Operation BREVITY: The Empire Exercising

[ClintHardware]

Hi All

I always begin with disbelief and then try to establish that my disbelief is incorrect.

I found this at Kew and what fascinated me was no mention of BREVITY being a problem/failure. So if it was not a problem/failure why were valuable resources that were hard to replace used/put at risk? At the moment I believe that BREVITY was an exercise to establish whatever they could (skills, methods, intelligence) for later purposes. I believe the document below is from 7th Support Group War Diary - I will let you know later.

7th Armoured Division General Intelligence Summary No2.pdf

7th Armoured Division General Intelligence Summary No. 2

(143.17 KiB) Downloaded 128 times

[Urmel]

If this document is from after 21 May (which I presume it was), it is really not saying what you think it is saying, although I have to give credit for whoever wrote it, they would have been superb in the spin doctor team of Alistair Campbell.

1) As you note under b) 15 May, the presumption was the Germans had suffered 'considerable' losses in AFVs. We now know that to be wrong, but it would have coloured the assessment of the success of BREVITY.
2) I particularly love the entry for 16 May: 'we held Salum, Musaid, Bir el Wair' - until we didn't anymore, sometime later in the day, because we were driven off them. All in a day's work, apparently, but let's just start with a factually wrong statement to make us look better. A correct phrase would have been '16 May - we lost Salum, Musaid, and withdrew the bulk of our forces to Sidi Barrani, whence they originally came' - woops.
3) The coup de grace to BREVITY was only delivered after this date, when Unternehmen SKORPION by Gruppe Herff more or less unceremoniously turfed the 3 Coldstream Guards out of Halfaya Pass.

If the WDF had managed to hold on to Halfaya, nobody would have thought BREVITY was a failure. They didn't, so it was.

The document is not an intelligence summary, it's a fairy tale. Compare that to the information the Germans had, as evidenced in the D.A.K. war diary.

[ClintHardware]

Fairy Tale? Interesting.

It is a contemporary document and it is meant to update those who read it. Possibly it was intended to be positive instead of negative but it does give the good and bad stuff. I will let you have the WO 169 file number tomorrow and respond further.

At the moment (and I could be wrong) I believe that holding an area of desert with some of the passes amounts in a tactical sense to holding an area of desert with some of the passes. Holding the Suez Canal is the necessary objective and Rommel told Schmidt that he thought he might do that during April 41.

If BREVITY can not be a knockout blow to capture significant elements of the DAK then why not wait and win the build up phase? I think the answer is troops need exercising.

[Urmel]

There remains zero evidence for that view, while there is all the evidence you need available for the view that it was a defeat:


Wavell himself says so in his despatch. http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/UN/UK/L ... /37638.pdf (p.19)

I decided to make a limited attack [...] in the hope of recovering Sollum and Capuzzo and thus securing a good jumping off place for a larger attack as soon as my reinforcements were available.

There is no need to theorise that this was anything other than what Wavell said, and it failed, completely, even though losses were only slight. This last point may partially be due to Gruppe Herff being under orders not to pursue, due to petrol shortage (D.A.K. war diary).

BATTLEAXE showed the reason why holding the desert triangle between Bardia, Capuzzo, and the pass was better than not holding it. CRUSADER and its aftermath did so again. There isn't a lot of real estate worth fighting for between Alamein and Agheila - but the triangle clearly was one of those few places. It could be outflanked, but at a severe cost, and to do so exposed the force doing the flanking to potential attacks from two sides. One of the lucky strokes of 4 Indian Division in its stand on the border on 25 November was that it wasn't at the same time attacked from Bardia - a co-ordination failure by Rommel lamented by General Schmitt.

As for calling it a fairy tale, I know it's harsh, but I am decidedly unimpressed by the analytical capacity and understanding of the British intel officers. This persisted until well into 1942. This document you posted is a prime example of this. It is concerned more with making WDF look good, rather than imparting the truth of the situation.

[ClintHardware]

I can empathise with your thoughts.

The source is from 7th Armd Div (WO 169/1173) and its the first page of some ten pages with appendices.

I am not really interested in high level stories of the Generals that go round in circles and miss the ground level detail and clues as to what was happening rather than what was said was happening. We must not forget that Wavell had to steer Churchill away from rash actions AND Wavell died in 1950 so unlike other Generals and Field Marshals who lived into the 1960s and 70s he was not questioned and tested as to his actions and reasons.

Also, deference to persons in authority declined during those post war decades.

