The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (162 page)

The crafty Spaniard was not impressed by the Fuehrer’s boast that “England already is decisively beaten,” nor was he satisfied with Hitler’s promise to give Spain territorial compensation in French North Africa “to the extent to which it would be possible to cover France’s losses from British colonies.” Franco wanted the French African empire, with no strings attached. Hitler’s proposal was that Spain enter the war in January 1941, but Franco pointed out the dangers of such precipitate action. Hitler wanted the Spaniards to attack Gibraltar on January 10, with the help of German specialists who had taken the Belgian fort of Eben Emael from the air. Franco replied, with typical Spanish pride, that Gibraltar would have to be taken by Spaniards “alone.” And so the two dictators wrangled—for nine hours. According to Dr. Schmidt, who was present here too, Franco spoke on and on in a monotonous singsong voice and Hitler became increasingly exasperated, once springing up, as he had done with Chamberlain, to exclaim that there was no point in continuing the conversations.
⁴¹

“Rather than go through that again,” he later told Mussolini, in recounting his ordeal with the Caudillo, “I would prefer to have three or four teeth yanked out.”
⁴²

After nine hours, with time out for dinner in Hitler’s special dining car, the talks broke up late in the evening without Franco’s having definitely committed himself to come into the war. Hitler left Ribbentrop behind that night to continue the parley with Serrano Suñer, the Spanish Foreign Minister, and to try to get the Spaniards to sign something, at least an agreement to drive the British out of Gibraltar and close to them the western Mediterranean—but to no avail. “That ungrateful coward!” Ribbentrop cursed to Schmidt about Franco the next morning. “He owes us everything and now won’t join us!”
⁴³

Hitler’s meeting with Pétain at
Montoire
the next day went off better. But this was because the aging, defeatist Marshal, the hero of Verdun in
the First World War and the perpetrator of the French surrender in the Second, agreed to France’s collaboration with her conqueror in one last effort to bring Britain, the late ally, to her knees. In fact, he assented to put down in writing this odious deal.

In return for this treacherous act, France was to be given in the “New Europe” “the place to which she is entitled,” and in Africa she was to receive from the fascist dictators compensation from the
British Empire
for whatever territory she was forced to cede to others. Both parties agreed to keep the pact “absolutely secret.”
*

Despite Pétain’s dishonorable but vital concessions, Hitler was not satisfied. According to Dr. Schmidt, he had wanted more—nothing less than France’s active participation in the war against Britain. On the long journey back to Munich the official interpreter found the Fuehrer disappointed and depressed with the results of his trip. He was to become even more so in Florence, where he arrived on the morning of October 28 to see Mussolini.

They had conferred but three weeks before, on October 4, at the
Brenner Pass
. Hitler, as usual, had done most of the talking, giving one of his dazzling
tours d’horizon
in which was
not
included any mention that he was sending troops to Rumania, which Italy also coveted. When the Duce learned of this a few days later he was indignant.

The Duce’s ambitions in the Balkans were as rabid as Hitler’s and cut across them so that as far back as the middle of August the Germans had warned Rome against any adventures in
Yugoslavia
and Greece. “It is a complete order to halt all along the line,” Ciano noted in his diary on August 17. Mussolini scrapped, for the moment anyway, his plans for further martial glory in the Balkans and confirmed this in a humble letter
to Hitler of August 27. But the prospect of a quick, easy conquest of Greece, which would compensate to some extent for his partner’s glittering victories, proved too big a temptation for the strutting Fascist Caesar to resist, false though the prospect was.

On October 22 he set the date for a surprise Italian assault on Greece for October 28 and on the same day wrote Hitler a letter (predated October 19) alluding to his contemplated action but making it vague as to the exact nature and date. He feared,
Ciano
noted that day in his diary, that the Fuehrer might “order” him to halt. Hitler and Ribbentrop got wind of the Duce’s plans while they were returning in their respective special trains from France, and at the Fuehrer’s orders the Nazi Foreign Minister stopped at the first station in Germany to telephone Ciano in Rome and urge an immediate meeting of the Axis leaders. Mussolini suggested October 28 at Florence and, when his German visitor alighted from the train on the morning of that day, greeted him, his chin up and his eyes full of glee: “Fuehrer, we are on the march! Victorious Italian troops crossed the Greco-
Albania
n frontier at dawn today!”
⁴⁶

According to all accounts, Mussolini greatly enjoyed this revenge on his friend for all the previous occasions when the Nazi dictator had marched into a country without previously confiding to his Italian ally. Hitler was furious. This rash act against a sturdy foe at the worst possible time of year threatened to upset the applecart in the
Balkans
. The Fuehrer, as he wrote Mussolini a little later, had sped to Florence in the hope of preventing it, but he had arrived too late. According to Schmidt, who was present, the Nazi leader managed to control his rage.

Nevertheless he had to do something to prosecute the war against the British, now that the invasion of Britain had proved impossible. Hardly had the Fuehrer returned to Berlin before the need to act was further impressed upon him by the fiasco of the Duce’s armies in Greece. Within a week, the “victorious” Italian attack there had been turned into a rout. On November 4 Hitler called a war conference at the Chancellery in Berlin to which he summoned
Brauchitsch
and
Halder
from the Army and
Keitel
and
Jodl
from OKW. Thanks to Halder’s diary and a captured copy of Jodl’s report to the Navy on the conference, we know the warlord’s decisions, which were embodied in Directive No. 18 issued by Hitler on November 12, the text of which is among the Nuremberg records.
⁴⁸

The German Navy’s influence on Hitler’s strategy became evident, as did the necessity for doing something about the faltering Italian ally. Halder noted the Fuehrer’s “lack of confidence” in Italian leadership. As
a result it was decided
not
to send any German troops to
Libya
until Marshal Rodolfo Graziani’s army, which in September had advanced sixty miles into Egypt to Sidi Barrâni, had reached
Mersa Matrûh
, a further seventy-five miles along the coast, which was not expected before Christmas, if then. In the meantime plans were to be made to send a few dive bombers to Egypt to attack the British fleet in
Alexandria
and mine the
Suez Canal
.

