The British Defence of Egypt 1935–1940

The British Defence of Egypt 1935–1940

This book offers a comprehensive and challenging analysis of the British defence of Egypt, primarily against fascist Italy, in the critical lead-up period to the Second World War. The security of Egypt, a constant of British imperial strategy, is a curiously neglected dimension of the still burning appeasement debate. Yet it was a factor which demanded constant consideration by British policy-makers and figured in the crises of the period over Abyssinia, Czechoslovakia, Albania and Poland. By giving equal weight to the perspectives and assessments of the men on the spot, Steven Morewood adds to the originality of his interpretation by suggesting the old view should be reinstated: that Mussolini should and could have been stopped in his empire-building at the Abyssinian hurdle. Thereafter, as Nazi Germany tore the Versailles peace settlement to shreds, the drift to war accelerated as British resolve and credibility were brought into question. The fascist dictators in Rome and Berlin held no respect for weakness and Mussolini became the conduit through which Hitler could apply pressure to a sensitive British interest through reinforcing Libya at critical moments. Steven Morewood is lecturer in International History in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Cass series: Military history and policy Edited by John Gooch and Brian Holden Reid

This series will publish studies on historical and contemporary aspects of land power, spanning the period from the eighteenth century to the present day, and will include national, international and comparative studies. From time to time, the series will publish edited collections of essays and ‘classics’. Allenby and British Strategy in the Middle East, 1917–1919 Matthew Hughes Alfred von Schlieffen’s Military Writings Robert Foley (ed. and trans.) The British Defence of Egypt, 1935–1940: Conflict and Crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean Steven Morewood

Writing the Great War: Sir James Edmonds and the Official Histories, 1915–1948 Andrew Green Command and Control in Military Crisis: Devious Decisions Harald Hoiback Lloyd George and the Generals David Woodward

The Japanese and the British Commonwealth Armies at War, 1941–1945 Tim Moreman

Malta and British Strategic Policy, 1925–1943 Douglas Austin

Training, Tactics and Leadership in the Confederate Army of Tennessee: Seeds of Failure Andrew Haughton

British Armour in the Normandy Campaign 1944 John Buckley

Military Training in the British Army 1940–1944: From Dunkirk to D-Day Tim Harrison Place The Boer War: Direction, Experience and Image John Gooch (ed.) Caporetto 1917: Victory or Defeat? Mario Morselli Postwar Counterinsurgency and the SAS 1945–1952: A Special Type of Warfare Tim Jones The British General Staff: Reform and Innovation 1890–1939 David French and Brian Holden Reid (eds)

Gallipoli: Making History Jenny Macleod (ed.) British and Japanese Military Leadership in the Far Eastern War 1941–1945 Brian Bond and Kyoichi Tachikawa (eds) The Baghdad Pact: Anglo-American Defence Policies in the Middle East, 1950–59 Behcet Kemal Yesilbursa Fanaticism and Conflict in the Modern Age Matthew Hughes and Gaynor Johnson (eds) The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick The Great to Napoleon Claus Telp

The British Defence of Egypt 1935–1940 Conflict and crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean Steven Morewood

FRANK CASS London and New York

First published 2005 by Frank Cass 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Frank Cass 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Frank Cass is an imprint of Taylor & Francis © 2005 Steven Morewood All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. The publisher makes no representation, express or implied, with regard to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and cannot accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-49512-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0–714–64943–0 (Print edition)

To my parents, Ronald and Doreen Morewood, for their love and consideration

Contents

List of maps Foreword Acknowledgements Abbreviations

Introduction: defending Egypt in the era of appeasement

x xi xiii xvi

1

The lingering strategic significance of Egypt 1 The appeasement debate and Egypt 2 The nature of the Italian threat to Egypt 5 Sir Miles Lampson and the security of Egypt 6 The decision-making process 8 1 The British defence of Egypt in the interwar period: strategic imperatives and rationale

11

No surrender 12 The role of Egypt in imperial defence 18 2 The defence of Egypt and the onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency The emergence of the Italian threat 24 The origins of the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis: the Egyptian dimension 27 The British response to the growing Abyssinian Crisis 30 The position in Egypt 33 Countdown to war 36

24

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3 Defending Egypt during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency: first phase, August–December 1935

44

Policy imperatives and dilemmas 44 Preparations for war 48 A clash of attitudes: the men on the spot and the Chiefs of Staff 54 The imperial defence dimension and the Hoare–Laval Pact 57 4 Defending Egypt during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency: second phase, January–July 1936

65

The capacity to defend the Egyptian power base 66 Too far and too fast 69 An oil embargo: so near and yet so far 73 The Suez Canal closure issue 76 The end of the emergency 82 5 The making of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance: the military aspects

86

The background to negotiations 86 Commencing negotiations 87 The military negotiations 89 The finale 93 An assessment 95 6 Securing an exposed flank: the defence of Egypt in British diplomacy, June 1936–April 1938

