Middle East Command (incl. North and East Africa) The Middle Eastern theatre was quiet for the first few months of the war until Italy's declaration of war on 10 June 1940. On 17 October 1939, Wavell had signed the Anglo-French-Turkish alliance, which was hoped in London would bring Turkey into the war. At an Anglo-French war conference in Vincennes in December 1939, Wavell had strongly supported the call by General
Maxime Weygand to take the
Armée du Levant from Beirut to Thessaloniki, saying he saw much potential to opening a Balkan front similar to the First World War
Salonika Front. In February 1940, Wavell first met
Dominions secretary Anthony Eden who had gone to
Port Said to greet the arrival of the first Australian and New Zealand troops to Egypt. Eden was later to write: "I liked [Wavell] from this first meeting and our friendship was to grow very close and last until his death". Wavell's relations with the Australians and the New Zealanders were to be difficult as both Canberra and Wellington wanted to keep control of their own forces. In March 1940, Wavell made a lengthy visit to South Africa to ask the South African prime minister
Jan Smuts if South African troops could go to Egypt; the response was negative as Smuts supported the war, but many of his fellow Afrikaners did not. Mitchell was replaced as the RAF GOC by Air Marshal
Arthur Longmore who with support of Wavell fought hard for modern aircraft to be sent to the Middle East as the RAF forces stationed in the Middle East were equipped with antiquated aircraft. When Italy entered the war, the Italian forces in North and East Africa greatly outnumbered the British and Wavell's policy was therefore one of "flexible containment" to buy time to build up adequate forces to take the offensive. In June 1940, Wavell had only two British Army divisions (36,000 men) to defend Egypt against a much larger Italian army in Libya while also having to deal with an Egyptian government whose loyalty to the Allies was questionable. The Royal Egyptian Army was not well regarded, but the possibility that King
Farouk of Egypt would join the Axis powers meant that Wavell always had to keep forces in the Nile river valley instead of in the Western Desert. Wavell disliked King Farouk whom he described as an immature and pompous teenager who did little to conceal his anti-British feelings. British interests in the theatre were to protect the Suez Canal, which required command of the Mediterranean sea, known as the "lifeline of the Empire" where shipping went back and forth from the United Kingdom to Australia, New Zealand, India and the other British Asian colonies. Closely linked to the first interest was the desire to defend the oil fields in Iran and Iraq where Britain obtained much of its oil, which travelled via tankers to Britain using the Suez Canal-Mediterranean route. Italian entry into the war closed the central Mediterranean to British shipping, which had to use the long route around Africa, which in effect was the same as severing the Suez canal, but the American historian Robin Higham wrote that no-one in London ever gave a serious reappraisal of what should be British grand strategy in the Middle East beyond defeating Italy as the best way to reopen the Mediterranean to British shipping. Higham wrote that much of Wavell's problems stemmed from the lack of a clear strategy in London about precisely he should have been doing. On 21 June 1940 upon hearing of the French surrender, Wavell sent out an order of the day to the British and Australian troops under his command reading: "Our gallant French allies have been overwhelmed after a desperate struggle and have been compelled to ask for terms. The British Empire will of course continue the struggle until victory has been won. Dictators fade away. The British Empire never dies". Wavell had a strong belief in the British Empire, and throughout his career he made references to serving the empire as the motivating force for his military career as despite being a career soldier, he maintained that he did not particularly like war. In July 1940, Wavell went to Khartoum where the Emperor
Haile Selassie had set up a government-in-exile and Wavell discussed plans with the emperor for British support for Ethiopian guerrillas. During a visit to London, Wavell first met the prime minister
Winston Churchill on 12 August 1940. After the meeting, Eden wrote in his diary that Churchill called Wavell a "good, average colonel" and the sort of a man who would make for a good chairman of a local
Conservative Party constituency association in the suburbs of London (not a compliment on Churchill's part). Wavell did not enjoy the confidence of Churchill who felt he was not aggressive enough. Unlike the loquacious Churchill, Wavell was a quiet, reserved man, and Churchill tended to take Wavell's laconic statements as a sign that he lacked aggression. In addition, Wavell was a poet, which Churchill saw as too "soft" and inappropriate for a British Army general. In the summer of 1940, Churchill was intent on sacking Wavell and replacing him with one of his favourite generals,
Bernard Freyberg, and was only stopped by objections from the War Office that Freyberg lacked the necessary experience for Middle East Command. Eden, whose judgement Churchill respected, lobbied the prime minister hard to keep Wavell as the GOC Middle East, and for the moment Wavell was retained. In addition, Churchill and Wavell had clashed over the "Palestine Question". Churchill had wanted to arm the Jewish population of the Palestine Mandate (modern Israel) as a militia to assist with the defence of the Middle East, a plan that Wavell had vetoed. In the first draft of
Their Finest Hour, Book 2 of his
memoirs/history of the Second World War, Churchill had written: ""All our military men disliked the Jews and loved the Arabs. General Wavell was no exception. Some of my trusted ministers like
Lord Lloyd and of course, the Foreign Office, were all pro-Arab if they not actually anti-Semitic". This line was removed from the final draft of
