Second World War, The

by Corrigan, Gordon

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  Having invaded British Somaliland in August and Egypt in September 1940, Mussolini, already vastly overreached if only he had realized it, invaded Greece on 28 October. The original excuse was that Greece had allowed ships of the Royal Navy to refuel in her territorial waters, which the Italians claimed was a breach of her neutrality,† but the real reason was Italian imperialism, rivalry with Germany for control of the Balkans and a wish to control the exit from the Dardanelles, which could easily be done from Greece. The relationship between Germany and Italy was always ambiguous. On the one hand, Italy had been fascist and Mussolini in power long before Hitler; the NSDAP had copied much of the Italian fascists’ ideology and methods, including the raised arm salute, and Hitler showed remarkable personal loyalty towards Mussolini long after there was any profit for Germany in so doing. On the other hand, Italy was in no position to fight a modern war, had traditionally favoured the British (a policy that made eminent sense given that the Mediterranean was a British lake), had entered the first war on the Allied side, had opposed Anschluss to the extent of sending troops to the Brenner Pass between Austria and Italy, and disapproved of Germany’s handling of Czechoslovakia. What tipped Italy into the German camp was British opposition to her Abyssinian adventures, her virulent anti-communism, a wish to create a second Roman Empire, and resentment over the failure to obtain what she saw as her just rewards in 1918. All these aims were more likely to be achieved by rowing in with Germany – assuming, of course, that Germany won the war, which in the spring of 1940 looked very likely. Despite the alliance, there was resentment of Italy’s younger and stronger partner, and the Italians very much wanted to achieve something by themselves, a strong motivating factor for the invasions of British Somaliland, Egypt and Greece.

  The British were under no obligation to get involved in Greece. After the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in 1939, they had tossed out guarantees to all who would listen, including the Greeks. The Greek government was well aware that these commitments could not possibly be honoured and turned the offer down, knowing full well that what forces the British could send in time of war would not be enough to ensure the integrity of Greece but might well provoke the very thing they would be sent to prevent – a German invasion. That Britain did get involved stemmed from one of Churchill’s flamboyant rhetorical gestures when a new Greek government, faced with an Italian invasion from Albania, changed its mind and asked for British troops after all. Churchill should have said no – the troops would have been far better employed in Africa – but ‘Britain supports her friends’ was the cry and troops went to Crete and aircraft to Greece, and the Royal Navy intensified its efforts to get the Italian navy to come out and fight. Had the British contribution stopped at that, then no great damage to her efforts in North Africa would have ensued. As it was, despite sending eight divisons into Greece, the Italian Army soon found itself in trouble. What was hoped to be a lightning campaign degenerated into a bloody struggle in the mountains in which the Italians came off very much the worse: the Albanian roads and ports could not support the logistical effort required, the Greeks did not welcome the Italians as liberators and the Greek Army was able to mobilize a lot more troops than the Italians expected. By the end of 1940 the Greeks had pushed the Italians back into Albania and it began to look as if, rather than Italy conquering Greece, Greece might conquer Albania. The Greeks too, however, were having problems in the mountains. There was a shortage of medical supplies and warm clothing, and they were very nearly out of ammunition. The British were asked for help.

  The Italians had not told the Germans of their intention to invade Greece (nor about the invasions of British Somaliland and Egypt) since they hoped to score a success of their own which, while it could not rival Germany’s conquest of Western Europe, might at least make up for Italy’s shameful showing against France in June 1940. The Germans were displeased, particularly as it now looked as if they would have to bail their ally out. They already had troops in Romania, sent there in September 1940 ostensibly to train the Romanian Army but in reality to secure the oil fields for Germany and prevent the USSR from gobbling up the whole country (Russia had already annexed two Romanian provinces in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact), and planning for Case Marita envisaged German forces in Romania invading Greece from Bulgaria, which was being wooed by Germany and would join the Tripartite Pact in 1941, and from Yugoslavia, across which country Germany had secured transit rights. In February 1941 the British decided to halt operations in Libya, to the considerable chagrin of General O’Connor, who was convinced (probably rightly) that he could be in Tripoli in weeks and have the Italians out of North Africa completely in a month. From London’s perspective, what now mattered was Greece, for, if a Greek collapse could be averted, it was here that one enemy was on the run, and in any case Churchill had seen great merit in a Balkan front in the first war and, egged on by the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, saw no reason to change his views in the second.

