Soldiers of Rommel’s Afrika Korps haul one of their 88mm flak/anti-tank guns across the desert, North Africa, 1941 [Bundesarchiv Bild 101l-783-0109-19/ Dorner/ CC-BY-SA, wiki]

Diverting resources for an expeditionary force to Greece and for the ill-fated defence of Crete had cost Britain at least one chance for victory in the North Africa campaign. Churchill continued to press Wavell to begin a new offensive. Despite his misgivings, the latter launched Operation Battleaxe this week in the war, on 15 June 1941.

Soldiers of the 4th Indian Division decorate their truck during Operation Battleaxe, North Africa, June 1941 [Public domain, Imperial War Museum, wiki]

Wavell was not optimistic. He knew that the new British Cruiser tanks were unreliable and that the Matilda’s were vulnerable to anti-tank fire. Plus the superiority in numbers, in artillery and in air power, that would be essential for success was simply not there. (It would be there later, for Montgomery).

In the end, the attack on Halfaya Pass was bloodily repulsed and the British armour decimated by the German 88s. Rommel’s spies had discovered the British plan and his forces had been lying in wait, with the 88mm anti-tank guns dug in and carefully concealed.

The tables were suddenly turned. German panzer units advanced and were outflanking the British positions, intent in cutting off any possible retreat. Messervy ordered a general withdrawal.

By the time Wavell had flown in from his headquarters, Operation Battleaxe was at an end. That the British forces escaped at all was due to the fighting qualities of the men on the ground, the tankers and the gunners, and to the pilots of the RAF.

Les amants de Carcassonne — by L.F. Bollee and Luca Malisan [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

He was born in Narbonne, in the land of the Cathars and was, in spirit, much like his Cathar ancestors: ascetic, seeking to lead a simple life. Their rejection of the authority of the clergy led to their persecution and an eventual crusade against the Carthars that saw their cities attacked and, in the case of Carcassonne, subjected to a lengthy siege (in 1209). As one sees from the photograph below, the ancient city has changed little since medieval times.

Joë was seventeen when the First World War began. He fought in the trenches, became the most decorated officer in his regiment, and was wounded close to the war’s end by a bullet that struck his spine.

Carcassonne, view of the ramparts [Author: Christophe Eyquem, Creative Commons 3.0 Unported]

He corresponded with and was visited by many writers, and a series of his love-letters, written post-war to a young woman he called Linette, have recently been published.

Linette is likely the name he gave her to honour a Linette that once he’d known. (Joë was in the habit of giving nice-sounding names to his female acquaintances).

Fans of the bande dessinée (French comic-strip) genre will appreciate Les amants de Carcassonne (The Lovers of Carcassonne) created by writer LF Bollée and artist Luca Malisan, with colours by Dimitri Fogolin (Editions du Patrimoine/Glénat, 2012). The book is set in Carcassonne during World War II and tells the story (based on truth) of Joë Bousquet and his relationship with (the first) Linette. Occasionally, Joë amuses Linette with stories of his Cathar ancestors, sometimes weaving himself and Linette into the tales as characters. Thus pictures of Nazis and WWII France are punctuated from time to time with illustrations of the siege of 1209 and medieval knights.

For the interested (maybe non-French speaking) reader, the story is as follows:

Page 3: Linette arrives in Carcassonne, by bus. It is August 1944. Although much of France has been liberated, Carcassonne is still occupied by the German army.

Pages 4–8: A flashback that shows why Linette is on her own. German soldiers (actually SS) arrive in her village—which is called Bousquet (like the poet)—and search for weapons. Linette and her sister Marinette run away with their father’s old shotgun, meaning to hide it. The Germans spot them and open fire. Marinette is killed, but Linette escapes. Her father and young brother are not so lucky. They are shot. With her mother already dead (through giving birth to her brother), Linette is now an orphan.

Pages 9–13: Now in Carcassonne, Linette’s old school teacher (Mademoiselle Roland) has put her in touch with an older couple who find her a job as secretary, taking dictation from the poet Joë Bousquet.

Pages 13–14: Linette looks out from her room and admires a scene of resistance in the street.

Pages 15–17: A tender scene where Joë invites Linette to take off her clothes in order to dry them. It has been raining. He promises to close his eyes. In the end, he peeks.

Pages 18–20: Joë makes amends by delighting her with a tale of the Cathars. The characters of Joë and Linette are there in medieval garb.

Pages 21–25: Given what has happened to her family, Linette is ready to join the fight against the Germans. She carries messages for the French Resistance and only escapes being caught by hiding in a cellar. The man of the house where she is hiding is taken away.

Pages 26–31: More tales of the Cathars. A young man from the Resistance (his name is André but his Resistance name is Musset; Linette’s Resistance name is Camille) visits Joë and requests him to publish coded messages as part of his next poems.

