Three Kings (Kirov Series) (17 page)

“And what about Egypt?” Rommel
asked the obvious next question.

“It will take us time to build up
the forces necessary for such a drive,” said Keitel. “The desert is a
singularly harsh environment. Everything an army needs to fight there must be provided,
and I am not simply speaking of tanks and ammunition now. You need food, water,
petrol, supplies of every kind, and all of it must move over water to Tripoli
and then by truck. The farther you move east, the longer that supply line
becomes. It is over 1400 miles from Tripoli to Alexandria, and there is only
one good road along the coast. Moving supply trucks that distance will consume
fuel, perhaps half of everything we send you for your fighting troops. We will
see what the Vichy French might send us from Tunisia and Algeria. After all, we
have just given them a nice house warming gift in the 77th Infantry Division,
so they owe us a favor or two.”

“Yet we cannot ask the French to do
anything substantial,” said Hitler. “You will be lucky to get some trucks,
supplies and a single brigade from them. If we go for the Suez Canal, then
German troops must do the work.”

“I can take it in 90 days if
adequately supported,” said Rommel, nipping himself mentally for revealing his
thoughts at this early stage of the planning.

Hitler gave him a discerning
look, as if he were seeing something in him that spoke of events yet to come,
of victories and new glory for the German Reich, and a final end to the
stubborn resistance of the British Empire.

“I like confidence in a man,”
said the Führer. “Look what
Dietl
did up in Narvik.
Conditions were harsh there as well, but he managed. I have every confidence
that you will do the same. The road to Suez may be a hard one, but we will get
there with a steady hand on the tiller and a firm command of the situation.
Between your position and Ivan Volkov’s troops and all that oil in Orenburg,
there is nothing but the British Colonies in the Middle East. The French
already have Syria, and both Iran and Iraq are leaning our way. The Iraqis are
already asking for our support, and I will see to that soon enough. As for
Turkey, I will see to them in time as well. At the moment, the British are the
only real threat. Until I can make further assignments to your new Afrika
Korps, stop O’Connor’s advance and await further troops and supplies. I hereby
appoint you
Befehlshaber
,
Commander in
Chief of all German Forces in North Africa—the troops in Morocco excepted.
Those will stay in the Western Command. We have plans there as well.”

It was a significant post, and
Rommel fully appreciated what he was now being told.
Befehlshaber
,
he thought with some excitement. That is better than a Korps Commander!
They are giving me the defense of Libya, but I will give them something more
than they expect. He saluted again, then offered his hand to Hitler as he made
ready to depart.

“I will look forward to your next
report,” said Hitler, “and perhaps another good motion picture!”

Chapter 14

His
business concluded,
Hitler departed with a gaggle of aides and staffers, and Keitel now leaned over
the map with Rommel for a more detailed discussion of the operation. “It will
be called
Sonnenblume
,” he said, “Operation Sunflower. That is a perfect
image of the whole affair, for in order for that flower to bloom, it depends on
the long thin stalk rooted to good ground. Tripoli is the closest port we have
that can do the job, but even that will permit only five or six ships to unload
per day—no more than three to five thousand tons of supplies.”

“That will certainly supply my
division, and the brunt of the fighting will be in Cyrenaica, with plentiful
water supplies. That said, what about the drive to Egypt?”

“This is the real problem,
Rommel.” Keitel seemed to brood now. “
Halder
believes
the most we can possibly support through Tripoli is three divisions. Give us
Benghazi and we can support one more. That will give you a single German Korps.
The Führer has eyes on Russia. This you should well know. I am trying to
dissuade him from attacking there, but he seems determined to do so in time. It
is only 600 miles from the Polish frontier to Moscow, and he has fifty
divisions there. It is twice that distance from Tripoli to Alexandria, and we
will be lucky to give you five divisions when all is said and done.”

“Will we undertake both
operations at once?”

“Not at the outset. I do not
think the Führer will issue orders for a full fledged invasion of Russia for at
least six months. That is all the time you will have to see if this
Mediterranean strategy Raeder keeps talking about is viable.”

