practice over or two, so to speak, with the Italians. What more delightful people to fight could there be?’ Nothing went right for the Italian war effort. Mussolini’s propaganda department in Rome made a film designed to demonstrate the superiority of fascist manhood. To this end, a fight was staged between former world heavyweight champion Primo Carnera and Kay Masaki, a black South African taken prisoner in the desert. Masaki had never entered a boxing ring in his life, and was knocked down when the cameras began to roll. He picked himself up, however, and struck Carnera a blow that rendered him unconscious.
To the outside world, the relative insignificance of Britain’s desert triumphs was plain. Romanian Mihail Sebastian wrote on 7 February 1941: ‘It goes without saying that the whole of the war in Africa (however interesting and dramatic) is only a sideshow. The struggle is between the British and the Germans; that is where everything will be decided.’ He was right, of course, but in blitzed London there was rejoicing. By 9 February, O’Connor’s force had advanced five hundred miles and taken El Agheila; the road west towards Tripoli lay open. Thereafter, to the bewilderment of ordinary soldiers, the advance ended; deep in the sands of Mussolini’s colony they halted, and languished. ‘Every day was the same as the day before,’ gunner Doug Arthur wrote wearily. ‘Saturday could have been Monday, Friday could have been Tuesday, even Pancake Tuesday, for all we knew…we didn’t know what was really going on, where we were going or what faced us when we got there.’
They were going no further in Libya. Four of Wavell’s divisions, including the New Zealand division and much of the Australian contingent, were transferred to Greece to meet the anticipated German assault there. It was afterwards claimed that the Greek diversion cost the British a unique opportunity to clear the North African coast and regain control of the southern Mediterranean. This seems doubtful: Lt. Gen. Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps was already landing at Tripoli, to succour the faltering Italians and thereafter dominate the campaign; the British supply line was stretched to its limits; O’Connor’s tanks and vehicles were almost worn out. Fighting the Italians flattered the capabilities of Western Desert Force, while the simultaneous Abyssinian campaign was a heavy drain on imperial resources. Even if none of Wavell’s men had gone to Greece, it is unlikely that the British were strong enough to complete the conquest of North Africa.
During the three months before the British offensive in Libya petered out in February 1941, it achieved an important marginal impact, unrecognised at the time: Compass contributed to keeping Spain out of the war. Franco faced the same dilemmas as Mussolini, but reached different conclusions. He was ideologically enthusiastic towards the Axis and wished to share the spoils of Allied defeat. But he was cautious about exposing his country, ravaged by recent civil war, to the hazards of a new struggle until the British had been reduced to impotence. From 1939 onwards Spain was no neutral, but a belligerent-in-waiting: Spanish foreign minister Serrano Suner, in particular, was wholeheartedly committed to joining the Axis cause. The shrewd Portuguese ambassador in Madrid, Pedro Teotonio Pereira, reported to Lisbon on 27 May 1940: ‘Beyond doubt Spain continues to hate the Allies…German victories are received with joy.’ Pereira asserted that almost all Spaniards wanted Germany to triumph, and regretted only that the destitution of their country made it inopportune to commit themselves immediately to its cause: ‘They do not judge the war to be infamous, but themselves in a bad position to take part.’
Franco intended to fight, but only if Germany accepted his stiff tariff: ‘Spain cannot enter por gusto [for fun],’ he told Hitler during their meeting at Hendaye on the Franco–Spanish border in October 1940. A secret protocol to the Spanish–German accord, finally signed in November, declared Madrid’s readiness to join the Tripartite Pact: ‘In fulfilment of its obligations as an ally, Spain will intervene in the present war of the Axis Powers against England after they have provided it with the military support necessary for its preparedness…Germany will grant economic aid to Spain by supplying it with food and raw materials.’ The Economic Ministry in Madrid drew up a formidable shopping list: 400,000 tons of fuel, half a million tons of coal, 200,000 tons of wheat, 100,000 tons of cotton and vast consignments of fertiliser.
