Errors that lost Axis powers the war
One of German leader Adolf Hitler’s fatal political errors was his invasion of Poland in 1939. It started a world war that he could have avoided. May 21 1940 was the day on which Germany lost World War 2. In Military Errors of World
War Two, Kenneth Macksey says that on this day “vital time was lost while OKW and OKH [German army command] paused en route to Dunkirk to debate”. Apparently they were haunted by Hitler’s and Gen Gerd von Rundsted’s dread of the exposed south flank.
As it transpired, Macksey says the south flank was never seriously threatened.
Macksey sees the basic reason for Germany’s failure to invade Britain in 1940 as “the lack of any preconceived will or intention to do so”. It was only after war had broken out that invasion was considered.
The mistake Benito Mussolini made in June 1940 was to lead his country into war. Italy was not ready for a war for which it showed no enthusiasm.
As far as Mussolini was concerned, to become an ally of Germany seemed a safe bet. France had surrendered and Britain seemed close to defeat. It seemed unimportant that Italy lacked coal and steel to engage in a major war.
The equipment of its army and air force was practically obsolete. Its aircraft were inferior to the Royal Air Force’s.
Macksey dismisses its tanks as machine-gun carriers. He is even more scathing of Italy’s artillery, which in some cases he says dated back to the 19th century, “pieces which were more suitable for museums”. Therefore it came as no surprise that when Britain continued to fight and supply its forces in the Mediterranean and in East and North Africa that the “Italians began to wilt”.
Gen Sir Archibald Wavell’s decision to relegate North Africa to a subsidiary role to facilitate an entry into the Balkans is criticised by Macksey “as a strategic error of the first magnitude”.
Macksey points out that it profoundly affected the future course of the war. “It won few friends in the Balkans and presented the Germans a foothold in North Africa which was a serious threat to the Suez Canal. And fluctuations in the desert continued between the British based in Egypt and the Germans and Italians at Tripoli.
Interestingly, it brought LtGen Erwin Rommel to world attention. Macksey believes Rommel’s impact was out of proportion to his intellectual capacity. “His tactical flair and rampant opportunism won him well-publicised fame for his exploits in France in 1940.”
Rommel’s appointment as commander of the Africa Corps “gave him a star role on a minor stage instead of a subsidiary role in the Russian theatre”. Rommel was instructed by his OKH army command to secure Libya. But he broke the rules while continuously short of supplies. Macksey said Rommel practised mobility “to the extremes of recklessness” and “showed a propensity to gamble’’ which completely unsettled the British as he advanced on the ports of Benghazi and Tobruk and for Egypt.
Not everything went his way, however. Macksey points out that Rommel did make unnecessary mistakes. He cites the occasion when the German Africa Corps charged into “the teeth of South African 40mm anti-tank guns and artillery of XXX Corps south of Sidi Rezegh. Casualties were heavy on both sides.”
In the summer of 1942 Rommel advanced to El Alamein, only 100km from Alexandria in Egypt. This in due course led to Rommel’s withdrawal from Cyrenaica.
Wikipedia, however, disagrees, seeing criticism of Rommel “for lacking strategic sense, for excessive absorption in the tactical battle, for neglect of logistics, for periodic imprudence ... as “shallow”.
Instead it believes Rommel’s especial flair “was undoubtedly for the battle itself, for the cut and thrust of manoeuvre, for personal leadership at the point of decision, and above all for the speed and energy with which he decided and acted”. In their History of Europe, Carlton Hayes and his co-authors say at El Alamein it seemed for a time that the Axis powers would conquer Egypt, but Rommel’s hardpressed army was pushed back by the Allies’ offensive under the overall command of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery. They describe the clash as “a spectacular battle of tanks”.
Macksey says Japan’s “inadmissable mistake” had been a subsequent opportunism which it pursued to attain dominance of the Western Pacific. It did this with “with a bellicosity which aroused British and American resistance”.
Japan’s mistake was to persist in underestimating US “combat prowess”. As Macksey points out, when the US soldiers and marines landed at Tulagi and Guadalcanal the Japanese army knew little about the elite US marine force. Macksey says they chose to despise it and “sent out inadequate forces to rout out the intruders”.
The Japanese did on occasion inflict losses on US warships and aircraft but were eventually defeated by sheer weight of US numbers and technology.
Time began to run out for the Axis, who Macksey says were then doomed to defeat. The choice for Germany, Italy and Japan was “either a discreet withdrawal from the war or fighting to the death”.