How Hitler Could Have Won World War II

11 TO AND FRO IN THE DESERT

WITH THE FAILURE OF ROMMEL’S ATTACKS AGAINST TOBRUK AND THE REFUSAL of Hitler to reinforce Africa Corps, a stalemate descended over North Africa in the spring of 1941. Rommel didn’t have enough forces to advance beyond the Egyptian frontier, and the British didn’t have enough power to relieve Tobruk.

However, Winston Churchill, unlike the German high command, recognized the importance of the Suez Canal, and ran great risks to hold it. To improve the strength of the Middle East commander, General Sir Archibald Wavell, he directed that a five-ship convoy with 295 tanks and forty-three Hurricane fighter planes be run directly through the Mediterranean, instead of around the Cape of Good Hope. He wrote the British Chiefs of Staff on April 20, 1941, that the war in the Middle East and saving the Suez Canal “all may turn on a few hundred armored vehicles. They must if possible be carried there at all costs.” Aided by misty weather, the convoy got through to Alexandria on May 12 without Axis attacks, but lost one ship with fifty-seven tanks to a mine in the Sicilian Narrows.

Wavell didn’t wait for the tanks to get to the front. He launched his first effort to relieve Tobruk, Operation Brevity, on May 15, sending twenty-six Matilda tanks in support of the 22nd Guards Brigade in a direct assault against enemy forces guarding Sollum and Halfaya Pass along the coast. Sollum and Halfaya were the only places along the Libya-Egypt frontier where troops could cross the 600-foot escarpment that stretches from Sollum southeastward into Egypt. Meanwhile, twenty-nine cruiser tanks with a Support Group of motorized infantry and artillery moved around the desert flank to the south and tried to get on the Axis rear.

The British seized Halfaya Pass, losing seven Matildas in the process. However, threats of German counterattacks on the flank caused the British to withdraw, leaving a small garrison at the pass. Rommel launched a sudden converging attack on May 27 and recaptured the pass. He dug in four high-velocity 88-millimeter antiaircraft guns, which had emerged as Germany’s best tank-killers. The guns, their barrels horizontal with little visible above ground, were to be of great importance in the next British effort, Operation Battleaxe.

Wavell planned Battleaxe as two separate operations. In the first, an infantry force, supported by half the British armor, a brigade of Matildas, was to seize Halfaya, Sollum, and Fort Capuzzo, eight miles to the west. In the second, the remaining armor was to cover the desert flank to the south to guard against the panzer regiment Rommel had posted there. Rommel’s other panzer regiment was near Tobruk and could move as needed.

Wavell’s plan betrayed the ambivalence about armor that bedeviled the British in North Africa. He split his armor into two separate forces, neither of which could support the other. Yet Rommel could send his second panzer regiment quickly to reinforce his first.

Another mistake of the British was their misunderstanding of the role of the 88s at Halfaya. British doctrine was largely fixed on the idea of tank versus tank battles, whereas Rommel used antitank guns to the maximum degree possible, holding his tanks back for decisive strikes or movements.

When the Matildas attacked Halfaya—dubbed by British soldiers as “Hellfire Pass”—on June 15, 1941, the commander radioed back his last message: “They are tearing my tanks to bits.” Only one of thirteen Matildas survived the trap of the four 88s. The attack collapsed.

The Germans also mounted four 88s and 50-millimeter antitank guns on Hafid Ridge, a few miles southwest of Capuzzo. When the British cruiser tanks coming around the southern flank reached Hafid, the German gun trap stopped them cold. By now most of Rommel’s forward panzer regiment had arrived, and had threatened an attack on the flank of the armored brigade, inducing Wavell to pull it back into Egypt.

By nightfall, the British had lost more than half their tanks, mostly to fire from the 88s and antitank guns, while Rommel’s tank strength had been little affected.

Rommel had learned something the British had not grasped about desert warfare: that attrition or wearing down of an enemy force and destruction of the enemy’s organic cohesion had to be the tactical aims. In other environments where few units were mechanized, like Poland in 1939 and western Europe in 1940, the greatest danger a force could face was being surrounded. When encircled, and subjected to fire from all sides, a force tended to disintegrate, and could be destroyed or forced to surrender.

