What if the Suez was reached by the A.Korps?

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Groscurth
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What if the Suez was reached by the A.Korps?

#1

Post by Groscurth » 15 Mar 2004, 02:19

Would this be the end of the UK?

Regarding Brittains supremacy on the sea I imagine that they could be abble to bring in oil from other places. What were (appart the US) the other areas that the UK could rely on for its supplies?

It would make things much more difficult for the UK but would this be a-, or end in a defeat?

I lack background on this and I guess that it has been discussed much of times before here. Someone can give me a link or more info?

Many thanks,

G.

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Reply.

#2

Post by john2 » 15 Mar 2004, 05:56

Cutting the British off from the Suez canal would lengthen British supply lines making it more difficult to get past the Uboats. However this would be compensated by supplies from the US. So basically as long as the US supports Britain she could theoretically lose her whole empire and keep fighting as British defenses would be too strong for an invasion to happen and a blockade on the part of Germany would be broken through with the help of the US navy. Whether or not the British people would want to keep fighting given the loss of her empire would be another story but militarily it was possible. There were really only 3 ways Germany could defeat Britain.
1 Negotiation (would never happen with Churchill)
2 Blockade (impossible with the US intervention)
3 Invasion (difficult but not realistic after 1940)

Hitler was so to speak stuck which is one of the reasons why he chose to invade Russia.


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Tim Smith
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#3

Post by Tim Smith » 15 Mar 2004, 09:15

The Suez Canal was a vital supply link for the Middle Eastern Theatre. Losing Suez means that British troops in Palestine and Syria cannot be supplied properly, as overland supply to these areas is insufficient to maintain a large army, and convoy through the entire Mediterranean from Gibraltar is too dangerous with Egypt gone. So once the Suez Canal is captured, the fall of Palestine and Syria is inevitable and only a matter of time. With their capture the whole Mediterranean seaboard is in Axis hands (apart from neutral Spain, Turkey and Vichy).

The closest British ports for supply are now Basra in Iraq, Aden on the southern Arabian coast, and Massawa in occupied Eritrea. Further south there is Mombasa in Kenya. The Afrika Korps would probably go for Basra. They could probably defeat the British again and conquer Iraq. Beyond Iraq there is the Persian border and Tehran. This would put Rommel on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. Central Persia (Iran) is an absolute nightmare for supply, so effective British power would retreat as far as the Indus River in western India.

There is very little chance of Rommel reaching India - that was really down to Japan to conquer - and of course they never managed it.

The Italians would probably attempt to retake Eritrea and Ethiopia (conquered by Britain in early 1941), but even with German help that would be difficult for them. Ethiopia and Kenya would probably be held by the British, guarding the rest of the African Empire.

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Re: What if the Suez was reached by the A.Korps?

#4

Post by redcoat » 15 Mar 2004, 14:03

Groscurth wrote:Would this be the end of the UK?
No, When Italy entered the war in June 40 supplies from the east for the UK stopped using the Suez Canal and travelled around the African continent
Regarding Brittains supremacy on the sea I imagine that they could be abble to bring in oil from other places. What were (appart the US) the other areas that the UK could rely on for its supplies?
All the oil supplies for the UK during WW2 came from the USA.
Oil from the Middle East was only used in N.Africa and the far East
It would make things much more difficult for the UK but would this be a-, or end in a defeat?
It would be an embarrassing defeat, but it would not have any effect on the UK's ability to wage war.

The only use the British made of the Suez Canal from 40-44 was to bring supplies up from the Red sea to aid their campaign in the Med

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Tim Smith
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#5

Post by Tim Smith » 15 Mar 2004, 16:00

Agreed.

The importance of Alexandria and the Suez Canal was about equal to the importance of Singapore and Malaya in the Far East. Losing these strategically important locations has a devastating effect on the British, but only in that local area, not globally.

The real lynch-pins of the British Empire were Canada, South Africa, India, and Australia - all extremely difficult, in fact almost impossible, for the Axis to conquer directly. The loss of any one of them would be likely to cause a British collapse, but only if it happens BEFORE the US enters the war - after the US entry, the British could have survived even that great a defeat!