  From March 1941 a British armoured brigade, the Australian 6 Division and the New Zealand Division were removed from Egypt and Libya and sent to Greece under the command of General ‘Jumbo’ Wilson. German plans were then slightly upset by a British-inspired military coup in Yugoslavia which meant that Germany had to squash that country before attacking Greece. On 6 April 1941 German troops invaded Yugoslavia from Germany to the north and from Romania and Bulgaria to the east. The capital, Belgrade, was bombed that same day – casualties were significant, even if the claimed death toll of 17,000 was almost certainly greatly exaggerated – and German efforts were helped by the mutiny of two mainly Croatian Yugoslav armies.* By 14 April it was all over and the Yugoslav government asked for an armistice. Now for Greece, and when the Germans crossed the border from Yugoslavia into Macedonia in the west and into Thrace to the east, both the Greek main force and the British were in the wrong place, having been committed to defending the Metaxas Line north of Salonika facing Bulgaria. It was another humiliating disaster for the British along the lines of Norway, and, when the Germans captured Athens on 27 April, the British began to evacuate their troops to Crete. Once again the Royal Navy saved a British army and by 30 April such men as could be got away had been taken off and Crete was preparing itself against the inevitable German assault.

  The defence of Crete, with the depressingly familiar instruction ‘to be held at all costs’, was entrusted to Major-General Bernard Freyberg, an Englishman who had spent much of his youth in New Zealand. He had won the Victoria Cross commanding a battalion of the Royal Naval Divison during the Somme offensive in 1916, then becoming the youngest brigadier-general in the British Army at the age of twenty-eight. Reverting to his substantive rank of captain after the war, he transferred to the Grenadier Guards, was a major-general when war broke out and was lent to the government of New Zealand to command their expeditionary force (a division plus supporting and logistic units). On Crete he had no chance. Although there were 43,000 men on the island, many were not from the combat arms and the 10,000 Greeks were mostly without weapons. While one British infantry brigade had been there since the previous November (and had done precious little to create defence works), and two squadrons of fighter aircraft had arrived from Egypt, there were only a handful of tanks, only sixty-eight anti-aircraft guns and very few vehicles. The roads that did exist were narrow and could easily be rendered unusable by bombing, while the ports were too small to be used by naval vessels, with the exception of one anchorage on the south of the island. German plans for the airborne assault on Crete were known from intercepts but there is little advantage in knowing that you are about to be attacked by ten very large men with machetes if you are armed only with a cricket bat.

  On 14 May the Luftwaffe began to bomb Crete and the air raids went on for six days. There were no hardened shelters for the RAF aircraft and after three days the last six of them were withdrawn back to Egypt before they too were shot down or destroyed on the ground. At 0800 hours
on 20 May, Case Merkur began when eight battalions of airborne infantry parachuted in or landed in gliders. Their casualties were severe, but, once the main airport at Maleme was taken the next day, the result was not in doubt. More and more German transport aircraft landed, disgorging mountain troops, and with the Luftwaffe having complete air superiority there was little the Royal Navy could do by day. On 22 May the Royal Navy removed the King of Greece and on 27 May the inevitable evacuation began from the south of the island. The losses to the navy were great, but, when Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, was asked whether the removal to Egypt of so few fighting troops was worth the cost in ships, he replied,‘It takes three years to build a ship, and three hundred to build a reputation.’ The evacuation went on until 1 June and 18,000 men were taken off at a cost of three cruisers and six destroyers sunk. If it had been an expensive defeat for the British, it was an expensive victory for the Germans. Of the 11,000 elite airborne soldiers, almost 4,000 were killed and never again would the Germans mount an airborne operation of this magnitude.