Their Finest Hour, but it reflected Churchill's feelings about Wavell. On 11 August 1940, the Italians
invaded the colony of
British Somaliland (modern northern Somalia) and faced with overwhelming Italian numbers, Wavell ordered General
Reade Godwin-Austen to evacuate to Aden. On 18 August 1940, the last British forces left
Berbera. During the brief campaign, the British lost 260 men (38 killed and 222 wounded) against the Italian loss of 1,800 (465 killed, 38 missing and the rest wounded). Wavell received what he called a "red-hot cable" from Churchill complaining that the British forces in British Somaliland must had fought poorly as hardly any British soldiers had been killed. Wavell wrote back that "a 'big butcher's bill' was not necessarily evidence of good tactics", a remark that greatly angered Churchill. In the summer and autumn of 1940, the British garrison in Egypt was reinforced by tanks from the United Kingdom and additional troops, which came primarily from India, New Zealand and Australia. In a bold move despite the risk that Germany would invade the United Kingdom that summer, in August 1940 154 tanks (half of the tanks in Britain) were sent to Egypt via the shorter and more dangerous Mediterranean route. A major problem for Wavell was that the threat of Italian air and naval attacks had generally closed the central
Mediterrean to British shipping, which had to reach Egypt via the long route around Africa, adding an extra 12,000 miles to the voyage from Britain to Egypt. Adding to Wavell's problems was that the Admiralty and War Office miscounted the number of ships available to take supplies to Egypt by including the Greek Merchant Marine and the Norwegian Merchant Marine into the British Merchant Marine and then counting the ships separately as part of their respective national merchant marines; not until April 1941 was this error corrected. The arrival of the
Second Australian Imperial Force to Egypt produced much dismay amongst the Egyptians as the
First Australian Imperial Force in World War One had been notorious for its heavy drinking and debauchery in the bars and brothels in Cairo, and Wavell was forced to issue a promise that this time the Australians would be better behaved. Despite Wavell's promises, the Australians during their leave times lived riotously in the bars and brothels in Cairo, and there were more complaints about conduct of the Australians than any of the other Allied soldiers in Egypt. The
7th British Armoured Division, which Wavell chose to spearhead the offensive, was described by the American historians
Williamson Murray and
Allan R. Millett as an "excellent" division made of "first-class" troops. Murray and Millet also described the other two divisions selected by Wavell to lead the offensive, namely the
4th Indian Division and the
6th Australian Division as high-quality divisions, which like the 7th Armoured Division were to greatly distinguish themselves in the fighting in Africa. At a conference in Khartoum with the South African prime minister,
Jan Smuts, Wavell came under strong pressure to invade Italian East Africa as soon as possible as Smuts expressed fears of an Italian conquest of Kenya, and then of Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe). Smuts also demanded that the Italian naval base at
Kismayu be taken as soon as possible lest the
Regia Marina cut off South Africa from the sea. As Smuts was a close friend of Churchill, he soon brought Churchill over to his viewpoint. On 28 October 1940
Italy invaded Greece. Britain had a legal and moral commitment to help Greece because of
the guarantee issued on 13 April 1939, promising to defend Greece against any power that attacked it. In October–November 1940,
Anthony Eden, now
Secretary of State for War, made an extended visit to the Middle East to see Wavell who told him about his plans for an offensive in the Western Desert. On 3 November 1940, Eden cabled Churchill that Wavell had a plan for an offensive and that it was imperative that no British forces be sent to Greece. Churchill did not tell the War Cabinet about this cable and on 4 November 1940 secured the approval of the War Cabinet to send aid to Greece. On 8 November 1940, Churchill finally informed the War Cabinet of Wavell's planned offensive and that of his wish to not send any forces to Greece. Wavell made it clear to Churchill throughout the winter of 1940–1941 that he did not want any forces diverted from Egypt to Greece while the Greek dictator, General
Ioannis Metaxas did not want British Army troops in Greece, saying he only needed 5 squadrons of Royal Air Force fighters to assist the Royal Hellenic Air Force against the
Regia Aeronautica. Metaxas was very confident that the Royal Hellenic Army was more than capable of defending Greece from the
Regio Esercito without British troops. However, Churchill saw Greece as the key to winning the war as British bombers could use Greek airfields to attack the
Romanian oil fields, which supplied the
Reich with its oil. In addition, Churchill wanted to revive the Salonika Front strategy of World War One by bringing Yugoslavia and Turkey into the war, which he believed would bog the Wehrmacht down in the Balkans. Metaxas had wanted to keep Greece neutral, and only became involved in the war when confronted with an Italian ultimatum demanding that Greece become an Italian colony. Throughout the winter of 1940–1941, Metaxas had sought German mediation to end the war with Italy, and promised Hitler that he would never allow British bombers to strike the oil fields of Romania. Metaxas failed to recognise that his promises made no difference to
Adolf Hitler, and the mere fact that Greece was allied to Great Britain led Hitler to decide to invade Greece. Hitler would not tolerate even a theoretical threat to bomb the oil fields of Romania, a determination that later led to embark on the costly Battle of Crete as he was convinced that the British would use the airfields in Crete for that purpose. Having fallen back in front of Italian advances from their colonies
Libya and