In the desert, surrounded motorized forces nearly always could mass at a single point and break out, thereby nullifying what elsewhere would be a devastating trap.

Rommel accordingly concentrated on winning battles of attrition and shattering the enemy’s organization. He came up with a five-point method of doing this. A commander, he wrote, must (1) concentrate his forces, while trying to split the enemy forces and destroy them at different times; (2) protect his supply lines, while cutting the enemy’s; (3) attack enemy armor with antitank guns, reserving his own tanks for the final blow; (4) operate near the front so as to make immediate decisions when tactical conditions change; (5) achieve surprise, maintain great speed of movement, and overrun disorganized enemy formations without delay. Speed is everything, Rommel wrote. And, after dislocating the enemy, he must be pursued at once and never be allowed to reorganize.

Rommel had only one “secret” weapon, the 88-millimeter antiaircraft (AA) gun that he and other German generals discovered in the 1940 campaign could blast through 83 millimeters of armor at 2,000 yards. This made the 88 the most formidable antitank weapon on either side. The British had a comparable high-velocity AA gun of about the same caliber (3.7 inches), which could have been as effective, but they did not use it against tanks.

Rommel also had the 50-millimeter antitank (AT) gun, which slowly replaced the poor 37-millimeter gun developed before the war. The 50-millimeter gun could penetrate 50 millimeters of armor at 1,000 yards. Although the Matilda with its heavy frontal armor was largely invulnerable to this gun, the more lightly armored cruisers could often be stopped, especially at close range. Both the 88 and the 50-millimeter AT gun could fire solid shot, to cut through armor, or high explosive, which could destroy or neutralize British AT weapons or crews.

By comparison, the British two-pounder (40-millimeter) AT gun was ineffective. It fired only solid shot, requiring a direct hit to destroy enemy AT weapons, and could penetrate merely the thinner side plates of armor at ranges below 200 yards. The British 25-pounder (87-millimeter) gun-howitzer, a superb field artillery piece, had to be pressed into service as an antitank weapon, though often at the expense of protecting infantry. Only in the spring of 1942 did the British begin to receive the six-pounder (57-millimeter) AT gun, which fired high-explosive as well as solid shot and had 30 percent greater penetration than the German 50-millimeter gun.

The British took a long time recognizing that Rommel was sending antitank guns against their tanks. In offensive or attack situations, Rommel leapfrogged the comparatively nimble 50-millimeter AT guns from one shielded vantage point to another, while keeping his tanks stationary and below the horizon. Once the AT guns were established, they protected the tanks as they swept forward.

In defensive situations, Rommel tried to bait or lure the British. He sent light tanks forward to contact the enemy, then retire. The typical British response was to mount a “cavalry” charge. But since visibility was obscured by stirred up dust and sand, British tankers usually did not see the 50-millimeter AT guns waiting in ambush in hollows and draws, nor the “gun line” of 88s drawn up at the rear. The 50s picked off British tanks that got within range, while the 88s took on the advancing enemy armor at distances far beyond the capacity of the tanks’ two-pounder (40-millimeter) guns to respond. The British added to the success of Rommel’s tactics by usually committing their armor piecemeal, mostly single units, instead of full brigades, and never massed brigades.

In addition to halving their armor by dividing their tanks between cruisers and infantry or “I” tanks, the British made two additional mistakes: they persisted in forming “support groups” and they dispersed their armor widely.

A support group of combined infantry and artillery units had successfully blocked the retreat of the Italians at Beda Fomm in February 1941. Its success led to repetition. The British saw no need to include tanks, as the Germans did with their Kampfgruppen or battle groups, which could take on any enemy force. As a result support groups had to depend upon a few 25-pounder howitzers and two-pounder AT guns, which were not always sufficient against strong German or German-backed Italian forces.

