supply line (630 miles back to Mersa Matruh and the British railhead), and because the Middle East command was transferring many British troops to Greece.
The remaining Italian troops in Libya were 200 miles west of Sirte around Tripoli. At Rommel’s insistence, leading elements of three Italian divisions there began moving toward Sirte on February 14.
On the same day the first German troops—the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion and the antitank battalion of 5th Light Division—arrived at Tripoli on a transport. Rommel insisted, despite danger of air attack, on unloading the ship by searchlight throughout the night. The next morning the two German outfits, in their new tropical uniforms, paraded through Tripoli, then moved off to Sirte, arriving twenty-six hours later.
Rommel had already grasped the essence of the war in Libya and Egypt: everything depended upon mobility.
“In the North African desert,” he wrote, “nonmotorized troops are of practically no value against a motorized enemy, since the enemy has the chance, in almost every position, of making the action fluid by a turning movement around the south.”
This was why the Italians had been beaten almost without a fight—they had moved largely on foot; the British were in vehicles. Nonmotorized forces could be used only in defensive positions, Rommel saw. Yet such positions were of little consequence, because enemy motorized units could surround them and force them to surrender, or bypass them. In other words, foot soldiers in the desert had no impact beyond the reach of their guns.
Rommel discerned that desert warfare was strangely similar to war at sea. Motorized equipment could move at will over it and usually in any direction, much as ships could move over oceans. Rommel described the similarity thus: “Whoever has the weapons with the greatest range has the longest arm, exactly as at sea. Whoever has the greater mobility … can by swift action compel his opponent to act according to his wishes.”
The Italians were discouraged, and little interested in challenging the British, while Rommel had only two battalions of 5th Light Division. The whole division couldn’t get there until mid-April, and Rommel’s main striking force, 15th Panzer Division, would take till the end of May to assemble.
Rommel knew that Hitler’s interest in North Africa was limited to helping the Italians hold Libya. Otherwise, he would have provided more adequate forces. However, Rommel, who had won Germany’s highest decoration for valor in World War I (the Pour le Merite, or “Blue Max”), was a resourceful and determined officer, not deterred by obstacles. No one knew it at the moment, but Erwin Rommel was one of the greatest generals of modern times. Moreover, he possessed a burning ambition to succeed.
Rommel decided to use the modest tools on hand to strike a surprise blow at the British, who were somewhat complacently sitting between El Agheila and Agedabia, sixty miles farther northeast. General O’Connor had gone back to Egypt, succeeded by Lieutenant General Sir Philip Neame, who had little experience in desert warfare. General Wavell had replaced the experienced 7th Armored Division (the “Desert Rats”) with half of the raw 2nd Armored Division, just arrived from England, while the other half had been sent to Greece. He had also replaced the seasoned 6th Australian Division with the 9th Australian Division, but, because of supply difficulties, part of the division had been retained at Tobruk, 280 air miles northeast.
Wavell thought the few Italians still in Tripolitania could be disregarded. And though he’d received intelligence reports that the Germans were sending “one armored brigade,” Wavell concluded, on March 2, 1941, “I do not think that with this force the enemy will attempt to recover Benghazi.”
That was a reasonable conclusion. No ordinary general would attack with such a small force. But Rommel was not an ordinary general.
Since none of his tanks had arrived, Rommel got a workshop near Tripoli to produce large numbers of dummy tanks, which he mounted on Volkswagens. These small vehicles served as the jeeps of the German army. They looked deceptively like tanks—at least to RAF reconnaissance pilots—and gave the British command pause.
Meantime Rommel moved up the two German battalions and his dummy tanks to Mugtaa, twenty miles west of El Agheila. Elements of two Italian divisions, the Brescia and Pavia, followed, along with the Ariete, Italy’s only armored division in Africa, which had just eighty tanks, most of them obsolete light models.
General Neame, suspicious of the buildup at Mugtaa, modest as it was, moved the main British body back to Agedabia, seventy miles northeast, leaving only a small holding force at El Agheila.
On March 11, the 5th Panzer Regiment of 5th Light Division—the “armored brigade” Wavell had heard about—arrived at Tripoli. This regiment, the only armored force that Africa Corps was to get until the 15th Panzer Division arrived, had 120 tanks, half of them medium Mark IIIs and IVs, the rest light tanks with only a limited combat role. Although 5th Light was not a panzer division, it had the normal complement of tanks of a panzer division in 1941. This total, however, was only a little more than half the number Rommel had commanded in his 7th Panzer Division in the 1940 campaign. After the French campaign, Hitler doubled the number of panzer divisions, but gave each division fewer tanks.
On March 19, Rommel flew to Hitler’s headquarters to get fresh instructions. Walther von Brauchitsch, commander in chief of the army, and Franz Halder, chief of staff, told Rommel there was no intention of striking a decisive blow in Africa, and he could expect no reinforcements.
Rommel tried to convince them that the weakness of the British in North Africa should be exploited. But his pleas fell on deaf ears. Brauchitsch and Halder were preoccupied with preparations for Barbarossa and distracted by the campaign against Greece about to commence. To them, Libya was a sideshow to a sideshow.
Rommel wanted two additional panzer divisions to complete conquest of Egypt. It was obvious that transporting them to Tripoli was the key problem, and to solve it Malta had to be neutralized by severe bombing attacks or seized in an air-sea operation. But Halder chose to ignore this unmistakable fact and asked Rommel how two additional divisions could be maintained and supplied. Rommel, exasperated, replied: “I don’t give a damn. That’s your affair!”
Back in Africa, Rommel sent his reconnaissance battalion to seize El Agheila on March 24. The small British force put up little fight, and withdrew to Mersa el Brega, twenty miles east. This was a potentially formidable position. Mersa el Brega was on a commanding height near the sea, while to the south was the Bir es Suera salt marsh, and south of the marsh was the extensive, sandy Wadi Faregh. Both were almost impassable for vehicles.
Rommel could wait for the rest of his troops to arrive at the end of May, or attack with the small force he had in place. For him the decision was easy: attack. If he waited, the British would have time to build a powerful defensive line.
When elements of 5th Light Division struck on March 31, the British hurled them back. In the afternoon Rommel found a way around the British between the Via Balbia and the sea. That night 8th Machine Gun Battalion’s vehicles crashed through the gap in a headlong rolling attack, flanked the British, and caused them to beat a hasty retreat, leaving behind fifty Bren gun-carriers and thirty lorries.
Luftwaffe reports showed that the British were pulling back from Agedabia. It was an opportunity Rommel couldn’t resist. He at once ordered his forces to advance on Agedabia, gaining it on April 2.
Neame, with Wavell’s permission, decided to evacuate Benghazi and retreat eastward. The abrupt withdrawal was a bonanza for Rommel, and he rushed to exploit it.
“I decided to stay on the heels of the retreating enemy, and make a bid to seize the whole of Cyrenaica at one stroke,” Rommel wrote.
Now commenced one of the most dramatic running battles in world history, in which an inferior force attacked and completely routed a superior enemy. Rommel ordered the reconnaissance battalion to drive straight toward Benghazi on the Via Balbia behind the retreating British, while Ariete Division’s reconnaissance battalion was to rush across the chord of the Cyrenaican bulge to get to the sea and cut off retreat before the British arrived.
Rommel made the decision to cut through the Cyrenaican interior despite warnings from Italian generals that the route was a death trap. Rommel examined the country by air, found it good for driving, and the Italians’ fears baseless.
Rommel learned that the British had already abandoned Benghazi, and at once ordered the 3rd
