Three Kings

The voices and heads were now lining up on the issue of Malta, Raeder, Keitel, Jodl, Halder, Kesselring, and Rommel all in unanimous agreement that it should become the next target, and to this chorus the secret whispers of Ivan Volkov continued urging Hitler to do exactly this were enough to tip the balance. Watch your enemy, Ivan Volkov had whispered. What does he covet? Look how he stubbornly holds on to the island of Malta. He knows the value of that place, even though it is far from Alexandria and can no longer be supported from Gibraltar.

Kesselring was consulted by Hitler and calmly told the Fuhrer that Malta would be far easier to take than Crete, agreeing with Raeder that the opportunity to do so was ripe at this very moment. “Look how easily we took their precious Rock of Gibraltar,” he said. “Malta will fall like a plum, right into our hands with no trouble.”

As further inducement, he produced an old volume containing Napoleon’s plan for the capture of the island in 1798, an item that Hitler found most interesting and persuasive.

For his part, Rommel could see that if the Luftwaffe pursued the Italian strategy of trying to bomb the island into submission, all those planes that might be supporting him in the desert would be tied up for months. Better now than later, he said of the plan when he finally heard that Keitel had formally proposed the operation to Hitler. He even offered to go and lead the attack himself, but yielded to Student as being more versed in airborne operations. It was now unanimous.

In spite of his worries over the threat Crete posed to the oil fields of Ploesti, Hitler was finally convinced to attack Malta first. “Crete can be taken after we conclude operations in the Baltic,” the generals and Admirals assured him. And with his grudging approval, the history of the war had come to its second major point of divergence.

The Germans planned to introduce their air strength first, with the aim of extending the Italian effort there and neutralizing the air defenses of the island. Once the defense had been suppressed, then Student would get his day in the skies, and his Fallschirmjagers would launch their daring attack. Italy would participate by providing shipping necessary to move one full regiment of German mountain troops, augmented by a battalion of the Italian San Marco Marines, a token force to allow Mussolini a scrap of honor in the situation that again saw the Germans taking the primary role from an otherwise inept Italian military.

The Germans had learned some valuable lessons in watching the British operate with their navy. They had finally come to realize the great value and importance of sea power as a guarantor of the lifeline of supply. This had never been necessary before in German operations, which had always been lines of communication on land. Now, however, with Germany contemplating a significant projection of power into the Eastern Mediterranean, a secure supply line by sea was essential. They were finally beginning to perceive the strong connection and relationship that sea power had to operations by the Luftwaffe. In this, the performance of Graf Zeppelin had opened many eyes. If anything, it was lack of adequate shipping that had forced the cancellation of Operation Seelowe, that and the fact that Goering had not delivered on his promise of defeating the R.A.F. Without dominating the skies over the English Channel, the Royal Navy then became a dangerous counter to any plan to invade England.

This hard lesson was now applied to the situation in the Med, and even Hitler began to see how things had changed after the capture of Gibraltar. The Germans now understood that to fight here, they had to control the airspace first, and then introduce naval forces of sufficient quality and number to hold the formidable power of the Royal Navy at bay. The war at sea would be an essential prerequisite to winning any battle on land. That was one salient point that arose in all those discussions at OKW with Admiral Raeder.

Admiral Lutjens and Captain Karl Adler aboard the Hindenburg would soon have some most interesting orders, and a formidable fleet would be assembled in the west as the naval covering force for Sonnenblume. It would be a combined operation, the first of the war between the French Navy and the Kriegsmarine. While there was still little love between the two forces, and much resentment against the Germans, the ill will the French sailors held towards the British after Mers-el Kebir and Dakar was more raw. The Germans proposed to bring two powerful ships, first to Gibraltar where they would briefly enjoy the fruits of the recent German victory there, and then into the Mediterranean itself. The entire German battlegroup that had managed to reach French ports would be involved, but it had to again slip past the watch of Admiral Somerville’s Force H.