SOUTHERN THEATRE: Winter in the Wilderness

(See Cover)

Through the squadron, like an exciting rumor through a bored crowd, ran the warning: enemy planes sighted. The carrier broke course and nosed into the breeze; the destroyers hung by her flanks watchfully. Three long-nosed fighters roared along the carrier’s broad flight deck and up into the sky. For ten minutes hundreds of eyes strained.

Suddenly one of the cruisers shuddered. About 200 yards astern of her a huge plume of foam scarred the blue of the Mediterranean and the blue of the southern sky. Other plumes from the same salvo walked out across the water. Every one a miss.

Spotters caught the enemy in focus. Archies opened up. The first roar had not died when a roar of British throats took its place. Down the sky like an aimless maple-seed pod fluttered a crippled Fiat. Two parachutes opened and floated down. They were seen to land on the sea, but the gear dragged the pilots down before a destroyer could gaff them.

To U. S. Correspondent Ralph Barnes of the New York Herald Tribune, who watched this brief action last week, this was stirring stuff. This was Great Britain, ruling the waves even in a sea which Romans called “ours.” Engagements like this had by last week confirmed Britons in their confidence—that peculiarly British sense of superiority which classifies all foreigners as “natives,” which makes Britons refuse to learn any language but their own, which in peacetime is simple bigotry, but in war becomes a kind of national virtue. The British were last week more sure than ever that the favorite vessel of the Axis, the airplane, was not necessarily superior to the proud conveyance of Drake, Nelson, Jellicoe. They were sure that Britain could not be brought to her knees until her Fleet was put out of action. And they were also sure that Adolf Hitler, who was mighty sick the first time he ever went to sea, and Benito Mussolini, who looks his most imposing pitching hay, were not the men to turn that trick on any body of water.

This attitude came into the open in Britain for the first time last week. Its emergence was due to three things: the amazing tenacity of the R. A. F. (see col. 1) the gales of autumn whisking the skirts of the Channel, and the reluctance of the Italian Fleet to do anything but play peekaboo. For over a year Britons had seen one victory after another go the enemy’s way. Last week for the first time they thought they saw a chance of carrying the war to the enemy.

Gap. They reasoned that this was still a war of blockade. Britain, with Canada and the U. S. behind her, was still blockading Hitler’s Europe, and, by the grip on Gibraltar and Suez, Mussolini’s Italy. The deadlock in the Battle of Britain, apparently, was about to bring a new Axis strategy into play against this blockade. Hitler undoubtedly visited Mussolini at Brenner Pass last week to talk strategy (see p. 39). German papers began to argue, not without a certain petulance, that Britain could be beaten without a costly invasion. Could it be possible that the war would move south for the winter? Britons hoped so—for this would give Britain’s Navy her first chance in the war for a real fight. In the Mediterranean, they were sure, Britain could and would assert her naval supremacy.

Naval rhymes with Wavell. Sir Archibald Percival Wavell is not a man of the sea; he is a soldier, expert in the warfare of that most unoceanic of all terrains, the desert. But by an irony of strategy, it appeared last week that he might be called upon to bear a major share in the maintenance of Britain’s vaunted naval supremacy.

Lieut. General Sir Archibald Wavell is Commander in Chief of Britain’s Army in the Middle East. The Axis strategy which seemed to be developing last week was a vast drive from all directions on Egypt—and Egypt means the Suez Canal. If Britain lost the Canal, her hold on the whole Eastern Mediterranean would be lost. Losing Suez and northeast Africa would mean the first major gap in the blockade. If the Axis should simultaneously drive for Gibraltar, the British Navy might have to abandon the Mediterranean, and it is even possible that a large body of the Fleet might be trapped. The naval and military campaigns in the Mediterranean were inextricably tied together. Mastery of the waters of the Mediterranean was very largely the problem of a landlubbing general.