Pages 32–39: Cathar resistance scenes mingle with similar scenes of WWII resistance. Joë and Linette star in both. She helps André when he is wounded. (Page 38 has a clever trio of drawings, comparing Joë prostrate in his bed with Joë as a wounded Cathar knight and then with Joë as he was when he lay wounded in the trenches of the First World War).

Page 40: Linette helps the Resistance when they receive an aerial arms drop.

Page 41: The older woman (Linette is staying with her and her husband) advises Joë against becoming attached to Linette: “She is not for you, this Linette… too young, too virginal, too spirited! and not cultivated enough…”

Pages 42–46: Carcassonne is liberated, but some Germans remain in the city. Linette becomes involved and is captured.

Pages 47–48: The story ends with Joë in his room. We are told that André survives the war but never pursues his intended study of medicine. He goes into politics. As for Joë, himself: he finds a new secretary, a young woman with whom he eventually enters into an amorous correspondence. Her name is Jacqueline. She never understands why Joë insists on calling her ‘Linette’.

British twenty-five pounder field gun in action during the advance into Syria, June 1941 [Public domain, Imperial War Museum, wiki]

Vichy-French leader Admiral François Darlan had already signed the so-called Paris Protocols, granting Germany access to military facilities in Syria, and Luftwaffe and Italian aircraft had already made refueling stops in Syria en route to supplying anti-British forces in Iraq. British access to Middle-Eastern oil was at risk.

The Syria-Lebanon campaign was commanded by Britain’s Lieutenant General Henry Maitland Wilson from his headquarters in Jerusalem. Nicknamed ‘Jumbo’ on account of his bulk, Wilson was a 60-year-old veteran of the Boer war and had fought at Passchendaele and on the Somme. He had long been an advocate for mobile warfare, with motorized infantry and tanks, and was no slouch when it came to tactics.

An Australian soldier stands in the cockpit of a captured Vichy French Marcel Bloch bomber, Rayak, Syria 1941 [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

The Vichy troops mounted a skilled defence—at sea and in the air, as well as on the land. In a destroyer-versus-destroyer engagement, the French crippled HMS Janus and continued with an air attack attack with Bloch bombers and Dewoitine D.520 fighters. A dogfight ensued with RAF Hurricanes, while HMS Janus limped into the safety of Alexandria.

Chapters 16 through 20 of England’s Last War Against France by Colin Smith present a detailed and highly readable account of the Syria-Lebanon campaign.

Damascus fell on 21 June. The Allied victory was front-page news, but the world’s attention would prove short-lived. The following day, Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa.

Australian soldiers take a refreshing foot bath in an ancient Roman aqueduct in Syria, June 1941 [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

Sinking of HMS Hood, 24 May 1941; painting by J.C. Schmitz-Westerholt [Public domain, wiki]

The Bismarck, together with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, were first sighted at anchor in Norway on 21 May. By 23 May, they were in the Atlantic, passing through the Denmark Strait between the coasts of Greenland and Iceland. (German battle-cruisers, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, had followed the same route, earlier in the year).

The first units of the Home Fleet to give battle were the brand new and not completely finished battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the ageing battle-cruiser HMS Hood, which had been commissioned in 1920 and had long been the pride of the Royal Navy. In a disastrous engagement on 24 May, the Hood was sunk and the Prince of Wales damaged and forced to withdraw. Artist J.C. Schmitz-Westerholt provides a vivid portrayal in the painting above. HMS Prince of Wales is recognizable in the foreground, with her distinctive four-gun fore-turret. Only three of HMS Hood‘s crew of over 1,400 survived.

After the engagement, the Prinz Eugen and the Bismarck went separate ways, and the British Admiralty lost track of them. The Bismarck remained lost until the morning of 26 May, when a Coastal Command Catalina flying boat spotted her steaming at high speed towards the safety of the German-occupied France. If the Bismarck and, afterwards, the Prinz Eugen were to join the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in Brest, then the four warships would constitute a formidable force if they chose to sail out as a group.

Torpedo attacks by Fairey Swordfish biplanes from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal finally resulted in a lucky hit. The Bismarck‘s rudder was jammed.

Destroyers (including HMS Cossack of ‘Altmark’ fame) shadowed the wounded giant throughout the night. British battleships HMS King George V and HMS Rodney engaged her on the morning of 27 May.

The Bismarck sank a little after 10.30am, perhaps as a result of torpedoes fired from the cruiser HMS Dorsetshire, perhaps as a result of being scuttled by her crew. Of Bismarck‘s complement of over 2,000, just over 100 survived.