98

The debate over the way forward 98 Defence planning priorities and Egypt 101 Assessing the Italian threat 102 From Eden’s resignation to the Easter Pact 107 7 ‘Bloodless War’ The Egyptian dimension of the Munich Crisis 112 The aftermath 117 More harm than good: the Rome visit 119 Bloodless war begins 121 Preparing for war 125 Improving the intelligence picture 129

112

Contents 8 The approach of war in the Mediterranean

ix 132

A summer of tension 132 Anglo-French incongruity 136 Preparing for battle 137 War comes closer 141 The onset of war 145 9 Implementing the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance: Anglo-Egyptian relations, 1937–1940

153

Implementing the Treaty: immediate achievements and complications 153 A changed leadership 156 Munich and after 159 The power struggle in Egypt 162 The lead up to war in Europe 165 Egypt stays out 168 The lead up to war in the Mediterranean 171 The removal of Ali Maher 173 10 The Suez Canal and the defence of the Far East, 1919–1940

180

The origins of the Suez Canal Defence Plan 180 The Suez Canal Defence Plan 186 The Suez Canal Defence Plan and interwar crises, 1937–1939 188 The advent of war in the Mediterranean 193 The Canal at war 199 Italo-German-Japanese motives for closing Suez 200 11 Conclusion Notes and references Select bibliography Index

205 213 241 268

List of maps

1.1

The Mediterranean and Red Sea after I. S. O. Playfair, The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume I (London: HMSO, 1954) 2.1 Abyssinia and surrounding territories, Naval Staff Intelligence Department, January 1935, after TNA ADM 223/828 3.1 Egypt and surrounding countries, Naval Staff Intelligence Department, February 1935, after TNA ADM 223/828 3.2 The Western Desert of Egypt 1940 after Playfair, The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume I (London: HMSO, 1954) 4.1 The Western Desert Strategic Arena after source unknown 11.1 The Suez Canal Route to Singapore after S. Roskill, British Naval Policy between the Wars, Volume II (London: HMSO, 1976)

19

29 49

52 67

183

Foreword

During the 1920s and 1930s the British Empire reached its greatest territorial extent, dwarfing the scale of any other empire and encompassing a quarter of the world. The lynchpin of that empire lay in Egypt where the Suez Canal provided the narrow but vital link between the key components of this geographically dispersed maritime giant. For all its importance, however, the role of Egypt in British policy during this period has either been neglected or dealt with superficially. Steven Morewood’s book breaks important new ground not only in our understanding of British policy in the eastern Mediterranean in the lead up to the Second World War, but also in addressing fundamental issues of strategy and policy, the nature of diplomatic-military relations, our understanding of the problems of policy formulation and decision making, the difficulties with sanctions, and the question of when, or when not, to use force. From the time Napoleon and Nelson fought over the fate of Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean has attracted the rivalry of the world’s Great Powers. Britain occupied Egypt in 1882, promising that this would be a temporary measure. In the four decades that followed, it repeated this pledge sixty-six more times. Various forms of Egyptian sovereignty were tried, but it was always Britain that played the dominant role. In the 1930s its position began to come under threat from a new rival, fascist Italy, with the Italian dictator, Mussolini, seemingly bent on the creation of his own regional empire. The failure to block Mussolini’s assault on Abyssinia in 1935 is seen by many as the beginning of the road to the Second World War. Appeasement of Mussolini was undertaken largely because of the belief that in a war Italy could inflict severe damage on British forces. Mussolini’s bluster distorted British perceptions of the reality of Italian military power. This is a recurrent theme in international relations, when states take potential adversaries and inflate their real power to far in excess of the actuality. It would be the Greeks in 1940 who would call Mussolini’s bluff, taking the decisive action that had eluded the British Empire since 1935. One of the most fascinating aspects of this book is the tale of British perceptions of Italian power and how this shaped British decisions.

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This study is based not only on the official records but also on a meticulous use of the private papers of the individuals involved. As a result ‘the voice’ of the central actors comes through, showing their concerns, anxieties, stratagems and even foibles. One of the most fascinating of these is Sir Miles Lampson, Britain’s larger-than-life representative in Egypt from 1934 to 1946. As Britain’s ‘man on the spot’, with an aptitude for making his views heard in Whitehall, his focus on Egyptian matters at the expense of wider strategic concerns provides a classic example of the necessary tension between those responsible for local or regional tactical concerns and those charged with oversight of a country’s grand strategy. Egypt was a major concern of British policy-makers over many decades and certainly in the years preceding the Second World War. It was a country with which many officials were familiar – even in those days, it was a popular holiday destination – and held strong views about. Control of the Suez Canal, and therefore the need to dominate Egypt, were consistent concerns of British governments. Nothing better illustrates, as this book demonstrates, the twists and turns, the conundrums and contortions of British policy in the late 1930s, as the world drifted towards war, than the issue of the British defence of Egypt. Professor Erik Goldstein University of Boston Editor, Diplomacy & Statecraft

