Rommel swooped over the battlefield in his Storch liaison aircraft, landing to direct operations when he needed to. Here he talks with his personal Luftwaffe pilot, soon after the capture of Mechili. Rommel’s own mobility in his Storch caused problems for his staff. On 7 April it became dear horn intelligence reports to Rommel’s chief of staff and operations officer at the Tactical HQ in Agedabia that the ad hoc and disorganised assembly of British forces at Mechili offered no threat to the advance and could be bypassed for the more important objective of Tobruk. But they could not pass this appreciation on to their chief who was flying here, there and everywhere in his Storch, completely out of touch with Tactical HQ. So they sent Rommel’s ADC, Lt H. W. Schmidt, in another Storch either to track down Rommel or, failing that, to reach Generalmajor Streich and pass the order straight to him. However, Schmidt himself got lost (there were sandstorms about) and did not arrive at Streich’s divisional HQ until the early morning of 8 April, by which time the attack on Mechili was already under way. Commentators on the desert war haw speculated that, had Rommel not lost touch with his Tactical HQ and received the staff’s advice, the outcome of the Cyrenaica campaign might haw been even more successful, culminating in the speedy capture of Tobruk, which in the event did not happen.

North Africa first entered German High Command thoughts on 24 July 1940, a few days after the decision to invade Great Britain was taken. The staff considered possible options in case Operation ‘Sealion’ was postponed or abandoned, and one idea was to back up the Italian Army in Libya with German armoured forces in case it undertook operations against the British in Egypt. The German Army C-in-C, Generalfeldmarschall Walter von Brauchitsch, put this up to Hitler who liked the idea. 3rd Panzer Division, therefore, fresh from its triumphs in the French campaign, was told to prepare for service in North Africa. Meanwhile the Chief of Mobile Forces, General Wilhelm Ritter wm Thoma, was sent to Libya to sound out the Italian C-in-C, Marshal Graziani, on this prospect of German assistance. He got a lukewarm reception, however, and Graziani showed no enthusiasm at all, confident of the strength of his own forces.

This was emphasised further when Hitler and Mussolini had their famous ‘summit’ meeting at the Brenner Pass on 4 October. Hitler brought up again the prospect of German assistance in North Africa, and Mussolini flippantly replied that he would need no assistance until his North African army had pushed the British back to Mersa Matruh, at which time some German tanks and Stuka dive bombers might come in useful.

Von Thoma’s own assessment of the situation was produced about that time. He concluded that any operations in North Africa would best be carried out by German troops alone and thought four panzer divisions would be necessary, notwithstanding the difficulty of transporting them and supplying them across the Mediterranean and having to run the gauntlet of the British Royal Navy to do so. This proposal was politically and logistically impossible at the time (not least because four panzer divisions could not be spared). When Mussolini carried out his sudden invasion of Greece on 28 October 1940 without consulting or forewarning Germany, Hitler was sufficiently disillusioned to order the postponement of any German plans for involvement in North Africa. As a result 3rd Panzer Division was diverted to another project, Operation ‘Felix’, the plan-never realised, of course-to attack Gibraltar.

Less than two months later, however, all this had changed. The war in the Western Desert had actually started in a modest way in June 1940, soon after Italy had declared war on Great Britain. At that time Egypt was being guarded by quite a small British force, but British troops took part in active reconnaissance patrols along the Libya-Egypt border. In mid-September 1940 the Tenth Italian Army moved ponderously 60 miles into Egypt under the command of Marshal Graziani. British strength In Egypt had expanded meanwhile from the original 7th Armoured Division by the addition of three Commonwealth divisions, forming what was called the Western Desert Force under command of Lt-Gen R. N. O’Connor. On 9 December 1940, O’Connor started a well-planned and brilliantly conducted offensive against the numerically superior Italian Army and this resulted in a sweeping conquest of Cyrenaica, including the taking of the important towns of Bardia, Tobruk and Benghazi. The Italian Army was virtually eliminated by the first week in February with the capture of 130,000 men and a big haul of equipment.

While this campaign was at its height, Hitler became alarmed at the political consequences of this defeat and realised that German reinforcements would be needed. Not least of his worries was that the British conquest of the whole of North Africa, plus command of the seas in the Mediterranean, would be a strategic disaster for Germany. Therefore, on 11 January 1941 Hitler signed his Military Directive No 22 ordering the Army Command to raise a ‘special blocking force’ (Sperrverband) for dispatch to Tripoli, while the Luftwaffe Command was ordered to transfer Fliegerkorps X to Sicily for operations against British shipping and bases in the Mediterranean. Hitler met Mussolini on 19 January to discuss this. Mussolini accepted the idea of the blocking force, but on 22 January the important base of Tobruk fell to the British who now looked set fair to take the whole of Cyrenaica. It now seemed likely that a modest blocking force would be insufficient on its own and a force with offensive capability would be needed instead. Hitler may have been influenced in this by a comment made by the Army Chief of General Staff, General Franz Halder, in October 1940 that a single German division could probably push the British back to the Nile if Germany did have to get involved in North Africa.(As it happened this prediction had a bigger element of truth in it than anyone thought at the time.)

The Army General Staff acted quickly. The move to Tripoli was designated Operation ‘Sunflower’ (Sonnenblume) in orders issued on 10 February 1941, and the commander of German military forces in North Africa was to be Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel who had been picked and appointed personally by Hitler on 6 February. From his exploits as a panzer division commander In both the Polish and French campaigns, Hitler considered Rommel to be the best man for a post which would demand considerable on the spot decision-making a long way from home.

Despite the powerful size and strength of the German Army early in 1941, the forces allocated the Rommel’s command were relatively scanty and weak. The main reason for this was that North Africa was still considered something of a sideshow despite the massive defeat of the Italian forces and, more importantly, the invasion of Russia scheduled for early summer I941 was already in its advanced planning stages and took priority of allocation over all other considerations.

Nonetheless, advance members of staff for the special blocking force were appointed by 31 January and sent to Naples to await early passage to Tripoli. On 12 February, Rommel and his chief adjutant Rudolf Schmundt, plus other key staff members, reached Tripoli to set up their HQ. On 19 February the German expeditionary force to North Africa was given the name that was to become famous, Deutsches Afrika Korps, and the order stipulated that all German forces were to remain at all times under control of their commander and not to be put under Italian command except for periods of tactical co-operation when necessary.