Sink the Bismarck — movie DVD cover [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

For movie-goers who enjoy a retrospective, the 1960 black-and-white movie Sink the Bismarck! rekindles the drama of the times, tracing the week-long chase from the viewpoint of the ‘strictly-by-the-book’ Chief of Operations at the British Admiralty, Captain Jonathan Shepard—played by veteran British actor, Kenneth More. Dana Wynter plays WREN Second Officer Anne Davis, who supplies the love interest. It fails to blossom until the end of the movie when the Bismarck has been sunk and the two of them emerge into the sunlight from the Admiralty bunker. Shepard comments that since it is already nine o’clock, they should go for dinner. Anne points out that it is nine o’clock in the morning, and suggests breakfast instead.

James Bond fans will know that the movie’s director, Lewis Gilbert, also directed The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker.

Working Dog Whiskey [Public domain]

The above photograph shows Explosive Protection Military Working Dog Whiskey relaxing between the feet of his handler.

The use of dogs in warfare goes back to ancient times. The US K-9 Corps was created on 13 March 1942.

Consequences — by Penelope Lively (Penguin, UK/Key Porter, Toronto, 2007) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Penelope Lively’s literary gem is both love story and a story of a family through three generations.

The novel begins in London, in St. James’s Park, where Lorna and Matt encounter each other by chance. The young woman is from a wealthy, conservative and judgemental family. The young man is from the working classes, newly trained in the art of wood engraving. He is feeding the ducks, attracting the birds in the hope of sketching them. The two young people fall in love. They marry and move to a rustic cottage in the wilds of Somerset.

The next thing that happens to them is World War II.

It will not give away the plot if I tell you (since it is also mentioned in the write-up on the inside cover) that Matt joins the army, is sent to the Mediterranean, and is killed in May 1941 when German paratroopers invade the island of Crete.

Try Consequences. Read Lively’s wonderful prose, and decide what you think of Lorna and Matt, and some of the sad and joyful times of the twentieth century.

German paratroopers descend on Crete from their Junkers transport planes [Public domain, Australian War Memorial]

Lieutenant-General Bernard Freyberg looks out from his dug-out during the Battle of Crete, May 1941

British and Commonwealth forces had withdrawn from the Greek mainland and established themselves on Crete. The Australians and New Zealanders were present in force, together with a 10,000-strong contingent of Greeks. All were under the command of British-born New Zealander, Major-General Bernard Freyberg.

Freyberg had been forewarned (through Ultra) of the German invasion. His troops were in position, although he was expecting the bulk of the invading force to arrive by sea. The Germans suffered extremely heavy casualties, to the extent that the German C-in-C, General Kurt Student, who was overseeing the operation from the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens, was being pressured to withdraw his men. Eventually, the Germans took the airfield at Maleme.

German troop convoys attempting to reach Crete continued to be ravaged by the Royal Navy, which suffered loses of its own. The destroyer HMS Juno, and the cruisers HMSs Fiji and Gloucester were sunk. The aircraft carrier HMS Formidable was so badly damaged that she left for US dockyards to undergo repairs.

Crete: The Battle and the Resistance — by Antony Beevor (Murray, London, 2005) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

The last of the Allied soldiers to be evacuated left Crete on the night of 1 June. Loses to Allied forces (including naval forces) were appreciable. As for the Germans: they had suffered over 3,000 dead, all picked-men. Over 150 of the Junkers transport planes had been lost.

The German High Command drew the lesson that parachute operations were too risky, and never again used paratroopers on such a scale. The Allied High Command drew the lesson that parachute operations were effective. Later in the war, the Allies would launch large-scale parachute drops in support of the D-Day landings (Operation Overlord) and the crossing of the Rhine (Operation Market Garden).

1942: Worn-out nylon (and silk) stockings are collected to be made into parachutes and glider tow ropes [Public domain, wiki]

Pairs that were worn out by 1942 are seen on the left, being donated to aid the war effort. They would be made into parachutes and glider tow ropes.

Betty Grable—the actress with the million-dollar legs—became the poster-person for nylons.

Martin Bormann stands at the fore, Nuremberg rally, 1938

On 13 May 1941, three days after Rudolf Hess had fallen from the sky above Scotland, Hess’s protégé, Martin Bormann, stepped into the Deputy Fuehrer’s shoes. The Office of Deputy Fuehrer was renamed the ‘Party Chancellery’, and Bormann was confirmed as head.

In his book The Hunt for Martin Bormann: The Truth, Charles Whiting reports Sicherheitsdienst (SD) chief Walter Schellenberg as commenting, “If I thought of Himmler as a stork in a lily pond, Bormann seemed to me like a pig in a potato field.”

Bormann, a one-time farm manager who had served a jail sentence for his role in murdering a suspected-Communist, joined the Nazi Party in 1927. Being born in 1900, he was exactly twenty-seven years old.

