For a period of some twenty-eight months of the Second World War, from February 1941 to May 1943, the battlefield fought upon by one German army extended across twenty degrees of longitude and through a sickle of Arab countries from Egypt to Tunisia. That German formation was conceived as a small contingent in approximately divisional strength whose task it would be to support the Italians and to act as a block against a British advance. It was to be subordinate to the Italians, on whose colonial territories it would serve and who had been fighting the British for nearly a year. This small unit rapidly developed to become the spearhead of Axis advances, commanded by a man whose plans and strategies were carried through often against the orders of his superiors in Libya, Rome, and Berlin. The German Africa Corps, as it was first known and under which title it has become a legend, rose in status to become Panzer Group Africa, Panzer Army Africa, and, finally in the closing months of the war, Army Group Africa.
But by whatever name it was known and under whatever conditions it fought this contingent, almost invariably inferior in numbers and supplies to its principal enemy Britain, was further burdened by being shackled to the less military potent Italian Army.
In order to understand what was so important about North Africa that years of fighting had to be conducted across its hot and desert wastes we must first consider the major combatant nations in relation to the area of the southern Mediterranean. The Germans, with whom this book principally deals, were drawn into that region because the demands of alliance compelled her to aid the weaker partner, Italy, who was there because of her geographical position. The presence of the other main protagonist, Great Britain, whom both Axis partners were seeking to drive from the Mediterranean, was due to Imperial policy. Britain's position needs to be explained in detail for the relationship of the Mediterranean with British foreign policies cannot be too highly stressed. To the Italians it was Mare Nostrum, but to the British it was the short sea route to the Imperial possessions in the Far East. The great inland sea and the land area surrounding it bound the continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia; there was no other region of the world which held this special strategic position of being at the epicentre of a world-wide war.
For more than two hundred years British Imperial strategy had been a maritime policy based upon British control of the seas. Through this control any land-based enemy could, in time of war, be blockaded into submission. Alternatively, being vulnerable to sea-borne attack at many points of his domain he could be financially ruined by being forced to the expense of maintaining a very large army to defend his territory against such attacks. British sea control would, at some time during that war, allow the Imperial strategists to establish a base convenient to some point at which the enemy was weakest and there, by rapid build-up, convert this into a springboard from which an assault on the mainland could be made. Then would be fought the decisive battle in conjunction with Britain's allies; a pre-requisite this for her own man-power resources were too small to allow her to dispose both a large navy and army.
Beginning in the eighteenth century Britain established her presence in the Mediterranean by the capture of Gibraltar and Minorca. A century later Malta was occupied and during the decades of the nineteenth century, as more bases were acquired at Alexandria and in Cyprus, the Royal Navy con-rolled the Mediterranean and thus the land and sea routes to the East. The British position was expressed in a single sentence by that great member of the Imperial Defence Committee, Lord Esher. 'Great Britain', he wrote, 'either is or is not one of the great powers of the world. Her position in this respect depends solely upon sea command - and upon sea command in the Mediterranean.'
In 1940 the Mediterranean and specifically North Africa was the only military theatre in which the British forces were fighting the enemy on land and the operations which were being carried out there, from the time of Italy's entry into the war until the surrender of the Axis armies in Tunisia, can be seen as a continuation of the traditional British policy. A proper acknowledgment must be made to each of the British bases there - Gibraltar, Malta, and Egypt - for these were the vital links in the Imperial chain which Britain strove to keep intact and which the Axis partners sought to break; but Egypt was the key to the whole southern Mediterranean. German grand strategy considered the possibility of a military pincer advancing along the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean and aimed at the capture of the Middle East. The northern arm had a choice of three different routes along which it could thrust: through Turkey, from Crete into Syria, or else through die Caucasus; but on the southern shore the pincer arm had, of necessity, to go via Egypt for there was no other route. Barring the path of the Axis thrusts stood the forces of Great Britain and her Empire and the failure of Germany and Italy to capture and hold Egypt was a strategic defeat of immense importance.
The course and the outcome of the campaign in the desert was influenced, decided is perhaps the better word, by conclusions reached and orders given by the chief political leaders of Germany, Italy, and Great Britain, each of whom was thousands of miles removed from the battlefields and not one of whom comprehended the peculiar characteristics of desert warfare nor sympathised with the difficulties of their respective commanders in the field.
Mussolini grasped the political need to hold the Italian African empire but n his Army he had a tool which was too weak to carry out his grandiose plans. Churchill, the inheritor of Britain's traditional policies, was aware of the importance of the Middle East but, refusing to accept the limitations of logistics, interfered with the plans which his generals on the spot had drawn up and demanded offensives or expeditions for which the British Army in the desert, for all the Imperial resources upon which it could draw, was too weak to undertake with any guarantee of success, at least until the middle of 1942.
Hitler, a central European, had little idea of the Mediterranean strategy and thus he had no detailed, long term plans for the German contingent which he sent to aid the Italians, except the vague concept of a southern pincer arm. What reason compelled him to support his weak ally? Hitler knew that the Italian Army and Air Force needed to be completely re-equipped if they were to play their part in a highly technical and industrial war, just as he knew that Italy had no natural mineral deposits and needed to import most of her basic raw materials. His Axis partner considered from an economic and military point of view was a broken reed and yet Hitler supported her. The answer to this question lies, perhaps, in the emotional debt which the German Chancellor owed to the Italian Duce. In 1938 Mussolini had stood apart when Austria was invaded and Hitler's telegram to his ally at that time 'Mussolini, for this I shall never forget you', found expression in later years when the need to help Italy arose. Hitler remained loyal to the Rome—Berlin Axis and was determined to maintain it even though his partner was a burden. This political line was echoed by his military subordinates who used the Führer's loyalty as an argument to defend political and military decisions which had been made. Even as late as December 1942, when it was clear that Italy was collapsing and that the whole area of the southern Mediterranean was passing under Allied control, Kesselring, the German Supreme Commander South, defended Hitler's decision. During a discussion with Buerker, commanding 10th Panzer Division, Kesselring was asked point-blank why the Tunisian bridgehead was not evacuated. Buerker pointing out that German-occupied Europe was proving too big to be successfully defended then asked what was so important about Africa that it had to be held at any price? Kesselring echoed Hitler's credo that to give up Africa would present the Italians with an opportunity to leave the Axis partnership.