ON December 10th 1941, when the last of Rommel’s forces broke away from Tobruk, it was eight months to the day since they had first made contact with the perimeter. During that time those thin defences had turned the tide of war in the Middle East. By going on to Tobruk in the previous January, Wavell had been able to clinch the advantages won at Sidi Barrani and Bardia, and to complete Mussolini’s humiliation. More than this, the capture of Tobruk greatly strengthened the defences of Egypt, as was shown by the way Rommel disposed his forces in Cyrenaica. From June onwards, as we have seen, two divisions watched the frontier; two were held in reserve west and south of Tobruk; and five more were needed to hem in the garrison’s one and a half divisions. This was the measure of its triumph.
It is, however, too much to claim that Tobruk stopped Rommel capturing Alexandria and the Suez Canal in 1941. Rommel hardly had sufficient forces for such a task. I doubt whether he had been sent to Libya for that purpose. His job was rather to secure this sector of the German right flank while Russia was attacked, to tie up British forces and to protect the air bases from which the Axis could challenge British naval power in the Central Mediterranean. There is now little reason for thinking, as many did at the time, that the German campaigns in Libya and the Balkans early in 1941 were part of a major drive on the Middle East. They were, I believe, merely preliminary moves in the attack on Russia.
By the end of 1940 Hitler, having lost the Battle for Britain, must have realized that he could not invade the British Isles, unless he could bring much greater strength to bear; and he could not do this until the threat to his eastern frontier had been removed. In spite of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression pact, Hitler then had more than 140 divisions and several thousand aircraft on the Russian border. The decision to attack Russia must have been made no later than January 1941, and in preparation for this offensive Hitler needed to safeguard his southern flank and, if possible, to strengthen it. In Albania the Italians were suffering defeat after defeat and, so long as the Greeks fought on, the Allies had in Europe a foothold which they might try to extend. Hence the campaign against Yugoslavia and Greece was an essential preliminary to the attack on Russia.
Hitler’s grand strategy required not only the conquest of the Balkans but also the encirclement of Turkey. This intention was clearly shown by the size and character of the force he sent to Greece and Crete – an armoured division, six infantry divisions, and two of air-borne troops. The latter were primarily intended for the attack on Cyprus not Crete, which he expected to take without much opposition. After that he had apparently planned to make an airborne invasion of Cyprus from the Dodecanese and, with the help of Vichy, to go on from Cyprus to Syria and to Iraq where revolt was organized. This development was blocked by the severe losses of the Luftwaffe and the Nazi air-borne divisions in the battle for Crete. Had this plan succeeded, Hitler would not only have made this flank secure, but he might also have forced Turkey to provide him with a back door to the Caucasus and a front door to Asia.
Even though the Germans were halted at Crete, Turkey might not have been saved if Tobruk had fallen in May 1941. The defence of the Middle East through 1940–1 was almost as much a political as military problem. For many years Axis propagandists had been campaigning against Britain in Egypt, Palestine, and the Moslem lands generally. This campaign had been helped by the prestige which the Germans had won through their European victories in the first eighteen months of the war. Germany – in Moslem eyes – was irresistible, and Britain’s military reputation could hardly have been lower. In view of this, an advance by Rommel to Mersa Matruh – or worse still to El Alamein – in May 1941 would have had disastrous political consequences, not only in Egypt, where the Axis had friends and agents in the highest places, but throughout the Middle East. Britain’s forces were probably capable of holding Rommel at El Alamein in that year, but they would almost certainly have been seriously embarrassed by civil uprisings extending from Egypt to Iran.
If Rommel had reached El Alamein at the time of our expulsion from Greece and Crete, it is difficult to see how Turkey could have withstood German pressure, especially as the Axis then had such air superiority that the British Fleet might well have been forced to leave the Eastern Mediterranean. With it would have gone the main bulwark of Britain’s prestige. Even as it was, the Turks were dragooned into signing a ‘Treaty of Friendship’ and a new trade agreement with Germany on the eve of the Nazi attack on Russia. A year later, when Rommel reached El Alamein, the political consequences were not so serious. The belief that Germany’s power was irresistible had been disproved at Tobruk, and Hitler’s crack troops had been defeated and driven back in both Russia and Libya. But in April and May of 1941, between Hitler and a great politico-military triumph in the Middle East there stood little but Tobruk.
