World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF THE DESERT: Failure of an Offensive

The War Office had apparently fumbled commanders again. In the fusty voice of an “official spokesman.” London announced last week that Lieut. General Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham, Commander of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert, had suffered a “serious overstrain,” had been replaced by Major General Neil Methuen Ritchie eight days after Britain’s Libyan offensive was launched. This may have been an admission that General Cunningham’s battle tactics* had failed. It was providing history with a scapegoat for the immediate failure of the British forces to clean the Axis from Libya.

With an eye on the Clausewitz theory that time and space are the underlying factors that govern strategy, Commander in Chief General Sir Claude John Ayre Auchinleck had taken plenty of time and space to prepare and deploy his forces for battle.

When General Cunningham took over the forces for the offensive, they had been placed in excellent position. But the moment the offensive began, plans went haywire, as they often do.

It was too early this week to say exactly where Cunningham failed or whether it was really he who really failed. Presumably his general and local tactics had failed in battle. It was General Auchinleck’s plan to have the Germans cut off from their supplies, retreat, then destroy them.

Timing of the various column movements was vital to such a plan. It was important that Cunningham get his forces around the Axis coast positions in time to cooperate with the southern forces that made the dash westward straight across the desert to Giálo, thence northward toward the shore between Bengazi and Tripoli. By the time the southern unit had reached the oasis at Giálo, the coastal forces were behind schedule, leaving the Giálo unit out on a limb. Though Ritchie took over on Nov. 26, only eight days after the offensive had begun, it was too late to repair the damage.

Second Push. The announcement of General Ritchie’s appointment was timed to coincide with Britain’s second offensive last week: from Tobruk westward. The offensive was comparatively successful. It swept 44 miles west of Tobruk this week, isolating German units at El Gazála. Axis pockets southeast of Tobruk were cleaned out by Australian and South African reserves brought up from the rear.

It was not by skill of maneuver and tactics that Britain was winning, however. It was by sheer doggedness. Every inch was fought for, and losses of both sides were high in proportion to the value of the ground.

Because the success of the next push—to Dérna or Bengazi—will directly reflect Ritchie’s ability, it will be the high spot of his career, and of the offensive. Neil Ritchie is only 44. If only because of his youth, he may do better than Cunningham, who is ten years his senior. But his career, from subaltern in the Black Watch at 17 to Major General at 43, has been almost too formal to promise the flashes of unorthodoxy which usually herald great commanders.

What young Ritchie may have to face at this moment is a renewed German air offensive. Last week the Luftwaffe was transferring some of its power from Russia to the Mediterranean. If the Germans laid off Russia to lay on Libya, they will make or break General Ritchie.

* Tactics are not to be confused with strategy. The German military writer Field Marshal General Kolmar von der Goltz, in On Military Leadership, draws the distinction: “Strategy concerns itself with those large-scale measures which serve to bring the forces into play at the decisive point under the most favorable conditions possible, while tactics relates to what is done in the engagement itself.” The British military writer Sir Edward Hamley says: “The theater of war is the province of strategy. The field of battle is the province of tactics.”