Il Duce waits until 1941

[CharlesMartell]

Italy's entry into WW2 was almost comical in its lack of planning and misguided objectives.

Mussolini declared "I only need a few thousand dead so that I can sit at the peace conference as a man who has fought" and so cast his hand against Britain and France in June 1940.

On June 20th the Mussolini's troops crossed the border into France.
In August the Italians invaded and occupied British Somali-land with light resistance.
In September, the Italians invaded Egypt.

Nothing went right for the Italians.
By the time they got their campaign against the French started, that war was as good as over.
Besides which , they got stuck in mountain passes and snow storms.
The only "spoils" the Italians got from France were Corsica and the Alpes-Maritimes province.

Italy's colonies in the Horn of Africa were in a precarious position from the day war was declared since there is no way of communication and supply unless you run the long gauntlet of the Royal Navy past Gibraltar and around the Cape.

Italy had 14 divisions in Libya but they were woefully prepared.
A whole division got literally "lost" just crossing the frontier into Egypt!
The Italian armies staggered a hundred kilometers or so and then encamped at Sidi Barani.
The troops were so lacking in basic transport that the Italian General Graziani was reduced to begging for 600 mules from Rome!

None of this makes any sense if one starts with assumption that the British are unlikely to capitulate to Germany as long as Churchill is leader.
I am not sure if Mussolini ever met Churchill but there must have been somebody influential in Italy or abroad who could give the Fascist leader a realistic appraisal of the situation and Churchill's character.

Let's assume a PoD of June 1st 1940.
The world can see the writing on the wall for France and Mussolini is keen for a piece of the action.
HOWEVER, wise advisers to Il Duce inform him that Britain has no intention of surrendering and Germany (for all Hitler/Goering's bluster) will have a tough time mounting a successful invasion.
Further, he is told that the strategic situation in the HoA (Horn of Africa) is precarious and overall supplies of critical raw materials for war are low.

Mussolini decides to bide his time and see how Operation SeaLion works out. Throughout the remainder of 1940 he stockpiles military supplies in the HoA and Libya.

He thinks about launching an attack on Greece in October but with winter approaching and his reservists needed for the fall harvest season, he also puts that idea on hold.

By Jan 1941, SeaLion has been shelved and Hitler is getting his ducks in a row for Operation Barbarossa.
Hypersensitive as always about RAF attacks on his supplies of fuel from the Romanian oil fields, Hitler asks Mussolini for a meeting to determine what can be done to remove the British presence from the Eastern Mediterranean.

The two hatch a plan to send two Panzer divisions, two motorized divisions and significant Luftwaffe units to Libya, headed by Erwin Rommel (similar to OTL).
These will join the Italians who comprise the bulk of the armed forces and with the overall command of the campaign led by Marshal Italo Balbo.

The operational aim is to launch the attack from Eastern Libya in March 1941, cross the Egyptian border and drive onward to first Cairo and then cross the Suez canal.
From that point, Rommel's troops will continue on to Jerusalem and wrap up Palestine (the propaganda value of making the Jewish Holy Land a Nazi trophy is irresistible to the Fuhrer).
Meanwhile, the Italians will turn inland and push up the Nile valley, eventually driving the British out of Sudan and linking up with the Italian colonies in the HoA.
British Somaliland, Malta and Cypress are all abandoned by the British as being indefensible (plus there is the need to move forces to the Far East as the Japanese begin to act more threatening in the later part of 1941).

With Suez and the HoA in Axis hands, the path is open for and aggressive Italian/German submarine campaign in the Indian Ocean in 1942.

All this is possible if Mussolini had waited until 1941 and entered the war in a more prepared and co-ordinated manner with his Axis partner.

Please comment and critique.

[iddt3]

Well it does ignore the bit where Italian entry into the War period was predicated on the false assumption that the British would fold as soon as the French did. If the war isn't going to be quick, than Italy has much more to gain by staying out as a friendly neutral to Germany and getting concessions out of the British than it does by getting involved in a war being fought on a scale that is simply beyond it.

[MattII]

Well if Italy stays out in 1940 the British can draw forces from Africa to re-equip the home units, and then maybe some of the more advanced weapons (like the 6-pounder) won't be so delayed.

[Cook]

Originally Posted by MattII

Well if Italy stays out in 1940 the British can draw forces from Africa to re-equip the home units, and then maybe some of the more advanced weapons (like the 6-pounder) won't be so delayed.