As for Greece, the Italian attack there, Hitler admitted to his generals, had been a “regrettable blunder” and unfortunately had endangered Germany’s position in the Balkans. The British by occupying Crete and
Lemnos
had achieved air bases from which they could easily bomb the
Rumania
n oil fields and by sending troops to the Greek mainland threatened the whole German position in the Balkans. To counter this danger Hitler ordered the Army to prepare immediately plans to invade Greece through
Bulgaria
with a force of at least ten divisions which would be sent first to Rumania. “It is anticipated,” he said, “that Russia will remain neutral.”

But it was in regard to destroying Britain’s position in the western
Mediterranean
that most of the conference of November 4 and most of the ensuing Directive No. 18 was devoted.

“Felix” was to be the code name for the taking of Gibraltar and the Spanish Canary Islands and the Portuguese Cape Verde Islands. The Navy was also to study the possibility of occupying
Portugal
’s
Madeira
and the
Azores
. Portugal itself might have to be occupied. “Operation
Isabella
” would be the cover name for that, and three German divisions would be assembled on the Spanish–Portuguese frontier to carry it out.

Finally, units of the French fleet and some troops were to be released so that France could defend her possessions in Northwest Africa against the British and De Gaulle. “From this initial task,” Hitler said in his directive, “France’s participation in the war against England can develop fully.”

Hitler’s new plans, as enunciated to the generals on November 4 and laid down in the directive a week later, went into considerable military detail—especially on how Gibraltar was to be taken by a daring German stroke—and apparently they impressed his Army chiefs as bold and shrewd. But in reality they were half measures which could not possibly achieve their objectives, and they were based partly on his deceiving his own generals. He assured them on November 4, Halder noted, that he had just received Franco’s renewed promise to join Germany in the war, but this, as we have seen, was not quite true. The objectives of driving the British out of the Mediterranean were sound, but the forces allotted to the task were quite insufficient, especially in view of Italy’s weaknesses.

The
Naval War Staff
pointed this out in a toughly worded memorandum which Raeder gave Hitler on November 14.
⁴⁹
The Italian disaster in Greece—Mussolini’s troops had now been hurled back into
Albania
and were still retreating—had not only greatly improved Britain’s strategic position in the Mediterranean, the sailors pointed out, but enhanced British prestige throughout the world. As for the Italian attack on Egypt, the Navy told Hitler flatly: “Italy
will never carry out
the Egyptian offensive.
*
The Italian leadership is wretched. They have no understanding of the situation. The Italian armed forces have
neither
the leadership nor the military efficiency to carry the required operations in the Mediterranean area to a successful conclusion with the necessary speed and decision.”

Therefore, the Navy concluded, this task must be carried out by Germany. The “
fight for the African area
,” it warned Hitler, is “the foremost strategic objective of German warfare as a whole … It is of
decisive importance for the outcome of the war.
”

But the Nazi dictator was not convinced. He had never been able to envisage the war in the Mediterranean and
North Africa
as anything but secondary to his main objective. As Admiral Raeder elaborated to him the Navy’s strategic conceptions in their meeting on November 14, Hitler retorted that he was “still inclined toward a demonstration with Russia.”
⁵⁰
In fact, he was more inclined than ever, for Molotov had just departed Berlin that morning after so arousing the Fuehrer’s ire. When the Admiral next saw his chief a couple of days after Christmas to report on how the bus had been missed in the Mediterranean, Hitler was not unduly perturbed. To Raeder’s argument that the victory of Britain over the Italians in Egypt
†
and the increasing material aid which she was receiving from America necessitated the concentration of all German resources to bring the British down, and that Barbarossa ought to be postponed until “the overthrow of Britain,” Hitler turned an almost deaf ear.

“In view of present political developments and especially Russia’s
interference in Balkan affairs,” Hitler said, “it is necessary to eliminate at all costs the last enemy remaining on the Continent before coming to grips with Britain.” From now on to the bitter end he would stick fanatically to this fundamental strategy.

As a sop to his naval chief, Hitler promised to “try once more to influence Franco” so that the attack against Gibraltar could be made and the Mediterranean closed to the British fleet. Actually, he had already dropped the whole idea. On December 11 he had quietly ordered, “Operation Felix will not be carried out as the political conditions no longer exist.” Nagged by his own Navy and by the Italians to keep after Franco, Hitler made one final effort, though it was painful to him. On February 6, 1941, he addressed a long letter to the Spanish dictator.

Unfortunately for the Axis, the letter reached the Caudillo on the very day that Marshal Graziani’s last forces in
Cyrenaica
had been wiped out by the British south of
Benghazi
. Little wonder that when Franco got around to replying—on February 26, 1941—though protesting his “absolute loyalty” to the Axis, he reminded the Nazi leader that recent developments had left “the circumstances of October far behind” and that their understanding of that time had become “outmoded.”