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Petter
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#6

Post by Petter » 15 Mar 2004, 16:56

So if South Africa breaks out of the Commonwealth after the Italo-German conquest of the Med and the Mid East ín 1940 it could mean the end of the Empire?

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#7

Post by Tim Smith » 15 Mar 2004, 18:50

If the British decide to LET South Africa break out of the Commonwealth and declare its neutrality, then yes, possibly - that would encourage other British mandates to do the same, especially Iraq and India which might attempt revolt.

But the South Africa ports were vital stopovers and fuelling points for naval vessels and convoys transiting between Britain and India/Australia. Without South Africa, life becomes much more difficult. So Britain might try and hold South Africa by force, treating it as an occupied country.

Centurion wrote:So if South Africa breaks out of the Commonwealth after the Italo-German conquest of the Med and the Mid East ín 1940 it could mean the end of the Empire?

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#8

Post by Jon G. » 15 Mar 2004, 21:16

Tim Smith wrote:If the British decide to LET South Africa break out of the Commonwealth and declare its neutrality, then yes, possibly - that would encourage other British mandates to do the same, especially Iraq and India which might attempt revolt.

But the South Africa ports were vital stopovers and fuelling points for naval vessels and convoys transiting between Britain and India/Australia. Without South Africa, life becomes much more difficult. So Britain might try and hold South Africa by force, treating it as an occupied country.
South African sentiment as to whether to join the British war effort was very touch and go. Smuts was pro-British, but there was a real split of sympathies between Afrikaaners and British descended colonists. If South Africa had secceded from the Commonwealth (as indeed they did in 1948), repercussions for the Empire could have been very gloomy. However, the British could well decide to just hang on to Simonstown and perhaps Durban and leave the rest of SA to its own devices.

The East African Keren campaign was really what brought South Africa wholly into the Allied camp - and that campaign had been fought and won by the time Rommel stood any realistic chance of reaching the Suez.

Iraq was not a part of the Commonwealth, but merely a mandate territory, and Iraq *did* revolt in April 1941, on the eve of the German invasion of Crete. Germany should definately have lent more support to this revolt than a few aircraft flying out of (Vichy) Lebanon, but by April 1941, Barbarossa had been decided upon of course.

I would not completely rule out that Rommel could have made it to the Suez. If he could have held onto it is another question; his army was already worn down by the time he made it to Alamein. But if the Axis had made the effort to gain air/sea superiority in the Eastern Mediterranean (as the Crete invasion could have been the precursor of) and solve Rommel's supply problems by conquering Alexandria and keep the supply route open, Rommel may have been able to take and hold the Suez.

Prospects for the British would have been grim, but they may have been able to strike back in force; they had a base area of some size in Palestine and a pipeline leading oil from Iraq and Persia to Haifa; besides Lebanon and Syria were in British hands by May 1941, a full year before Rommel would have been able to make it to the Suez.

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#9

Post by Tim Smith » 16 Mar 2004, 14:04

Shrek, you are assuming Rommel could not have reached El Alamein before July 1942, the historical date, when it was too late to conquer Egypt.

But you are ignoring the opportunities available to Rommel in the Battles of Operation Battleaxe (June 1941) and Operation Crusader (November 1941). Historically, Battleaxe was a draw, with high British losses but little territorial advantage to either side. Crusader was a British victory that relieved Tobruk, recaptured Cyrenaica, and drove the Afrika Korps all the way back to El Agheila, right where they'd started.

If Rommel had won both these battles then he might have taken Tobruk in July 1941 and reached El Alamein by September. The Battle of El Alamein could then take place in November 1941 - and if Rommel won that then he'd be in Cairo by Christmas 1941.

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#10

Post by Jon G. » 16 Mar 2004, 19:14

Yes, my assumption was that if Rommel had made it to the Suez, he would have done so by 1942. That was the year of his greatest successes. His performance in 1941 was not too impressive in comparison; his idea on how to take Tobruk in that year was a simple head-on assault that got him nowhere.