The British dispersed their tanks because it was impossible to conceal armor in the desert from the air. Rommel tried to practice the opposite policy, drawing together every possible tank and gun to work against a single objective—which, because of British dispersion, was often a fragment of total British armored strength.

Finally, the British failed to copy the Stuka dive-bomber, which was in effect mobile artillery that could deliver fire on the point a forward force wished to destroy, or through which it wished to advance. The dive-bomber offered the vanguard of an attacking force a way to eliminate an enemy strongpoint shortly after its discovery without having to bring up more weapons. If tanks could not knock out such a point, the only other way to break it was to advance field artillery, a time-consuming job that often gave the enemy the chance to strengthen his position or move.

Since the start of World War II and the unveiling of blitzkrieg with tanks and dive-bombers, the offensive had dominated the defensive. This period was now coming to a close. The inherent superiority of the defense over the offense was being reasserted. It had marked World War I and had been brought on by the great power of defensive weapons like field fortifications, artillery, and the machine gun.

The enormous offensive battles that burst upon the world in Russia in the summer and fall of 1941 obscured this point for a time. But the Tobruk battles and Operation Brevity foreshadowed what Battleaxe now demonstrated: when resolute troops held strong defensive positions, and possessed weapons that could immobilize tanks, they could prevail. This lesson, learned in the trenches of the western front 1914–1918, was going to be relearned on the battlefields of the Second World War.

As the giant caldron battles of Barbarossa slowly played out in the Soviet Union in the fall of 1941, the British prepared for their first major offensive against Rommel in North Africa.

Winston Churchill had been agitating for such an attack for months, and poured as many troops and as much equipment as he could find into Egypt. Four days after the end of Battleaxe, he relieved General Wavell and replaced him with General Sir Claude Auchinleck, commander in India, and immediately began pressing him to mount a major effort to wrest Libya from the Axis.

The campaign that opened on November 18, 1941, code-named Operation Crusader, developed into the most spectacular tank battle in history, a battle fought at extreme speed over a desert that allowed almost complete freedom of movement.

However, Crusader is notable because Auchinleck started with a false concept—he sought to destroy the enemy’s forces—and also dispersed his armor so widely that he never achieved decisive strength at any point. The result was that Rommel, though vastly outnumbered in tanks and other weapons, was able to block the British and turn what appeared to be certain defeat into almost a victory.

Armored forces are so fluid they are unsuited to be an objective. They usually can be destroyed only by indirect means. The British could have done this by throwing a strategic barrage or barrier across the Axis line of supply, requiring Rommel to commit his panzers to reopen the line under conditions favorable to the British.

Such a choke point existed: Acroma, on the Axis supply route twenty miles west of Tobruk. A concentrated attack on Acroma would have relieved the siege of Tobruk without a fight and forced Rommel to attack the barrier frontally or retreat for lack of fuel and supplies. Yet the British never aimed at Acroma or any other strategic point astride the Axis supply line. Instead, they crashed against Rommel’s gun-lined traps in direct, costly assaults that, moreover, were delivered by numerous individual units, and never by massed armor.

Consequently Rommel repeatedly caught British armor dispersed. As he remarked to a captured British officer after the battle: “What difference does it make if you have two tanks to my one, when you spread them out and let me smash them in detail?”

The British desert force had been renamed 8th Army, placed under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Alan Cunningham, and divided into two corps: the 13th under Lieutenant General A. R. Godwin-Austen with the 2nd New Zealand and 4th Indian Divisions and a force of infantry or “I” tanks; and the 30th under Lieutenant General C. W. M. Norrie with the “Desert Rats” of the 7th Armored Division (7th and 22nd Armored Brigades, plus an infantry and artillery Support Group), 4th Armored Brigade, 22nd Guards Brigade, and 1st South African Division. In reserve was the 2nd South African Division.

The British plan was for 13th Corps to pin down Axis troops holding the frontier from Sollum and Halfaya Pass to Sidi Omar, twenty-five miles inland, while the 30th Corps swept around south of Sidi Omar, destroyed Rommel’s armor, then linked up with the Tobruk garrison, seventy miles beyond the frontier.