If your ground forces are not ready to go beyond Sollum and Capuzzo to reach Tobruk and perhaps destroy the DAK, then why hold Sollum etc? But if you need to focus German thoughts away Tobruk then occasionally seizing those positions is useful and then falling back on your lines of communications to use less fuel and encourage the enemy to use more of their's, has a purpose and function.

Because of the interwar lack of funding the British Army and those of the Empire, they needed a testing ground and someone to shoot at so they could completely understand what kit and training was needed.

Note that the Americans today still do not understand what the British and Canadian intentions and methods in Normandy were, and even now we get books misrepresenting why operations were launched and quickly shut down - and then we read of Eisenhower laughing at Montgomery wanting to get his administration right - without understanding what that meant to the success or otherwise of operations. Administration is not paperwork.

The last thing Wavell was going to tell anyone was that he was exercising his troops and maintaining German focus at the border.

BUT I agree with you in that we have no actual information to substantiate this theory - only matters of circumstances coming together that can only raise questions about what was happening and being intended.

[Urmel]

I am not really interested in high level stories of the Generals that go round in circles and miss the ground level detail and clues as to what was happening rather than what was said was happening.

But this is not a 'story', this is the man making the decision to undertake BREVITY telling you why he made the decision for publication at a point in time when secrecy was no longer a concern. You cannot get much closer to the truth, short of being in his head on the day. Has anyone on his staff or in the staff of WDF at the time ever suggested anything approaching your theory?

If your ground forces are not ready to go beyond Sollum and Capuzzo to reach Tobruk and perhaps destroy the DAK, then why hold Sollum etc?

Look at the map. Musaid is 100km closer to Tobruk, Capuzzo even closer. Holding the triangle made success in an attack on Tobruk with the means at Wavell's disposure possible. Not holding the triangle meant that you needed a force the size of Auchinleck's to have a chance of success. Gruppe Herff reported that on retreat the British blew up supply dumps in the coastal plain east of Halfaya. Why do you think these were put there? And why did they not attack with a view to destroy the D.A.K. (and those pesky Italians)? Because they couldn't. Not with the forces available at the time.

The last thing Wavell was going to tell anyone was that he was exercising his troops and maintaining German focus at the border.

Why not? It would have been the perfect excuse for failure for him to say 'hey, look at this, you all thought it was a failure in 1941, but today (probably in 1942, but for internal use only, published in 1948), when I submit my Despatch, you can see that it wasn't, it was all part of the master plan, and am I not the most clever chap, the Germans never figured it out.'.

BUT I agree with you in that we have no actual information to substantiate this theory - only matters of circumstances coming together that can only raise questions about what was happening and being intended.

But we have factual evidence that the theory is wrong and can be discarded. Surely that must trump any circumstantial evidence you can come up with?

[ClintHardware]

Secrecy was still a concern when the Dambusters film was made.

The files we are looking at Kew were closed until 1970 - 5. Wavell could not speak openly.

Wavell buried himself in poetry after the war and he may not have wanted to put energies into rocking the boat.

Churchill stated his position after the evacuation from France 1940, that victory would not obtained by retreats. I don't have proof of this but I feel that Wavell uses the description disaster to describe the loss of Cyrenaica to appease Churchill's view of retreats - but I am not convinced he thought it was a disaster because of the context of these events including trading desert for time to re-launch 7th Armd Div and 4th Indian Div. Had Wavell's troops lost whole formations in the manner of the X Armata that would definitively have been a disaster.

Yes Musaid is nearer but look at the long march to contact of CRUSADER. British mobility assisted by the techniques of the RASC and other ASCs could overcome such distances with enough time to plan and a build up of supplies including trucks and workshop facilities.

Operation COMPASS was launched from a second "exercise" to keep matters secret from the bars of Cairo. That fact was revealed after the event but when? Post war or during the war? I don't know the answer but it would be interesting to know when it was revealed.

I am not saying you are wrong but I sense there is something we have not been told.

[Urmel]

The troops were told about the secret of Operation COMPASS on 6 December 1940 (see the Official History), and written orders date-stamped 7 December were issued that made it clear it was an attack. No secrecy after that, and it also wasn't launched from an exercise as you claim. Also, you are confusing things here: Operation COMPASS was a real operation masked as an exercise until two days before it started. You are claiming BREVITY was a real exercise masked as an operation, and that this was so secret that until today, nobody ever spoke about it.

I already pointed out that CRUSADER used this out of necessity and needed an unbelievable amount of reinforcement and planning to enable this long approach march, including the installation of FMCs in the open desert.

