Rommel takes Benghazi

On 3 April 1941 the British gave up Benghazi, the chief port and capital of Cyrenaica, which they had captured less than two months earlier in Operation Compass. That morning the headquarters of the 2nd Armoured Division reported that it could no longer cover the coast road, and the commander of the troops in Cyrenaica, Lieutenant General Philip Neame, ordered the depots in the city to be blown up. In the evening Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel, after a sharp quarrel with his Italian superior, General Italo Gariboldi, won freedom of action for further operations, and during the night of 3–4 April the German 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion drove into the deserted city. This was the midpoint of a three-week campaign in which Rommel, against orders from Rome and Berlin, took almost the whole of Cyrenaica from the British.

War chronologies break this period up into separate dates, not always accurately. Under 1 April they speak of a British withdrawal “after losses at El Agheila”; in fact the British had given up El Agheila without much of a fight as early as 24 March, and the action after which they fell back was fought on 31 March at Mersa Brega. Under 2 April they state that after taking Agedabia Rommel decided to seize the whole of Libya and set off for Benghazi; according to his own notes, he took the decision to go for the whole of Cyrenaica “at one stroke” on the afternoon of 3 April, while on 2 April he had ordered only the capture of Agedabia. Under 4 April they place the Axis forces “about 200 miles east of El Agheila”. Benghazi, however, lies not east but north-north-east of El Agheila, some 220 kilometres (roughly 140 miles) away as the crow flies and, according to the British official history, 172 miles – about 280 kilometres – by the coast road. Only the columns sent across the desert had got further east by that day. Under 6 April they give the capture of Derna; on the morning of that day Rommel had only just sent a small detachment towards it, which cut the coast road on 7 April, and Rommel himself reached the town on the evening of 8 April.

An opportunity Rommel could not resist

Rommel arrived in Libya on 12 February with orders to defend Tripolitania. The Army High Command – Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch and General Franz Halder – absorbed in preparations for war with the Soviet Union, agreed in March at most to a limited advance towards Agedabia, and only after the arrival of the 15th Panzer Division, around the middle of May. Retaking El Agheila on 24 March and attacking Mersa Brega on 31 March could still be presented as improving the defensive position. Any further advance was an open breach of his instructions.

News that Generalmajor Johannes Streich’s 5th Light Division had broken through the defences at Mersa Brega reached Rommel’s headquarters only on the morning of 1 April. The British, he noted, had withdrawn “rather hastily”, leaving behind several dozen carriers and lorries. On 1 April the Germans occupied the abandoned defile and brought up their units. Air reports and Streich’s patrols showed that the enemy was falling back. “It was an opportunity I could not resist,” Rommel wrote, “and I gave the order to attack and take Agedabia, even though according to my instructions we were not to undertake any such operation before the end of May.” Gariboldi, Governor of Libya since 25 March and the formal superior of the Afrika Korps, warned against becoming involved in large-scale fighting too early and protested that a further advance contravened his orders. Rommel did not listen.

On the morning of 2 April the 8th Machine Gun Battalion set off after the British, followed by the main body of the 5th Light Division on both sides of the Via Balbia coast road and by the Italian Ariete Armoured Division and Brescia Infantry Division. The British Support Group of the 2nd Armoured Division broke contact with difficulty; its only infantry battalion, the 1st Battalion Tower Hamlets Rifles, lost more than a company in the fighting and was reduced to half strength. The withdrawal was covered by a squadron of the 5th Royal Tank Regiment, which clashed with the II Battalion of the German 5th Panzer Regiment. According to the British official history, five British and three German tanks were destroyed in this action; Rommel wrote of seven enemy tanks in flames. In the afternoon the Germans took Agedabia, and their forward elements reached the small port of Zuetina on the coast.

That same afternoon the Commander-in-Chief Middle East, General Archibald Wavell, flew in anxiously from Cairo to Neame’s headquarters at Barce (Al-Marj). The commander of the 2nd Armoured Division, Major General Michael Gambier-Parry, reported that he had only 22 cruiser tanks and 25 light tanks left and expected a breakdown every ten miles. Neame, convinced that the main thrust would come across the desert towards Mechili and Tobruk, was ready to release the division from covering the road to Benghazi. Wavell objected. As the British official history explains, he did not believe the enemy was ready for an ambitious operation, and since he had attacked nonetheless, his objective had to be a near and easy prize – Benghazi – which must not be surrendered without a fight. His order that the division should delay the advance on the city for as long as possible reached it only during the night, when it could no longer be carried out. In the evening Wavell summoned Lieutenant General Richard O’Connor, the victor of Beda Fomm, from Egypt with a view to giving him command in Cyrenaica.