They can’t really; Italy would remain a potential enemy whose army’s capabilities were wholly untested and would continue to be considered a greater threat than they really were. Stripping forces from the region would have been inviting the Italians to jump into the war. Italy not entering the war in June 1940 means they’d have remained a ‘non-belligerent’ supporter of the Axis, not neutral.

The continued production of the 2 Pounder long after it had already been proven inadequate was the product of some very fuzzy thinking. The thinking seems to go “They need guns now, so we will rush these guns to them even though we know they are worthless!” With the threat of invasion and the urgent need for any guns it’s hard to see that decision changing.

[MattII]

Nevertheless, the lack of an actual front in September, along with a continual refusal of the Germans to put to see might see the initial deployment of the 6-pounder brought forward by some months.

[Cook]

Probably, although I’d say that’d happen after the Battle of Britain and fear of invasion in September at the very earliest.

[MattII]

Agreed, I figure it probably wouldn't be more than about 6 months ahead of OTL, and without an enemy to test it against...

[CharlesMartell]

I guess the real questions I would like answered here are:

1) With 9 months extra preparation (and no diversion in Albania/Greece), would the Italians had the ability (with or without limited German support) to take Cairo and seize the Suez Canal.

2) And assuming "yes" above, would they have had the ability to penetrate up the Nile Valley far enough to link up with their colonies in the Horn of Africa.

If you'd like me to put it a slightly more interesting way, how would the Battle of El Alamein have played out in April/May 1941 instead of late 1942? (assuming that is where the British would form their line of resistance).

One factor that somebody else might have insight to is the state of "Ultra" dispatches in the spring of 1941. Didn't the Germans change their code systems around that time? What impact might that have had?

[MattII]

1) No

2) No, again.

It would take way more than a year to correct all the faults in the Italian force to make them capable of winning anything like that, like for starters they'd need new factories capable of producing more than a handful of tanks or trucks at once.

[CharlesMartell]

Originally Posted by MattII

1) No

2) No, again.

It would take way more than a year to correct all the faults in the Italian force to make them capable of winning anything like that, like for starters they'd need new factories capable of producing more than a handful of tanks or trucks at once.

Yet in OTL the Italians when they fought with the Afrika Corp acquitted themselves reasonably well.

[von Adler]

First of all, why should the Germans send troops to Libya? Before Operation Compass, there were no such plans. After Operation Compass, the plan was to send two divisions to hold Tripolitania to save Italian face. Egypt and the Seuz canal was only relevant in ww2 because the Italians had a lot of troops in Libya and the British had only one land front - in Egypt, for almost three years.

The British send all their convoys arond Africa anyway - the Med was too dangerous in war-time.

The infrastructure in Libya and Egypt cannot supply the forces mentioned - it could barely support the Afrika Korps when it was at 1 armoured and 1 light division and 5 Italian divisions.

Here's a calculation I did on supply.

Tripoli-El Alamein, 2250km.
Benghazi-El Alamein, 850km.
Tobruk-El Alamein, 500km.
Mersa Matruh-El Alamein, 175km.

Average final unloading in the ports May-September 1942 (a lot more was delivered to Tripoli and then loaded again and shipped to Benghazi, Tobruk etc by coastal shipping).

Tripoli: 16654 ton.
Benghazi: 57610 ton.
Tobruk: 54655 ton.
Mersa Matruh: 11957 ton.
Totalt: 140876 ton.

In percentage:

Tripoli: 11,8%
Benghazi: 40,9%
Tobruk: 38,8%
Mersa Matruh; 8,5%

If a German Panzer Division consumes, on average (more in offensive operations, less in pursuit, lull or defence) 450 tons of supplies (including water);

Tripoli: 53,1 ton.
Benghazi: 184,05 ton.
Tobruk: 174,6 ton.
Mersa Matruh: 38,25 ton.

A truck from Tripoli needs 675+675kg of fuel to make the round trip and thus delivers 1,05 tons of supply each trip (remember, 20% of the weight is crates, oil drums and other packaging). 40km/h, driving 16 hours per day, loading and unloading takes five hours each. 79,5 trucks from Tripoli need to arrive daily. 30% of the trucks in Nort Africa was out of service at any given time, and for 10 trucks running, you need 1 truck to carry supplies, spare parts, oil, food, water etc for the crews and trucks in the convoy. With the distance 6,4 trucks are needed for each that is arriving (being in transit or loading or unloading), for a grand total of 596 trucks.

