German Mediterranean strategy and Malta : 1940-1942

Abstract

This study deals mainly with German strategy, and it considers this German strategy with an eye to the role that Malta played in it. Concentrating on this small aspect of the War necessarily conditions the arguments. But I am attempting to place the Malta question in the wider context of Mediterranean strategy, and also to place the Mediterranean in the still wider context of German strategy generally. This procedure provides some clues to the focal Malta question. For, strategically, the Island obviously figured in German strategy only as far as it was concerned with the Mediterranean at all. Its importance depended on the way in which the Germans intended to deal with the Mediterranean: Malta did not play a role in the plans to "seal" the sea at both ends by taking Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. Had this plan been successfully carried out, Malta would not have been able as a British base. On the other hand, its elimination as a base was a precondition to the realisation of part of this plan, namely the Suez project. For the Island was the major stumbling-block to the smooth running of the Axis convoys from Italy to Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. While at first this problem was disregarded by the Axis, it was later duly considered in the context of plans for major operations in North Africa, whether these were an end in themselves or part of a larger strategy. Various schemes for the neutralisation or occupation of Malta were developed in order to facilitate the convoy traffic. At one time the Island also appeared in another strategic context: when it seemed as if the Italian colonies in Libya were lost; the Germans wanted to prevent the use of Malta by the British as a springboard against Italy, and therefore they briefly considered taking it. Hitler had not started the War to fight against Great Britain and to fight in the Mediterranean; and I am attempting to show that his antipathy to German involvement there was hightened by political complications with France, Spain, and Italy. Furthermore, neither purely strategic nor political reasons explain the appearance of the German Luftwaffe in the Mediterranean in December 1940, and again in December 1941. Nor can the abandonment of the 1942-plan to take Malta be explained in these terms. Generally speaking from the contemporary German point of view, the weaknesses of the Italians caused the German decisions in these three cases. I am therefore also trying to deal with these Italian failures and the reasons for them.