The Desert War: Conclusion

I could cover the last two years of the war and what happened to the key commanders - especially Rommel. However, I'm sure that you can find that information easily, so I'll finish up with some brief thoughts on the campaign itself and what we can learn from it.

Was it worth it?

The Allies did not win the war through the defeat of the Afrika Korps - they won it through the ground of invasion of Germany from two directions and via a highly bloody (on both sides) strategic bombing campaign.

Losing this campaign though would have been catastrophic - Middle Eastern oil supplies would have been in great danger and the loss of Egypt might have forced Churchill from office in favour of someone who would make a peace deal... that would have let mainland Europe to either the Nazis or more likely Stalin.

It can be argued that diverting forces to North Africa when they could have been used preparing for an earlier Second Front in Europe was a waste of resources and holding the line might have been enough...

I disagree. The Allies needed a clear strategic victory in 1942 at a point when they were facing defeat nearly everywhere. Forcing the Germans out of North Africa and liberating a number of future African countries did just that.

The Italy campaign on the other hand...

What can we learn from this campaign?

1. It's not what you have, it's what you do with it - Rommel was an extremely capable general. Most Wehrmacht commanders would not have lasted as long as he did and if Rommel had not gone out of the equation permanently in 1944, the concept of him leading the Battle of the Bulge is a terrifying prospect. 
2. The capacity of so-called military experts to be completely inept is massive.
3. Logistics are vital in any war, especially when there is not a ready-made source of water and food nearby.
4. Sometimes 'the sideshow' can be vital to the main event.
5. Our veterans have had to fight in unpleasant conditions in wars that seem to have little to do with their home country... but they are usually of importance to the wider world and ultimately us. For this they should receive our gratitude.

Thank you for reading. I hope that you have found this interesting.

The Desert War: 1943 - Patton finishes the job

As 1943 began, the Germans were beginning a full scale strategic retreat that would only end with the fall of Berlin. However, they were going to make sure that the Allies paid for every mile they took.

In the west of North Africa, an offensive into Tunisia had bogged down under a German counter-attack. To prevent another one, Rommel now ordered a counter-offensive in the west.

When looking at the closing stages of this campaign, it is important to remember the vast differences in experience levels of the two sides. The German forces had been at this particular conflict for about two years - the American troops had no experience of desert warfare at all and had only come into the war in December 1941. What experience they had in a modern environment was against the Japanese - half a world away and in very different terrain. The senior commanders of the US Army had seen action before... but that had been in 1918 during the relatively brief involvement of the United States on the Western Front. The US Army had been allowed to deteriorate considerably in the 20 years of peace, mostly due to lack of money from Congress.

Thus it was entirely logical to go for the much weaker forces.

Faïd Pass and Sidi Bouzid

On 30 January, German forces under the command of Hans-Jürgen von Arnim launched an attack at the Faïd Pass, occupied by French forces. The local commander called the Americans of General Lloyd Fredendall's II Corps for assistance, but they were too slow to react to a swift German attack.

SW of this pass was Sidi Bouzid, a major communications and supply hub of the US II Corps. It's at this point that one should make that Fredendall really didn't know what he was doing. Prone to informality and using his own slang, he created confusion in a situation where clarity was essential. He did not visit the front line, overruled local commanders and ignored advice about mutual support.

As he did here - the American defences were spread on two hills wide apart. They were not in a position to help each other. On 14 February, 140 tanks from two Panzer Divisions attacked through the pass under cover of a sand storm, most of the American vehicles had been destroyed or driven west. A US counter-attack the following day suffered heavy casualties under air and tank attack, its gains were only temporary as the US forces were forced to the Kasserine Pass west of Sbeitla.

Kasserine Pass

Rommel now proposed a strike into French Algeria to further undermine the US forces before the British could arrive from Libya, aiming for Tébessa, a major supply dump. Berlin approved this, but changed the single strike into two separate ones. Rommel was unhappy, but he continued with the assault anyway. There had been no large scale contact between US and German forces, but he was confident that he could defeat the Americans.