The British give up the city

For the 2nd Armoured Division 3 April was a day of unrelieved misfortune. Gambier-Parry replied to Wavell’s order that the 3rd Armoured Brigade was scattered, disorganised and out of petrol, and that the Support Group, if thrown onto the coast road, would simply be overrun. His forecast of breakdowns proved all too accurate: the tanks, most of them with engines long past their service life, broke down one after another. Instead of sending part of his force onto the Benghazi road, he withdrew the whole division via Sceleidima onto the escarpment south of El Abiar. The report reached Cyrenaica Command shortly before six in the morning and dashed any hope of holding the city. Neame had no choice: he ordered the demolition plan to be carried out. Some 4,000 tons of previously captured Italian ammunition, among other things, were blown up and the storehouses set on fire. No. 3 Squadron RAAF, whose Hurricanes were based at Benina airfield outside the city, was ordered east in the afternoon.

Benghazi could not have been defended in any case. Wavell had from the outset regarded it as a place of “prestige and propaganda” value rather than military value, and in his instructions to Neame he told him not to hesitate to abandon it. The port, bombed and mined by the Luftwaffe since February, could not take supply ships, and on the flat plain south of the city the infantry had nowhere to hold out against tanks. The defence was therefore based on the edge of the escarpment east of Benghazi. It was held by Major General Leslie Morshead’s 9th Australian Division, from Tocra on the coast to the pass at Er Regima, where the road from Benghazi climbed onto the plateau of the Jebel Akhdar.

False reports added to the confusion. In the afternoon a reconnaissance pilot spotted a column of vehicles heading for Msus, where the armoured division’s main fuel dump was located. The 3rd Armoured Brigade marched there all night and found no one, but on hearing of the “enemy” column a company of a French motorised battalion had already destroyed most of the fuel. Shortly before midnight on 3–4 April Neame, unsure of the positions of his own troops and convinced that the Germans were already at Msus, announced his intention to withdraw to the Derna–Mechili line and moved his headquarters from Barce to Maraua.

O’Connor flew into Cyrenaica on 3 April together with Brigadier John Combe, former commander of the 11th Hussars. After speaking to him, however, Wavell changed his mind: he decided that changing commanders at so grave a moment would be unwise, left Neame in command and told O’Connor to help and advise him. In the afternoon he flew back to Cairo.

The quarrel with Gariboldi

On the German side 3 April was a day of decision. Rommel moved his forward headquarters to Agedabia and watched the enemy’s movements. The British, he wrote, were retreating all along the line, evidently convinced that the Germans were far stronger – an impression that the dummy tanks built on car chassis no doubt helped to create. In the afternoon Rommel decided to stay hard on the heels of the retreating British and to try to seize the whole of Cyrenaica at one stroke.

He drew up a plan that was to set the style of the entire campaign. A detachment of the Italian Ariete Division under Colonel Fabris set off across the desert towards Ben Gania, and the Italian Santa Maria reconnaissance battalion, with German signals and anti-tank platoons, under Lieutenant Colonel Gerhard von Schwerin, headed for Maaten el Grara to reconnoitre the route to Msus. Rommel placed Lieutenant Colonel Irnfried von Wechmar’s 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion directly under his own command and sent it along the Via Balbia towards Benghazi. When the staff of the 5th Light Division reported that refuelling would take four days, he ordered all the division’s lorries to be unloaded and sent for petrol, food and ammunition to the divisional dump near the Arco dei Fileni – the monumental arch on the border between Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, west of El Agheila – with orders to return within twenty-four hours. This brought the division to a standstill for a day, but Rommel judged that with the enemy in retreat he could afford it. What mattered most was that the British should go on believing in a great offensive.

