Analysis In 1942, a Court of Inquiry was held , which found Klopper to be largely blameless for the surrender. The verdict was kept secret, which did little to enhance his or his troops' reputation. After the war, Winston Churchill wrote that the blame belonged to the British High Command, not to Klopper or his troops. He accepted that the facts were obscured at the time as the Tobruk leadership were all prisoners of war but that the truth had since emerged. The British official historian, Ian Playfair, wrote in 1960 that "the reasons for the disaster are plain enough". It was commonly accepted that there was no intention of standing another siege of Tobruk and that the port was not prepared for one. Neither Auchinleck nor Ritchie appreciated the extent of the defeat which the Eighth Army had suffered at Gazala or that the Eighth Army was no longer able simultaneously to continue to fight in the Tobruk area, defend the frontier and prepare a counter-attack. Klopper and his staff did not have the experience to make best use of their resources under such difficult circumstances. Rommel had overwhelming air support at Tobruk, because almost all of the Allied fighter aircraft had been withdrawn and were out of range;
Luftwaffe bombing played an important role in breaching the defences.
Repercussions On 21 June, the prime minister, Winston Churchill and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff,
Alan Brooke, were attending the
Second Washington Conference discussing grand strategy with the US President,
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the US Army Chief of Staff,
George C. Marshall. An American aide arrived with the news of the Tobruk surrender, which he gave to the President who passed it to Churchill. Churchill's military aide
Hastings Ismay contacted London and confirmed the news. The conference also received a telegram from British Minister-Resident in the Middle East
Richard Casey warning that the defeat opened the possibility of an Axis invasion of Egypt. Churchill recalled in his memoirs, {{blockquote |text=I did not attempt to hide from the President the shock I had received. It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another. Nothing could exceed the sympathy and chivalry of my two friends. There were no reproaches; not an unkind word was spoken. "What can we do to help?" said Roosevelt. I replied at once, "Give us as many Sherman tanks as you can spare and ship them to the Middle East as quickly as possible". Roosevelt asked General Marshall to see what could be done. Marshall ordered the
2nd Armored Division, which was training with its new
M4 Sherman tanks, to prepare to move to Egypt. When it became apparent that this new formation could not be made operational until the autumn, Marshall decided instead to send three hundred of their Shermans, a hundred
M7 Priest (105 mm self-propelled guns) spare parts and one hundred and fifty instructors, in a fast convoy beginning on 1 July. Brooke later wrote, On 25 June the
Maldon by-election was won by
Tom Driberg, a left-wing journalist, standing as an
Independent, who gained sixty per cent of the vote, defeating the
Conservative Party candidate. Churchill and others attributed the defeat to the loss of Tobruk four days before; Driberg denied this was a major factor, suggesting instead that it was part of a wider swing to the left and away from the established political parties. In parliament, there was a growing feeling that Churchill was responsible for the muddle and lack of direction in the management of the war, despite his popularity with the public. The
Labour Party MP Aneurin Bevan tried to force a parliamentary enquiry into Churchill's role in the defeats at Gazala and Tobruk but was prevented by
Clement Attlee, the Labour
Deputy Prime Minister. When a right-wing Conservative, Sir
John Wardlaw-Milne, tabled a
motion of no-confidence in the coalition government, there was speculation that it might go the way of the
Norway Debate, which had led to the resignation of the previous prime minister,
Neville Chamberlain, in May 1940. The debate opened on 1 July and on the following day Bevan attacked Churchill by saying that he "fights debates like a war and war like a debate". Churchill replied with (according to
Anthony Eden) "one of his most effective speeches" and the government won by 425 votes to 25.
Casualties It was the second-largest capitulation by the British Army in the war (behind the
fall of Singapore) and the biggest defeat in the history of the Union Defence Force.
German propaganda initially reported that the Wehrmacht had captured 25,000 Allied prisoners of war, which turned out to be an underestimate as the true total was 32,200. The Germans left the task of housing the prisoners to the Italians, who lacked the infrastructure to treat the prisoners in accordance with the
Geneva Convention. The prisoners were crammed into open pens to await deportation and were left seriously short of food and water. Conditions improved after the prisoners had been transported in cargo ships to Italy. Many of them, especially South Africans, were subject to recriminations from other prisoners who felt that Tobruk had surrendered too easily. At the
Italian armistice in September 1943, many prisoners escaped, including Klopper, who was rescued by
Popski's Private Army (Major
Vladimir Peniakoff) which was operating nearby. The number of Eighth Army prisoners taken in the battle is not known precisely because the Eighth Army records were lost. Axis casualties are not known either but German casualties for the fighting since 26 May (including Gazala) was reported as 3,360 of whom 300 were officers; German losses for 20 to 22 June would have been considerably less than that. An estimate of British casualties was published in the British official history, the
History of the Second World War and
The Mediterranean and Middle East: British Fortunes Reach Their Lowest Ebb and is shown in the table above.