Eritrea towards (respectively)
Egypt and
Ethiopia, Wavell mounted successful offensives into Libya (
Operation Compass) in December 1940 and Eritrea and Ethiopia in January 1941. On 8 December 1940, Wavell called a press conference where he told the assembled British and Australian journalists: Gentleman, I asked you to come here this morning to let you know that we have attacked in the Western Desert. This is not an offensive and I do not think you ought to describe it as an offensive. You might call it an important raid. The attack was made early this morning and I had word a hour ago that the first of the Italian camps have fallen. In the
Battle of Sidi Barrani, which began on 9 December 1940, a numerically superior Italian force was overwhelmed by a mixed force of British, Indian and Australian troops. The battle ended with three Italian divisions surrendering and the Italians almost pushed back into their colony of Libya. After the victory, Wavell pulled out the 4th Indian Division and sent it south to take retake
Kassala in the Sudan in order to appease Smuts. O'Connor felt it was a mistake to pull out the elite 4th Indian Division from the Western Desert. On 3 January 1941, Wavell launched a new offensive that saw the destruction of what was left of the
Italian 10th Army and the capture of the
Cyrenaica province of Libya. On 8 January 1941, Wavell with Major
William J. Donovan who was visiting Egypt as the personal representative of
President Roosevelt, who often sent out his close friends on diplomatic missions. Wavell told Donovan that he saw little hope in success in Churchill's plans to bomb the Romanian Ploesti oil fields as the Germans had constructed a powerful air defence system around them. Wavell stated that air defence system of radar stations, searchlights, flak batteries, and fighter squadrons would make it almost impossible to bomb the oil fields. On 13 January 1941, Wavell on Churchill's orders visited Athens to meet Metaxas to offer British Army forces to the mainland of Greece, and seemed privately relieved when Metaxas refused his offer. During his visit to Athens, Field Marshal
Alexandros Papagos, the Commander-in-Chief of the Greek Army, told Wavell that the German build-up of Wehrmacht forces in Bulgaria was highly concerning to the Greeks, and that Greece would need at least nine British Army divisions to hold the Greek-Yugoslav frontier where the Metaxas line ended. Wavell told Papagos that he did not have nine divisions to spare for the defence of Greece. On 20 January 1941, the Emperor
Haile Selassie returned to Ethiopia in the company of Wavell's favourite guerrilla fighter
Orde Wingate, and the news of his return sparked a fast-spreading rebellion all over Ethiopia, which tied down a significant number of Italian forces (see
East African campaign (World War II)). On 26 January 1941, Churchill in a cable to Wavell expressed the hope that the British would soon take all of Libya and urged him to start planning for an invasion of Sicily to be launched later in 1941. In the same telegram, Churchill expressed much anger at Wavell for refusing Smuts's offer of a South African division to Egypt unless the South Africans supplied of all the division's needs. The war had badly divided the Afrikaners into a pro-British "liberal" faction that supported fighting for Britain versus the pro-German "republican" faction that wanted to see South Africa fight for the Axis. Churchill accused Wavell of being politically naïve, as Churchill argued that having a South African division fighting in Egypt would win the Afrikaners over to supporting the war and told Wavell to supply the South African division out of his supplies. Wavell responded on 27 January 1941 that the main limits on his forces were logistical and he needed more transport vehicles. Wavell also complained that stockpiling supplies for the planned invasion of Rhodes was forcing him to hold back on supplies for North Africa. By February 1941, Wavell's
Western Desert Force under Lieutenant-General
Richard O'Connor had defeated the Italian Tenth Army at the
Battle of Beda Fomm taking 130,000 prisoners and appeared to be on the verge of overrunning the last Italian forces in
Libya, which would have ended all direct Axis control in North Africa. On 29 January 1941, Metaxas died, and his successor as prime minister of Greece,
Alexandros Koryzis, was unable to stand up to the British Foreign Secretary,
Anthony Eden (Eden had been moved from the War Office to the Foreign Office in December 1940), who pressed him very strongly to allow more British forces into Greece. In February 1941, Wavell launched an offensive into the colony of Italian East Africa with the British advancing into what is now Somalia from Kenya and making amphibious landings in Somaliland and Eritrea. On 11 February 1941, a landing was made in Italian Somaliland and on 14 February 1941,
Kismayu, one of the principal Italian naval bases on the Indian Ocean was captured by
12th African Division. A force of Ethiopian guerrillas, known as
Gideon Force, under the command of
Orde Wingate operated effectively behind Italian lines and advanced on
Addis Ababa. On 25 February 1941,
Mogadishu was taken and on 16 March 1941
Berbera was retaken. His
troops in East Africa also had the Italians under pressure and at the end of March his forces in Eritrea under
William Platt won the decisive battle of the campaign at
Keren which led to the liberation of Ethiopia and the British occupation of the
Italian colonies of Eritrea and
Somaliland. , commander of British and Indian Army forces in Iraq in April 1941. In February Wavell had been ordered to halt his advance into Libya and send troops to intervene in the
Battle of Greece. Between 12 and 19 February 1941, a mission headed by
Anthony Eden (now
Foreign Secretary) and the
Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Sir
John Dill was in Cairo, during which time Wavell changed his views on the proposed Greek expedition. Wavell's