That evening Gariboldi was waiting for him at the headquarters in Agedabia. The Italian commander, Rommel recalled, was “by no means pleased with the course of operations so far” and sharply reproached him that they were in direct contradiction to the orders from Rome and that supplies were too uncertain for anyone to take responsibility for such an operation and its consequences. He demanded that all action be halted and that no further moves be made without his express permission; he also wanted to consult the Comando Supremo in Rome. Rommel replied that he could not accept such a procedure, as whole days would be lost, and that as a German general he had to issue orders appropriate to the situation. The conversation, as he put it, became “somewhat heated”. According to his account, at the climax a signal arrived like a deus ex machina from the German high command, granting him “complete freedom of action” and settling the dispute in his favour. Historians who have compared this account with the German records point out that the signal was less clear-cut: it permitted a further advance only if it became clear that the British had withdrawn their armoured forces. Rommel read it in his own way.

Gariboldi’s caution was not without grounds: if things went wrong, the poorly motorised Italian divisions faced a repeat of Beda Fomm, and supplies came along a single road from Tripoli, more than 800 kilometres from El Agheila. Rommel, however, was counting on success to justify his disobedience. That same day he wrote to his wife: “We have been attacking since 31 March with dazzling success. Our superiors in Tripoli and Rome, and perhaps in Berlin too, will be tearing their hair. I took the risk against all orders and instructions because the opportunity seemed favourable. No doubt it will all be pronounced right later on, and they will say that in my place they would have done exactly the same. We have already reached our first objective, which we were not supposed to reach until the end of May. The British are fleeing headlong.”

The night of 3–4 April

In the evening Rommel drove north to Wechmar’s battalion and met him near El Magrun. Wechmar reported that he had not run into the British, and an Italian priest who had come out from Benghazi to meet him said that the enemy had already left the city. At Wechmar’s request Rommel sent the battalion forward at once.

The 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion entered Benghazi during the night, before dawn on 4 April. The British, Rommel noted, had set fire to all their stores. According to his account, the civilian population, particularly the Italians, welcomed the Germans with great enthusiasm. On the morning of 4 April Rommel visited the city with his chief of staff, and when a reinforced regiment of the Brescia Division arrived to take over Benghazi, he sent Wechmar with a tank company by the shortest route, through Er Regima and Charruba, towards Mechili. In the afternoon the battalion ran into the Australian 2/13th Battalion at Er Regima, which, supported by the British 51st Field Regiment, held up the Germans until the following day at a cost of 98 men. During the night the 9th Australian Division began withdrawing to the escarpment east of Barce. Australian soldiers later dubbed this disorderly retreat across Cyrenaica the “Benghazi Handicap”, a name borrowed from horse racing.

Columns across the desert: Derna and Mechili

On 4 and 5 April Rommel formed several columns from whatever units he had to hand and sent them straight across the desert, across the bulge of Cyrenaica, to cut off the British line of retreat. Schwerin’s group was to make for Tmimi on the Gulf of Bomba; Fabris’s detachment, followed by the whole Ariete Division, for Mechili, an old fort at a junction of desert tracks; General Streich with the 8th Machine Gun Battalion for Tobruk; and Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Olbrich with the main body of the 5th Panzer Regiment via Msus to Mechili. Generalmajor Heinrich Kirchheim, who had come to Africa on a visit, was ordered to lead the Brescia Division along the mountain road. Rommel flew over the columns in an aircraft, urging the commanders on. The columns, however, strung out over dozens of kilometres, bogged down in the sand and came to a halt without fuel or water, and on the evening of 4 April Schwerin’s group was stranded without supplies near Ben Gania.

On the British side chaos reigned, and the 3rd Armoured Brigade was melting away by the hour. At Msus it had nine cruiser tanks left, and a regiment of captured Italian tanks was struggling along with difficulty; when fuel ran out, the better machines were refuelled from the worse ones, which were then blown up. On 4 and 5 April German aircraft destroyed three petrol convoys. By the afternoon of 5 April eight cruiser tanks and fourteen light tanks had reached Charruba, and the brigade, as the official history puts it, had ceased to be of any use as a fighting formation.

