William F. Buckingham - Tobruk: The Great Siege 1941-42

The Libyan port of Tobruk occupies a key place in the history of the Second World War in North Africa, largely due to the two hundred and forty day siege endured by the garrison composed of British, Australian, Indian and Polish troops between April and December 1941. This was the longest siege in British military history, and included a complete garrison relief carried out by sea in the face of overwhelming German and Italian airpower. Moreover, the series of deliberate attacks on the port by Rommels newly arrived Afrika Korps between 11 April and 2 May 1941 was the first time the German blitzkrieg technique employing Panzers and close air support had been held and successfully repulsed by defenders holding fixed defensive positions. The fact that the rebuff was delivered by an inexperienced and relatively poorly equipped Allied force made the event all the more noteworthy.

The defence of Tobruk was also one of very few bright spots in the dark days of 1941. At that time the German triumph in continental Europe and the Dunkirk evacuation were very fresh in mind, and German invasion of Britain seemed a very real possibility. The Blitz was at its height and the Axis tide of victory seemed unstoppable after the humiliating series of Allied reverses in Holland, Belgium, France, Greece and Crete. Tobruk thus joined the Battle of Britain and the stalwart defence of the Mediterranean island of Malta as a beacon of hope for the beleaguered British public, and the relief of the port in December 1941 was greeted with much jubilation. Its importance became unfortunate when on 21 June 1942, Tobruks new South African-led garrison surrendered to Rommel after less than a day of fighting with the loss of 30,000 Allied prisoners of war. Occurring a mere six months after the end of the great siege, the shock of this event was rendered all the more intense.

Published works on Tobruk tend to focus, to a greater or lesser extent, on the great siege and this event from the Allied perspective, with some more recent works covering matters from the Axis perspective as part of a wider examination. While these provide perfectly adequate and in some instances very detailed coverage, most focus narrowly on the siege and subsequent Axis recapture of Tobruk and thus do not fully address the crucial role the port played in a wider sense. The Desert War swung back and forth along a coastal strip running for a thousand miles of Egypt and the Italian colonial provinces of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania. Operations were restricted to this narrow cockpit by the Mediterranean to the north and impassable terrain to the south, and Tobruk played a vital role in this operational ebb and flow, not only when the fighting came close by. The port was located virtually astride the road and rail links that ran through the coastal strip, which in turn meant that neither side could afford the luxury of ignoring it whether it lay in the immediate battle area or suddenly far to the rear of the fighting front as was often the case. Possession of Tobruk thus became a major preoccupation for both sides, and this imperative exerted a clear and overriding influence on the conduct of operations in the Western Desert throughout the whole of the period between September 1940, when the Italians launched their ill-fated invasion of Egypt, and the final German defeat at El Alamein in November 1942.

A second major omission in works on Tobruk concerns the portrayal of the Italian contribution which, wittingly or otherwise, tends to echo British and German wartime attitudes. The British view was shaped largely by wartime propaganda, with seemingly endless lines of Italian prisoners of war marching happily into captivity being among the most iconic images from the war. The German view is well illustrated by Rommel, who made no secret of his contempt for his Italian allies and took every opportunity to denigrate and humiliate them. As a result, the current casual reader could be forgiven for not realising that Tobruk was actually located inside an Italian colony, or that the Italian armed forces actually provided the bulk and backbone of the Axis effort at Tobruk and indeed North Africa generally. Without them Rommel would have been hamstrung: he was dependent on Italian logistical resources and Italian military units, which were largely less mobile but more numerous, to pin down his British opponents and guard the flanks of the fast moving armoured operations with which he is associated. Even more importantly, the Australian acquisition of Tobruk in January 1941 also involved a siege, for the Italians had invested much time and treasure in constructing the ports defences. The quantity and quality of those defences is not only readily apparent from the effort which was required to overcome them. That those same defences played a key role in the subsequent Allied defence of Tobruk against Rommel is frequently overlooked, as is the fact that a British survey to establish a shorter defensive perimeter discovered that Italians had not only occupied the only feasible line of defence, but had done so with good deal of tactical expertise.

This work will therefore address these omissions as part of a wider and properly rounded account, that not only tells the story of the epic siege of Tobruk using official documentation, captured German records and participant accounts, but also provides the background that shaped events at Tobruk, thus placing the latter in its proper context. There will also be a deliberate emphasis on the Italian perspective in Libya, elsewhere in Africa and the Mediterranean region, again to set matters in their proper context and attempt to compensate for the neglect of this important angle in other accounts.

Finally the author would like to thank Jonathan Reeve at Tempus Publishing for once again tolerating a sometimes elastic approach to deadlines, and the members of the Tanknet Internet Military Forum who provided invaluable help and advice, often at short notice.

William F. Buckingham

Bishopbriggs, Glasgow, February 2008

At 17:30 Hours on 4 November 1942 Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel ordered his Panzerarmee Afrika to commence a general withdrawal from Egypt along the coast road running west toward the Libyan frontier. The withdrawal was prompted by Operation SUPERCHARGE , the second of two major British attacks that made up what has become known as the Battle of El Alamein. The first attack, codenamed Operation LIGHTFOOT , began on the night of 2324 October 1942 after an intensive deception effort and preparatory artillery barrage. A two-pronged infantry assault, LIGHTFOOT was intended to breach the extensive Axis minefields and push the fighting into back into their carefully sited defensive zone. There the defenders could be worn down, a process referred to as crumbling, and Rommels mobile reserves drawn into the fight. With this achieved SUPERCHARGE was launched on the night of 12 November, aimed at the junction between the Deutsches Afrika Korps and the less well equipped Italian forces occupying the southern portion of the Axis line.

By 3 November SUPERCHARGE was exerting such pressure that Rommel issued a preliminary withdrawal order, but this was countermanded by Hitler via one of the grandiloquent statements that were to become increasingly common as the war tilted against Germany. Rommel was ordered to stand fast, yield not a yard of ground and throw every gun and every man into the battle. elements of the British 7 th and 10 th Armoured and 2 nd New Zealand Divisions found their way through the Axis line at the south-west corner of the salient created by SUPERCHARGE . British armour swiftly cut the main Axis supply line, known as the Rahman Track, overran the