Virtue Magazine

Before Hitler could turn to the ultimate showdown with Bolshevist Communism, he had to secure his southern flank, and bail out his beleaguered ally, Mussolini. The Italian dictator had entered the war solely for the purpose of territorial aggrandizement, fearful that continued German victories would leave them the masters of Europe, leaving him with no piece of the pie. So Hitler sent forces to help seize British and French holdings in northern Africa, and also to bail Mussolini out in the Balkans. There, Mussolini had attacked Greece from the bases he had already taken in Albania, in an attempt to add to his new Roman empire. Soon, his incapable army was bogged down, and pushed back by the outgunned, but tough Greeks. The British promised to intervene and help the Greeks, hoping to establish a new front in Europe. Hitler recognized this would be a dangerous threat to his southern flank if he allowed it to materialize, and diverted troops that should have been preparing for the attack on Russia to deal with the Balkan problem. The Russians had helped spur German planning by illegally seizing Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, then stripping Bessarabia away from Rumania, acts of naked aggression that hinted at wider ambitions in eastern Europe. Doubtless this played a not insignificant role in Hitler’s decision to attack the Bolshevik powerhouse. Germany had long viewed itself as the protector of European culture against Russian (now Bolshevik) barbarism.

But first the Balkans had to be cleared. What the incompetent Italian Army had failed to do over months of bloody fighting, the Wehrmacht accomplished in a matter of weeks. Yugoslavia would pay the price for reneging on its alliance with Hitler by suffering invasion and occupation as well. The German forces carved up Yugoslavians, Greeks, and English forces alike, racing through the mountainous country and bringing all of the Balkans under control in barely two weeks. It had been another smashing triumph for German arms, and seemed to display an almost insurmountable superiority in military skill, though not in numbers of men, or quality of weapons. The Balkan territories were divided up between Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria, though German forces would be called upon to maintain order, once Communist-inspired partisan movements began under the guidance of men like Marshal Tito. In Greece, a civil war would continue for several years after the end of the Second World War, between Communist forces and other partisans. The Balkan campaign was wrapped up with vicious fighting on the island of Crete, which the Germans finally conquered in a daring parachute assault. Casualties were so heavy, though, that Hitler decided the novelty of paratroop attacks had worn off, and that tactic had no more future. The English and Americans would prove him wrong a few years later.

Italian ambitions in Africa had also been crushed by the outnumbered British, both in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and northern Africa. There, a huge, lumbering Italian army had marched across Libya to the Egyptian border. British forces had fallen back steadily, before, under the command of General Sir Archibald Wavell, they launched a brilliant riposte. The Italian forces were routed, and sent scrambling back across the desert in abject defeat. It was perhaps the most humiliating defeat suffered by any force during the war, considering the size of the forces involved. Hundreds of thousands of Italians were captured, and it soon looked like the British would sweep Mussolini’s forces out of Africa altogether.

And then Hitler intervened. Concerned that Mussolini was losing prestige with his failures in the Balkans and Africa, he dispatched a couple of divisions, one panzer, one motorized, to prop up the Italian empire in Africa. Their commander was to be a relatively unknown general named Erwin Rommel, who had performed well in command of the 7th Panzer Division in France, though it was the first time he had ever commanded tank forces. Hitler had known him before the war, which no doubt gave Rommel an advantage in gaining this independent command. Rommel would become legendary as the brilliant ‘Desert Fox,’ and would be a nemesis of the British for more than a year, winning significant victories with usually inferior forces. When he first arrived, he attacked with the only German unit so far arrived, the 8th Machine Gun Battalion, and stunned the British, who had become somewhat disorganized after their monstrous advances, and also had dispatched significant forces to Greece. In a matter of weeks, Rommel had regained nearly all the territory lost by Italian Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, but stalled at a city on the Mediterranean, a vital port called Tobruk. A lengthy siege ensued, in which both German and Australian troops would suffer enormously. Rommel fought several battles during that period, both offensive and defensive, in which he constantly baffled the tough British with his deft handling of armored forces, and his use of 88mm anti-aircraft guns in a tank busting role. But by year’s end, Rommel’s forces were nearly exhausted, and the English, having been removed from the Balkans altogether, could concentrate all their forces in Africa. Worn down by the fruitless siege, Rommel was finally forced to fall back, but this shortened his supply lines, and, ignoring British propaganda proclaiming that they were close to scoring a clean sweep in Africa, began to plot yet another offensive. He received some replacements for his battered panzer divisions, though not the extra divisions he would have liked, and which probably would have allowed him to drive the British across the Nile, and perhaps out of the Middle East altogether. But most German units were tied up on a far more important front, the life-or-death struggle against Russian Communism.