The Hunt for Martin Bormann: The Truth — by Charles Whiting (Leo Cooper, London, 1996) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Bormann had a gift for handling money. He took over the running of the Nazi Party’s finances and, by age thirty-three (and on Hess’s recommendation), was chosen by Hitler as his chief-of-staff.

Hess’s fall from the skies and subsequent fall from grace was a dream-come-true for the scheming Bormann. While Hitler busied himself with the war, Bormann held the title of Reichsleiter. ‘The Brown Eminence,’ as he was nicknamed, was running Greater Germany, an empire of seventy million souls.

He lived to witness, in fact to promote, the demise of many of his rivals: Deputy Fuehrer Hess (declared insane), Hermann Goering (arrested for attempting to seize power), and Heinrich Himmler (disgraced following his attempt to negotiate with the Allies).

Bormann was with Hitler to the end. After the suicide of the Fuehrer and his mistress, Eva Braun, Bormann simply disappeared.

Rumours abounded. He had fled to South America; British commandos had smuggled him from Berlin; he was a Russian agent. Some of these ideas are presented by Whiting in his book, together with more recent postwar evidence that Bormann did, in fact, perish in the ruins of Berlin.

The wreckage of Rudolf Hess’s Messerschmitt 110, after crashing on Bonnyton Moor, Scotland, on the night of 10/11 May 1941 [Public domain, Ian Dunster, wiki]

Messerschmitt 110 [Public domain, wiki]

He passed over Dungavel House and was nearing the western coast of Scotland before realizing he had gone too far. Hess flew back towards Dungavel. Mysteriously, the landing lights at Dungavel airstrip were turned on, but then turned off again before Hess had time to land. (So it is reported, in some accounts).

It is well known that Hess baled out by parachute (rather than face an impossibly difficult landing in the dark?), that he was arrested by the local Home Guard, and that he asked to be taken to the Duke (whom Hess claimed he had met at the Olympics in Berlin). Hess informed his captors that he was the bearer of a plan to bring peace between Germany and Great Britain. His astonishing appearance made world-wide news.

Hitler disavowed all prior knowledge of Hess’s flight or of any plan for peace. Official announcements from Berlin maintained Hess had a mental disorder and had acted on his own. The British went along with the idea that Hess was crazy, and his flight entered the annals of history as one of the strangest and most inexplicable events of World War II—fuel for numerous conspiracy theories that were to follow. Perhaps a few of them are true.

Hess: The Fuhrer’s Disciple — by Peter Padfield (Papermac, 1993) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

There are points on which all agree: Hess was carrying an offer of peace; Hitler wanted peace with Britain, thereby freeing his forces for the invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa).

Many books maintain that Hess went with Hitler’s full knowledge and approval, and that the Fuehrer was offering numerous concessions: peace with Britain, preservation of the British Empire, return by Germany of all conquered territories in Western Europe (namely France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway—but not Poland).

The Hitler/Hess Deception — by Martin Allen (Harper Perennial, 2003) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]

Churchill seemed to be the odd-man-out, intent on continuing the war despite of the certainty of German victory. Allen explains how British intelligence launched an operation to stall for time, giving the impression that the peace movement was a viable alternative to Churchill’s government, that Churchill might be deposed and the British agree peace. According to Allen (and some other authors), British intelligence sent bogus messages—as if coming from highly-placed members of Britain’s peace movement—and invited Hitler to send an emissary to Scotland. It is unclear whether or not the British knew the emissary would be Rudolf Hess. So what happened next?

Britain’s situation was hopeless. Germany controlled the resources of continental Europe. Italy was Hitler’s ally. Britain had lost all of her allies, including Greece, and Rommel was on the rampage in North Africa. As for America: the USA was unlikely to enter the war on Britain’s side. Even Lend-Lease might not last forever. Britain was surviving on borrowed time.

And so if Hitler could be persuaded that Britain was no threat, was on the verge of making peace, he would likely begin his next adventure: a full-scale invasion of the USSR—Operation Barbarossa.

Of course, if Hitler’s proposal to guarantee Britain her Empire and to return the conquered territories became know to peace-inclined members of the British government and to the governments-in-exile of defeated countries (France, Holland,…), how then would Churchill justify his determination to fight on?

And so Hess was muzzled and locked away.

He was a prisoner in the Tower of London and, after the Nuremberg trials, was sent to Berlin’s Spandau prison.

He lived there until 17 August 1987, when he was found hanging from an electrical extension cord. His death was declared a suicide, but again the conspiracy theorists came to the fore, claiming he had been murdered, strangled by the British to ensure his silence.

Of course, if Hess’s flight to Scotland was really the result of a sting orchestrated by British intelligence with Churchill’s blessing, and if the result was to persuade Hitler to leave Britain alone and to embark on Operation Barbarossa, then the British would understandably be reluctant to fess up to triggering a Soviet death toll of 20 million people.