  It was not only in Greece that the Germans felt obliged to rescue their Italian allies, but in North Africa too. Hitherto, they had taken little interest in what went on in the Mediterranean and in North Africa: Germany’s ambitions lay in mainland Europe and not abroad, but the possibility of the whole of the Libyan coast being in British hands, which might encourage the French North African territories to declare for de Gaulle, and the possibility that Italy might have to leave the war, thus allowing the British use of Italian airfields from where they could bomb Germany’s main source of oil in Romania, concentrated minds somewhat. After the initial refusal to send anything to Libya, it was now agreed to despatch the Deutsche Afrika-Korps (DAK) of one panzer division, one light division* and supporting arms, with forty aircraft and an anti-aircraft battalion of the Luftwaffe, the whole to be commanded by the newly promoted Lieutenant-General Erwin Rommel. Rommel was fifty years old and had come to prominence as a dashing and succesful divisional commander in the Battle of France, when his division had been first to reach the Channel coast and had captured the entire British 51 Highland Division at St Valery.

  The DAK began to land in Tripoli harbour on 14 February 1941.The British knew they were arriving but assumed that it would be at least three months before they could do anything – they would need to acclimatize, train, reconnoitre and plan. The German army did not operate that way, however, and, when Rommel launched an attack on 24 March 1941, the British were forced to retreat. By 4 April the combined German–Italian offensive had taken Benghazi, and the next day Derna, capturing Generals O’Connor and Neame* on the way. On 10 April, Rommel began the first siege of Tobruk, and on 17 June the British counter-stroke, Operation Battleaxe, aimed at relieving Tobruk, was called off after the loss of ninety of the 190 British tanks to no avail. The year 1941 was not looking good for the British, the only bright flashes in strategic darkness being the putting down of a pro-German revolt in Iraq in May and the taking of Syria after hard fighting against Vichy French forces in June.

  In Berlin all this was mere froth. Far greater things were being planned and all attention was focused on the East.

  5

  THE RUSSIAN WAR

  JUNE–OCTOBER 1941

  While to Germany the defeat of France – ‘the perpetual disturber of world peace’ as Hitler put it – wiped out the disgrace of 1918 and the stain of Versailles, the opposition of Britain was unfortunate and irrelevant to Germany’s war aims. The war against Russia was Hitler’s and Germany’s real war. It would not only fulfil National Socialist aims of ridding the world of the Jewish-Bolshevik* menace and provide land for expansion of the German population – Lebensraum – but would also provide a huge economic area to be exploited for the benefit of the Reich, thus freeing Germany from the effects of blockade, a major factor in her defeat in 1918. Control of the Baltic and of the industrial area of the Ukraine would mean the German economy was no longer dependent on imported raw materials, while the oil fields of the Caucasus could supply the Wehrmacht and German industry. Furthermore, the elimination of Russia would put paid to Britain’s last hope in Europe, for Hitler was well aware of Churchill’s attempts to draw Stalin into a grand anti-German alliance both before the invasion of Poland in 1939 and in conversations with the newly appointed British ambassador to Moscow, the Labour Party nominee Sir Stafford Cripps, in July 1940.

  Of course, many of Germany’s economic aims could be achieved by maintaining the status quo as agreed in the pact of 1939, and Russia was scrupulous in adhering to her side of that agreement, with deliveries of foodstuffs, iron ore and oil being made to Germany daily. There were difficulties in adhering to the pact, however. Hitler did not trust Stalin to keep his word, and, as the balance of trade was heavily in favour of the USSR, deliveries could cease at any time. Soldiers in the German units stationed in Poland were highly suspicious of Russian intentions and the Commander-in-Chief of the army, Colonel-General Walther von Brauchitsch, instructed that all officers and men were to be briefed that there was no breakdown of German–Soviet relations and that the recent move of the German Eighteenth Army into Poland was not to be taken as indicating any aggressive intent. The department of the SS’s intelligence apparatus responsible for gauging public opinion reported that the German civilian population was unhappy with this perceived closeness to Russia, long seen as a potential enemy. If the British really were hanging on in the hope that the two dictators would fall out, then the sooner Russia was dealt with, the better.