volte-face on the Greek expedition seems to have been motivated partly out by the belief that with German forces massing in Bulgaria with the clear intention of invading Greece it was a matter of British honour to respect the "guarantee" of Greece made on 13 April 1939 and do something to help the Greeks. Wavell also felt the Greek expedition fitted in with the British objective of bringing the United States into the war. The U.S. president
Franklin D. Roosevelt had leaned into a pro-Allied neutrality since the start of the war, but much of American public and Congressional opinion was solidly isolationist, and Wavell wrote that to not help the Greeks would have a "deplorable" effect on American public opinion. In an attempt to appeal to American public opinion, British decision-makers had consistently portrayed the war against Nazi Germany as a crusade against evil. Wavell argued that an expedition to Greece would fit in very well with the image that Britain sought to project in the United States of being an enlightened, caring nation whose moral values were almost the same as those of the United States, especially as Congress was still debating the
Lend-Lease bill at the time. The crucial moment in the change in Wavell's stance appears to have been a meeting in Cairo on 19 February 1941 attended by Wavell, Dill, Eden and Donovan during which Donovan strongly stressed that American public opinion would be strongly impressed by an expedition to Greece, which Donovan stated would improve the odds of Congress passing the Lend-Lease bill. On 20 February 1941, another meeting in Cairo attended by Dill, Wavell and Eden ended with the conclusion "there was agreement upon utmost help to Greece at the earliest possible moment". On 17 February 1941, Wavell met with the Australian prime minister
Robert Menzies in Cairo, during which Wavell mentioned that Churchill was planning to revive the First World War Salonika Front and was talking about sending the three Australian divisions to Greece. Wavell asked for freedom to move about the Second Australian Imperial Force as needed, a request that was granted by Menzies, who insisted for domestic political reasons that the three Australian divisions be kept together. Menzies argued that the Australian people needed to see their forces fighting together for Australia and keeping the Australian divisions apart would make it seem like Australia was only serving British interests. The British had broken the Luftwaffe codes and both Wavell and Churchill believed that there would not be a German offensive in Libya on the basis of Hitler's orders to
Erwin Rommel of the
Afrika Korps in February 1941 to only defend the Italian colony of Libya lest its loss bring down the Fascist regime in Italy. However, Rommel was determined to launch an unauthorised offensive to win himself glory. Wavell had broken up the British
XIII Corps by sending the 4th Indian Division to Ethiopia and the 6th Australian Division to Greece. Wavell had replaced O'Connor with General Sir
Philip Neame, who had no experience of desert warfare. The new GOC of the
2nd British Armoured Division, Major-General
Michael Gambier-Parry was likewise new to desert warfare. Rommel soon learned from reconnaissance that the British forces in the Western Desert, at the end of a long supply line, were not prepared for a German offensive. The British stopped their advance into Libya at
El Agheila while the 7th Armoured Division was returned to Egypt to be replaced by the 2nd Armoured Division. In early 1941, the
6th British Division was training in Egypt for amphibious operations for an invasion of Rhodes as Churchill hoped that seizing the Italian
Dodecanese islands might bring Turkey into the war. The Greeks had committed most of the divisions of the Royal Hellenic Army to the front in
Epirus and pushed into the Italian colony of Albania while the remainder of the Greek Army held the
Metaxas Line along the Greek-Bulgarian border. The Metaxas line did not extend along the Greek–Yugoslav border as Yugoslavia was a Greek ally while Bulgaria claimed parts of northern Greece (see
Macedonian Struggle). Along the Greek-Yugoslav border the
Monastir Gap in the mountains forms a natural invasion route into northern Greece. The Greeks had wanted
Force W to hold the Greek-Yugoslav border, but Wavell chose the
Aliakmon line further south on the grounds that
Force W was too small to hold the entirety of the Greek–Yugoslav border. Even then, Wavell admitted that
Force W was too small to hold the Aliakmon line either. Wavell also admitted that a strong German offensive down the
Monastir Gap could outflank both the Metaxas line and the Aliakmon line, but he concluded that the 16 divisions of the Yugoslav Royal Army should be able to delay the Germans in Yugoslav Macedonia (modern
North Macedonia) for some time. Wavell's staff officers led by
Freddie de Guingand stated that Britain did not have sufficient troops to defend Greece, and favoured an advance to drive the Italians out of Libya. De Guingand believed that if the British reached the Libyan-Tunisian border, French officials in Tunisia, where it was known that several French garrison officers were lukewarm in their loyalty to
Vichy France, would defect over to the
Free French. Wavell's staff had argued that Allied control of Libya and Tunisia would enable Allied shipping to pass through the central Mediterranean to Egypt rather than via the long route around Africa. At War Cabinet meeting in London on 24 February 1941, papers written by Eden were presented which argued for the expedition. By all accounts, Eden was the minister most in favour of the expedition, which he believed would cause Turkey to enter the war on the Allied side. Churchill stated at the meeting that Wavell was in favour of the expedition, saying he "was inclined to understatement and so far had always promised less than what he had delivered". The three service chiefs, namely Dill, the
First Sea Lord Admiral
Dudley Pound and the
Chief of the Air Staff Sir
