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The Fall of Goering and Udet’s Mediterranean Strategy of 1940-41



Chapter I: The Siege of Britain, June 1940 - May 1941


It was the summer of 1940 and the fascist legions of German dictator Adolf Hitler stood victorious over the blackened bones of what had once beenthe old order of Europe which he had shaken to its core. Hitler had risen to power as the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, commonly abbreviated to NSDAP or Nazi party for the opponents of the National Socialists. Hitler, after World War I, found himself in a turbulent political climate that took shape in the wake of Germany’s surrender in 1918. The new Germany was unable to deal with the massive economic problems induced by the burdensome war reparations which caused massive hyperinflation. The army was limited to a mere 100.000 men, the navy to a meagre six battleships which were not to exceed 10.000 tonnes and which was stripped of its fearsome submarine fleet and then there was the decimation of the air force to nothing which completed the picture along with 132 billion German marks in war reparations and cession of territory to Poland, France, Belgium and even neutral Denmark. Germany was also threatened by communist revolution although the army remained loyal to the new Weimar Republic and finally squashed the uprising in 1919. The Versailles Treaty was a humiliation for what had once been the dominant power in Europe and one of the strongest countries in the world, a genuine superpower. Germany and its national pride, not to mention the economy, couldn’t handle this and an era of political convulsions wracked with internal instability and with communist revolution lurking around the corner, began. This instability becomes noticeable when you look at the fact that in the period 1918-1933, Germany had about twenty different. governments. The Austrian corporal rose as an inspiring speaker whose populist rhetoric struck a chord in his home base of Bavaria and later in Germany. After a failed coup with war hero Ludendorff, he was imprisoned, but released again in 1925 to continue his rise to power.

In 1933, he took over Germany with 44% of popular vote after the rather dubious Reichstag fire of which Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe was accused. He embarked on a massive rearmament program and ignored the Treaty of Versailles which ended up in the bin. In 1935 he reinstated conscription, in 1936 he remilitarized the Rhineland, in 1938 he annexed Austria in the Anschluss after Mussolini had foiled a previous attempt in 1934 when he was still friends with France and Britain as this was before the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. He continued with demanding the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia as it was largely ethnically German. He was granted this region in the Munich Conference only to invade the rest of the now defenceless rump state which ended any trust in Hitler and explains the subsequent Anglo-French reaction to his next aggression. When he invaded Poland in 1939, war was on. In a lightning campaign he defeated Poland while France and Britain did nothing. They stood by idly in a phoney war. In April 1940, Hitler attacked neutral Denmark and Norway in operation Weserübung to safeguard the flow of iron ore from Sweden through the ice-free port of Narvik. These lightning campaigns and stunning victories culminated in the Battle of France. In the so-called Sickelschnitt plan in which German panzers penetrated into the Ardennes and threatened to cut the Allies in half. French forces were routed in an enormous victory of unprecedented scale and final proof that blitzkrieg worked while the German air force pounded them with impunity. It was now nearly the end of June, and Germany now controlled France, the Low Countries, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Bohemia-Moravia and Austria. The Channel was all that separated the vaunted Wehrmacht from Britain where Prime Minister Winston Churchill prepared for the inevitable battle for air superiority and for Britain which, in the end, wouldn't come or so it seemed.

On June 20th 1940, Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering, leader of the powerful and modern Luftwaffe, suddenly collapsed while having dinner and it turned out that he had suffered a minor stroke which would leave him incapacitated for the near future and utterly incapable of his enormous task of leading the German air force to more victories again according to his doctors. This left the powerful German air arm which had wreaked so much havoc with its modern Stuka dive bombers and Messerschmitt fighters leaderless and one man stepped up to take over from Goering, a man who would ultimately prove to change history entirely by fighting a very different campaign than his predecessor had envisioned. His name was Ernst Udet who was already a colonel-general and director-general of equipment and a major proponent of dive bombers, claiming even that he had introduced it. Udet was an ace from the First World War in which he had scored no less than 62 victories, a number surpassed only by his commander, Manfred von Richthofen, better known as the Red Baron. He was also the youngest ace to survive World War I at the age of 22 when the war ended. He was not a political man, but had joined the Nazi party in 1933 after Goering had promised him two US aircraft, two Curtis Hawk II biplanes which he gladly accepted. He was involved in the building of the Luftwaffe since the beginning and knew its limits and already knew that gaining and maintaining air superiority over Britain was an impossibility. The German air force lacked the range to establish air superiority over anything but southern England and this task would be hard enough and would cost a lot of planes and would be only temporary as the Luftwaffe couldn’t keep such an effort up forever. Any pilots lost over Britain, would be captives lost forever. From his navy colleagues, he had understood that any invasion would be suicide as the invasion force would either be destroyed at sea or cut off, losing Germany many valuable river barges which would wreck Germany’s economy which needed them for transport of raw materials like coal. Even attempting to gain air superiority alone seemed like a Sisyphus task.