Gentle Bloodhound. “Archie” Wavell’s Middle East experience spans 23 years. He is the foremost British savant on fighting in the wilderness, and wrote the Staff College handbook on the subject. He is also author of the standard work on the Palestine campaign in World War I, and of a biography of his hero and chief in that campaign, Lord Allenby. He participated in such ruthless suppression of native revolts in Palestine that his enemies called him “the greatest bloodhound” ever sent to put down the Arabs.

He is an unconventional theorist of war. “My ideal infantryman,” he says, “has the qualities of a successful poacher, a cat burglar, and a gunman.” As far back as 1935 he said: “No one should hold high rank in the Army without having at least six months’ really close association with the R. A. F., within a few years of his promotion. The commander of the future must be able to handle air forces with the same knowledge as forces on land. … It is this combination which will bring success in future wars.” As a Briton he should have lumped knowledge of sea, land and air warfare. Coordinating all three intelligently is certainly Britain’s problem.

Last week Sir Archibald returned to Cairo after flying visits to the various areas under his command—the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Palestine—where he conferred with local commanders and took in all he could with the one eye the Germans left him in World War I. Back at Cairo he settled down to busy conferences with Lieut. General Henry Maitland (“Jumbo”) Wilson, Commander in Chief in Egypt, with whom he lives in a flower-filled house right in the middle of Cairo’s Botancial Gardens on an island in the Nile. They feverishly mapped out Britain’s defenses in the areas where no flowers grow.

By last week summer was off the deserts of North Africa. Heat—sometimes as high as 125 degrees—still seemed a three-dimensional solid, heavy, immovable, pressing against cheeks and the soft places in soldiers’ wrists. But for the most part, “good” weather for fighting had come. For Italy, which had waited long, it was now or never; for Germany, stalling in the north, it might mean all or nothing. Sir Archibald and his aides expected action in the near future.

Encirclement. They knew just about what to expect, for geography canalizes desert warfare. Some of the enemy’s drives were already either under way or poised to strike. Month ago Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, Italy’s expert in African warfare, led the spearhead of a drive from Libya into Egypt. After his first crushing spurt, he had pegged in at Sidi Barrani (see map), and his forces had been consolidating themselves there ever since. The British were 80 miles east at Mersa Matruh, the outpost to which they had decided to retire, with tip & run tactics, whenever the drive from Libya materialized. To south and east, the Italians had already wiped out French Djibouti and British Somaliland, so as to clear the rear. This gave the Italians a strong clutch on the Red Sea’s mouth and western coast. In order further to dominate that sea, through which British supplies and reinforcements were still running last week, the Italians were preparing to hop on to Britain’s Perim Island, in the narrow Straits of Bab el Mandeb. An all-out dive-bombing assault would make Perim practically untenable. This week the Italians staged their first big bombing attack on the island.

Another Italian push, dormant at the moment, was already part way into Kenya. This drive had a double purpose—to keep the British from driving in at Ethiopia’s rear, to back up an Italian drive at the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’s rear. An attack on the Sudan, perhaps starting from Kassala, where Italian forces have long been massed, would probably aim at Khartoum, where the branches of the Nile converge.

For all practical purposes, the Nile is Egypt. All Italian efforts would be directed toward taking the river. Once the Nile’s three big cities—Alexandria, Cairo, Khartoum—were bagged, and the river crossed, Britain’s resistance in North Africa would be near its end.

Last week Rodolfo Graziani flew to Rome to get orders from his boss, who at Brenner Pass in an armored train had just got orders from his boss. The orders, if advices reaching London had any basis, delighted Mussolini and infuriated Graziani. II Duce had reason to be pleased: Herr Hitler reportedly told him that Germany would send substantial forces into the Southern Theatre for the winter. Marshal Graziani’s pique was due to the inference that the Italians, and specifically the Italian Command, were eunuchs in warfare, unable to do heavy jobs without some muscle to help them.