Because he was denied this triumph, Hitler’s attempt to envelop Turkey failed. He then tried to frighten the Turks into surrender, but Stalin evidently warned him that any move against them would bring Russia in on their side. Hitler turned to attack the Soviet without further ado. Had Crete not proved so costly and Tobruk so stubborn, Russia would almost certainly have found herself invaded a month earlier than she was and attacked, moreover, on her southern flank as well as her western front.
Tobruk had an important effect on the course of the war for further reasons. Here the Germans suffered their first defeat on land. The Tobruk garrison showed that they could be beaten and how to beat them. It demonstrated that the Blitzkreg, break-through tactics could be defeated by resolute infantry, who held their ground; by minefields and artillery fire; by defence in depth and by individual courage. It showed that the dreaded dive-bomber could be beaten off by ack-ack gunners who fought strongly back. Until this siege the dive-bomber had so dominated the gunner that the approved tactics were that gun crews went to ground when directly attacked.
Tobruk put an end to that and also to the theory, so current after the campaigns in Western Europe and the Balkans, that ground troops could not hold their positions against an enemy who had complete command of the air. Admittedly the conditions in Tobruk were very different from these which had enabled the Nazis to use their aircraft so successfully in Greece and Crete, but that did not lessen the effect of Tobruk’s example on the rest of Wavell’s forces. After these further retreats and evacuations, there was a danger that the Luftwaffe might gain a decided moral ascendancy over the British troops – especially those who had as yet no action experience against the Germans and had not fully recovered from the pessimism that followed Dunkirk. The success of the Tobruk garrison in dealing with both tanks and dive-bombers and fighting back month after month with no air support at all was most timely and heartening – not only for the Middle East forces, but for the Allies on every front.
Long before the war, the Germans began undermining the resistance of their enemies and prospective victims by sedulously spreading the doctrines of the inevitable success of the side strong enough to take the offensive: the certain supremacy of the force with superior engines of war; and the clear advantage of the young, sturdy Totalitarian nations over the effete democracies. Their successes in 1940 were prima facie proof of their case and Allied troops developed an inferiority complex, which was heightened by Germany’s continued superiority in armament. Gallant though Dunkirk had been, nothing had happened on land to disprove the German doctrines – until Tobruk. But the Tommies and Diggers then showed that resolute men could defy superior mechanized power, so long as they refused to be intimidated. Before we could begin to defeat Hitler, this psychological supremacy of the machine over man had to be broken. Tobruk did that, and did more. It gave Britain time to recover from the disasters of Greece and Crete, and to re-organize the defence of Egypt; time for American aid to become effective and fresh supplies and reinforcements to arrive from Britain. It set an example of courage in the face of superior strength; of firm spirit in spite of hardship; of cheerful defiance and offensive defence.
Tobruk not only leg-roped Rommel, it also made possible his defeat in the November offensive. If the British had not been holding Tobruk – if they had not been able to strike at Rommel from two flanks simultaneously – the November attack would have failed as certainly as had that in June. By November 23rd, when the Germans had regained Sidi Rezegh and put out of action half the British tanks, the Eighth Army had lost that armoured superiority on which its success primarily depended. If Rommel had then been free to concentrate all his strength to drive the remaining British tanks back across the frontier, he would have won the day. Only fear of the British garrison in Tobruk stopped him from doing that. No wonder Rommel and the Germans came to hate the very name ‘Tobruk’ – so much so that after they later captured the Fortress in June 1942, Hitler renamed it ‘Rommel’.
It is not unfair to say that as the November offensive developed the outcome was as much the relief of the Eighth Army as the relief of Tobruk. In this final triumph the A.I.F. had been represented only by the 2/13th but that battalion’s recapture of the lost ground at Ed Duda on November 29th was the turning-point in one of the major crises of the campaign. The 2/13th had gained there at least a token revenge for all the Australians who had fought to hold Tobruk.
There was much in common between these men and the original Anzacs. Although the one was a successful defence and the other an offensive which failed, the same spirit was engendered in Tobruk and on Gallipoli. In both, the constant threat of an enemy who hemmed them in with their backs to the sea bound men together in unbreakable comradeship. Because of this, Tobruk and the spirit it typified became woven into the pattern of the Australian heritage, just as surely as Gallipoli was twenty-six years before.
