation of the Italian Navy. The first was ruled out by Hitler’s decision to use Student’s paratroopers elsewhere, the second by lack of fuel.

  There was also the problem of the two divisions and two brigades which the British had withdrawn up the Nile Valley, and which were now being adequately supplied through Port Sudan and Port Safaga on the Red Sea coast- This force, largely composed of infantry, offered no serious threat to Axis control of lower Egypt, but it could not just be ignored. A covering force would have to be left behind. Rommel wished to leave the Italians. This would both allow him to use his full German force and rid him of his troublesome and ill-equipped ally.

  Mussolini was not of the same mind. He insisted that at least Ariete take part in the cross-Sinai attack. The Middle East was, after all, in the Italian sphere of influence. Hitler agreed to Ariete’s inclusion. He did not want to anger the Duce and, in any case, what harm could it do? Ariete would be accompanied by five German divisions and under the direct command of his favourite field-marshal. Rommel, though far from convinced, was forced to accept the Führer’s decision. 90th Motorised and 21st Panzer, both of which had suffered heavily in the May battles, would be left behind. The remaining four German divisions, Ariete and the newly-arrived 164th Division would make up the new Panzer Army Asia.

  This grandly-named Army was not likely to live up to its name before mid-August. In the meantime Rommel would have to wait, to worry about the time granted to the British, and to watch, from a respectful German distance, as the Egyptian economy succumbed to hyper-inflation.

  Wolfsschanze

  If the steady erosion of Germany’s pro-Arab facade was noticed amidst the medieval Prussian forests no one seemed to care too much. At the Wolfsschanze it was all smiles through June and July. Fall Siegfried was consuming the Russian steppe, Panzerarmee Asien was poised to drive the British from the Middle East. By mid-July even Yaroslavl had fallen. In the Wolfsschanze canteen bets were being placed. Rommel was seven to four on favourite to reach Baghdad first; Guderian a mere two to one against.

  While his armies flowed across the maps Hitler had developed an obsession with oil. He read all he could find on the subject, and watched all the available films in the Wolfsschanze cinema-room. By the end of July he had mastered the theory and theoretical practice of finding oil, drilling oil, transporting and refining oil. He knew at least as well as the British just how dependent they were on the Iraqi and Iranian oilfields. He thought he knew - though his information was two years out of date - how dependent the Russians were on the Caucasian oil.

  All this oil now seemed within the Wehrmacht’s grasp. Two months, three, perhaps even four. But no more than that. In his late-night monologues the Führer imparted visions of a Reich swimming in the black fluid. ‘An empire that is not self-sufficient in oil could never survive,’ he told all and sundry. The Middle Eastern and Caucasian oilfields would be one of the three pillars of the thousand-year Reich, along with the vast agricultural lands of the Ukraine and German industrial genius. With such a material basis beneath them the German people could let their spirits soar, could realize the true potential of the volk soul.

  Within the context of such euphoric visions the Führer sought to bring the war to its inevitably triumphant conclusion. It was little more than a matter of playing out time. The Russian problem had been, or soon would be, conclusively solved. The British problem likewise. Perhaps it would be necessary to mount an invasion of England in 1943 - personally he doubted it. The British would sue for peace while they still had some of their empire left, before the Japanese gobbled up India.

  This over-confidence, or ‘victory disease’ as the Japanese called it, was to have important, perhaps crucial consequences. Hitler drew one conclusion from the imminence of victory - he did not need allies. When German arms reigned supreme from Narvik to Abadan, from the Urals to the Pyrenees, then all of them - Italians, Japanese, Finns, Hungarians, Arabs - would have to make their own way in a German world. Of course he would always have a soft spot for the Duce, and there was no need to annoy him unduly at this stage. Hence the agreement to the inclusion of Ariete in the ranks of Rommel’s Panzer Army Asia. But allowing the Italians the whole of the Middle East in their sphere of influence - that had been over-generous. The boundaries would have to be withdrawn in a manner that more faithfully reflected the two allies’ respective contributions to the conquest of the area.

