Rommel in Tripoli

On 14 February 1941 a German transport ship moored in the port of Tripoli carrying the first combat units that the Reich had sent to help the Italians, beaten in Libya: the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion and the 39th Anti-Tank Battalion. Waiting for them for two days had been Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, the victorious commander of the 7th Panzer Division in the French campaign, whom Adolf Hitler had placed at the head of the German forces in North Africa. Rommel had the ship unloaded all night by lamplight, regardless of the danger of an air raid. Before noon the next day the soldiers, in new tropical uniforms, marched past the governor’s residence and set off east along the Via Balbia towards Sirte, where the last Italian units still fit for battle were stationed. So began the German presence in the Libyan desert, which was to last for more than two years.

Popular chronologies spread this beginning over several days: on 3 February Rommel was supposedly appointed commander of the “German troops in Africa”, on 9 February Mussolini supposedly learnt that German reinforcements were on their way, on 11 February the first units of the Afrika Korps supposedly arrived in Tripoli, and on 14 February Rommel himself. These dates need sorting out. On 3 February Hitler decided to send considerably stronger forces to Libya under a corps headquarters, but Rommel received his assignment on 6 February. He flew into Tripoli on 12 February, not 14 February. On 11 February the first echelon of transports reached the port, mainly with supplies and services, while the combat units landed on 14 February. The corps received the name Deutsches Afrikakorps only on 19 February.

From a “blocking detachment” to a corps

Hitler had decided on military aid for Italy in Libya back in January. Directive No. 22 of 11 January provided for the dispatch to Tripolitania of a small “blocking detachment” (Sperrverband) drawn from units of the 3rd Panzer Division, capable of supporting the Italians in their defence against British tanks. During the meeting at the Berghof on 19–20 January it was agreed that the shipment of this unit, named the 5th Light Division, would begin around 15 February. The operation was given the code name Sonnenblume (Sunflower).

The plan was quickly overtaken by events on the battlefield. On 22 January Tobruk fell, on 30 January the Australians entered Derna, and the Italians began abandoning the whole of Cyrenaica. General Hans von Funck, whom the Army High Command had sent to Libya on reconnaissance, reported in Berlin on 1 February that the proposed detachment would not be enough to avert disaster. At least a whole panzer division would be needed, and even that could not go into action in Tripolitania before the end of April. The Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, endorsed this assessment. On 3 February he proposed to Hitler that the detachment be reinforced with a panzer regiment, that the rest of a panzer division be sent after it, and that all mobile units in Libya be placed under a German corps headquarters working with the Luftwaffe. According to the war diary of the OKW operations staff, kept by Helmuth Greiner, Hitler gave his consent. The OKW order on the matter was issued on 6 February.

Hitler chose Rommel to command the corps. Funck, who already knew the ground, did not get the post; according to some authors Hitler disliked his pessimism. In the dictator’s eyes Rommel had qualities that many generals lacked: he was bold, victorious and well known to Hitler since commanding the guard at his headquarters in 1939. In a letter to Mussolini of 5 February Hitler presented him as the boldest general of armoured troops in the German army, whose services in the western campaign had been “absolutely exceptional”, and compared him with General Eduard Dietl, the hero of Narvik.

Rommel was at home at the time on short leave. On the second evening an adjutant from Hitler’s headquarters summoned him to report in Berlin at once. On 6 February he landed at Staaken airfield and reported to Brauchitsch, who gave him his new assignment, and in the afternoon to Hitler. He was told that two divisions, a light one and a panzer one, would go to Libya; that the first units would arrive in mid-February; that the 5th Light Division would be assembled in Africa by mid-April and the 15th Panzer Division by the end of May. The Italian motorised units were to come under his command, while he himself was to be subordinate to the Italian commander-in-chief in Libya. In the evening Hitler showed him British and American illustrated magazines with reports on General Archibald Wavell’s advance through Cyrenaica. That day Rommel wrote to his wife that “things are moving fast” and that his new task was “very big and important”.