Charles Portal, all spoke in favour of the expedition, but protected themselves from any future criticism by citing Wavell's opinion as the primary reason for their approval. Menzies, who attended the War Cabinet, felt that there was a lack of discussion about the merits of the Greek expedition. After visiting Ankara to meet President
İsmet İnönü, Eden and Dill returned to Athens on 2 March 1941 to find that
Alexandros Papagos had refused to redeploy the Royal Hellenic Army to the Aliakhmon Line as he had promised in February, saying he was not going to abandon northern Greece without a fight. Wavell was summoned to Athens, where he was unable to change Papagos's mind. On 6 March 1941, the South African prime minister General
Jan Smuts arrived in Cairo for a conference with Wavell, during which he strongly expressed support for the Greek expedition. Smuts was Churchill's favourite
Dominion prime minister, and the one whose military advice he was most likely to follow as Churchill believed him to be a military genius after his leading role in the
Second Boer War. The American historian Robin Higham described Smuts as playing a "sinister" role in British decision-making during both world wars as Smuts was grossly overrated as a general and his ideas about strategy were consistently wrong; his endorsement of the Greek expedition played a major role in silencing any criticism. On 25 March 1941 Yugoslavia joined the Axis
Tripartite Pact, but did not grant the Germans transit rights, which would have forced Wehrmacht forces in Bulgaria to attack Greece through the Metaxas Line. Later on 25 March 1941, a military coup in Belgrade overthrew the Regent,
Crown Prince Paul, which led Hitler to invade Yugoslavia as well as Greece and led the Wehrmacht generals to use their preferred plan to bypass the Metaxas Line by invading
Yugoslav Macedonia. The new government in Belgrade refused to antagonise Hitler by mobilising the Yugoslav military and spread out the Yugoslav forces too thin to defend the whole of Yugoslavia. These decisions caused the rapid defeat of Yugoslavia. The result was a disaster. The Germans were given the opportunity to reinforce the Italians in North Africa with the
Afrika Korps and by the end of April the weakened
Western Desert Force had been pushed back to the Egyptian border, leading to the
Siege of Tobruk. On 31 March 1941, the
Afrika Korps went on the offensive and rapidly pushed back the Commonwealth forces into Egypt. Inspired by the German victories, on 3 April 1941 a group of pro-German Iraqi Army generals staged a coup in Baghdad and installed the pro-Axis
Rashid Ali al-Gaylani as the new prime minister of Iraq. King Farouk of Egypt leaned into a pro-Axis neutrality and because of the uncertain attitude of the Egyptian Army, Wavell was forced to keep one of the Australian divisions intended for Greece in Egypt. Wavell suspected with good reason that Farouk was in contact with German and Italian agents, and that Egypt would join the Axis the moment that Axis forces reached the Nile river valley. On 6 April 1941, the Germans invaded Greece and Yugoslavia. Of the two divisions and one brigade that made up General
Henry Wilson's Force W, the
2nd New Zealand Division and the
1st British Armoured Brigade were just taking up their positions on the Aliakhmon Line in central Greece while the 6th Australian Division was in the process of disembarking in
Piraeus. The only good news for Wavell that day was that the British had taken
Addis Ababa. Also on 6 April 1941, Wavell decided to hold
Tobruk, after receiving assurances from Admiral Andrew Cunningham that it could be resupplied from the sea, on the grounds that the
Afrika Korps would not be able to advance any further. Wavell believed that with the port of Tobruk, the
Afrika Korps would probably be able to take Alexandria and without Tobruk it could not. On 8 April 1941, Wavell personally visited Tobruk to inspect its defence. The first combat with the Wehrmacht in Greece occurred on 9 April 1941 as the unmobilised and thinly spread Royal Yugoslav Army was promptly defeated and the German
XXXX Panzer Corps having smashed way into Yugoslav Macedonia turned south though the
Monastir Gap into Greece. On 11 April 1941, Wavell visited Athens to meet with General
Henry Maitland Wilson, GOC of
Force W along with
Thomas Blamey, the GOC of the 6th Australian Division and
Bernard Freyberg, GOC of the New Zealand Division. With the Germans having advanced into northern Greece, Wavell decided that the Aliakhmon line was indefensible and ordered
Force W to retreat south with the aim of holding the
Thermopylae Pass. On 13 April, Wavell returned to Cairo and on 15 April 1941 he decided that Greece could not be held and that
Force W should be withdrawn before the entire expeditionary force was lost. On 16 April 1941, Papagos requested that the British pull out what was left of the Greek Army and on the same day Wavell passed along that request to Churchill. Later the same day, Churchill granted his approval for a retreat from the mainland of Greece. The British and New Zealand troops holding the Thermopylae line fought bravely, but the lack of air support and devastating attack from
Stuka dive bombers forced their retreat. In North Africa, the
Afrika Korps could not advance further without the port of Tobruk to bring in supplies, and the
9th Australian Division holding Tobruk beat off a series of German attacks between 11 and 18 April 1941. With the Germans stopped outside Tobruk, Wavell returned to Greece on 19 April 1941, where he found a chaotic situation as Greek Prime Minister
Alexandros Koryzis had committed suicide on 18 April. On 20 April 1941, Wavell met with King
George II of Greece and gained his approval for the evacuation. Wavell ruled that Piraeus could not be used because of Luftwaffe air superiority and instead
Force W would have to leave via the beaches. For five days starting on 24 April 1941,
Force W was evacuated amid
Dunkirk-like scenes under heavy German air attacks on various Greek beaches. By 29 April 1941, the last Commonwealth forces had been pulled out of Greece, having suffered 15,000 casualties and leaving behind all their heavy equipment and artillery.
