238: The Key to Empire

Description

Episode 238 turns the lens toward the British position in North Africa on the eve of Italy’s intervention. We explore why the Suez Canal anchored every strategic conversation, how diplomats scrambled to keep Mussolini neutral, and what resources Wavell actually had on hand in Egypt.

From debates over naval deployments to improvisation inside the Western Desert Force, this chapter shows how Britain planned to hold a vast empire with limited tools—and how those choices shaped the coming battles.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 238 - North Africa 1940 Pt. 2 - The Key to Empire. This week a big thank you goes out to Rodrigo, Quinn, and Aron for supporting the podcast by becoming members. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episode plus special member only episodes roughly once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more. Last episode discussed the position of Italy in the 1930s and how its goals of territorial expansion related to the situation in North Africa in 1940. This episode will focus on the other side of the North African front, the British discussing both the role that North Africa and the Mediterranean played in pre-war British planning before discussing the events of the Phoney war period between September 1939 and June 1940 when Italy officially entered the conflict. One of the major themes of Britain’s war planning during the 1930s was dealing with the problem of Imperial overstretch, which made it difficult for the British Empire to prepare and react to all of the threats that it faced around the globe. From the Germans in the North Sea to the Japanese in the South Pacific and many places in between there were simply too many concerns and not enough resources. But one of the most critical resources that had to be protected, and was essential to the continued viability of the British empire was the Suez canal. The canal allowed for the linkage between the European territories and the Asian territories without having to make the long trip around Africa, at least in peace time. In wartime it actually served something of the opposite purpose, allowing the European and Asian territories of the Empire to reach Egypt without having to go through the Mediterrranean. With convoys from Britain going the long way around Africa, then up the eastern coast and then through the Red Sea, and supplies and troops from India making the much shorter journey to Egypt the Suez canal would become a critical part of Britain’s wartime infrastructure. This meant that it had to be protected, at almost any cost, with the added benefit being that holding the line in Egypt kept the Italians and Germans further away from the critical oil fields of the Persian Gulf and away from India.

Due to the importance of the Suez Canal, and in general the importance of the British position in the Mediterranean, attempts at appeasing Mussolini, and keeping Italy at the very least neutral would be a major point of discussion during the late 1930s and after the war started. Even though war had appeared imminent during the Abyssinian Crisis in 1935, during the last years before the war Britain was doing just about anything to avoid the possibility of a war with Italy. This included a specific refusal to discuss anything related to war with Italy during Joint Anglo-French staff talks in 1938, just out of concern that if those conversations leaked then Mussolini would be offended. The position of France within British planning would end up being largely useless due to the course that the war would take after 1939. It was expected that the French Navy would play a major role in helping to contain the Italian fleet, with most of the French naval strength concentrated in the Western Mediterranean while the Royal Navy focused on other threats . The French Navy would attempt to gain greater funds in the last years before the war specifically to build out its strength to try and match the expansion occurring within the Italian navy at the same time. The forces that were available would be attacked by the British after the armistice to prevent them from falling into German hands, making any pre-war planning pretty much useless. Of course, a key player in any war in the Mediterranean was the Royal Navy, but by 1940 its situation had also drastically changed from prior years, and not just because of the French surrender. At the turn of the 20th century the Mediterranean had been the most important posting in the Royal Navy, but the Anglo-German naval arms race before the First World War caused that to decisively change. Then during the interwar years, with budget cuts and then the rise of antagonism between Britain and Germany and Britain and Japan the Mediterranean rapidly because a second class theater in terms of resources and support. This also occurred because there were some British military theorists who believed that it was rapidly becoming impossible for the Royal Navy to even operate in the theater due to the threat from Air power. Unlike almost every other naval theater during the war, land based airpower could cover almost the entirety of the Mediterranean, and so as the ability of aircraft to attack naval targets continued to increase, the threats to any naval vessel in the Sea also grew. Some Naval leaders believed that anti-aircraft weapons, better armor on decks, and torpedo protection would prevent any real danger from air attack. But this would prove to be largely incorrect, with airpower indeed proving to be a serious threat to every military naval vessel during the war. While for most of the 1930s the Far East had priority over the Mediterranean when it came to naval resources this would actually begin to shift during 1939, particularly during the spring and summer when it seemed clear to just about everybody that was in Europe was becoming inevitable. This caused a reprioritization of imperial concerns, with the Mediterranean receiving greater priority and the Far East considerably less priority. Now this would of course have important ramifications in late 1941, but there were more immediate concerns for the British that were far closer to home. Along with this reallocation of naval resources there began to be serious discussions about how the British would respond and react to Italian aggression in North Africa, including a re-evaluation of the ground forces available for the defense of the Suez Canal.