British perversity in splitting armor is shown in the fact that the three armored brigades of 30th Corps aimed from the outset at divergent objectives—although Auchinleck and Cunningham had identified the Sidi Rezegh airfield, atop an escarpment only twelve miles southeast of the Tobruk defensive perimeter, as their principal target. If the airfield could be seized, tanks there and tanks from Tobruk could open a link, relieve the siege, and endanger the Axis position.

On the night of November 18, 1941, 30th Corps swept around Rommel’s desert flank, without encountering any resistance. The next day Cunningham sent two of three regiments of the 7th Armored Brigade to capture Sidi Rezegh airfield. The third regiment and the division’s Support Group did not come up until the following morning, November 20. By then Rommel had rushed up part of 90th Light Division and a large number of antitank guns to block the advance.

Meanwhile, the other two British armored brigades drove off to widely separated places, and promptly ran into trouble. The 22nd, newly arrived from England, encountered the dug-in guns of Trieste Armored Division at Bir el Gubi, twenty-two miles south of Sidi Rezegh. Without waiting to call for assistance, the brigade launched a “charge of the Light Brigade” against the Italian guns, losing forty of 160 tanks within minutes, and completely bogging down.

The 4th Armored Brigade stopped at Gabr Selah, thirty miles southeast of Sidi Rezegh. The reason was to keep in touch with the left or southern flank of 13th Corps, although this could have been done by radio. One of the brigade’s three regiments rushed off twenty-five miles in pursuit of a German reconnaissance unit and was lost for the day. Rommel sent 21st Panzer Division’s tank regiment, plus twelve field guns and four 88s, against the two remaining regiments of 4th Brigade, and destroyed twenty-three Stuart tanks against a loss of three German tanks.

The Germans, too, made a serious error. General Ludwig Cruewell, commanding Africa Corps, led all of his armor on a wild-goose chase toward Fort Capuzzo on the morning of November 20, after receiving a false report that a British advance was coming from that direction.

Although General Cunningham was informed of Africa Corps’s departure—which opened up a giant hole in the Axis position—he took no advantage of the bonanza. He should have concentrated his armor, driven straight for the Sidi Rezegh airfield, and relieved Tobruk. This would have fatally compromised the entire Axis position. Instead he did nothing, giving the Germans a chance to retrieve Cruewell’s blunder.

Although 21st Panzer Division ran out of gasoline near Sidi Omar, and didn’t get refueled until after nightfall, 15th Panzer Division swept back southwest, and, in the afternoon, struck 4th Brigade, still sitting at Gabr Saleh, and inflicted more heavy damage on it. Cunningham ordered the 22nd Armored Brigade to assist, but it didn’t complete the twenty-eight-mile trek from Bir el Gubi until after the battle had ended. However, the “I” tank brigade of 13th Corps was only seven miles to the east of 4th Brigade, and eager to advance. But, because it had “infantry” tanks, Cunningham did not call on it.

Rommel was exasperated by Cruewell’s rush off to Fort Capuzzo, but, since 8th Army was not advancing into the void, he saw that 7th Armored Brigade and Support Group at Sidi Rezegh airfield were in a dangerous position. They were stopped from advancing on the Tobruk defenses by 90th Light, while Cunningham had done nothing to protect their rear. Accordingly, Rommel ordered Africa Corps to advance on the tail of the force the next morning, November 21, in hopes of destroying it.

General Norrie, commander of 30th Corps, had his eyes focused on Tobruk, not on his backside. He was planning to advance toward Tobruk on the morning of November 21 with 7th Tank Brigade and Support Group, in conjunction with a tank-led sortie coming out of Tobruk.

However, at 8 A.M. Norrie saw German panzers approaching Sidi Rezegh from the south and east. Instead of turning his whole armored force to meet this threat, Norrie left the 6th Royal Tanks to continue the attack toward Tobruk, and diverted his other two regiments, the 7th Hussars and the 2nd Royal Tanks, to challenge Cruewell. The result was disaster. The 6th Royal Tanks charged 90th Light’s well dug-in guns and were shattered, while Rommel himself directed 88-millimeter fire on a tank sortie that tried to break out of Tobruk, knocked out several “I” tanks, and halted the advance.