Hitler’s condition and Mussolini’s consent

German aid was not unconditional. The German military attaché in Rome, General Enno von Rintelen, wrote in a report of 29 January that there was no point in sending a panzer division to Tripoli if Marshal Rodolfo Graziani intended merely to wait for the English in a fortified camp around the city. Hitler agreed with him. In his letter of 5 February, which Rintelen carried to Rome, he set out his reasoning to the Duce. The Italian units shattered in Cyrenaica had lost faith in themselves, so a German unit could raise their spirits. That made sense, however, only if it was strong enough to “turn the tide”. The British were crossing the desert to the rear of one position after another, and the fleet was supplying them from the sea, so they could not be stopped by defence alone: the defence had to be offensive in character, and that required a strong armoured formation as well as air and naval forces to cut British shipping along the coast. There was one condition: before the Germans arrived, the coast must not be lost to such an extent that the defence would have to be shut up within the perimeter of Tripoli itself, from which nothing could be recovered.

Rintelen arrived in Rome by train just before midnight on 8 February and that same night, accompanied by General Antonio Gandin, talked with Benito Mussolini. That was most probably when he delivered the letter. At nine o’clock on the morning of 9 February the Duce received him again, alone, and declared that he accepted the German concept for the defence of Tripolitania. The Italian generals had proposed that the line of defence should run between Al Khums and Misrata, because further east they would be unable to supply their troops. Rintelen replied that this was too far back: the English would then get Misrata with its port and the villages of the Italian colonists, whereas they had to be stopped in the desert, in front of the inhabited coastal strip. Mussolini agreed and ordered a defence between Sirte and Misrata. He also accepted the German point that there was no need to keep large forces facing French Tunisia. That same morning the Chief of the General Staff, General Alfredo Guzzoni, issued a new directive on the defence of Tripolitania. Mussolini stipulated that he wished to meet Rommel in person, but only after his reconnaissance, since he would be away from Rome until 13 February. On 12 February he met General Francisco Franco at Bordighera.

This, then, is how on 9 February Mussolini learnt that German reinforcements were on their way. On the same day British armoured cars reached El Agheila on the border of Tripolitania. At the same time the Duce had to swallow another humiliation: that morning British warships had shelled Genoa, and the Italian fleet had failed to intercept them.

A change of guard in Libya

The defeat at Beda Fomm on 7 February, in which the commander of the 10th Army, General Giuseppe Tellera, was killed and General Annibale Bergonzoli was taken prisoner, ended the existence of the Italian army in Cyrenaica. Graziani, long dejected and absorbed in sending despairing telegrams to Rome, asked to be relieved of command. Mussolini, embittered both by his defeat and by his attitude, accepted the request. On 11 February the high command in North Africa was taken over by General Italo Gariboldi, until then commander of the 5th Army in Tripolitania and Graziani’s deputy. He received the office of Governor-General of Libya in the second half of March. Graziani returned to Italy, where he was accused of cowardice, and his conduct was later examined by a commission of inquiry. He received no further command until Mussolini’s fall.

Gariboldi, a sixty-one-year-old veteran of the war against Ethiopia, was a sensible but cautious commander. He was taking over an army that had lost some 130,000 men as prisoners and almost all its equipment in two months, while the remnants of its forces were falling back in disorder across the desert. In Tripolitania there were mainly poorly armed infantry divisions without transport, and from Italy only the Ariete armoured division, with a few dozen obsolete light tanks, was on its way. Many Italian officers, as Rommel later noted, already had their bags packed and were counting on a swift return home.