On the evening of 5 April, when airmen reported that the British were still retreating, Rommel decided to concentrate his columns on Mechili and personally led the spearhead of Streich’s group, Lieutenant Colonel Gustav Ponath’s 8th Machine Gun Battalion, through the night. On the morning of 6 April, some 20 kilometres short of Mechili, he sent Ponath on with just fifteen vehicles to the coast road near Derna, with orders to close it in both directions. That same morning the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade beat off a first attack at Mechili, and O’Connor, concluding that the expected great outflanking manoeuvre had begun, ordered a general withdrawal. The Australians, having gathered every vehicle that could still move, set off east in the evening, behind a screen of demolished bridges and roads.

Neame and O’Connor left the headquarters at Maraua at around eight in the evening on 6 April, travelling in a single car with Combe. They were to take a desert track to Tmimi, but in the darkness, beyond the settlement of Giovanni Berta (today Al-Qubbah), they turned north towards Derna. During the night of 6–7 April, near Martuba, the car drove into Ponath’s men, and both generals, together with Combe, were taken prisoner. A similar fate befell the commander of the 3rd Armoured Brigade, Brigadier Reginald Rimington, who had gone ahead to Derna for fuel. On the morning of 7 April Ponath cut the coast road and seized the airfield near Derna, and the last four British tanks were lost in a counter-attack that enabled the rest of the columns to break through. Rommel himself reached Derna on the evening of 8 April, by which time it was already in Axis hands. O’Connor, the architect of victory in Operation Compass, spent more than two and a half years in Italian captivity, until his escape after Italy’s capitulation in 1943.

At Mechili the headquarters of the 2nd Armoured Division with General Gambier-Parry, most of the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade and Australian anti-tank gunners were trapped. Rommel twice called on them to surrender and was twice refused. At dawn on 8 April Gambier-Parry attempted to break out; only small groups got through, among them a squadron of the Indian 18th Cavalry, and the rest surrendered. Sources put the number taken prisoner at Mechili at between two and three thousand. On the evening of 7 April the 9th Australian Division and the Support Group blocked the coast road at Acroma, some 25 kilometres west of Tobruk, and over the following days took refuge in the fortress that the Australians had captured in January.

Place in the war

Taking Benghazi cost the Germans little, but it was the turning point of the campaign. Up to 2 April Rommel could still claim that he was improving the defensive position of Tripolitania. On 3 April, in his quarrel with Gariboldi, he settled that he was going for the whole of Cyrenaica, and from that moment he conducted the war in North Africa very largely on his own initiative. Gariboldi had to accept it, and in July he lost his post, partly because of his poor cooperation with Rommel. Within a week of entering Benghazi the Axis forces had reached Tobruk, which they encircled on 10–11 April, and by mid-April their forward units stood on the Egyptian frontier at Sollum. In less than three weeks the British had lost almost everything they had gained in the two months of Operation Compass, and three generals, O’Connor foremost among them, had been taken prisoner. Wavell, as the British official history stresses, blamed himself alone for the defeat: he had left in Cyrenaica an armoured division in name only and sent his best troops to Greece, where the German offensive began on 6 April.

It is often added under 3 April that Tobruk “would remain a threat for the next seven months”. This is close to the truth. The fortress garrison – first Morshead’s 9th Australian Division, later the British 70th Division and the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade that relieved it – held out from 10–11 April until the turn of November and December 1941, close to eight months, until it linked up with the relief force from Egypt in Operation Crusader. Throughout that time Tobruk tied down a considerable part of the Axis forces, and the port, supplied by the Royal Navy, prevented Rommel from advancing safely on the Suez Canal: as long as the fortress held, any march towards Egypt left an armed garrison behind him astride his only supply road.

Benghazi changed hands three more times. The British recovered it in December 1941, Rommel retook it at the end of January 1942, and the Eighth Army entered the city for the last time in November 1942, after the victory at El Alamein. This see-saw of the front began on the night of 3–4 April 1941.

In Berlin Rommel’s successes were received with mixed feelings. Halder, for whom Africa was a secondary theatre compared with the preparations to attack the Soviet Union, sent General Friedrich Paulus to Libya that April to rein in the headstrong general. Propaganda, however, made the dash across Cyrenaica the beginning of the legend of the “Desert Fox”, and the Reich was drawn into the war in Africa more deeply than Adolf Hitler had intended.