Rommel retakes Benghazi

By 10 a.m. on 29 January 1942 General der Panzertruppe Erwin Rommel, with a small battle group, had taken Benghazi, the main port of Cyrenaica. In the evening he was joined by the Italian Ariete Armoured Division. The city had changed hands for the fourth time in less than a year. Rommel took it by a ruse: the main body of the Afrika Korps feinted a march on Mechili, deep in the desert, while weak German detachments crossed trackless ground in the rain into the rear of the British 4th Indian Division. The division managed to slip away, but Eighth Army’s command, divided for several days in its reading of the situation, had to give up western Cyrenaica. By 6 February the British forces had withdrawn to a line running from Ain el Gazala to Bir Hakeim, west of Tobruk. There the front came to a halt for almost four months.

The question of the date

War chronologies usually record under 29 January that Rommel’s Afrika Korps retook Benghazi on its march east, and add that for the next few months both sides would rest and rearm. The date is correct. Some accounts give 28 January, because the attack on the city began that day and in the evening the British blew up its port installations, but German troops entered Benghazi on the morning of 29 January. Nor was the city taken by the Afrika Korps alone: it was occupied by a battle group with reconnaissance units, led by Rommel in person, and by the Italian XX Corps. The second part of the statement needs filling out. There was no immediate lull in the fighting, for during the following week the British withdrew through the Jebel Akhdar hills with German and Italian units following them. The “rest” lasted from early February to 26 May, but it was a period of a race for supplies, during which the fighting went on in the Mediterranean and over Malta.

Rommel chooses Benghazi

After the first days of his second offensive, launched from Mersa Brega on 21 January, the Afrika Korps had smashed the remnants of the British 1st Armoured Division near Msus on 25 January and then halted, out of fuel. On 26 January Rommel considered his next move. His radio intercept service had picked up enough British signals for him to know that the British commanders were at odds and that Benghazi might be given up without a fight. He did not want to push on north-east towards Mechili, as that would have left strong forces in Benghazi on his flank, ready to strike at his supply lines. He decided to attack Benghazi itself, and from a direction from which no one expected him.

Colonel Werner Marcks’s battle group and two German reconnaissance units, the 3rd and the 33rd, were to cross difficult country from the south-east, seize the airfield at Benina and cut the road north of the city at Coefia. The Italian XX Corps was to advance via Sceleidima and Soluch, and the German 90th Light Division along the coast road from Beda Fomm – the same road on which in February 1941 the British had destroyed the retreating Italian army. The key to the plan was deception: the Afrika Korps was to manoeuvre so that the British would expect the next blow to fall on Mechili. The attack was set for 28 January.

Ritchie against his generals

On the British side the command was in two minds. On the evening of 25 January the commander of Eighth Army, General Neil Ritchie, after speaking with the Commander-in-Chief Middle East, General Claude Auchinleck, countermanded a withdrawal that the commander of XIII Corps, Lieutenant General Alfred Reade Godwin-Austen, had ordered a few hours earlier, and took the 4th Indian Division under his own command. Both divisional commanders doubted his plans. Major General Frank Messervy reported that the 1st Armoured Division had 41 serviceable tanks, and Major General Francis Tuker that he had only one brigade of the 4th Indian Division to hand. Ritchie would not be dissuaded: Indian columns were to strike at the enemy’s lines of communication north-east of Agedabia, with the armoured division covering them from the east.

On 27 January two British Tomahawk fighters spotted, through a sandstorm, Afrika Korps columns heading for Mechili. That evening Ritchie issued an order in which he treated this thrust as the main one. The 1st Armoured Division was to strike at the rear of the enemy moving on Mechili, and the 4th Indian Division at the forces moving on Benghazi. “The enemy has divided his forces and is weaker than us in both areas. The watchword is offensive action everywhere,” he wrote. Rommel’s ruse had worked.

28 January: the escape of the 7th Indian Brigade

At noon on 28 January Tuker reported that two large columns with 47 tanks were advancing from the south on Sceleidima and Soluch – it was the Italian XX Corps. He proposed a withdrawal unless he received air support and the armoured division. Ritchie replied that the 1st Armoured Division was operating towards Mechili and could not help. Tuker then demanded the immediate evacuation of Benghazi, and Ritchie agreed. In the evening the port installations were blown up, and Brigadier Harold Briggs’s 7th Indian Brigade was to be north of the city by dawn.

It was already too late. Marcks’s group had crossed the trackless ground at night and in the rain, and before Er Regima Rommel himself joined it. At 6 p.m. the German 33rd Reconnaissance Unit reached Coefia, where the road ran along an embankment with deep ditches on either side, and closed it just as the Indian brigade’s lorries were approaching. A jam built up on the embankment, and the leading units were unable to dislodge the Germans. Briggs then decided to slip away in the opposite direction. Three columns, some 4,100 men in all, set off by night to the south and east, towards Soluch, Antelat and Saunnu – right through the middle of the enemy’s rear area. Some equipment was destroyed to save fuel, but almost all the weapons and ammunition were taken along. After several skirmishes, in which they even took some German and Italian prisoners, all the columns reached Mechili and El Adem. The British official history called the march “audacious”.