Meanwhile, to the southeast of Sidi Rezegh, 15th Panzer Division drove a wedge several miles wide between the 7th Hussars and the 2nd Royal Tanks. This allowed 21st Panzer Division to overrun and almost wipe out the now-isolated 7th Hussars. After refueling, Africa Corps came back in the afternoon and attacked 2nd Royal Tanks, advancing antitank guns ahead of the tanks and around the flanks of the British armor. The AT guns took such a toll that the regiment was saved from annihilation only by the belated arrival of 22nd Armored Brigade from Gabr Saleh. The 4th Brigade didn’t come up until the next day.

Artillery of Support Group stopped an attempt by Africa Corps to overrun Sidi Rezegh airfield, but the panzer corps was now in what Napoleon called “the central position” between two enemy forces, each inferior to the central force. That is, Africa Corps was between Support Group and remains of 7th Tank Brigade on one side, and 22nd and 4th Armored Brigades approaching from the south on the other. Rommel saw that Africa Corps could destroy each in turn, and ordered Cruewell to carry out the assaults the next day.

But Cruewell had not recognized the incredibly favorable position Africa Corps had gained. Instead, he once more made a foolish error. He had planned to take Africa Corps eastward during the night, in order to achieve “complete freedom of maneuver.” Getting Rommel’s order, he made a third mistake. Instead of turning the whole corps back to the central position, he sent 15th Panzer toward Gambut, twenty miles northeast of Sidi Rezegh, and directed 21st Panzer to reassemble between Belhamed and Zaafran, some seven miles north of the airfield.

Cruewell thus separated the two panzer divisions by eighteen miles, abandoned the central position, and permitted 30th Corps to concentrate its remaining 180 tanks.

Rommel arrived around midday November 22 at 21st Panzer and discovered that his armor had been split. He determined nevertheless to oust Support Group from the airfield. While 21st Panzer’s infantry and artillery attacked Sidi Rezegh from the north, locking Support Group in place, he wheeled the panzer regiment, along with a number of 88s and 50-millimeter AT guns, to the southwest, struck the western flank of the British position, overran the airfield, and shattered part of Support Group.

Once more the British did not use their tanks in mass: 22nd Armored Brigade came up to help, but 4th Brigade inexplicably held back. German 88s and AT guns destroyed half of the 22nd’s tanks before the brigade withdrew. When 4th Brigade at last came into the fight at dusk, it was unable to retrieve the situation.

The British now decided that the airfield was untenable and withdrew south to await 1st South African Division, which had been ordered northward, although only its 5th Brigade was coming up by the morning of November 23.

Meanwhile, Cruewell returned with the 15th Panzer and struck the 4th Armored Brigade from the east after it had drawn into a defensive “hedgehog” perimeter. The Germans seized the brigade headquarters and a large number of men and tanks, mutilating the brigade to such a degree that it was unable to reassemble the next day.

Africa Corps had gained command of the battlefield. The 15th Panzer was at Bir Sciaf Sciuf, fifteen miles east of Sidi Rezegh; 21st Panzer was holding the Sidi Rezegh area; and the Italian Ariete and Trieste Divisions were assembling around Bir el Gubi, twenty-two miles to the south.

Rommel had received reports that 7th Armored Division’s remnants had withdrawn from the airfield, and assumed that the division had moved about twelve miles south of Sidi Rezegh. He saw that 7th Armored and 5th South African Brigade might be destroyed on November 23 by a concentric attack, with the Italians moving northeast, and Africa Corps enveloping them by driving south and west.

However, Cruewell had put in motion his own plan by the time Rommel’s order arrived, thereby showing that even the best concepts of a commander can be upset by a subordinate who does not comprehend what the commander is doing.