21st Panzer went against Sbiba Pass; totally inadequate American forces collapsed within minutes. Rommel himself led the forces heading for the Kasserine Pass. The Americans fell back en masse, allowing equipment to be captured - the sheer success then slowed the Germans down as they had to detach troops to mop up the pockets of resistance.

On 22 February, with Rommel's objective clear, British forces replaced the Americans in the line and the Afrika Cops now faced much stronger resistance. Behind their lines, the Allies put together a large artillery force and then used it to launch a pre-emptive artillery attack on the German positions, destroying many tanks.

Rommel was now facing the British coming in from Libya, so he ordered a retreat that was sped up by a massive USAAF airstrike. On the 25th, Kasserine Pass was recaptured, but at a heavy price - 10,000 Allied casualties for only 2,000 Axis ones.

Patton and El Guettar

While the situation was now stabilised, the series of defeats eliminated any remaining confidence in Fredendall. Eisenhower relieved him of command with the recommendation he be assigned to a training unit - he would spend the rest of the war in the United States.

His replacement was George S. Patton, one of history's great generals and one of the Second World War's bigger egos. An Olympic pentathlete (he came 5th in the first event in 1912 and would have been in the 1916 games had they not been cancelled) and an expert swordsman in particular, he launched the first US armored vehicle raid in the Mexican Expedition of 1916-17. When the US went to France in 1918, he was assigned to the Tank Corps, where he was wounded and decorated.

After that war, he moved back to horse cavalry as the US forces were shrunk in size, but returned to armour just before the US entered this war. He entered North Africa commanding the landings in Morocco.

Patton believed in strict discipline and being seen at the front - he was also more than a bit of a bigot (of course, this was still a segregated Army and a largely segregated country).

With his arrival as commander, the Allied forces began to prepare for another offensive against the Axis forces in Tunisia. This was launched on 17 March, with US forces reaching El Guettar. The Italian forces retreated and fortfied the surrounding hills, as well as blocking the nearby pass. The Germans then launched a counter-attack on 23 March - they had initial success, but then got stuck in a minefield, which allowed the US to destroy 30 of their tanks and force a withdrawal.

The Americans began to push back, but on reaching Hill 369, the battle turned into a stalemate. The hill was captured after four days of fighting, but the Germans had arrived and things weren't getting easier.

Then the British arrived from the east, linking with the American forces. By this point, a badly ill Rommel had left the theatre to recover, handing over to von Arnim - he would not return.

Endgame

What the Axis forces really needed now was an evacuation - Hitler refused to do so; continuing to supply the forces there by air. The Americans were now in a position to interfere with this supply run and appointed James Doolittle (of the Doolittle Raid) to run Operation Flax. Starting on 5 April, US and later British fighters attacked the aerial convoys, inflicting heavy losses on the German aircraft, especially their transports. Göring, faced with these losses, eventually terminated all flights into Tunisia, evacuating nearly all the local Luftwaffe presence by early May.

On 22 April, the final Allied offensive, Operation Vulcan, was launched. Stiff German resistance resulted in heavy casualties, but the Allies too the positions one by one, overwhelming the enemy or making them run out of supplies. On 6 May, Tunis and Bizerte were taken.

A week later, the remaining Axis forces in Tunisia, now in a tiny coastal pocket, surrendered - 240,000 prisoners were taken, meaning the British now had more German prisoners in their country than British prisoners in Germany for the first time since the war began.

The Mediterranean route was now clear. The job was done.

Shaken not Stirred, a history of 007: Part One - the 1950s

2013 marks the 50^th anniversary of a British cultural icon – Doctor Who. It also makes the 60^th anniversary of another icon. A man who can be conjured up with a few notes from the theme tune, who has spawned a slew of imitators and reactors the world over. He likes his cars fast, his women beautiful and his villains evil.

The name’s Bond, James Bond.

I’m going to take you on a year-by-year history of the world of 007 and the real-world politics, especially in terms of espionage, that inspired it, skipping the years where not much happened, looking at the movies, the books and the games. Having seen every official Bond movie and read most of the Fleming books at least, I’d like to think I know a thing or two about the subject. Of course, I may get things wrong.

So, let us start from the beginning.