“Rest assured, Keitel, I will
stop O’Connor, and send the British reeling all the way back to the Nile.”

“Stop them first, as the Führer
has ordered. Whether we ever get to the Nile remains to be seen.”

“You seem to have considerable
doubts about it,” said Rommel.

“That is because I am a realist.
They don’t appoint old men to lead cavalry charges, Rommel, but we set up all
the horses in nice neat little rows before everything begins—we do the
planning, hand out the sabres and steeds. I have little doubt that you and your
men can beat the British, but this campaign will be won or lost by the supply
trucks, not your tanks, which will become nothing more than stationary metal
pill boxes when they run out of gasoline. Yes? So we must give serious thought
as to how we can possibly support a major campaign against Egypt and the other
British holdings in the Middle East.”

“That is simple,” said Rommel
with a smile. “I’ll capture British supplies as I move forward!”

Keitel returned his smile,
realizing he had a real cavalry officer here, and that Rommel was chafing at
the bit. Was he really the right man for this assignment? Perhaps we should
have appointed someone like
Manstein
, a sound
strategist who also knows how to calculate logistics.
Manstein
would want us to extend a rail line from Tripoli, as far east as we could push
it. How could he communicate the importance of logistics to a man like Rommel?
He tapped the Nile river with his pencil.

“If you ever set eyes on the
Nile, General, you will find yourself nearly 1500 miles from your primary
supply base in Tripoli. Then what will you do? The Nile Delta is a maze of
rivers, canals and marshes. Every bridge on the river will be blown up in your
face.”

“That didn’t stop me in France.”

“No? Well in France you had
friendly forces massed behind you, good rail lines and a road net to move up
supplies, and only over a distance of a few hundred miles. Consider that before
you plan any offensive east, and remember, your orders now are to fight a
defensive battle, nothing more. Stop O’Connor and then let us see what we can
do to build up your force for future operations.”

Rommel eyed the map quietly,
pointing at a spot near Sicily. “What about Malta?” There it sat, right astride
the convoy routes they would need to reach Tripoli with all the troops and
supplies that must land there. Keitel raised an eyebrow, not expecting the
issue to come up here.

“Yes,” said Keitel. “Malta. It
could become a problem. At the moment it is not much of a threat, and the
Italians believe they can pound it to dust with their air force.”

“Now they begin to sound like
Goring,” said Rommel. “If the British build up strength there, it will choke this
supply line you are so concerned about—a nice fat stone in the neck of the
goose.”

Keitel was pleasantly surprised
to hear such an appraisal from a man like Rommel. “We are considering the
matter,” he said. “Student has the 7th Flieger Division itching to do
something. We are already knee deep in the Balkans. Some discussion has been
going around about opening another route to the Suez Canal from that direction,
a nice right pincer to compliment your operations down that long desert road.
But to do that we will have to hop from one enemy held island to another—from
Greece to Crete, to Cyprus, and then perhaps we can make the final jump into
Syria to join the Vichy French. That’s a big operation, and in the meantime, I
am trying to interest Student in another plan—Malta.”

Rommel nodded. “Considering that
the Italians will be delivering the supplies, I can only find myself hoping
their navy does a little better than Graziani. Yet now that we have Gibraltar,
what is to stop us from sending our own navy into the Mediterranean? I have
heard Admiral Raeder’s arguments about the southern approach across the desert.
Will he support me once I get there?”

“I would not count on it,” Keitel
admonished, “and we haven’t the merchant shipping in any case. At the moment,
we must rely on
Regia Marina
, or perhaps the Vichy French.”

In this Keitel was being
deliberately evasive. He knew of secret plans already underway that would
indeed see some rather dramatic developments in the Mediterranean, and one of
them involved Malta. In fact, Keitel had worked out a plan with ‘Smiling
Albert’ Kesselring and Student, taking it to
Jodl
and
Raeder to see what they thought on the matter. What he wanted to know now was
what Rommel was thinking. He would be the commander on the ground, and the man
most likely to gain or lose on the question of Malta. Was he in favor of such
an operation?