Like Gallipoli, Tobruk has been made almost part of Australian soil by those who fought and died there. Most of the members of the A.I.F.,1 who were killed in the defence of Tobruk, lie buried in its War Cemetery. A few days before he left Tobruk General Morshead unveiled a memorial and there was a short ceremony at the cemetery in honour of those who lay there. In a broadcast at the time I described the ceremony in these words:
‘At the setting of the sun we are met to honour those whose sun has set, but whose names shall live. Here beside the road that runs from Bardia to Tobruk the smooth brown sand of the desert is broken by 800 white crosses and the mounds of 800 graves – the graves of those who have died fighting for their country at Tobruk. In the west the sun has just set, but the sky is still streaked with light and a restless wind sweeps a fine dust-cloud across the cemetery. From the escarpment to the south comes the occasional thunder of guns; along the road from time to time trucks, armoured cars and tanks roar past on their way to or from the front; half a mile away troops are shaking out their blankets. The ordinary life of war goes on while we are gathered to do homage to those who have found peace only in death.
‘Silhouetted against the evening sky is their memorial – a plain grey concrete obelisk – bearing the inscription:
THIS IS HALLOWED GROUND FOR HERE LIE
THOSE WHO DIED FOR THEIR COUNTRY
At the going down of the sun and in
the morning we will remember them.
‘Over this inscription is draped a Union Jack and around the memorial are now gathered those who have come to honour fallen comrades. Each unit in the Tobruk Fortress has a representative here. There are officers and men of the British, Australian, Polish and Indian forces; officers and men of the Army, Navy and Air Force, for members of all three services are buried here. Now they stand in solemn silence awaiting the arrival of the Fortress Commander who will unveil the memorial. After that there will be a short service of dedication conducted by an Australian and a British chaplain.
‘This will be a simple ceremony. Here within the sound and range of enemy guns anything elaborate would be out of place. Here soldiers, sailors and airmen are gathered to honour fellow soldiers, sailors and airmen. They have come straight from their tasks of war. Some from front-line posts; some from gun-positions; some from headquarters’ dug-outs; some from dockside or aerodrome. Some have come in their everyday dress – their shorts, shirts and steel helmets; some are in warmer battle dress; a few are wearing uniforms for which they’ve had no use these last six front-line months. There is to be no display, no pomp and ceremony, no glittering uniforms, no regimental bands, no speeches. Just two chaplains in khaki, one bugler and a hundred men gathered round a plain memorial draped with a Union Jack.
‘Some of the graves are not yet completed. Some are only mounds of earth ringed with rough rock. Most of them have been bordered with a concrete wall and covered with white tiles on which there is a cross or a rising sun in dark stone. More than 500 of the men buried here are Australians. Some gave their lives when we first took Tobruk, but most have died in the defence of the Fortress. As well as the Australians, there are several hundred troops from the British Isles, Indians and Poles and a few Jewish volunteers from Palestine. There are two Greek sailors, a New Zealander and a South African and several members of the Libyan force which joined the Army of the Nile after Cyrenaica was first conquered. The Mohammedans are buried in a sector by themselves, and so are the Germans and Italians. But it does not matter whether they are friend or foe; Christian, Hebrew or Mohammedan; European or Asiatic. They are men who gave their lives for their country and as such we honour them.
‘But as nearly all those who are buried here died in the heroic defence of Tobruk, it is fitting that we should think specially of them. Their example of defiance and self-sacrifice is an inspiration to those who are left to fight on. Tobruk stands unconquered to-day because of the courage of men like these. The drifting sands may sweep across this cemetery and cover these crosses and this memorial as they have covered the monuments which the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans raised along this barren coast. But the sands neither of the desert nor of time will obscure the splendid achievement of the men of Tobruk. Their real monument is their name and their most honoured resting place is in the grateful hearts of their fellow men.’
_____________
1 In the withdrawal from Bengazi, the defence and relief of Tobruk, at least 776 officers and men of the A.I.F. were killed or died of wounds. Some of these have no known grave. Most of the 65 Australians posted missing are now presumed to have been killed also. The full list of A.I.F. casualties in this and other Middle East Campaigns is given in Appendix I.