Ian Fleming, the man with the golden typewriter

Ian Fleming (1908-1964) was the son of an MP who died on the Western Front in 1917 and had a privileged upbringing. He attended Eton College and excelled. After that, he failed to get a commission in the Army or into the Foreign Office, so joined Reuters as a news correspondent. He enjoyed it, but decided it wouldn’t make his fortune, so he went to work in the City of London. There he enjoyed the high life of a young bachelor, having a lot of girlfriends or going to gamble at Le Touqet[1] at the weekends. He also liked playing bridge.

When the Second World War began in 1939, Fleming was head hunted for the job of PA to the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey (generally held to the inspiration for M) getting the rank of Lieutenant Commander as a result. His Naval Intelligence work included setting up two special operations units and coming up with the initial idea for Operation MINCEMEAT[2], having seen it in a detective novel.

In 1942, he attended a U-boat conference in Jamaica (then a British colony), fell in love with the island and later bought a house there. A house he would call Goldeneye.

Following the war, he became foreign manager for the Kemsley newspaper group that then owned the Sunday Times – a role he continued in until 1959, the company allowing him three months off every year to write his novels once he’d gotten started.

1950

As the 1950s began, the Cold War was just getting started big-time. The USSR had tested its first atomic bomb the year earlier – much earlier than anyone had expected. In fact, they’d garnered much of the information to do it from spying on the Manhattan Project and the spies were being exposed due to the decryption of Soviet intelligence[3] messages under Operation VENONA. With fears of “Reds under the bed”, a whole-scale blacklisting of those with suspected Communist links in Hollywood got under way.

Britain was still recovering from the devastation of the Second World War. Its cities were in need of rebuilding, hundreds of thousands were in temporary accommodation, the Olympic Games in London two years earlier had been done very much on the cheap and rationing was still in place, including that British staple of tea.

1951

Two British diplomats, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, disappeared, eventually turning up in Moscow. They’d been spying for Moscow Centre since the 1930s. They avoided capture because of another Soviet mole in British intelligence…

1952

King George VI, the man who’d never planned on becoming monarch of his country, dies after a long period of ill-health. On holiday in Kenya, Princess Elizabeth is informed that she is now Queen Elizabeth II.

While waiting for his marriage to his long-standing girlfriend Anne Rothermere  (who he’d had an affair with during both of her previous marriages), Fleming finally decided to write the spy novel he’d been thinking about doing it for a while. He names the protagonist James Bond after an ornithologist and gets his code number, 007, from a signature used by Elizabethan spy John Dee.

1953

Josef Stalin died after a stroke. In the subsequent power struggle, secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, who favoured closer relations with the West, had the rest of the party leadership turn on him, with the result being his subsequent arrest and execution.

Fleming completed his novel and with the help of his brother, got it published by Jonathan Cape. Three publication runs were required to keep up with demand.

Casino Royale (novel)

The man is only known as Le Chiffre. He’s the treasurer of a French trade union, one controlled by SMERSH[4]. He’s taken a large sum of money from the union and blown it on the sex industry (which the government have clamped down on), so he has to get the money back through a high-stakes game of baccarat in a French casino – or die at the hands of SMERSH. James Bond’s mission; to make sure he loses.

Royale, which I re-read as the 2006 film approached, is a rather different kettle of fish to most of the rest of the canon; it’s a lot more small-scale than some of the films or even Fleming’s later work – only the second half of the film is really an adaptation of this novel. This isn’t to say it’s not highly enjoyable and the ending is pretty shocking – especially Bond’s reaction to it.

1954

The Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll produced a much bigger than expected yield of 15 megatons. Radioactive contamination was widespread in the local area, most notably among the crew of a Japanese fishing vessel.

Fleming’s second novel had been written before Casino Royale was published. When it came out in April 1954, it too was a big success.

Live and Let Die (novel)

Bond is sent to New York City to investigate Mr Big, notorious Harlem criminal and SMERSH operative. As he does so, he is drawn into a dark world of voodoo and enters waters that are shark-infested: literally.