Udet went to see Hitler on June 30th as he returned from France which had surrendered on June 25th and used these arguments to convince him into a Mediterranean campaign for 1940-41 which would also conveniently support Hitler’s Italian colleague fascist dictator Mussolini and would entail the benefit that many lost pilots could be rescued, unlike any pilots lost over British skies. He also factored in that the British wouldn’t anticipate such a move. The campaign to establish air superiority over Britain which was scheduled to take place in July, was called off by Hitler on July 2nd in favour of new strategy dubbed the ‘Siege of Britain’ strategy which was to cut off the British motherland from its empire thought up by Udet among others. Of the 4000 planes that would have participated in this operation, half were designated to partake in combat in the Mediterranean theatre, but when Udet arrived on the scene in Sicily, he found that Italian facilities were woefully inadequate to house and support such a large and modern air force. Udet requested the Heer for engineers and received them as Hitler’s last directive made the efforts in this region paramount for 1940 at the least even though he was disappointed with the lack of progress. Nevertheless, the Northern African campaign was about to commence. Battalions of engineers arrived on Sicily over the course of July 1940 and began expanding on existing Italian airfields of the Regia Aeronautica and also commenced with the construction of new ones, which would delay the planned invasion of Malta to October at the earliest.

In the meantime, Udet launched a small deception campaign in conjunction with his colleagues in the Kriegsmarine which was called Operation Seagull or Unternehmen Möwe in German which was part of Udet’s strategy to confuse the British as to where the next blow would land. This ruse consisted of building a number of mock-up landing craft to make them believe an invasion was pending, a view augmented by a few well-placed air raids against British coastal cities and radar installations along the south coast of the island kingdom, leading the British Royal Air Force and Navy leadership to believe an invasion was in the works to which they responded by concentrating more and more planes and ships in the British Isles. This was what part of the other half of the aforementioned 4000 aircraft originally intended for the establishing of air superiority over Britain was used for. The remainder was relegated to air defence duties so that any reprisal bombing campaign against German cities would end up as a bloodbath. Even with the now obvious build-up of troops concentrations in Sicily and the build-up of an aerial force, the British still had to invest in air defence as they couldn’t ignore the enormous amount of planes sitting there in northern France. And as far as they could tell, the Germans could strike anywhere in the Mediterranean although option Malta dawned on some. In the meantime, the first elements of the Deutsche Afrika Korps arrived in Tripoli under the leadership of a young commander who had distinguished himself in France as leader of the 7th panzer division or Ghost Division: Erwin Rommel. They arrived in the shape of the 5th Light Division which bolstered the Italian Tenth Army.

On November 1st 1940, the Germans were finally ready to execute Operation Hercules together with the Italians, an operation that is better known as the invasion of Malta. Hundreds of German dive bombers, bombers and fighter craft took off from nearby Sicily and attacked the unsuspecting garrison which they soon ground into the dust as they quickly achieved air superiority over the little island which had a much smaller air force defending it, a force that was easily vanquished for minimal losses. Air supremacy over Malta was a fact in a matter of hours and soon the second wave arrived, now unopposed by the normally so formidable Royal Air Force. The island’s defences and any military installations of any significance were now being bombed by the versatile Ju 88 bomber, which could also double as a night fighter, fighter bomber and dive bomber, and the German bomber fleet’s workhorse, the Heinkel He 111, with impunity in a sky clear of British fighters as the RAF was spread thin to defend both Britain and the entire Mediterranean. With Malta bombed into ruin, the invasion could begin the following day while over 1500 miles away, Churchill was woken up with the news that Malta was under attack. On November 2nd, the Germans landed two airborne divisions behind Valetta by parachute to seize airfields so heavier equipment could be flown in, albeit at relatively high losses. In the meantime, the Regia Marina with air cover from Sicily, landed three Italian assault divisions on the island. The garrison resisted bravely, but they were hopelessly outnumbered and the island was declared secure in the early morning of November 4th.