It is impossible to discuss when you don't have a single fact or indeed even circumstancial evidence to discuss.

[ClintHardware]

The evidence BEGINS with the document I have given you.

BREVITY appears to be a limited operation for the sake of exercise to test Axis forces and to acquaint 7th Armd Div and 4th Indian Div with fighting German forces.

You seem to be placing too much reliance on Wavell telling us all there is to find out. Wavell was having to placate the politicians and beat the Axis. Political Logic is a completely different entity from Military Logic They do not even run parallel to each other.

By raising this topic I have introduced a question. I have not yet answered that question but during the next two months I am going to be studying BREVITY at Kew and finding anything I can to provide an answer one way or the other. I do not mind what the answer is. I do not need anything but logical deduction from the data in the documents even if that data gives several reportable answers/questions. I will state all of the answers/questions in writing.

For too long the history of this theatre has been unquestioned with authors following each other. Lets try some Zero Based Budgeting methods for once to at least raise questions. I was looking at a fairly new book (published 2012) the other day and all of its stated references were other author's books and only those books. No wonder so much does not get tested.

I place a lot of blame on the publishers who want to fund their life style and will market anything of any quality just so long as it sells - and that means printing as few pages as possible.

Give me some low level documentary evidence (at Battalion, Brigade or Division) substantiating your defence of the status quo. There must be some somewhere.

[Urmel]

Give me some low level documentary evidence (at Battalion, Brigade or Division) substantiating your defence of the status quo. There must be some somewhere.

Sorry mate, but it can't be up to me to disprove your gut feeling. It's your responsibility to provide proof.

The document you provided is nothing that even approaches proof. It is simply a whitewash of a failed attack in a not particularly good intel summary.

[Urmel]

Just to sum up my point of view:

1) BREVITY as planned made military sense, in that it was meant to establish a secure base close to the border from which an attack to relieve Tobruk could be launched. Furthermore, by occupying more Axis troops on the border, the situation around Tobruk (which had after all just withstood a major assault, and nobody could know if another one wasn't imminent) would be made easier for the garrison.
2) There was political pressure on Wavell to do something to provide some relief (no matter how light) for Crete.

1) and 2) are not mutually exclusive - they can well be complimentary.

Now for the documentary evidence:

1) The despatch - by the time of writing his despatch, Wavell had been sacked as CO in the Middle East. Why would he have to placate anyone at this stage? You have thus far failed to show any reason at all why, if the purpose of BREVITY was to exercise the WDF, he wouldn't be able to say so? By the time of publication, the war was over, so there was no need to preserve secrecy that I can see over a minor gambit in a minor operation against a beaten enemy five years earlier.
2) The intel summary that you posted - while interesting, it doesn't actually say that this was meant to be an exercise.

I would recommend looking into the relevant command war diaries (division/brigade) to find relevant operation orders.If the operation orders explicitly state that the operations are meant as a raid, rather than meant to occupy and hold a secure base, they won't disprove Wavell's statement in his despatch. I haven't looked at these, but that's what I would be looking for.

[ClintHardware]

1) The document I have given you does not refer to BREVITY or of there being a major action.
2) Wavell's despatches are read by the politicians he has to placate them.
3) Wavell switched commands with Auchinleck after BATTLEAXE – he was still reachable and accountable for his earlier actions. He does not disappear.
4) I have found nothing at battalion/regiment, brigade or divisional level to date that has any concerns of failure with any of the skirmishes and heavier movements and fighting around the time of BREVITY. I am still searching - this is not a job done it is a question left not answered.

If you want to support your view reliably find me something other than Wavell.

AND

5) The problem with presenting "Whitewashed" events to intelligent officers there on the ground confronting the enemy (unlike the politicians) is that they rapidly realise the presence of Whitewash and then nothing that follows can be believed at face value.

Have any of you other bloggers got any original ground evidence one way or the other?

[Urmel]

If you want to support your view reliably find me something other than Wavell.

Look, you believe what you want to believe. I am done arguing with you.

[ClintHardware]

My Apologies I had not meant to offend.

[Urmel]

It's really quite easy, just get yourself down to Kew and pick up the WDF, 7 AD, 22 Guards Brigade, and 4 Indian Division WDs. Look at the orders to establish intent, not at what people thought about what happened after the event.

I have just gone through the CAB weekly summaries, and they mention that this was a combined offensive (Tobruk and WDF), but not the objective.

If I had the WDs for this period I'd tell you, but I don't have these, and nothing seems to be online.