Any discussion of the Fleming novels must note that the attitudes expressed by many characters, including Bond himself, are not exactly politically correct. LaLD is the most stand-out example. The title of Chapter Five contains a certain word beginning with “N” and got changed for the US release, while the black characters here have their speech rendered phonetically in what was meant to an attempt at atmosphere but just comes across as patronising. To be honest, Fleming was probably about as prejudiced as most of British society at this point.

All this said, the book is a decent thriller (one notable review from The Observer – “Don’t blame me if you have a stroke!”) and a couple of key sequences were lifted for use in other Bond films.

****

The year would also see the first adaptation of a James Bond novel – for the small screen. Fleming sold the rights to Royale separately to the later books and this would have its own profound effect on the history of the series.

Casino Royale (TV) – the Climax! Episode

CBS paid Fleming $1,000 for him to adapt his first novel into a 48-minute drama (an hour with ad breaks included), which was broadcast live (yes, live) on the Climax! anthology series in . The adaptation, starring Barry Nelson as an American Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre, changes quite a few things, including the ending. It went largely unnoticed at the time, then got lost until 1981, when a copy missing the ending showed up. The final bit was later found, but most video releases, including as an extra on the DVD release of the 1967 version, don’t have it…

1955

The Eastern bloc countries signed the Warsaw Treaty, creating the military alliance known as the Warsaw Pact.

Another year, another novel…

Moonraker (novel)

M asks Bond to join him for a game of bridge with industrialist Sir Hugo Drax, who he suspects is cheating at cards and wonders why. Drax is giving the UK a free nuclear missile system[5], but strange things are going at the base in Kent, with a security officer being killed and so Bond is sent undercover to investigate. Is Drax all he seems?

Another good one – better than the film, with a couple of nice twists at the end and a suitable (if highly destructive) demise for the villain.

John Payne and Rank both attempted to make this into a film at the time, nothing came of it.

1956

An uprising against Communist rule in Hungary was brutally put down by Warsaw Pact forces, with Soviet leader Khrushchev also declaring to the West that “we will bury you” (meaning that communism would outlast capitalism, but the phrase was taken by many as a threat). Meanwhile, Britain and France made a secret agreement with Israel for the latter to invade Egypt, allowing them to stop in as a “peacekeeping force” and take control of the Suez Canal, recently nationalised by pro-Soviet leader Colonel Nasser. International outcry from both superpowers forced the withdrawal of forces and swiftly brought down British Prime Minister Anthony Eden.

Bob Holness, later host of quiz show Blockbusters, played Bond in a South African radio adaptation of Moonraker.

Diamonds Are Forever (novel)

Bond travels to the US to track down a diamond smuggling ring, a journey that takes him to Las Vegas.

Probably one of the weaker Bond novels – I read it quite late on – the book is largely set in the US and gets a bit clichéd at times.

1957

The USSR launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, a move that took the Americans by complete surprise. The public feared that this launch, using a converted ICBM, meant the Soviets could now launch a nuclear weapon anywhere on the planet – in reality their missile force was still limited in numbers and capability.

Fleming published his first work of non-fiction, The Diamond Smugglers, based on research he did for Diamonds Are Forever. It got middling reviews, but his novel would not…

From Russia, with Love (novel)

SMERSH, smarting from their defeats by Bond, decide to kill him. Shooting him isn’t enough – they want to make sure he dies in a sex scandal that embarrasses the Secret Service[7]… So, they use a pretty girl and a cipher machine as bait for 007.

I recently re-read this novel and it’s still a classic tale of espionage. Fleming’s research was extensive, most notably in the culinary department[8] and the brilliantly paced story wonderfully evokes a lost period of time. Remember for most people in the UK, plane travel was a luxury beyond their means.

1958

The US and Canada created NORAD.

CBS asked Fleming to look at writing a Bond TV series. The thing ultimately fell through, but Fleming got a couple of outlines down and used them for later short stories. Fleming also published his sixth Bond novel

Dr. No (novel)

Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the disappearance of two Secret Service staff. As he does so, he discovers the activities of the metal-handed villain Dr. Julius No…

This one got a lot of negative reviews at the time, with accusations of Fleming being basically sadomasochistic[9], although it’s tame by modern standards. Personally, I found this one quite good.