Rommel, in the meantime, awaited the arrival of more reinforcements now that the major logistical bottleneck of Malta had been removed. Leaving Malta a British base would have been detrimental as in its function as naval and aerial base, it could disrupt the flow of supplies to the point that Rommel would get only half of what he was asking for, or so post-war estimates said. Now the problem was ameliorated although not gone as Libya’s limited port facilities and its one single railroad were still inadequate. Rommel had requested for engineers to address the problem and expand the port facilities although that would take months, a period that he wasn’t going to wait. The work being done did somewhat improve his supply situation although it would never be ideal and so he could only wait for more panzers and troops to come in so he could begin. By late December, the Africa Corps numbered a total of four panzer divisions which Rommel estimated to be the maximum size sustainable and a joint Italo-German offensive was begun which reached Sidi Barrani where Graziani wanted to halt to await supplies and consolidate positions. Rommel, however, barged on against orders in an unauthorized offensive which irritated Mussolini who felt that Rommel was robbing him of his glory. Hitler authorized this attack and Mussolini reluctantly ordered Graziani to follow suit. The British, in the meantime, were caught off guard as they had been told by their screening force that the Axis advance had halted at Sidi Barrani and was ordered to wait there. They were totally surprised when Rommel’s forces showed up at Mersa Matruh by January 20th 1941 and routed their unprepared forces which was composed of the 7th Armoured Division and the 4th Indian Infantry Division under generals Richard O’Connor and William Gott. They retreated in disorder, losing a lot of equipment in one of the blackest days of the British Army. Mersa Matruh fell to Rommel’s forces in one fell swoop, paving the way toward El Alamein to which Mersa Matruh was the end terminus of the railway line running through El Alamein. The town itself was rather insignificant, but south lay the wide open Qattara depression which was suitable for Rommel’s beloved flanking manoeuvres. Fortunately for them, they received a slight reprieve as Rommel was forced to stop because he had outrun his supply lines and had halted before El Alamein, a recurring problem for the Africa Corps. It was a short reprieve. New supplies reached him and elements of the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica arrived in Libya to provide ample air support for the Italo-German troops.

In mid February, Rommel took the initiative once again and the panzers rolled forward to El Alamein again to resume the lightning war, but the defences of the town were far from finished and not yet ready to deal with Rommel’s tanks which simply outflanked the unfinished defensive lines and subsequently attacked El Alamein. British forces, by now, had somewhat regained their composure from their defeat at Mera Matruh and put up an organized resistance which inflicted high casualty rates on the Africa Corps although victory was not in doubt and British troops left El Alamein in an orderly, but bitter retreat unlike the last time when they evacuated in panic. This costly victory, however, forced Rommel to halt his advance toward the Suez Canal again to await reinforcements and repairs since by now his panzers were slowly beginning to show signs of wear and tear due to the inhospitable desert climate which mainly effected the engines which tended to get clogged up. Breakdowns were becoming a common problem for him and his troops although morale in the Africa Corps remained high with yet another victory under their belts, although Rommel understood quite well that they had to move on and not allow the British to reinforce their position in Egypt as new troops were arriving from other countries of the British Commonwealth. Rommel pressed on toward Alexandria in late March, early April and hopes arose in Berlin where Hitler was already preparing his speech for when the Suez Canal fell although it wouldn’t be that easy as new commander Sir Claude Auchinleck used what he had to mount a fierce resistance in the barren, desolate deserts. After a long journey, Rommel arrived and took Alexandria, the fabled city founded by Alexander the Great. The key of his successes lay, for a part, in his brazen armoured attacks and inventive tactics, but also in the effective use of air support. The Germans and Italians enjoyed air superiority over much of the Mediterranean Sea which they dominated from Malta. Without this crucial key factor, Rommel could never have kept on winning while sustaining these heavy losses.

After an exhausting conquest with the loss of more than a quarter of all his tanks to both enemy fire and breakdown, Rommel reached the Suez Canal, a highly propagandized event in Nazi Germany which celebrated this victory over Britain. Winston Churchill, on the other hand, had nothing to revel about as he had just suffered a major defeat as he was cut off from Britain’s empire and was nervously contemplating what possibilities he still had left. Hitler himself was happy with this latest conquest although slightly disappointed at the losses and the fact that he would have to postpone Operation Barbarossa, the planned invasion of the Soviet Union, which he had been preparing since December, to June at the earliest. With the Suez Canal and Malta in German hands, the Axis now dominated the eastern Mediterranean as the only way in was past the gauntlet at Malta where the Axis had full air superiority with planes stationed on the island itself and in Sicily and Vichy French Tunisia. The British had to deeply reconsider their options and the decision to fight on in the light of these events as Hitler dispatched two squadrons of Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers and two fighter squadrons of Messerschmitt Bf-109s to French Syria to harass the British in Iraq. Many feared an invasion of the Middle East even though Germany in reality couldn’t conduct a large campaign so far away from its supply base. Nevertheless, Britain was in an unenviable position and some began to move against the stubborn Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
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