Axis The Nazi hierarchy shared Churchill's view of the symbolic importance of Tobruk and
Joseph Goebbels, the
Reich Minister of Propaganda, made much of its capture. On 22 June, Hitler promoted Rommel to , making him the youngest
field marshal in the German Army, much to the annoyance of senior Italian officers. Although Rommel undoubtedly considered it a great honour, he later confided to his wife that he would rather have been given another division. Mussolini was also jubilant and is said to have ordered that a suitable white horse be found for his triumphal entry into Cairo. Despite the demolitions at Tobruk, the Axis captured about of fuel and a further at Belhamed. Amongst the 2,000 vehicles captured were 30 serviceable tanks. It has been estimated that Rommel was using some 6,000 captured British lorries by the end of the month. Also taken in Tobruk were of water and three million rations of food []. Because of the tenuous Axis supply line, the troops had been living on very short rations and the British supplies were enthusiastically received, especially chocolate, canned milk and vegetables; stores of shirts and socks were enthusiastically looted. The equally deprived Italian troops tended to be excluded from the plundering. flies over a convoy of British lorries during the retreat into Egypt, 26 June 1942. In the afternoon of 21 June, the day of the surrender, Kesselring visited Rommel's headquarters and reminded him of the agreement that the invasion of Malta would follow the capture of Tobruk and that his aircraft were already returning to Italy. The next day, a senior Italian staff officer arrived with orders from General Bastico to halt. Rommel, now a field marshal, was able to decline this "advice". He had the latest pessimistic report from the US military attaché
Bonner Fellers in Cairo to Washington on the British dispositions, which concluded with the phrase; "If Rommel intends to take
the Delta, now is the time"; the supplies captured at Tobruk made that possible.
Axis invasion of Egypt On 22 June, Rommel by-passed the chain of command by writing directly to Mussolini via the German attaché in Rome,
Enno von Rintelen, requesting that the offensive be allowed to continue and that the Malta invasion be postponed to preserve his air support. Mussolini forwarded the letter to Hitler, who had been harbouring doubts about the Malta operation. Hitler replied the next day with an effusive letter which agreed with Rommel's suggestion and urged Mussolini not to let the opportunity slip away, stating that "the goddess of success passes generals only once". The British retreat soon became a
rout. Ritchie decided not to regroup at the Egyptian border as planned but further east at the fortified port and army base at
Mersa Matruh. Auchinleck sacked Ritchie on 25 June, taking charge of the Eighth Army and began a further withdrawal to a better defensive position at El Alamein. On the next day, Rommel arrived at Matruh and broke through in the centre. The
Battle of Mersa Matruh was another fiasco for the Eighth Army, who suffered 8,000 casualties and lost a lot of equipment and supplies but the bulk of the Eighth Army was able to break out and fall back to El Alamein. Rommel hoped that a swift central attack on the new British positions might succeed in the same way as at Mersa Matruh but he was moving further away from his air support and supply bases. The Axis came correspondingly within the range of the DAF and their advance was eventually halted at the
First Battle of El Alamein in July. El Alamein was to be the furthest advance eastwards of the Panzer Army Africa.
Operation Agreement The deadlock following El Alamein prompted a plan to attack the coastal flank of the Axis forces.
Operation Agreement was a raid on Tobruk by the
Special Air Service attacking from the desert, while a large amphibious force was landed by naval vessels. The raid on 13/14 September 1942 was a disaster; a
cruiser and a
destroyer were sunk and there were some 800 Allied fatalities, without any of the objectives being achieved. Following the
Second Battle of El Alamein in late October 1942, the Panzer Army Africa withdrew towards
El Agheila, allowing the 7th Armoured Division to enter Tobruk unopposed on 13 November. Tobruk was the first big port west of Alexandria to be recaptured; some jetties were found to be intact and an Allied convoy arrived on 19 November. Despite a fire on a merchant ship, a daily average of of supplies were landed there in support of the Allied offensive. == See also ==