World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF AFRICA: Promissory Front

This week the Allies offered Hitler a second front. More important, the offer was made on terms which made it very nearly as painful for him to refuse as to accept.

Just at the time when Rommel’s remnants were fleeing before the British in Egypt (see p. 27), U.S. troops landed along the whole coast line of Vichy Morocco and Algeria. Instantly Hitler’s already serious problem of trying to keep an Axis foothold in Africa became just twice as serious.

In his broadcast from Munich (see p. 36) Hitler virtually confessed that he could not now meet the danger in Africa itself. He all but said that North Africa for the present must go by default to the Allies. The only alternative for him—and it may not be physically possible—will be to strip Europe of large numbers of Nazi troops, equipment and planes, both to reinforce Rommel and to form a new front in French Africa, perhaps to attack Gibraltar through Spain.

But Hitler did not tell his people what it will cost the Nazi cause to allow the Allies to gain undisputed possession of Vichy Africa. If that object is achieved —and its achievement may be far from easy—the good points of the Allied strategy are:

>The whole Axis foothold in Africa is likely to collapse. Allied troops can attack Triopoli by the easy route from Tunis. In that event Rommel, running before the British, cannot use the 600 miles of virtually waterless desert between Bengasi and Tripoli as a refuge in which to recover his strength—as he did last year.

>If Africa lost to the Axis one prong of the pincers (the other is in Russia) with which the Axis was preparing to pinch off the whole Middle East will have been destroyed.

>With the airports of French North Africa in Allied hands, land-based Allied planes will be able to defend British convoys headed eastward through the Mediterranean. With the rail and highway route from Casablanca to Tunis, the Allies will not need Mediterranean convoys —even fighters can be flown to Malta and Egypt by easy stages.

>Whether by using land transport or making it safe to send their convoys through the Mediterranean, the Allies will save a 12,000-mile voyage around Africa for troops and supplies. From a military standpoint, this saving will be the equivalent of raising hundreds of ships that Hitler’s U-boats have already sunk.

>Allied bases along the North African coast will place Germany’s advanced Mediterranean bases in Sardinia, Sicily and Crete in immediate danger. The Axis’ entire Mediterranean coast line may soon be bombed and raided; almost certainly, it will eventually be invaded.

>There will be an end to Hitler’s holding one front with a minimum number of men and machines while he fights on the other. If the Allies consolidate their hold on North Africa, the Axis will be subject to attack from Sicily to Murmansk: Hitler will have 10,000 miles of front to man and protect.

>To guard the whole Mediterranean frontier of Europe Hitler will have to draw anew on his military strength in Europe. He may be able to postpone the actual diversions, but he must now face the prospect. How far he will have to weaken his defenses in Western Europe, and whether he will have to draw from his Russia armies—for more planes, at least, he may have to turn to his Russian front where most of his strength and his main effort are now concentrated—are still matters of conjecture. Whatever his strength now, it will have to be spread thinner, thereby opening new opportunities for attack by the Allies.

The Problems. Such are the strategic possibilities of the Allies’ move into Vichy Africa. Realizing the possibilities may not be so easy as it looked the morning of the invasion. The Axis must still be cleaned out of the almost 1,000 miles of Libyan coast line.

To do so the Allies may have to sacrifice an air campaign of the size and vigor which otherwise could have been waged against continental Germany this winter. The African show must already have drawn many British and U.S. planes from Britain. Raids from Britain into Germany have not stepped up at the rate that might have been expected this fall. If the African campaign proves difficult, a real air front against Germany may be postponed indefinitely.

But the Allies’ biggest problem now is that Africa is a base for an Allied invasion of Southern Europe—but no more than a base—one which the Allies must now man and equip for offensive operations more difficult and probably more costly than any of their operations to date in Egypt, Morocco or Algiers. Alexandria is only 350 miles on the map from Crete; Algiers is only 350 miles from Italy’s Sardinia, 525 miles from Sicily, 700 from Italy’s southern toe. But, in military and naval miles, the Axis’ shore is many times farther from Allied Africa than Casablanca or Algiers was from Britain. The Allies must assume that even Italy’s coasts are or will be far more strongly defended, and that the Balkans and Crete will fall only to the heaviest air, land and sea assaults. The Allies’ campaign in Africa may develop into a real second front. But the Allies cannot assume that it will be a cheap second front.