  Hitler had always said, both in his written works and in private conversation, that Russia, communism and the Jews were his and Germany’s real enemies; anything else was peripheral. Politically he was at the height of his popularity in the summer of 1940: in a mere nine months Poland, Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France had been conquered and the British sent unceremoniously back to their island, from where they bayed toothlessly across the Channel. The reservations of the general staff – in any nation far more aware of the effects of war than their political masters and hence more cautious – had been shown to be groundless, and opposition to the NSDAP was at its lowest level since 1933. Hitler could do whatever he wanted and there was no one to argue against him. The war in the East was the one that mattered to Germany: it was there that the overwhelming majority of her soldiers and airmen would fight, it was there where more than three quarters of her dead would lie and it would be there that the Second World War would be decided. It would be this war that would ultimately bring Germany down to defeat, occupation, ignominy and partition for fifty years.

  After the Battle of France, General of Artillery Franz Halder, Chief of the General Staff of the German army, said that it would win no more battles for a long time. What he meant was that, even though his staff were pondering their part in Sea Lion, the elimination of England would be a matter for the air force and the navy. Indeed, plans were drawn up to reduce the size of the army to 120 divisions by disbanding thirty-five divisions and their ancillary units, releasing half a million men back into the civilian economy. Then, on 21 July 1940, Hitler addressed the senior officers of the three armed services. He told them that they must consider ‘the American and Russian question’, again alluding to British hopes of Russian and eventually American support. He was well aware that in the long term Britain and America could build more ships and aircraft and muster more men and equipment than could Germany. America was not a threat yet but could become so. He was determined to deal with Russia in the near future and he regarded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact as no more than a temporary tactical manoeuvre. The army general staff were instructed to plan for military intervention to demonstrate to Russia Germany’s hegemony in Europe, while at the same time pursuing the half-hearted scheme for a landing in England, while the other two services were told to submit their views on the Russian question.

  The Kriegsmarine’s assessment, submitted by Rear Admiral Kurt Fricke, ch
ief of operations staff, to Grand Admiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the navy, emphasized the threat from a powerful Russian fleet in the Baltic and the need for Germany to have sufficient terrain in the East to allow her to be economically self-sufficient and for a German Europe to be secure against military action. All this could be achieved by a successful war against the USSR, but should only be embarked upon when Britain had been defeated. Raeder underlined the sentence about British defeat being a prerequisite for action and passed the paper to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief of OKW, who presumably showed it to Hitler. The Luftwaffe’s view was, perhaps understandably, more tactical than strategic. The Battle of Britain was in the process of being lost and the air force chiefs saw a war with Russia as allowing them to return to what they were good at – the tactical ground support of a swift-moving army.

  On 31 July, ten days after Hitler’s indication that war with Russia was a serious consideration, the heads of the three services and their senior staff officers were again summoned, this time to the Berghof, Hitler’s mountain home in Obersalzburg. After some discussion about Sea Lion, when Hitler ordered a date of 15 September 1940, or, depending upon the results of the air campaign, a postponement until May 1941, discussion moved on to Russia. Hitler explained that Britain’s only hope lay in the Soviet Union and, eventually, America. If Russia could be taken out of the picture, then America would never intervene in Europe because she would be too concerned with the threat from Japan, which would be far greater once Russia was eliminated. Russia must therefore be attacked as soon as possible, in the spring of 1941. The offensive, said Hitler, could only be successful if Russia were destroyed in one blow: merely capturing part of it would not do and holding still for the following winter would be perilous. Hitler defined his war aim as ‘the liquidation of Russia’s manpower and the capture of the Ukraine, the Baltic states and Belorussia’.34