Couple of key changes got made for the film – for one thing, in this Dr. No (who Fleming based on Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu[10]) is buried alive in bird droppings.

1959

Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, overthrowing the pro-US government. Nikita Khrushchev made the first visit of a Soviet leader to the US.

The Daily Express, a British newspaper, started doing a comic-book adaptation of Fleming’s novels. I’ve “read” some of these, which have been published in compilation form – they’re quite good.

Goldfinger (novel)

James Bond, after catching the man cheating at cards with the aid of an attractive female assistant, is sent to investigate Auric Goldfinger, who is suspected of smuggling gold[11] out of the UK and working for SMERSH. Little does Bond know how just much Goldfinger loves gold…

An instant bestseller with far better reviews than the previous novel, Goldfinger contains some wonderful scenes, some of which got into the film and others that didn’t. It also contains a rather preposterous grand plan that involves an idea to blow up the vault of Fort Knox with a tactical nuke.

This one also got Fleming into a bit of legal trouble. He named people in the books after real people he knew, in this case architect Ernő Goldfinger, whose architecture Fleming took particular exception too. Goldfinger found this out and sued, at which point Fleming threatened to change the name of his villain to something ruder. The matter was settled out of court.

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As the Cold War turned hotter and 1960 began, Fleming was now a best-selling author, but a film adaptation had yet to get anywhere. That would soon change. For an Italian-American film producer by the name of Albert R. Broccoli was about to enter the Bond story.

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[1]An upper class resort in the Pas-de-Calais region of Northern France.

[2]A scheme that successfully diverted German forces to Crete shortly before the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, MINCEMEAT basically involved procuring the body of a homeless man from a morgue and dressing him up as a Royal Marines Major, with false papers in his pocket and carrying dispatches relating to the fake invasion plan, then dropping him into the sea off the coast of neutral Spain, where the information would eventually find its way into the hands of German intelligence.

[3]Soviet intelligence was split between the military GRU and the “civilian” organisation that went through a number of names before finally ending up as the KGB in 1954. From here on in, I’m going to refer to the latter organisation as Moscow Centre, the term used in John Le Carré’s novels and also in house.

[4]A Russian acronym for “SMERt' SHpionam” or “death to spies”, SMERSH really existed, but was far smaller than Fleming suggested and only operated as an independent organisation during the war.

[5]The UK’s nuclear deterrent at this point was bomber-based (such as with the Avro Vulcan), although 60 American Thor intermediate-range ballistic missiles were deployed in the country at above ground sites under dual-key arrangements, with the RAF controlling the missiles and the USAF the warheads, from 1959 to 1963 as a temporary measure until the US ICBM force came fully on-line.

[6]An attempt at a British land-based system called Blue Streak was ultimately cancelled due to cost and concerns about vulnerability to a Soviet first strike, as the missiles took five minutes to fuel, could not be held fuelled for long periods and putting them in silos was a political no-no due to lack of suitable places on the relatively crowded UK mainland.

The RAF then looked at buying Skybolt air-launched ballistic missiles, but multiple test failures and Robert McNamara’s opposition to bombers led to that programme being axed. In the end, the Royal Navy got Polaris missiles from the US, with UK warheads, mounted in British submarines – these have now been replaced by Trident. A tactical nuke capability remained until 1998.

[7]The Secret Intelligence Service is called the Secret Service in Fleming’s novels. MI6 has never been its official name (although it was used as a "flag of convenience") and the organisation was not officially acknowledged as existing until 1994.

[8]A contribution, it might be said, to his early death.

[9]He was apparently into that sort of thing, but that’s beside the point.

[10]The most famous/infamous of the (now pretty much defunct due to changing views) “Yellow Peril” villains.

[11]The world currency system at this time worked on a gold standard, with most currencies fixed against the US dollar, which in turn could get you a set amount of gold ($35 for an ounce). Known as the “Bretton Woods” system, this system ran from 1946 to 1971, when balance of payments and deficit issues caused by the Vietnam War led to the USA going off the gold standard unilaterally, resulting in the system collapsing and currencies “floating”.