From Benghazi, 1,89 tons arrive per truck. A grand total of 172 trucks are needed.

From Tobruk, 2,1 tons arrive. 158 trucks in total.

From Mersa Matruh, 2,295 tons arrive. 18 trucks are needed (the short distance means that trucks can do more than one trip per day).

596+172+158+18=944.

On average, a German Panzer division at El Alamein requires 944 trucks to keep its supply at 450 tons per day, with all those ports in German control.

All of Deutsch-Italienischer Panzerarmee needed about 3500 tons of supply per day at El Alamein, not counting extra to build up for an offensive. That would require 7341 trucks. And I don't think Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica in North Africa is counted into that.

2 more armoured divisions would do the trick in North Africa? Perhaps, but how do you supply them?

The Germans do not have this amount of trucks to spare. And the Italians do not have them, period. Their entire army in Libya had less than 4000 trucks in November 1940 - that includes motorised units and supply.

As for the Italian situation in East Africa, they controlled only the territory their troops were standing on. While they could take British Somaliland (which was not defended) they had to travel between towns in armed columns protected by the air force and with armoured elements or the Ethiopian patriots would attack them. They do not have the supplies, and especially not the troops to spare for an invasion up the Nile.

And bottom line - why on earth would the Germans spare four top-class divisions right before the launch of Barbarossa - when the Italians have not been defeated?

The only reason the war in Libya got so large was because Rommel was very skilled in securing resources for himself.

[MattII]

Originally Posted by CharlesMartell

Yet in OTL the Italians when they fought with the Afrika Corp acquitted themselves reasonably well.

They were brave soldiers no doubt, and well trained, but it's hard to effect armoured warfare when you don't actually have anything to effect it with (your best tank is still going to be the 14 tonne M14/41, which for all its qualities, is going to be outnumbered).

[CharlesMartell]

"Why should the Germans send troops to Libya?"

Well to make sure the job gets done, for one.
As explained above, the ATL is based on the assumption that
the campaign is to Italy/Germany's mutual advantage by removing
British presence from the Eastern Mediterranean.

I take your point about the logistical challenges though.

Re point 2)

I wonder whether it would be possible for the Italians to construct enough river barges to travel up the Nile and deal with their logistics that way?
After all, the British forces holding Sudan must be light.

[Magnum]

Adler, this is not the whole story. There are ways to alleviate some of the logistical problems.

1. railway

A 750 mm (2 ft 5 1⁄2 in) (later 950 mm) gauge railway was built east from Benghazi; the main route was 110 km long to Marj and was opened in stages between 1911 and 1927

Military extensions of some 40 km were made from Marj towards Derna in World War II

Have the Marj to Derna line completed in the 1940-1941 timeframe. This should free up lots of trucks and be far more effeective.


2. Stock up
The italians can build large (even huge) supply depots close to the border with almost a year in advance to prepare, thus solving a large part of the problem

3.Trucks
- The germans OTL pressured the vichy French to sell a lot of their trucks in north africa to the italians.
- with more time, the italians themselves can produce and ship more trucks
- if the start date is in early 1941, the germans can ship some more of their trucks. Barbarossa is still half a year away, and once the Suez is reached, they may think they can send most of them back
- trucks can also be captured from the british, just as Rommel did OTL

4. Supply consumption
- given the appaling british performance in the early years, if the axis uses overwhelming force, than fighting may take place in short, intense intervals whenever the british try to make a stand, thus reducing supply consumption (even more if Rommel manages to trap and destroy a british division early on)
- with the Battle of Britain switched to night bombing and Barbarossa stil months away, the Germans can deploy significant Luftwaffe assets. These will have a far lower supply consumption than a panzer division, yet still produce a huge, potentialy game-changing impact

5. Air supply
Germany has some Ju-52s and the like just sitting around doing nothing. Barbarossa is stil months away. Use them to supply your forces. Also use pilots other than flight-school instructors on them. These pilots can have only minimal training, since they don't have to know anything about bombing, complex navigation or engaging the enemy.

6. Mules and other
Why is using animal caravans a bad idea. They eat local food (and thus don't use up the precious petrol) and they don't require spare parts. Sure, their slow, but you can have a steady stream of them.