29 January: Benghazi

On the morning of 29 January Rommel entered Benghazi. There was not enough fuel for a pursuit, but the city and its surroundings yielded enormous booty: according to the account published in Rommel’s papers, the captured vehicles, weapons and equipment made it possible to equip and motorise many German units. Immediately after the city was taken, permission arrived from Rome from Mussolini to occupy Benghazi with a small mobile force – should the British abandon it. The British official history remarks drily that this may have caused some amusement.

Benghazi was changing hands for the fourth time. In February 1941 the British had taken it after their victory in Operation Compass; at the beginning of April Rommel recaptured it in his first offensive; and on Christmas Eve 1941, after Rommel’s withdrawal from Gazala, the British returned. Each time the port was wrecked, and it never had time to handle supplies on a large scale. The soldiers of Eighth Army ironically called these to-and-fro expeditions across Cyrenaica the “Benghazi Handicap”.

Retreat to the Gazala Line

On 30 January Messervy reported that the 1st Armoured Division stood no chance against more than 25 German medium tanks. Ritchie then accepted Godwin-Austen’s proposal to prepare a defensive position at Ain el Gazala, and adopted a plan to withdraw the troops through the Jebel Akhdar by 4 February. Mobile columns were to operate as long as possible from the area of Derna, Mechili and Tengeder. The Axis followed up with only small forces – two groups under Colonel Marcks and Colonel Geissler, delayed by roadblocks, mines and air attacks. On 3 February the Germans took Timimi, and by 6 February Eighth Army stood on the Gazala–Bir Hakeim line, exactly where Rommel had withdrawn seven weeks earlier for fear of encirclement.

Poles took part in the retreat. The Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade had been on occupation duty in Cyrenaica, in the settlements of Italian colonists, since 8 January. On the night of 25–26 January it was ordered to occupy the fort at Mechili without delay, and on 3 February, on the orders of XIII Corps, it withdrew towards Acroma, destroying the fort. Until mid-March it held a sector of the Gazala Line – the very one it had attacked in December.

Rommel believed he could have achieved more. In the account published in his papers he wrote that had the Afrika Korps and the Italian motorised corps, standing idle near Msus and Agedabia, been thrown in simultaneously via Tengeder and Mechili, a considerable part of the enemy’s forces could have been destroyed. But fuel was short, and the Italians did not want to advance further. On 1 February Mussolini signed a directive which Bastico passed on to Rommel on 4 February: supply by sea was very difficult because stocks of naval fuel oil were almost exhausted, and the main task of the Axis forces remained the defence of Tripolitania. Rommel interpreted it very freely and left his mobile units far forward, on the eastern edge of Cyrenaica between Mechili and Temrad.

Colonel general

Success in Cyrenaica brought Rommel further honours. On 20 January, the eve of the attack, he had already received the Swords to the Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves, and on 22 January his Panzer Group Africa was renamed Panzer Army Africa (Panzerarmee Afrika; some sources give 30 January), making him an army commander. After the capture of Benghazi Hitler promoted him to Colonel General – on 30 January according to most sources, with effect from 1 February according to some. Joseph Goebbels’s propaganda made him a hero to a country that was just then living through the hardest winter of the war on the Eastern Front. Praise came from the other side too: as early as 27 January Winston Churchill, defending the government in the House of Commons, spoke of “a very daring and skilful opponent” and, as he put it, “a great general”.

The balance

According to the British official history, between 21 January and 6 February Eighth Army’s land forces lost some 1,390 killed, wounded and missing (other accounts give 1,309), 42 tanks destroyed and 30 damaged or abandoned after breakdowns, and 40 field guns. Axis losses, according to the same source, were very slight. In the air the Germans lost 19 aircraft and the Italians at least as many, against 45 British aircraft.

On the British side the defeat had a sequel in the command. On 2 February Godwin-Austen asked to be relieved of command of XIII Corps, because Ritchie had shown a lack of confidence in him, disregarded his advice and taken away his division. Auchinleck accepted the resignation, and the corps was taken over by Lieutenant General William Gott. The British official history concedes that Godwin-Austen’s assessment, unwelcome as it was, had been realistic. In his signals to Churchill Auchinleck pointed to the weakness of the 2-pounder anti-tank gun, the unreliability of British cruiser tanks and inadequate handling of armoured units, which failed to offset the superiority of German equipment. He also wrote of signs that the tank crews were losing confidence in their equipment.

Place in the war

The recapture of Benghazi ended Rommel’s second offensive and dashed British hopes of quickly driving the Axis out of Libya. The victory of Operation Crusader had been half reversed: Tobruk remained in British hands, but western Cyrenaica, with Benghazi and its airfields, returned to the Axis. From February both sides built up their strength. The British constructed fortified brigade “boxes” on the Gazala Line, covered by extensive minefields, and the command in Cairo, under pressure from Churchill, planned a new offensive for June. The Germans and Italians, taking advantage of the neutralisation of Malta by Kesselring’s air forces in the spring of 1942, shipped more and more supplies to Libya, while in Rome and Berlin there was argument over whether to take Malta or Egypt first.

Rommel struck first. On 26 May 1942 he opened the Battle of Gazala, in which he routed Eighth Army; on 21 June he took Tobruk and received his field marshal’s baton. The pursuit was halted only in July at El Alamein, less than a hundred kilometres from Alexandria. The events of January foreshadowed many features of that campaign: Rommel’s boldness against the wishes of his ally and his own superiors, his dependence on fuel and convoys, and a British command in which the commander-in-chief, the army commander and the corps commanders all too often read the situation differently.