The weakness of the British Army in Egypt in 1935 was partially due to a simple lack of concern about the risk of a possible Italian land campaign. It was far from the top ranking concern for the British military officers with both an Italian air attack on the Suez Canal or Alexandria and the possibility of an internal rebellion both seeming like a far more imminent threat. This was of course at a time when the abilities of all of the strategic bombing forces around Europe were heavily overestimated. Due to this fear from the air, resources were put into bolstering the anti-aircraft defenses around Alexandria, primarily to protect the Royal Navy’s ships that used it as a home base in the Eastern Mediterranean. Several search lights and a series of observer posts were also organized during this time. An air attack seemed more likely because British planners did not believe that the Italians could stage a major invasion force over the distances required in the Western Desert. The desert was an area that was around 800 kilometers long and 250 kilometers wide . There was one major road through the area, which ran along the coast, and any navigation off of that road would require a map and a compass, as there were few landmarks and no real signs of civilization that could help a navigator find his way. Even if they were able to use the coast road, which the British would attempt to prevent through aerial attacks, water was still going to be a major problem . Along the road there were water supplies that were available, enough to allow traffic to traverse the area during peacetime, but there was not even close to enough for a major invasion force. It was estimated that the water facilities along the route were only capable of supporting about 5,000 men, far fewer than would be necessary to seriously threaten the British in Egypt. Along with this, even supporting that many would require hundreds of trucks which would be easy targets for the RAF . The British had the ability to move supplies by rail from Alexandria to Mersah Matruh, about 2/3 of the way to the Western Egyptian border, but beyond that even they would be forced to use motor transport to move supplies, and they would have been seriously challenged to mount any kind of major operation over the border. It should also be noted that this desert was not sort of the romantic desert of sand dunes and long vistas of sand that you might expect, but instead was was instead of barren rubble and boulder strewn area with at times large elevation changes due to the present of the Libyan Plateau. And while the plateau might from a distance appear to be nice and flat it was anything but easy to move over. The complete lack of any kind of resources in this area of plateau and desert meant that anything that was required had to be carried and hauled, food, water, and fuel were completely unavailable . This made logistics more important in the North African campaign than in some other theaters, simply due to the inability of troops to survive from local resources. And the story of the various offensives from 1940 to 1943 is largely a story of logistics, water, food, and fuel.

But really, the lack of ability of the British to attack through the desert was not seen as a major problem, the goal of the forces in Egypt was to defend Egypt, not go on adventures in Libya. To that end they would be slowly increased in size over the course of the late 1930s, doubling in strength up to around 28,000 men by the spring of 1939. This increase was almost required by the continual increases in the number of Italian soldiers that were stationed in Libya, because even if they would have issues attacking across the desert that possibility could not be completely ignored. To add a bit of local political drama, due to the treaties signed with the Egyptian leaders, the British were obligated to provide for the defense of Egypt against foreign invaders, so they always had to make at least a serious effort to match up against the Italians to prevent any accusations of neglecting those obligations . It was just one of many ways in which the British leaders in Egypt were highly sensitive to the opinions and views of Egyptian leaders. The spring of 1939 was a real turning point, because after the Italians seized Albania, they quickly moved about 30,000 troops to Libya, causing real concern among the Egyptians who chose to mobilize their army and ask the British to commit more troops to Egypt. This was important, because by asking the British to move in more troops they were actually asking the British to exceed the previously agreed up on limits placed on British forces in Egypt. This might have real ramifications among the anti-British groups in Egypt and so the decision was made to send some reinforcements, just a single brigade, but to base them in Palestine instead of Egypt. It was difficult to send any more than a Brigade due to all of the demands placed on the British army during the summer of 1939, particularly the frantic efforts to try and throw a Field Force together that could be sent to France in case of German aggression. And during that time it was also not guaranteed that Italy would actually enter the war.

War would indeed come for the British Empire before the Italians were involved, and on August 20, 1939 the Mediterranean Fleet was officially put on a war footing, and then six days later all merchant shipping came under the control of the Admiralty. This level of readiness, even before the German invasion of Poland, would then also spill out into the air services with fighter defenses over Alexandria beginning round-the-clock patrols and in the Western Desert air squadrons also moved to war readiness. Ground forces were also pushed out west from Mersa Matruh, towards the Egyptian border, in readiness to meet and defend against any Italian incursion into Egyptian territory. Throughout the Phoney War period there was a recognition that British forces in Egypt needed more men and supplies, particularly due to the fact that supplies were only kept at a 1 month buffer, which was not believed to be sufficient for war time conditions which could disrupt the delivery of more supplies. Orders were given to raise those supplies to 3 months, but it was difficult to make this happen during late 1939 and early 1940 with so many other demands on British shipping and military supplies. Meanwhile, more and more Italian resources arrived in North Africa, in March specifically around 80,000 additional men were dispatched, all of which was known, at least at a high level, by the British. From the very beginning major efforts were put into monitoring Italian actions to try and gain as much information about their intentions as possible. Messages could not always be read, but traffic analysis still provided some information. For example there was a noted increase in signals traffic between Italy and Libya after the German invasion of Western Europe, on May 11th. By May 25th, with the war seeming to be going very poorly for the Western Allies, there were discussions about trying to gain greater assurances that Italy would not join the conflict. This included the discussion of throwing territories at them, which was felt to be worth it to prevent them from joining with Germany and causing great problems in the Mediterranean.