7. Suplying Italian East Africa once hostilities start
This is tricky. However, some trickle of supplies can be brought over if the axis uses one or more hidden airbases located in the south of Lybia. it won't be much, but stuff like antibiotics and small and valuable spare parts can make a huge difference for the local forces.

Also, would small caravans crossing the desert and somehow the Nile in secret manage to get all the way to Ethiopia ?

8. Blocking the Suez
If the Italians plan their war entry, then they can actually, you know, plan. This means that they can do all sorts of things in the opening hours, like maybe having one or two merchant ships scuttle themselves while crossing the Suez, effectively blocking it for some time. This will wreak havoc on british supplies

[Rich Rostrom]

Originally Posted by MattII

They were brave soldiers no doubt, and well trained, but it's hard to effect armoured warfare when you don't actually have anything to effect it with (your best tank is still going to be the 14 tonne M14/41, which for all its qualities, is going to be outnumbered).

There was a joke in the Afrika Korps that the Italians were the bravest armored troops - because they went into battle with Italian tanks.

[Cymraeg]

Originally Posted by CharlesMartell

"Why should the Germans send troops to Libya?"

Well to make sure the job gets done, for one.
As explained above, the ATL is based on the assumption that
the campaign is to Italy/Germany's mutual advantage by removing
British presence from the Eastern Mediterranean.

I take your point about the logistical challenges though.

Re point 2)

I wonder whether it would be possible for the Italians to construct enough river barges to travel up the Nile and deal with their logistics that way?
After all, the British forces holding Sudan must be light.

Yes, but the Afrika Korps was only sent to North Africa once it became clear that the Italian forces were badly led, badly equipped and were being rounded up by the acre by far smaller British forces. ITTL that wouldn't be clear until the same thing happens. There haven't been the multiple fiascos in France, Greece and Egypt to show the Italian Army up as being a paper tiger, so there's no reason (yet) to send German forces to North Africa.
As for barges and the Nile I have no doubt that Mussolini hoped to take the port of Alexandria intact and then use what they found there - if, that is, he thought that far, which I doubt.

[MattII]

Originally Posted by Magnum

Adler, this is not the whole story. There are ways to alleviate some of the logistical problems.

Much of that of course requires prescience, or some sort of magic:
1) Helpful, but not exceptionally since it's in the middle of the route rather than at one end, a line from Tripoli to Homs (or better yet, Misrata) would allow you to shift stuff just as far by train, and with only one intermodal transfer rather than two.
2) And you were just hoping the British wouldn't notice anything out of the ordinary?
3) The more truck models you draft in the more supply lines you need since each model will be able to use only its spare parts.
4) This requires the Germans forcing their way into what is predominantly an Italian theatre, and as yet the Italians haven't yet proved how godawful they are at fighting an actual war.
5) They lost something like 280 of the things in the Netherlands, which was about a year's production at the time.
6) And how many are available?
7) Southern Libya? Doesn't that mean bringing over more trucks? Why not just air-drop supplies over Tripoli and that?
8) Nice, but the British do have ports south of the Canal, and railroads.

[CharlesMartell]

Originally Posted by Cymraeg

There haven't been the multiple fiascos in France, Greece and Egypt to show the Italian Army up as being a paper tiger, so there's no reason (yet) to send German forces to North Africa.

Yes I understand that but even so, if you want to tip the odds of the campaign in your favour, you send the best weapon at your disposal.
And in March 1941 the deadliest fighting weapon on the face of the planet was a German Panzer Division.

If the campaign was a joint plan between Hitler / Mussolini (see OP) then why not?

As in my OP there is also the added inducement to Hitler that if he helps the Italians get as far as Suez then his troops get to help themselves to Jerusalem and Palestine in phase two of the operation.

[von Adler]

The German General Staff knew that it was not possible, barring a full year or moe likely 18 months of MASSIVE infrastructure construction, to supply a German force in Libya. They knew very well that trying to take Egypt based on this was close to impossible. Rommel had no regards for logistics, and tried anyway - he was skilled and lucky (often running on captured British fuel), but that was not enough.

In 1940 and 1941, the Eastern Med was not a place where the Germans wanted to go - it would not secure any flanks or positions for their ghrand invasion of Russia, it would not secure them any resources or reduce their enemy's ability to fight - sending troops there was useless. The original DAK was initially called 'Sperrverband Libyen' - Blocking Union Libya. It was intended to save Italian face, nothing else. Rommel changed that, and used his political influence and hero status through the propaganda to secure ever-more resources for a front the Germans did not need and had no use for.