Rommel in Tripoli

On the morning of 11 February Rommel reported in Rome to General Guzzoni, who had accepted the plan for a defence at the level of Sirte. The Chief of Staff of the Italian Army, General Mario Roatta, was ordered to fly to Libya with Rommel. In the afternoon Rommel flew to Catania, where he talked with the commander of X Fliegerkorps, General Hans Geisler, whose dive-bombers had been attacking the British fleet and Malta since January. The news from Africa was bad: the British had taken Benghazi, destroyed the last Italian armoured division and, by German reckoning, could be outside Tripoli within a few days. Rommel demanded that the Luftwaffe bomb the port of Benghazi that very night and the British columns south of the town the next day. Geisler refused, because the Italians had asked him to spare Benghazi, where many of their officers and officials owned houses. Hitler’s chief adjutant, Colonel Rudolf Schmundt, who was accompanying Rommel, contacted headquarters during the night and obtained approval. A few hours later German bombers took off for Cyrenaica.

At around ten o’clock on 12 February Rommel and Schmundt took off from Catania and at about noon landed at Castel Benito airfield south of Tripoli. The German liaison officer with the Italian command greeted them with the news that Graziani had handed over command to Gariboldi, and described scenes from the retreat, with soldiers throwing away their weapons and fighting for places on overloaded lorries. At 1 p.m. Rommel reported to Gariboldi and set out his intentions on the map: not a step back, strong Luftwaffe support, and all available forces, including the first German units, thrown into the defence of the Sirte area. He believed that if the British met no resistance they would push on, but that if they saw another battle awaiting them, they would halt to bring up supplies. He intended to use the time gained in this way to build up his own forces.

Gariboldi, depressed by the defeat, received this plan with evident doubt and advised Rommel to look at the ground first, since a newcomer could not yet know the difficulties of this theatre of war. Rommel replied that he would soon get to know it, and that same afternoon he flew along the coast with Schmundt in a He 111. He saw the anti-tank ditches around Tripoli, the belt of sand in front of the city, the hills between Tarhuna and Al Khums, the open plain stretching to Misrata, ideal for motorised forces, and finally the white houses of Sirte and the Italian positions east of the little town. When he returned to Gariboldi in the evening, Roatta was already in Tripoli with a new directive from the Duce. The objections fell silent. The Italian X Corps, with the Brescia and Pavia divisions, was to move to the area of Sirte and Buerat, followed by the Ariete division.

Rommel also decided on something that was not in his orders. Berlin had sent him on reconnaissance, but he concluded that in so tense a situation, and given the “ponderousness” of the Italian command, he must take command at the front into his own hands as soon as possible – at the latest once the first units had arrived. Rintelen, to whom he had revealed this intention while still in Rome, warned him that it was the surest way to lose his honour and good name. Formally, Rommel became commander of the German troops in Libya with effect from 15 February.

The first units

The shipment of troops across the Mediterranean began with difficulties. According to some accounts, the first convoy left Naples on 8 February, but on news of British warships it had to take refuge in Palermo. According to the OKW operations staff’s diary, the first echelon of Operation Sonnenblume reached Tripoli on 11 February. It consisted, however, mainly of supplies and rear services rather than units fit for combat. At the same time Ju 52 transport aircraft ferried men and equipment across the sea, flying in groups just above the water to avoid detection. It is therefore right to point to 11 February as the day on which the first elements of the future Afrika Korps began to arrive.

The second echelon, with Lieutenant Colonel Irnfried von Wechmar’s 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion and the 39th Anti-Tank Battalion, arrived on 14 February. That same day, at Rommel’s insistence, the first Italian division set off from the Tripoli area towards Sirte. Unloading the 6,000-ton ship took all night, by lamplight, which according to Rommel was a record for the port of Tripoli. In the morning the soldiers were issued with tropical uniforms, and at eleven o’clock they formed up on the square in front of the governor’s palace. After a short parade Wechmar’s column drove off eastwards and after 26 hours on the road reached Sirte, more than 400 kilometres from Tripoli. The change of mood, Rommel wrote, “did not go unnoticed in Tripoli”.

Another parade, with which the one of 15 February is sometimes confused, has also passed into legend. On 12 March, after the arrival of the main body of the 5th Panzer Regiment, the tanks drove past the reviewing stand in Tripoli several times in a loop, so that observers and any spies would overestimate their number. The dummy tanks that Rommel had built in workshops a few kilometres south of the city served the same purpose: wood and canvas mock-ups mounted on Volkswagen chassis. From the air they looked deceptively like the real thing.