But, assuming that he won both Crusader and Battleaxe, assuming that he at all times had the air support that he needed, and assuming that the Axis made the big effort of gaining air/sea superiority in the Eeastern Med. he may of course have reached the Suez by 1941 - at a time where the British were weaker and the US had not yet entered the war as an active belligerent - plenty of Honey tanks for North Africa already in April 1941, though...

The German invasion of Crete in April 1941 could, and in hindsight, perhaps should, have been the starting shot for a serious Axis attempt at conquering the Eastern Mediterranean - but the main German effort was in Russia, and the Med theatre was relegated to sideshow status almost from the start.

When Rashid Ali in Iraq turned off the oil pipeline leading from Iraq to Palestine, the British did not hesitate to invade Lebanon and Syria; Vichy neutrality or not. When their oil supplies were jeopardized, they played hardball (Hitler had a similar obsession with Rumania and Hungary right up to 1945) - I think they would have staked everything at re-taking the Suez, even giving up Malaya and Burma right away if need be.

In terms of available resources and good base areas, the Brits had the perpetual upper hand in the Mediterranean, and perhaps Hitler aknowledged this right from the start.

A better coordinated strategy between Germany and Italy could have meant a more serious and more concerted Axis effort in the Med. theatre - but this was not the case, 1941 or 1942.

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#11

Post by Jon G. » 17 Mar 2004, 18:57

Here is something I posted on this subject on the old PanzerWorld forum a while back. It's recycled, but I figure it's okay since I wrote it myself.

Perhaps I put too much fate on van Creveld here, but I thought it would be good to keep the discussion rolling.

Whether Hitler could have beat the British by capturing her Mediterranean possessions is an interesting question. As it was, the NA theatre was no more than a sideshow from a German point of view, and an expensive one at that. Whichever assets went there had to be taken from the all-important Eastern Front. The dire supply paradox of the NA theatre was clearly defined already before Rommel went there; at least 4 Panzer Divisions were needed to beat the British, but in turn only two PD’s could be held in continuous supply. The alternative would have been to simply cut lose from the Italian forces in NA, but that would have taken away the first reason for the Germans to go there in the first place: to save Mussolini from the embarrassment of losing his NA possessions to the British (which could very well have happened anyway, had not Churchill decided to embark on the Greek adventure in early 1941 by frittering away resources from NA; surely one of the most bungled operations of the entire WWII) In a way, one could reasonably argue that Rommel only made it to NA due to Churchill’s misappreciation of the situation in the Mediterranean theatre in early 1941.

Supplying Rommel was perhaps less of a problem and more of a paradox than it has been commonly made to be. On average, Axis divisions in NA received 800 tons of supplies per day, very lavish by WWII standards. Shipping off supplies from southern Italy (principally Naples) to Tripolis could be done – and was done – with comparatively small losses, even in 1942; Malta is overrated in that context. However, from Tripolis to Alamein there is a solid 1200 miles to cover, most of them by a single road. A tank driving from T. to A. under its own power would wear out its engine two times over, illustrating the exorbitant cost of bringing supplies to the front. An alternative was to use the ports of Tobruk (which Rommel failed to take in 1941) and Benghazi instead, closer to Egypt (if not exactly next door), but apart from these ports having much smaller capacity than Tripolis, they were both well within range of the RAF flying out of Egypt, and keeping the supply line from southern Italy to these ports would have required air and sea superiority in the eastern Mediterranean, something the Axis never managed to achieve – Crete was conquered, but at prohibitive cost (7th para Div being virtually annihilated there) which was not encouraging for any follow-up operations. Perhaps the lost opportunity in the eastern Mediterranean was failing to take Cyprus, which is better situated for challenging the air/sea superiority in the eastern Med.

Basically, the Axis would have needed to achieve air/sea superiority in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean, something they never even got close to doing. As it was, however, a stand-off was, in fact achieved in the western parts of that small sea, and this was accomplished even without taking Malta (suppressing it was enough; and if the Axis had had superiority in the east. Med. Theatre, Malta would have been nothing but a backwater) or Gibraltar, which is less important than one might think; there were alternative routes available for the British. But Axis assets were not strong enough to gain the upper hand in the east – the Germans simply not having the naval forces needed (aircraft carriers might have alleviated the situation), and the Italian navy, though big and generally well-led, turned out to be technologically very inferior to the RN – who also had a most able commander in Cunningham - and suffering from having very small fuel stocks.