The narrow guage railroad extended only 40km east from Tripoli - most of it ran to the west to the Tunisian border, as the Italians had envisioned the large French army in North Africa as their main enemy in Libya.


As you can see, this is completely useless to supply any kind of army - especially as you will need a lot of work to load the supplies in the harbour to trucks, move it to the railroad (it did not extend down to the ports, AFAIK) and then offload it and reload it on trucks again. You can nothing in time and very, very little in number of trucks needed, and you probably lose in manpower needed for transport.

There was a severe lack of rolling stock and locomotives - the railroad was not electrified, and needed either diesel engines (very rare, especially narrow guage, and usually very weak in this era) or steam locomotives, that will need regular supply of coal and water, both rare resources in Libya.

All four Panzergruppe on the eastern front had a total of 14000 trucks. Supplying Panzerarmee Afrika at El Alamein, with enough to spare to allow to build up supply depots for an offensive would have required 12000 trucks. The Germans had a shortage of trucks for the entire war (only 17% of the Heer was ever mechanised or motorised).

The Germans themselves said of the Libyan railroads:

There was no continuous railroad in Libya. The two railroads, each about 30km. in length, in Tripolitania and in Cyrenecia were of no military importance. The only permanent signal communications system consisted of an open-wire telephone line, on poles, from Tripoli to Bardia. The distances spanned were extremely great, and the line made only limited communications possible. Furthermore, it was frequently interrupted by....air attacks against the Via Balbia (the coastal road running from Tripoli to Tobruk).

In 1939 there were 11,064km of roads, in Libya, of which 3,398 were asphalt hard-surfaced. There was a total of 444km of small-gauge rail lines [1meter width], 271km in Tripolitania, and 173km in Cirenacia. The Italian small-gauge railroads in Tripolitania had 3 short links centered on Tripoli, and these led to the cities of Zuara, Toguira, and Garian. The lines in Cirenacia consisted of 2 lines centered on Benghazi and they ran to the cities of Soluch and Barce. These small-gauge rails were used primarily for economic means and local transport of civilians.

It was only from Tripoli and Benghazi that ammunition and supplies could be moved forward to the front. The lack of any rail connections proved a serious disadvantage. Investigations showed that to construct a railroad to meet even the most modest of needs, at least 60,000 tons of shipping space for locomotives, cars, rails, understructures, and so forth, would be required [this extra tonnage would be in addition to the supplies already coming to N. Africa from Italian ports], and a period of 12 months for the Tripoli-Benghazi section, and an additional 3 months for the extension to Derna would be needed.

[Rich Rostrom]

Originally Posted by CharlesMartell

I guess the real questions I would like answered here are:

1) With 9 months extra preparation (and no diversion in Albania/Greece), would the Italians had the ability (with or without limited German support) to take Cairo and seize the Suez Canal.

No. The Italian army was incapable of a deep offensive campaign against a competent foe.

2) And assuming "yes" above, would they have had the ability to penetrate up the Nile Valley far enough to link up with their colonies in the Horn of Africa.

As above.

One factor that somebody else might have insight to is the state of "Ultra" dispatches in the spring of 1941.

The Allies had thoroughly penetrated the heavily used RED key, which was mainly but not exclusively used by the Luftwaffe. IIRC they had some exploitation of other Army and Luftwaffe keys. They hadn't really cracked any Kriegsmarine keys yet.

In mid-1941, the British made a concerted effort to capture Kriegsmarine Enigma materiel. They grabbed enough to crack HYDRA, the main KM key, by July. This reduced losses to U-boats by 2/3.

Didn't the Germans change their code systems around that time?

Not particularly. There were minor changes fairly often.

What impact might that have had?

Allied success against Enigma in 1941 was dependent on a lot of German errors, including failure to notice weaknesses in Enigma. Had the Germans thoroughly reviewed their cipher systems and operational practice, they would have seen (and fixed) their problems, and shut out the Allied codebreakers.

Later in the war, the Allies had the famous bombes, and could and did defeat major German enhancements to Enigma. But that later success was dependent on already knowing the characteristics and typical content of Enigma messages from a continuous stream of tens of thousands of decrypts. If Enigma had gone dark for six months to a year, it's unlikely the Allies could have broken it again. For one thing, Allied leaders would not have provided the resources when there was no guarantee, or even realistic hope, of useful results.