Meanwhile, 2nd New Zealand Division of 13th Corps had advanced directly from the east, seized Fort Capuzzo, and sent its 6th Brigade westward along an Arab desert trail, the Trigh Capuzzo. Soon after daylight on November 23, after Cruewell had departed, the brigade bumped into Africa Corps headquarters at Gasr el Arid, twenty-five miles east of Sidi Rezegh, and seized it after a bitter fight. Loss of the corps staff and its radio links seriously handicapped Rommel in the days to follow.

Cruewell’s plan to destroy 7th Armored Division and 5th South African was foolish. He ordered 21st Panzer’s infantry and artillery to hold the escarpment and airfield south of Sidi Rezegh, while the division’s panzer regiment joined 15th Panzer for a wide sweep around the rear of 7th Armored Division and the South African brigade, and join up with the Ariete and Trieste Divisions moving up from Bir el Gubi. Cruewell’s idea was not a concentric assault on the enemy from all sides, as Rommel intended, but an assault by all the assembled Axis strength head-on against the British and South Africans.

However, when Cruewell’s forces rumbled southwestward through early morning mist on November 23, they ran smack into the center of 7th Armored’s position.

General Norrie had not moved the division twelve miles south to link up with the South Africans, as Rommel thought, but a few miles southeast. The British were as surprised as the Germans, and the arrival of the panzers set off a wild stampede in all directions by British tanks and other vehicles trying to get away. The scattering of the division offered Cruewell a golden opportunity to destroy the whole force in detail. But Cruewell, intent on linking up with the Italians, called off pursuit, and, swinging on an even wider outflanking movement, continued to the southwest. Thus Cruewell missed one of the great chances in the war.

Cruewell didn’t reach the Italians until midafternoon. And it took a while to line up his forces for attack on the South Africans, now to the north. In the long delay Cruewell had given them, the South Africans moved most of their guns to the exposed flank and formed a powerful defensive barrier.

Cruewell now committed one further error. Instead of following German tactical doctrine and advancing antitank guns forward and around the flanks to engage enemy armor and neutralize enemy artillery and tanks before committing his panzers, Cruewell formed up his tanks in long lines, and, ordering his infantry to follow in trucks, launched a headlong charge. They met a curtain of fire. Tank after tank was shattered, truck after truck full of infantry destroyed. The Germans had to commit all of their artillery to silence the South African guns, while British and German tanks and antitank guns fought tremendous duels. By late afternoon the panzers finally punched a few holes in the front and the tank attack moved forward, destroyed the 5th South African Brigade, and killed or captured 3,000 soldiers. As darkness fell, hundreds of burning vehicles, tanks, and guns lit up the horizon.

Cruewell’s attack had succeeded, but at enormous cost. Hundreds of German infantry had been killed, and Africa Corps lost seventy of its remaining 160 tanks. Although 30th Corps had only seventy tanks fit for action, and these widely dispersed, out of 500 at the start, the British had large tank reserves, the Germans almost none.

The tank losses in this one mad attack largely offset the gains of Rommel’s superb maneuvers over the past several days.

Rommel’s offensive power had been crippled. But he was not ready to back off, and he conceived a brilliant riposte: to strike deep into the British rear, with the aim of cutting enemy supply lines, and restoring the situation on the Sollum–Halfaya Pass front. Rommel hoped Cunningham would be so unnerved by this unexpected move he would give up the fight.

In light of Axis weakness and British strength, this was the boldest decision Rommel ever made. A more conventional commander would have finished off the remnants of 30th Corps scattered all over the battlefield, or crushed 2nd New Zealand Division, still advancing westward toward Tobruk. But Rommel knew direct assaults on either of these forces would consume what little strength he had remaining. Besides, British cruiser tanks were faster than his own, and could avoid destruction by escaping.

Rommel saw that the only hope for victory was a vigorous strike into the heart of enemy resistance. This might shake enemy morale, and it especially might play on the fears of the British commanders.

Rommel scraped together a weak force from various formations to keep up the Tobruk siege. Then, at midday on November 24, he struck eastward with 21st Panzer, ordering 15th Panzer, Ariete, and Trieste divisions to follow.