None of these conversations led anyway, and the Italians would join the war on June 10th, with the announcement made by Mussolini in Rome. This jump into the war was generally caused not by real desire to fight it out in North Africa and more the simple concern that if Italy did not join the war soon then they would miss out on the spoils. The British had been preparing for Italian entry since June 8th, when enough information was compiled about Italian actions to cause them to believe that a declaration of war was imminent. There were some people that did not know that Italy was going to be at war, the military commanders of Italian forces in Libya and Italian East Africa. This meant that in some cases Italian forces near the front did not know what was happening when British aircraft attacked them, due to the news simply taking too long to reach the front that they were now at war.

The British General in command of Middle Eastern Command, who would be a critical driver of events in North Africa until he was relieved of command in June 1941 was General Archibald Wavell. Wavell arrived in July 1939 and took over command from General Wilson. Wavell would end up being a bit of a divisive leader, and would never really get along well with Churchill. He would also write a letter to another officer which would be uncovered after the war in which he made it clear that he was not a fan of war, and in fact he believed that war was quite a boring affair. Or to quote from the letter: “it has always seemed to me that most people seeing the muddles of war forget the muddles of peace and the general inefficiency of the human race in ordering its affairs. War is a wasteful, boring, muddled affair”. Wavell would spend the early months of his command trying to bring together British forces and logistical resources into an organized structure that would be capable of operating in the Western Desert which was no small task given what was available and the environment. An important part of his plan was to begin to prepare for the possibility of a massively expanded military force in Egypt, with his expectations being that an additional 6 divisions would be sent if war began with Italy. Wavell’s concerns were far beyond just Egypt and Libya though, and as the head of Middle Eastern command he also was in overall command of British forces in Sudan, Palestine, Transjordan, and Cyprus. When war was declared on Germany the British forces in East Africa, Iraq, and along the Persian Gulf also came under his purview. This was a massive military command, which was short of men and material for the geographical size of what it was assigned to protect.

Looking at the armored forces available to Wavell and the British in some ways they suffered from the same problems as the Italians did during the early war years. After the disasters in France the British armored forces would find themselves at something of a crossroads. Coming into the war the British armor had two different types of forces, there were dedicated armored divisions that were theoretically designed to launch independent operations. The other type of armored unit was tank brigades which were equipped and trained to support infantry operations. The challenge was that the British made the same mistake as many other armies did in the pre-war years. They knew that tanks could be powerful on the battlefield but they underestimated the importance of providing the tanks with support. Instead the tank units that were available were very tank heavy, and did not contain the variety of supporting units that would make them the most successful. Trucks and other wheeled transport was a major problem for the armored units in Egypt, which was absolutely critical in the Western Desert because of the fact that supporting a single armored brigade, of which there were two in each armored division, required 50 tons of supplies per day. These supplies could only be provided by loading them onto trucks at the end of the railhead and driving them to the front lines. And that is not even considering the need for some sort of motor transport for the division itself. In that area the situation was just as grim. On paper they were support to have two motorized infantry battalions, and a Royal horse artillery regiment, 24 towed anti-tank guns, and one truck mounted engineer squadron. Even if all of this was provided it would still have been useful to have even more and the 7th armored Division in egypt at the start of the war had less than half of the support units that it should have had on paper. There was also a serious shortage of tracked vehicles that could move with the tanks cross country, for example the universal carriers which were a critical part of allowing the infantry support units to keep up with the armored formations were not really available in quantity at the start of the war. Even with its shortages the 7th armored was the only armored division available in the Middle East, and was really the only one in the entire British Army for some time after the disaster in France. Eventually the decision would be made to dispatch the available pieces of the 1st Armored Division which was rebuilding in Britain in August 1940. The fact that the British were dispatching their only combat capable armored brigade from the first Armored division to Egypt at a time when it appeared that a German invasion was likely says something about how important the situation in Egypt was considered in London. More and more armored units would be sent to Egypt over the course of 1940 and 1941. And while additional tanks was always welcome, it did not solve some of the key issues that the British units would have when it came time to attack. They still would not have enough trucks and support units, they would not have enough radios or men trained to use them, they were still organized into units that were far too tank heavy, making them very vulnerable to infantry and anti-tank guns. And most importantly for fighting in the Western Desert they still did not have a way to push forward enough infantry to support armored advances, or enough supplies to keep them going. British soldiers would die in the months that followed due to these short comings