Force W withdrew to
Crete. Further south, the successful campaign in the
Horn of Africa led to the Emperor Haile Selassie returning to his throne and the surrender of 100,000 Italian soldiers under the command of the
Duke of Aosta. Benito Mussolini had claimed the
conquest of Ethiopia in 1936 as his greatest accomplishment, and the liberation of Ethiopia in 1941 was a great blow to the prestige of the Fascist regime. On 11 April 1941, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the Red Sea was no longer a war zone and as the US was still officially neutral, American merchantmen and tankers could now travel the Red Sea to Egypt, which greatly reduced the demands placed on British shipping. On 23 April 1941, General
Charles de Gaulle arrived in Cairo to ask Wavell for permission for Free French forces to use the Palestine Mandate to invade the
French mandates of Syria and Lebanon ruled by General
Henri Dentz, who was loyal to Vichy France. On 26 April 1941, Wavell first learned via
Ultra of
Unternehmen Merkur, the German plan for an airborne invasion of Crete. On 30 April 1941, Wavell visited Crete, where at a meeting in
Canae he expressed much approval of Freyberg as GOC of Crete, saying that Freyberg had won the
Victoria Cross in 1916 and that he was a very brave, tough soldier. During the same visit, Wavell told Wilson that "I want you to go to Jerusalem and relieve Baghdad", saying the new regime in Iraq had joined the war on the Axis side. Events in Greece provoked an Iraqi pro-Axis faction to begin the
1941 Iraqi coup d'état. Wavell, hard pressed on his other fronts, was unwilling to divert resources to Iraq and so it fell to
Claude Auchinleck's
British Indian Army to send troops to
Basra. Churchill saw Iraq as strategically vital and in early May, under heavy pressure from London, Wavell agreed to send a division-sized force across the desert from
Palestine to relieve
RAF Habbaniya and to assume control of troops in Iraq. Churchill nearly sacked Wavell on 6 May 1941 when he at first refused an order to march into Iraq. During the Iraq campaign, the Vichy premier Admiral
François Darlan, gave the Germans transit rights to send their forces to Iraq across Syria. When he learned of this Churchill wanted to allow Free French forces to invade Syria at once, but Wavell advised that Free French forces were too small to invade Syria without British help. On 18 May 1941, General
Georges Catroux met with Wavell in Cairo to urge him to invade Syria, claiming that Darlan had signed a secret agreement with Hitler for the
Reich to occupy Syria and that Vichy forces were withdrawing into Lebanon as the prelude for the hand-over. Besides de Gaulle and Catroux, Major-General
Edward Spears, with whom Churchill enjoyed warmer personal relations than de Gaulle, was also lobbying Wavell for an invasion of Syria. In the
Battle of Crete German airborne forces attacked on 20 May and as in Greece, the British and Commonwealth troops were forced once more to evacuate. The Anglo-Greek-Australian-New Zealander forces had been evacuated to Crete, and placed under the command of Freyberg. Churchill had personally insisted on Freyberg being given the Crete command. For
Unternehmen Merkur (Operation Mercury), the invasion of Crete, the Germans had committed the
Fallschirmjägerkorps (i.e. the Parachute Corps) of the Luftwaffe. As the British had broken the Luftwaffe codes, the entire German plans for Operation Merkur was known in advance. However, Freyberg refused to believe the Ultra intelligence which warned him of an airborne assault and even named the three Cretan airfields targeted, and persisted in keeping the majority of his forces on the coast to resist a seaborne invasion. Freyberg regarded Crete as strategically unimportant, and was not aware of Hitler's fears that the British would use airfields on Crete to bomb the Ploesti oil fields on which Germany depended. Freyberg's son claimed in the 1970s that Wavell had let Freyberg in on the Ultra secret shortly before Operation Mercury was launched, but also told him that would could not move his forces away from the coast to protect the three airfields as that might tip the Germans off that the Luftwaffe codes had been broken. During the hard-fought Battle of Crete, the British, Greek, Australian and New Zealander forces put up a ferocious resistance, and the invasion of Crete nearly turned into a German defeat as the
Fallschirmjäger took heavy losses and two of the three airfields were successfully held. British and Australian forces inflicted heavy losses on the Germans at
Heraklion air field and Greek and Australian forces were equally successful in holding the
Rethymno airfield. General
Kurt Student, the commander of the
Fallschirmjäger, nearly cancelled Operation Mercury as reports of the German failures come in, but Hitler insisted on continuing the operation. The Allied successes against the elite
Fallschirmjäger at Heraklion and Rethymno were especially striking as Freyberg continued to regard these landings as a diversion and kept the majority of his forces on the coast. However, Brigadier
L.W Andrew of the
22nd New Zealand Battalion unwisely pulled his forces back from
Maleme airfield, which allowed the Germans to fly in heavy forces to Crete. The Allied forces defending Crete were lightly armed as they had abandoned all of their heavy equipment on the Greek mainland, and once Maleme airfield was lost, so was Crete. Churchill, who believed the Allies were on the brink of a great victory, continued to bombard Wavell with telegrams demanding he sent more forces to Crete. On 22 May 1941, the New Zealanders failed to recapture Maleme airfield and on 25 May the Germans captured Galatas. A counter-attack by the New Zealanders halted the German advance for the moment. Churchill was notably angry when Wavell reported to him that Germans had air superiority made it impossible to send tanks to Crete. On 26 May Freyberg asked Wavell for permission to evacuate his forces to Egypt as defending Crete was hopeless. On 27 May 1941, Wavell reported to London that the situation in Crete was "no longer tenable" and recommended a retreat to Egypt as otherwise all of the Allied forces in Crete would be lost. Owing to the strength of German air attacks on the northern shore of Crete, the Allied forces had to retreat to the southern shores where they were picked up by Royal Navy ships under heavy German air attacks. On 1 June, the last Allied forces totaling 16,000 men had been evacuated from Crete. The Germans had lost 4,000 killed and 2,500 wounded taking Crete, which was more than all of their losses on the Greek mainland and Yugoslavia combined. About 16,000 Allied soldiers were killed or captured while the Royal Navy had lost three cruisers and six destroyers to German air and naval attacks during the evacuation while a battleship and an aircraft carrier had been badly damaged. The British Mediterranean fleet's losses off Crete meant that there was no immediate prospect of Britain regaining command of the central Mediterranean, and Egypt would still have to be supplied via the long route around Africa. The Germans had been outraged that the civilian population of Crete had joined in the defence as the idea of women fighting was considered offensive by the Nazis, and in the aftermath of the battle, the