Drang Nach Süden. Adolf Hitler knew that a winter campaign in the South would have several advantages. His people and Army were both becoming restive for new triumphs. Of 212 divisions in all, probably not over 60 were useful to garrison the conquered territories. All the rest—about 150—might as well be put to some use. There were three things Germany very much wanted to get at: the oil fields of Iran and Iraq, which could supply Germany’s major shortage; Gibraltar, one of the keys to British sea power; and Dakar, a place of many potential uses (see map). A drive in the East could weaken the British Empire gravely. Meanwhile bombing would continue Britain’s terrible wearing down.

What form might Germany’s hibernal campaign take? Three routes were open: via Spain, via Italy, via the Balkans and Asia Minor. It appeared last week as though each route were primed; on the basis of past performance, the many-headed Nazi machine would probably use all three.

Neutral observers were not convinced by Axis assurances that despite the visit to Berlin and Rome of Don Ramón Serrano Suner, brother-in-law of Generalissimo Franco, Spain would continue nonbelligerent. Some 40,000 German “tourists” had filtered into Spain. Spanish popular agitation for the return of Gibraltar had been too well synchronized with Axis moves to be altogether spontaneous. It seemed extremely likely that the “Rock” was in for a winter of terrible poundings by the Luftwaffe and by artillery from Algeciras across the Straits. And if Gibraltar fell, it was further likely that Axis troops would go on to Morocco and Algeria.

Persistent reports reached London last week that German troops were moving through the Tirol, down Italy’s shank and off the toe to Sicily, where they were massing. From there it was expected that they would be transported to North Africa either by the hazardous sea route which the Italians use, or by air. London also heard that large parts of the Luftwaffe were destined for the Egyptian campaign, to give the Italian Army an overhead striking superiority something like that which the German Army used in the Polish campaign.

The third possibility, a drive down through the Balkans, over the Dardanelles and across Turkey (for strategy, see color map opposite p. 62), was somewhat more hypothetical—because of the unknown quantity, Russia. But Germany and Italy would like to have a go at bothersome Turkey. Excuses for a campaign in the Balkans were a dime a dozen. Italy had one all ready: border strife between Greece and Albania. Troop concentrations threatened a major short circuit at that partly burned-out fuse last week. The way had also been paved by the partition of Rumania and the abdication of King Carol. By last week the Iron Guard’s revolution in Rumania had been completed, and a full division of German troops was reported moving in (see p. 40).

It was by no means certain last week that Adolf Hitler had abandoned his plans to invade the British Isles. In fact British confidence that he had might be what he was waiting for. But it did seem certain that the war’s centre of gravity was tending south; that Germany would soon play some taking cards in the Mediterranean area. The worst that could happen would be everything at once: invasion of Britain, a Spanish-based blow at Gibraltar, a German-supported Blitzkrieg across Egypt to the Suez Canal, an Italian drive down the Nile, turbulence in the Balkans and a diversion through Turkey, blasts here and there at Perim, Dakar, perhaps at Singapore with the help of the eager little Japanese.

Could Britain take all that? By 1940 Adolf Hitler may no longer believe what he wrote in 1924. The London Daily Sketch recently attributed the following to Mein Kampf: “The British nation will … be considered as the most valuable ally in the world as long as it can be counted on to show that brutality and tenacity in its Government, as well as in the spirit of the broad masses, which enables it to carry through to victory any struggle that it once enters on, no matter how long such a struggle may last, or how great the sacrifice that may be necessary, or whatever the means that have to be employed; and all this even though the actual military equipment at hand may be utterly inadequate when compared with that of other nations.”

But before the winter is out, Adolf Hitler hopes that new actions will erase old words. For the military equipment of Sir Archibald Percival Wavell is already grossly inadequate compared with that of Graziani and the Italians. He is thought to be outnumbered between two and three to one in everything—number of troops, tanks, planes, big and little guns. If substantial forces were put into the opposite scale pan by Adolf Hitler, the weight of the enemy might become irresistible. Sir Archibald’s chances of holding out in the Southern Theatre would then be slenderer than Winston Churchill’s of holding out on the little island where the vines of empire have their root.