The unexpected advance scattered the 7th Armored and 1st South African divisions in front of him, and, in five hours, he reached the frontier sixty miles away at Bir Sheferzen, twenty miles south of Halfaya Pass. Rommel at once sent a battle group through a gap in the frontier wire and belt of mines to Halfaya to dominate 8th Army’s route of retreat and supply along the coast road.

The move threw 30th Corps into chaos, and caused Cunningham to do precisely what Rommel hoped he’d do: call for immediate withdrawal of 8th Army back into Egypt. But General Auchinleck arrived at 30th Corps headquarters and ordered continuation of the campaign. It was a brave decision. Auchinleck’s commanders had panicked at Rommel’s surprise move, and could think only of flight. But Auchinleck knew that Rommel’s strength was practically exhausted, while 8th Army still had great untapped resources, including many tanks in rear depots. He had the moral courage to stand when many another commander would have run. The decision ensured Rommel’s defeat.

It was obvious to Auchinleck that Cunningham had to be replaced, and on November 26 he named Lieutenant General Sir Neil Ritchie, his deputy chief of staff, to command 8th Army. This guaranteed that, whatever the risks, the battle would continue.

Rommel’s own vehicle got stranded on the opposite side of the frontier fence because of engine trouble. But Cruewell’s command vehicle, a covered van captured from the British, came past, and picked him up. When night fell, the German commanders could not find their way through the frontier minefields, so they and their staffs spent the night with Indian dispatch riders going back and forth and British tanks and trucks moving past. At daybreak they slipped away unchallenged, and crossed back into Libya.

On his return Rommel found that 15th Panzer had still not reached the frontier, while Ariete and Trieste Divisions had halted well to the west upon encountering a brigade of 1st South African Division. Also, supply columns bringing fuel and ammunition had failed to arrive. Rommel now could not carry out his plan to send a battle group to seize Habata, the new British railhead thirty-five miles southeast of Halfaya Pass, or to block the British supply and escape route along the escarpment running southeast into Egypt from Halfaya. His bid to force the British to retreat had failed. Even so, Rommel stubbornly held on, hoping for an opportunity to strike a killing blow.

Meanwhile, 13th Corps, led by 2nd New Zealand Division and ninety “I” tanks, pushed on westward toward Tobruk. The scratch force that was left to defend the Sidi Rezegh area was soon under great pressure. On November 25, the New Zealanders seized Belhamed, only nine miles southeast of the Tobruk perimeter. The next night, the Tobruk garrison crashed through Axis besiegers and gained the top of the escarpment at Ed Duda, only a couple of miles from the New Zealanders.

Panzer Group headquarters sent frantic radio signals asking for return of the panzers, but Rommel was not willing to give up so readily. He ordered Cruewell to drive north and clear the Sollum front by thrusts of 15th Panzer on the west and 21st Panzer, already at Halfaya, on the east. However, 15th Panzer had gone back to Bardia, fifteen miles north of Sollum, to refuel. At the same time 21st Panzer also headed toward Bardia because of a misinterpreted order.

Rommel realized his hopes were gone and ordered 21st Panzer back to defend Tobruk, but kept 15th Panzer south of Bardia. Early on November 27 the division’s tanks overran headquarters of 5th New Zealand Brigade at Sidi Azeis, ten miles southwest of Bardia, and captured the commander, 800 men, and several guns. With this success, Rommel ordered 15th Panzer to move back toward Tobruk as well.

On the frontier, Africa Corps had gained nothing decisive. Now it was down to only a fraction of its original strength, while the British, left in possession of the Sidi Rezegh battlefield, had been able to repair many tanks and receive replacements from Egypt. British tank strength was now 130 to 40 German, but Rommel continued to use his armor in concert, while the British kept theirs scattered.

Rommel hoped to keep the Tobruk garrison isolated, and to destroy the two New Zealand brigades (2nd and 4th) in the Belhamed area. On November 29, 15th Panzer detoured to the south and west around Sidi Rezegh and, in a bitter engagement, seized Ed Duda in an advance from the southwest. Ariete Division and 21st Panzer were to attack the New Zealanders from the east and south, but made little headway against British armor that drove against them on their southern flank.