“Suppose we forsake Malta, and
the British reinforce it with considerable air units. What then? You know damn
well that your army cannot live off the desert, nor on captured British
supplies.”

Now it was Rommel’s turn to raise
an eyebrow, inwardly seeing difficulties in all of this talk of supplies, and
wanting nothing whatsoever to do with it. In the history Fedorov knew, he would
learn the hard lessons of logistics in the desert, after two long years of
bitter struggle there. Only then would he come to write:
“The first
essential condition for an army to be able to stand the strain of battle is an
adequate stock of weapons, petrol, and ammunition. In fact, the battle is
fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins. The
bravest men can do nothing without guns, the guns nothing without plenty of
ammunition: and neither guns nor ammunition are of much use in mobile warfare
unless there are vehicles with sufficient petrol to haul them around.”

Now however, all he wanted to do
was to get down to the desert and beat the British. Then he would see how long
it took before those oak leaves showed up for his Knight’s Cross.

He put his hand in his pocket.
And his finger found the hole there, the one he had neglected to mend days ago
when he first discovered it. Now the pocket was useless, and could hold nothing
if value until it was sewn. A stitch in time, he thought. Yes… even he could
see the shadow Malta cast on his prospects. He had been opposed to the plan
when he first heard about it, thinking it would only draw off supplies and
troops he might need himself in the desert. But now he passed a strange moment
of inward thought, as if he were seeing the long desert road ahead of him, and
hearing the melancholy regret that would later inspire those words on the
matter of logistics. It was as if an inner sixth sense was warning him now,
whispering of a doom he could not yet see or believe possible, but one that
would be his undoing in the months ahead.

He compromised with the inner
fear that came with that strange thought, that rising wary feeling within him.
Malta was largely undefended at this point in the war. A quick operation to
seize it should not cause him any delay or concern in his own planning. So,
when the conference concluded, he made one last suggestion to Keitel on the
matter, and it fell like a stone in the quiet pool of the other man’s thinking
on the subject.

“Take Malta as soon as possible,”
he said. “Take it before the British realize what they already have in hand,
and start sending reinforcements there. Then give me everything you can,
Keitel. Give me the tanks and supplies, and I promise you—I will give you Egypt
in return.”

Yes, he thought. I will give them
Egypt, and after that, I will carry the war on my shoulders all the way to the
Caspian Sea. He could see it all now, and he knew it was more than possible.
Then they will have all the oil they might ever need, he thought, but to do
that I will need the supplies and fuel Keitel speaks of first. The 5th Light
Division is hardly enough to get started, but I will not know that until I am
on the ground in Libya. If I find myself begging for table scraps, starved of
men, fuel, and material, then things might not turn out to the Führer’s liking.
But I do know one thing—Hitler loves a good victory, doesn’t he? So that is
exactly what he will get.

* * *

Keitel
had his answer from
Rommel, and now he knew that there would not be objection or difficulties on
his end of things if his own plan went forward. He had
Jodl
and Raeder in his corner, and Kesselring too. Now he wanted to sound out the
mind of yet one other key officer before he face the real challenge of trying
to persuade Hitler. That man was Franz
Halder
, the
Chief of the OKH General Staff at that time.

Keitel had taken Rommel’s advice
to heart, at least on one matter, the importance of Malta to any future effort
to supply an army in North Africa. So now he sought to raise the matter with
Halder
, and the two men went round and round with it before
a decision was reached.

“Crete would seem to be a more
inviting target,” said
Halder
, Chief of the OKH
General Staff at that time. He removed his cap, tucking it under his arm as he
ran a hand over his short cropped hair, which he wore in Hindenburg style after
the famous German Chancellor, a half inch thick brush on top, and shorter on
the sides. His eyes played over the map behind the round wire frame spectacles
he wore, his face serious as he considered the situation.