On 16 February German scouts, together with Major Santa Maria’s Italian column, pushed forward beyond Sirte towards the enemy for the first time. On 17 February Rommel wrote to his wife that co-operation with the Italian command was going splendidly and that his men were already at the front, which had been moved several hundred kilometres to the east. Every day he flew between Tripoli and the front, usually in a light Fi 156 Storch liaison aircraft. More German and Italian units followed the first battalions. The corps quartermaster organised supply by small ships along the coast, since the Via Balbia was the only road and there was no railway along the coast. On 19 February an order came from Hitler’s headquarters that all German troops in North Africa under Rommel’s command were to be called the Deutsches Afrikakorps. The day before, Hitler had decided that in addition to the 5th Light Division with its panzer regiment, a whole panzer division – later the 15th Panzer Division – would go to Tripolitania.

On the other side of the front

In those days the British could have struck at Tripoli and, according to Rommel himself, would have met no resistance worthy of the name. General Richard O’Connor was convinced that he could reach Tripoli after a short pause to replenish supplies. The government in London, however, decided otherwise. After the death of Ioannis Metaxas the Greeks were ready to accept British aid, and Winston Churchill saw in the Balkans a chance of a front against Germany. On 12 February, the day Rommel flew in, he instructed Wavell to hold Cyrenaica with the smallest possible forces and to prepare everything he could for dispatch to Greece. The experienced 7th Armoured Division, its vehicles worn out, returned to Egypt, and the best Australian and New Zealand units were to sail for the Balkans. On the border of Tripolitania there remained the incomplete 2nd Armoured Division, newly arrived from Britain, and the poorly equipped 9th Australian Division.

Wavell knew that the Germans had arrived in Tripoli, but he believed they would not be capable of a serious offensive before May, by which time the British tanks would have been repaired and the defence of Cyrenaica strengthened. After the war he admitted that, after his experience with the Italians, he “had not reckoned with Rommel”. This calculation, based on the pace of German shipments, took no account of the character of a man who in his very first days in Africa had ignored the instruction to confine himself to reconnaissance.

Place in the war

Rommel’s arrival in Tripoli opened a new chapter in the war in North Africa. Until then it had been an Anglo-Italian war in which the Italians suffered defeat after defeat. From February 1941 it became an Anglo-German war in which the Italians, although they still provided most of the soldiers, increasingly played second fiddle. Formally Rommel was subordinate to Gariboldi; in practice he soon began to wage his own war, often against the wishes of both Rome and Berlin. Italy’s own position changed too: after the Berghof and the dispatch of German troops to Libya, Mussolini could no longer pretend to be waging a “parallel war” alongside Germany.

The first clash between Germans and British in Africa took place on 24 February between Nofilia and El Agheila, when a German detachment destroyed several British armoured cars and took prisoners. On 24 March the Germans took El Agheila, and on 31 March, contrary to instructions to wait for the arrival of the 15th Panzer Division, Rommel attacked at Mersa Brega. In less than three weeks he took from the British almost the whole of Cyrenaica, won in Operation Compass, and General O’Connor, who had come to advise the new commander in Cyrenaica, fell into the hands of a German patrol. Rommel reached the Egyptian frontier. He could not, however, take Tobruk, whose siege lasted until December 1941 and where from August the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade fought. The front swung back and forth between Tripolitania and Egypt throughout 1942, until the Battle of El Alamein, and the campaign in Africa ended in May 1943 with the surrender of the Axis forces in Tunisia.

The dispatch of the Afrika Korps also had a cost that went unnoticed in February 1941. The force that Hitler had intended for a short rescue mission tied down ever more German divisions, aircraft and ships for two years, and its supplies depended on shipping across a sea dominated by the British from Malta and Alexandria. Rommel, raised to hero status by Goebbels’s propaganda, became the most famous German general of the war and the “Desert Fox”, as both the Germans and his enemies called him.