Fallschirmjäger massacred many Cretan civilians. In the aftermath of the Battle of Crete, Wavell was described as being very unhappy. Sir
Miles Lampson, the British ambassador to Egypt, wrote on 29 May 1941 after a meeting with Wavell that he was "looking the picture of gloom". Lampson reported that Wavell's mood recovered as he joked that Churchill's "snappy, caustic telegrams" were useless as telegrams "didn't help him beat the Germans". By the end of May
Edward Quinan's
Iraqforce had captured
Baghdad and the
Anglo-Iraqi War had ended with the re-establishment of the pro-British ruler and troops in Iraq once more reverting to the overall control of Indian Army GHQ in Delhi. However, Churchill had been unimpressed by Wavell's reluctance to act. In book 3 of his memoirs/history of the war,
The Grand Alliance, Churchill split the different campaigns in Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia, Egypt and Greece into different chapters, making Wavell's complaints about feeling overwhelmed seem petty and churlish. In fact at one point in May 1941, Wavell was conducting simultaneously campaigns in Iraq, the Horn of Africa, North Africa and Crete. Churchill had great hopes for Wavell's
Operation Battleaxe planned for June to relieve Tobruk, and in May 1941 sent out a convoy codenamed Tiger to once again send tanks to Egypt via the shorter, but more dangerous Mediterranean route rather the long route around
Cape of Good Hope. In early June Wavell sent a force under General Wilson to invade
Syria and Lebanon, responding to the help given by the
Vichy France authorities there to the Iraq Government during the
Anglo-Iraqi War. Initial hopes of a quick victory faded as the French put up a determined defence. For a time, it appeared that a stalemate was developing as the Anglo-Australian-Indian=Free French force that had invaded Syria seemed to be stuck before Damascus. Churchill determined to relieve Wavell and after the failure in mid June of
Operation Battleaxe he told Wavell on 20 June that he was to be replaced by Auchinleck, whose attitude during the Iraq crisis had impressed him. The requirement that Wavell send forces barely recovered from the defeat on the Greek mainland and the bloody fighting on Crete into Syria and Iraq reduced the number of forces that Wavell could commit to Operation Battleaxe while British tank commanders failed to take into the account the devastating 8.8 cm anti-aircraft/anti-tank gun; most of the British tanks knocked out in Operation Battleaxe were destroyed not by German tanks, but by the "88" guns. German tactics were to lure British tanks into the range of the 88 guns, which was helped by British doctrine that tanks should serve in a "cruiser" role, independently in the desert away from supporting artillery, which might had knocked out the 88 guns. Churchill felt that because of the Ultra secret that Wavell must had been incompetent in conducting Operation Battleaxe, which led directly to his decision to sack him. Churchill could not mention Ultra in
The Grand Alliance, but claimed that MI6 had a spy in the staff of the
Afrika Korps, and that Wavell was amiss in not using the intelligence from the alleged spy better. The British historian
David Reynolds wrote that Churchill "seems not to have understood" that the British had the advantage in strategic intelligence as they could read some of the German codes, but that the Germans had better tactical intelligence as the
Afrika Korps made better maps and was more aggressive in patrolling the "no-man's land" between the Allied and Axis lines. The end of Operation Battleaxe released more British forces to be sent north to Syria and on 21 June 1941 Damascus fell, the same day that Auchinleck replaced Wavell. One of Wavell's last duties was to serve as the host for
W. Averell Harriman, another of President Roosevelt's friends whom he had sent out on a diplomatic mission to the Middle East in late June 1941. Harriman described Wavell to Roosevelt as "a man of true integrity and a true leader".
Rommel rated Wavell highly, despite Wavell's lack of success against him. Of Wavell, Auchinleck wrote: "In no sense do I wish to infer that I found an unsatisfactory situation on my arrival – far from it. Not only was I greatly impressed by the solid foundations laid by my predecessor, but I was also able the better to appreciate the vastness of the problems with which he had been confronted and the greatness of his achievements, in a command in which some 40 different languages are spoken by the British and Allied Forces."
Commander-in-Chief, India during the
Second World War Wavell in effect swapped jobs with Auchinleck, transferring to India where he became
Commander-in-Chief, India and a member of the
Governor General's Executive Council. Initially his command covered India and Iraq so that within a month of taking charge he launched
Iraqforce to
invade Persia in co-operation with the Russians in order to secure the oilfields and the lines of communication to the
Soviet Union. In the summer and fall of 1941, many British officials expected the Soviet Union to be defeated that year. Wavell's initial concern was that the Soviet Union would be defeated and that Germany would advance though the Caucasus to invade Iran, and from there invade India. Wavell once again had the misfortune of being placed in charge of an undermanned theatre which became a war zone when the Japanese declared war on the United Kingdom in December 1941. On 22 December 1941, Wavell went to
Chungking, the temporary capital of China, to see
Chiang Kai-shek to discuss keeping the
Burma Road open. While waiting for his flight to Chungking, Wavell met at
Rangoon airport with
Claire Lee Chennault and the other pilots of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "
Flying Tigers" who were also on their way to China. Chennault and the other "Flying Tigers" impressed Wavell as brave, determined, high-spirted adventurers, whom Wavell predicted would do well in China. Wavell described his landing on an airport on a semi-flooded island in the
Yangtze river as "rather hair-raising" and Chungking itself as an "unattractive" city that had been badly damaged by
Japanese bombing. Wavell called Chiang "not a particularly impressive figure" who was only interested in grand strategy in Asia and had no interest in Burma despite the importance of the Burma Road in keeping China supplied with arms. Chiang did not speak English and his American educated wife
Soong Mei-ling served as his translator. Wavell reported to London that he had the impression that Chiang was planning to steal the billions of American aid that he had been promised by Roosevelt. On the second day of the conference, Wavell accepted Chiang's offer of the