Another problem in the med. Theatre was Vichy France. A neutral, if Axis-inclined power, with a big Mediterranean fleet. Hitler – wisely – wanted to keep Vichy France neutral and her remaining fleet as an unknown, powerful ‘joker’ factor, rather than running the risk of having that fleet sink itself or, even worse, defect to the allies. As it was, that navy was kept out of the picture, a considerable political feat of Hitler’s. The Admiralty’s top brass must have spent many sleepless nights over the dreadful prospect of the Vichy French navy defecting to the Axis; when the British wanted to intern the parts of the Vichy navy harboured in North African ports in 1940, they played hardball, not hesitating to shell the French ships that failed to surrender.

If Hitler wanted Rommel to advance into the eastern Mediterranean, he would have needed to crack the nut that was Vichy France – Lebanon and Syria being Vichy French. And Turkey actually succeeded in pursuing a strict neutrality policy throughout WWII, which is all the more remarkable considering how weak she was economically, politically and militarily; any Axis overtures to that country might well have met with an immediate and violent Soviet (pre-June 41) or allied reaction, something that was probably not worth the risk with Vichy France still being in the picture. I think the Vichy French presence in Lebanon and Syria, as well as the desire to keep Turkey neutral, precluded any more determined German support to Rashid Ali’s coup in Iraq in 1941, an otherwise very interesting prospect.

Of course, Vichy ended up leaving the game in 1942, when the allies landed at Tunis – the German occupation of southern France then made it possible to ship off the 5th Panzer Army to certain defeat in the formerly neutral French NA colonies.

To sum up, the war was neither won nor lost for Germany in the Mediterranean theatre (Italy is another matter); for Rommel to advance right through to the Caucasus, many things would have needed to play out just right: the eastern Mediterranean under Axis control (or at the very least contested), Vichy France somehow staying neutral or becoming an active Axis partner, and at least keeping Turkey neutral. If Hitler had devoted the resources that such an undertaking would have needed, it is doubtful if there would have been any German armies for Rommel to join up with in the Caucasus - if he had made it that far.

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#12

Post by Groscurth » 24 Mar 2004, 17:27

Thank's to all for your replies, most informative.

Regards,

G.

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#13

Post by Petterson » 25 Oct 2004, 08:37

But wasn`t the most important task of the British eighth army to defend Persian Gulf? Would the eight army after losing the Suez Canal build defence line in Palestine?

And was eight army the only army level British unit between Egypt and India?

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#14

Post by Jon G. » 25 Oct 2004, 08:47

There were no Eight Army units anywhere near the Persian Gulf. Iraq was a British mandate territory but formally independent, and Persia was fully independent until 1942, where it was jointly occupied by Soviet and British forces.

The British also had the Ninth and Tenth armies in Syria and Palestine. In fact some of the largest British troop concentrations in one place at least until 1943.

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#15

Post by Von Schadewald » 23 Nov 2004, 14:33

With some more tankers & supplies getting through, & Hitler being less parsimonious in sending Rommel divisions, Rommel bisects 8th Army in August 1942, Auchinleck's two "battle groups", being destroyed piecemeal, with Suez siezed, a rush through Sinai, with a fight to the finish against anti-Vichy French, Australians, Haganah & the Stern Gang around the Temple Mount: "We will keep Rommel's grubby little hands off Jerusalem!" (8th Army ditty).

Could the Germans realistically have made it to Jerusalem, given the religious-prophetical (Germany is referred to in Ezekiel 38 as being part of the confederacy in the War of Gog and Magog)-End Time-metaphysical implications, that would have stiffened the Allied resolve, and those of the Jewish fighters?

Bearing in mind that this is before Montgomery took over, who as a zealous Catholic and believer was able to restore 8th Army's amazing under-confidence in itself to a near-religious fervour.

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