  The Japanese could not be dealt with in this way. They were more powerful and they were further away. When Raeder had come to him in February with his plans for concerted action in the Middle East-Indian Ocean area it had seemed that the military advantages of Japanese help would outweigh the political disadvantages of a Japanese presence. But over the following months the equation had see-sawed. By April the Japanese had been demanding tripartite Axis declarations of independence for the Arab World and India. This was quite unthinkable. Worst of all, Mussolini had supported the Japanese, presumably as a feeble attempt to counter German predominance. Such anti-German groupings within the Axis would have to be stopped. The Japanese would have to be held at a long arm’s length.

  Fortunately this was now possible without doing any damage to the military situation. The British were going to be driven from the Middle East whether or not the Japanese Navy cut their Indian Ocean supply lines. So Japan should be encouraged to concentrate its efforts in the Pacific, to reducing the American Navy still further. This would keep the Americans’ eyes off Europe, weaken the Allied hold on the Atlantic, and leave Germany a free hand in the Middle East. Accordingly Raeder was instructed to ‘discourage’ Japanese intervention in the Indian Ocean area, and to minimise German-Japanese co-operation as tactfully as he saw fit. The ‘grand plan’ would be a purely Teutonic affair.

  London

  While serving as Commander-in-Chief Middle East, General Wavell had noted down his reasons for believing that Germany would lose the war:

  1. Oil, shipping, air power and sea power are the keys to this war, and they are interdependent.

  Air power and naval power cannot function without oil.

  Oil, except very limited quantities, cannot be brought to its destination without shipping.

  Shipping requires the protection of naval power and air power.

  2. We have access to practically all the world’s supply of oil.

  We have most of the shipping.

  We have naval power.

  We are potentially the greatest air power, when fully developed.

  Therefore we are bound to win the war.

  Or so it seemed in 1940-1. But by the summer of 1942 the other side of the same coin was becoming equally apparent. In mid-July General Brooke noted in his diary:

  All the motive-power at sea, on land, and in the air throughout the Middle East, Indian Ocean, and India was entirely dependent on the oil from Abadan. If we lost this supply, it could not be made good from American resources owing to shortage of tankers and continuous losses of these ships through submarine action. If we lost the Persian oil, we inevitably lost command of the Indian Ocean, and
so endangered the whole India-Burma situation.

  A report from the Oil Control Board confirmed Brooke’s realistic assessment. If Abadan and Bahrain were lost, the report concluded, nearly thirteen and a half million tons of oil would have to be found from the US and other sources. An additional 270 tankers would be needed to carry this oil, and they did not exist.

  The British had to hold the Middle East against the strong enemy thrusts converging on the Persian Gulf from the north and the west. The defence of the Iraqi-Iranian-Gulf oilfields came second only to the defence of Britain and its Atlantic lifeline in the War Cabinet’s list of priorities. Certainly the prospect of losing these oilfields did a wonderful job in concentrating the British mind. One member of the War Cabinet noted that ‘the gravity of the situation is such that the PM has stopped pressing for his Norwegian project. This, I suppose, is some consolation.’

  There was no such solace for Auchinleck. He had presided over the most humiliating series of reverses suffered by a British army in living memory. It mattered little that the responsibility was hardly his, that the interference from his superiors and the crushing superiority of the German force had rendered defeat inevitable. It mattered even less that his decision to evacuate Egypt and so save Eighth Army, rather than fight a glorious but hopeless battle in the Delta Region, would prove one of the most crucial decisions of the war. He had lost. The troops needed new leadership, a new source of confidence. Auchinleck had to go. On 6 June the relevant telegram arrived from Whitehall. General Alexander would take over the Middle East Command, General Montgomery, on Brooke’s insistence, the leadership of Eighth Army. General Wilson would remain in command of the ‘Northern Force’, comprising Ninth and Tenth Armies in Syria, Iraq and Iran.