The men of Panzer Group were exhausted, the weather was cold, the country without water, and the Axis supply line in tatters. Although the New Zealanders were nearly encircled, strong British armor threatened to push aside the light forces covering the Axis southern flank, and the 1st South African Division was coming forward to help.

But Rommel was still determined, and so were his men. On the morning of November 30, 15th Panzer with the help of battle groups from 90th Light attacked southward from the escarpment north of Sidi Rezegh. By evening they had gained some New Zealand positions, 600 prisoners, and twelve guns. During the same period, 21st Panzer and Ariete stopped a relieving attack by British armor from the south.

During the night most of the New Zealanders broke out, although the Germans captured more than 1,000 men and twenty-six guns. British armor and infantry moved south and east to regroup. Tobruk once more had been isolated.

Rommel appeared to have won. But the price had been too high. He had no offensive power left, while British tank strength was growing daily with shipments from the rear. If his army were to survive to fight another day, Rommel had to extricate it.

With the same boldness he had employed in the attack, Rommel pulled back his forces swiftly in a masterful series of engagements, preventing the British in every case from surrounding Axis units and forcing their surrender.

On January 6, 1942, Rommel reached Mersa el Brega, on the border of Tripolitania. Once more all of Cyrenaica had been evacuated. The Axis garrison marooned at Bardia surrendered on January 2, 1942, but a starving force at Halfaya Pass didn’t give up until January 17. This so delayed British movements, especially of supplies, that the British could maintain only the 1st Armored Division, fresh from England, and the 201st Guards Brigade at Agedabia.

Meanwhile Rommel’s supply situation had improved vastly because Hitler had transferred a Luftwaffe air corps to Sicily and Italy, and it beat down British air and sea domination over the sea route to Libya. On January 5, 1942, an Italian convoy reached Tripoli with fifty-five tanks and a number of antitank guns. Counting repaired armor, Rommel now had 111 German and 89 Italian tanks on January 20. The British 1st Armored Division had 150, all manned by inexperienced crews.

At once Rommel resolved on a counteroffensive. To preserve secrecy, he kept his plans from both the German and Italian high commands. He lulled the British into complacency by forbidding all air reconnaissance, camouflaging his tanks to look like trucks, and massing his forces by short night marches.

When he struck, therefore, on the night of January 20–21, 1942, he achieved absolute surprise. Rommel sent a battle group of 90th Light and some tanks northward along the Via Balbia, while Africa Corps advanced about forty miles inland, along the Wadi el Faregh. Rommel hoped to block the retreat of the British. But the going was so hard through the sand dunes that the enemy had time to escape, concentrating east of Agedabia. Africa Corps ran out of fuel, but Rommel took personal command of the 90th Light battle group and rushed into Agedabia, seized the town on January 22, and continued on northward on the Via Balbia, throwing British supply columns into confusion.

Rommel now tried to block the retreat of 1st Armored Division, but the bulk of it escaped, although Africa Corps was able to surround and destroy one combat group with seventy tanks near Saunnu, forty miles northeast of Agedabia. The remaining British tanks broke for Msus, forty miles north. In one of the most extraordinary chases of the war, the panzers pursued the British armor, and wrecked more than half of the remaining tanks.

Rommel now feinted with Africa Corps toward El Mechili, eighty miles northeast of Msus across the chord of the Cyrenaican bulge. Since Rommel had used this route in his first offensive in April 1941, Ritchie took the bait and concentrated all his armor to meet it. Instead, Rommel rushed 90th Light along the coast to Benghazi, where it captured mountains of supplies and 1,000 men from the 4th Indian Division. The victory brought promotion to colonel general from Hitler, but no additional troops.

The men of the Panzer Group were at the end of their strength. When Ritchie withdrew to Gazala, only forty miles west of Tobruk, and began building a new defensive line, all the Germans and Italians could do was to come up on the line on February 6, 1942.

Once more, Rommel had gained much with little. At Gazala, he was positioned to resume the attack as soon as he could rebuild his army.