Franco’s military planners busied themselves preparing a possible takeover of Portugal as well as Gibraltar. Thereafter, however, relations with Germany soured. The Spanish dictator was galled when Hitler refused to concede to him French colonies in Africa, partly because Germany still hoped to enlist Vichy France as an active ally. Mussolini strongly opposed Spanish belligerence, partly because he was a competitor with Franco for the same French colonies, and also because he sought unreserved personal hegemony over the Mediterranean littoral. Hitler, in his turn, had his own shopping list, wishing to appropriate some of Franco’s colonies as German overseas bases: Spanish Equatorial Guinea, Fernando Po and one of the Canary Islands. The most intractable sticking point in negotiations was that the Spanish leader, like Mussolini, was unwilling to allow large numbers of German troops into his country. He admired Hitler vastly, and cherished illusions that the Führer would create a new European polity in which Spain, for so long an abused underdog, would be conceded its rightful place in the sun. But he had no intention of allowing his country to become a Nazi fiefdom.
Hitler’s key strategic objective was seizure of Gibraltar. Having scant faith in the Spanish army to accomplish this, he prepared plans for the Wehrmacht to do so. For Franco, however, in the words of historian Stanley Payne, ‘it was a point of both honor and national interest that Spanish forces carry out the operation’. An impasse developed: the Germans would not provide Spain with the weapons and supplies for Franco to make an attempt on Gibraltar, and Franco would not grant the Wehrmacht rights of passage for its own assault. He knew the Spanish people were unwilling to accept the sacrifices of a new war. His generals were hostile, not least because the British were paying them a fortune in secret bribes – $13 million in all – to keep their country neutral. As long as Britain remained undefeated, the Royal Navy could blockade Spain, with devastating economic consequences. Once again, British sea power exercised an important, though invisible, influence upon events.
British successes in Libya and Abyssinia further discouraged Franco from any hasty commitment to fight, at precisely the moment when Hitler was ready to dispatch tanks and troops to take Gibraltar. On 7 December 1940, the Abwehr’s chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris met Franco in Madrid, to seek his agreement that German forces should start moving into Spain within a month. Franco refused. Canaris cabled Berlin on the 10th, saying that Spain would not move as long as the British maritime threat persisted. Hitler lost patience, and Operation Felix, the Gibraltar attack, was shelved. By February 1941, his attention had switched irrevocably eastwards. He needed every division for his intended invasion of Russia. His interest in Gibraltar waned, and with it Germany’s willingness to pay an extravagant price for Spanish belligerency. Spain remained an active friend of the Axis for almost two years thereafter, until the successful Allied invasion of North Africa made obvious the turn of the tide. Italian aircraft bombing Gibraltar refuelled at Spanish airfields; vital commodities including tungsten continued to flow from Spain to Germany; the country swarmed with Nazi diplomats and spies, who were provided with every facility to impede the Allied war effort. Franco sent a token division to assist Hitler’s invasion of Russia; Luftwaffe weather and reconnaissance aircraft flew from Spanish bases until 1945. But Spain maintained nominal neutrality. Gibraltar remained unconquered, and thus the gateway to the Mediterranean stayed open to Allied shipping.
If Franco had joined the war, the inevitable fall of Gibraltar would have doomed Malta. It would have been much harder – perhaps impossible – for the British to hold the Middle East. The damage to their prestige and confidence would have been immense, and Churchill might not have survived as prime minister. Franco deserved no gratitude from the Allies, because cautious Spanish diplomacy was driven by self-interest; he held back only because he overvalued his own worth to the Axis. But the outcome was much to the advantage of both Britain and Spain.
Rommel, who had made his reputation in the 1940 French campaign, arrived in Africa on 12 February 1941. His soldiers, flushed with victory in Europe, were in exuberant mood, perceiving their deployment as a romantic adventure. ‘We are all twenty-one years old and crazy,’ wrote panzergrenadier