6th Chinese Army to help Burma, but refused the offer of the 5th Chinese Army under the grounds it would be impossible to supply two Chinese armies at once. Wavell denied that his refusal of Chiang's offer of two Chinese armies was racially motivated, saying that moving two Chinese armies from
Yunnan province into Burma would increased his logistical problems immensely. His return flight to India was constantly stopped because of the heavy Japanese bombing of Chungking. Wavell was made Commander-in-Chief of
ABDACOM (American-British-Dutch-Australian Command). Besides a relentless advance down
Malaya (modern
Malaysia), the Japanese had landed in the northern islands of the
Dutch East Indies.(modern
Indonesia). Late at night on 10 February 1942, Wavell prepared to board a
flying boat to fly from
Singapore to Java. He stepped out of a staff car, not noticing (because of his blind left eye) that it was parked at the edge of a pier. He broke two bones in his back when he fell, and this injury affected his temperament for some time. Wavell chose to focus on defending Java as the best way to defend Australia. On 23 February 1942, with Malaya lost and the Allied position in
Java and
Sumatra precarious, ABDACOM was closed down and its headquarters in Java evacuated. Wavell returned to India to resume his position as C-in-C India where his responsibilities now included the defence of
Burma. On 27 February 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy defeated an Anglo-Australian-American-Dutch fleet in the
Battle of Java Sea, and on 12 March 1942 the Dutch governor of Java signed the instrument of surrender. After the fall of Singapore, Wavell commented to
Alan Brooke, the new CIGS, that if only the defenders of Malaya had held out for a month longer, it would have been possible to defend Singapore along with the Dutch East Indies. in WW II On 23 February British forces in Burma had suffered a serious setback when Major-General
Jackie Smyth's decision to destroy the bridge over the
Sittang river to prevent the enemy crossing had resulted in most of his division being trapped on the wrong side of the river. The
Viceroy of India Lord Linlithgow sent a signal criticising the conduct of the field commanders to Churchill who forwarded it to Wavell together with an offer to send
Harold Alexander, who had commanded the rearguard at Dunkirk. Alexander took command of Allied land forces in Burma in early March with
William Slim arriving shortly afterwards from commanding a division in Iraq to take command of its principal formation,
Burma Corps. Nevertheless, the pressure from the Japanese Armies was unstoppable and a withdrawal to India was ordered which was completed by the end of May before the start of the
monsoon season which brought Japanese progress to a halt. On 8 March 1942, the Japanese took Rangoon. The Japanese advance into southeast Asia along with the bombing of
Darwin and a Japanese submarine attack in
Sydney Harbour led to considerable public Australian alarm in early 1942 and insistent demands by the Australian prime minister
John Curtin that the Allies hold the Dutch East Indies to stop the expected Japanese invasion of Australia. The Allies rushed reinforcements to the Dutch East Indies instead of Burma. In particular, two of the three Australian divisions fighting in the Middle East that were supposed to be redeployed to Burma were sent instead sent back to Australia as Curtin argued as the Australian prime minister that the defence of Australia took precedence over the defence of Egypt or India. Wavell also had to deal with General
Joseph Stilwell, who had been appointed by Chiang to take command of the
Chinese armies driven into India by the
Japanese conquest of Burma. Wavell first met Stilwell in
Calcutta on 28 February 1942, and had difficult relations with the notoriously abrasive and
Anglophobic Stilwell. Stilwell described Wavell in his diary as "a tired, depressed man pretty well beaten down". Wavell charged that Stillwell was a generally difficult subordinate who had no staff to speak of as Stilwell tried to serve as a one-man general staff for the Chinese. Stillwell had a very specific mission, namely to reopen the Burma Road so that American aid could reach China, which caused conflicts with Wavell had a number of other responsibilities besides for reopening the Burma Road. The fact that Stilwell feuded endlessly with Chiang, whom he called "the Peanut" caused problems for Wavell as it was never entirely clear just how much control Stilwell actually exercised over the Chinese armies under his command. Wavell was strongly critical of Churchill's decision to give priority to the
strategic bombing offensive against Germany, which he complained left his command deprived of the aircraft needed to defend India. In April 1942, he wrote to Churchill after the Japanese
Indian Ocean raid: "It certainly gives us furiously to think when, after trying with less than twenty light bombers to meet an attack, which has cost us three important warships and several others and nearly 100,000 tons of shipping, we see that over 200 heavy bombers attacked one town in Germany". By definition, Wavell's role in India required him to put the security interests of India first, which put him at odds with the "
Germany First" grand strategy. In April 1942, Wavell complained that there the 7 elite divisions of the Indian Army were fighting in Libya and Egypt while he had only 3 lesser quality Indian divisions to defend India against the expected Japanese invasion. Wavell also charged that it was not possible to raise more divisions in India owing to a lack of equipment. In addition, the "
Quit India" protests launched in August 1942 overwhelmed the police forces, and Wavell was forced to send out Indian Army troops as an aid to civil power in several provinces to uphold the authority of the Raj. In order to wrest some of the initiative from the Japanese, Wavell ordered the
Eastern Army in India to mount an offensive in the
Arakan, starting in September 1942. After some initial success the Japanese counter-attacked, and by March 1943 the position was untenable, and the remnants of the attacking force were withdrawn. Wavell relieved the Eastern Army commander,
Noel Irwin, of his command and replaced him with
George Giffard. In 1942, Wavell brought
Orde Wingate to India to launch the first
Chindit raid into Burma, which began on 8 February 1943. The Chindit raid, through militarily inconclusive, lifted morale as the exploits of a
commando unit operating in the jungle beyond Japanese lines attracted much media attention. In January 1943, Wavell was promoted to field marshal and on 22 April he returned to London. On 4 May he had an audience with the King, before departing with Churchill for America (for the
Trident Conference), returning on 27 May. He resided with
Henry 'Chips' Channon MP in Belgrave Square and was reintroduced by him into London society. Churchill nursed "an uncontrollable and unfortunate disapproval – indeed jealous dislike – of Wavell", and had several spats with him in America. ==Viceroy of India==