Acknowledgements

This project was originally spawned from a desperate search for a doctoral dissertation topic which had not yet been ‘done’. My supervisor, Doctor John Whittam, provided the necessary critical nurturing, as did several other Bristol academics, including the inspirational Professor Glyn Stone, who first converted me to international history, Professor George Peden, who elegantly bestrides economic, strategic and diplomatic history, and Doctor Neil Young, whose doctoral thesis preceded mine. The external examiner, the late Doctor Esmonde Robertson, considered the resultant thesis ripe for publication in revised form. His final remark was encouraging: ‘You’ve made a contribution.’ The conversion from Ph.D. to book manuscript could not, however, have been completed without the help and guidance of many people. My parents, Ronald and Doreen, were always extremely supportive, not least financially, and did not force me into the family building firm to join my three brothers, Colin, Andrew and Kevin, for ‘real work’. The late Doctor John Herman was always on hand at the then Public Record Office to urge me to finish the book and it is deeply saddening that cancer claimed him before he saw the final result. I am grateful to David Steeds, the author of a long overdue biography of Lord Killearn, for providing insights into his personality and lifestyle. Professor Douglas A. Farnie helped me to understand the workings of the Suez Canal. Doctor Brian Sullivan patiently answered many questions on fascist Italy when I was a postgraduate while Professor MacGregor Knox kindly provided a pre-publication copy of his book, Hitler’s Italian Allies. So too did Doctor Richard Davis in respect of Anglo-French Relations before World War Two. I am especially indebted to Doctor Robert Mallett, whose knowledge of the Rome archives is unsurpassed, who furnished invaluable insights into Mussolini’s foreign policy. I have no doubt that his forthcoming biography of Il Duce will be definitive. Professors Volker Berghahn and Derek Aldcroft provided much needed encouragement while Professor Erik Goldstein was also very supportive at a time when a fledgling academic career often seemed beyond the realms of probability. Others who helped along the way include Glenn Gilbert, Rob Dandy, Gaynor Johnson, Saul Kelly, David Orange and Dawn Miller. I owe a debt to Harry Buglass of Birmingham University’s Institute of Archaeology & Antiquity for providing

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excellent maps in double quick time. For their camaraderie I wish to thank the members of Nuneaton Rambling Club who helped refresh my mind. Last but not least, I wish to extend my thanks to Andrew Humphrys for his patience and editorial support, to Richard Willis and his capable team for the production of the volume and to the series editors. Any errors that remain are of course my responsibility. I have visited many archives on my travels and always found a friendly welcome and helping hand. Some archivists and assistants will have to remain anonymous, such as those who man the enquiry desk at The National Archives, a regular port of call, but I would like to single out Henry Scott for his efficiency at its photocopying counter. The Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College was a favourite haunt where two successive outstanding archivists, Gillian Grant and Clare Brown, have served me very well. Lord Wilson kindly furnished a pertinent document from his father’s papers. The staff in the Special Collections at the University of Birmingham was invariably friendly and never ceased to amaze in their readiness to produce requested documents virtually instantaneously. I should like to extend a special thanks to Karen Jackson, Arts Liaison Librarian at the University of Birmingham, for helping to track down some elusive bibliographical references. Crown copyright material appears by kind permission of The National Archives. Quotations from the Adam, Bartholomew, Brooke-Popham, Liddell Hart, Pakenham-Walsh and Pownall papers appear by kind permission of The Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. Quotations from Admiral Lord Chatfield’s papers are reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees, National Maritime Museum. Quotations from Admiral Cunningham’s papers appear courtesy of his nephew, Hugh C. Byatt. Quotations from the Stanley Baldwin and Viscount Templewood papers appear by permission from the Syndics of Cambridge University Library. Quotations from the Imperial War Museum appear by kind permission of the Department of Sound Archives. Quotations from the League of Nations Union appear by permission of the United Nations Association. Quotations from the Geoffrey Dawson papers appear by permission of the Bodleian Library, acting on behalf of William Bell. Quotations from the Gilbert Murray papers appear courtesy of the Bodleian Library and his grandson, Alexander Murray. Quotations from the Lord Simon papers appear by permission of the Bodleian Library and John Simon. Quotations from the Lord Cecil papers appear by permission of his executor, Professor Ann K. S. Lambton. Quotations from the Harold Macmillan papers and the Sir Joseph Ball papers appear by permission of the Conservative Policy Forum. Quotations from the Joseph Chamberlain, Sir Austen Chamberlain and Neville Chamberlain papers appear courtesy of the University of Birmingham Special Collections. Quotations from the correspondence of Lord Halifax with Anthony Eden in the Avon Papers appear by kind permission of the current Lord Halifax. The quotation from the Smuts Papers, duplicated on microfilm

Acknowledgements

xv

at Cambridge University Library, appears by permission of the South African National Archives at Pretoria. Thanks are extended to Jonathan PellyFry for permission to consult his father’s papers. Michael Pope and Lord Wilson also kindly afforded access to their father’s papers. Earlier versions of chapters 5 and 11 appeared in Diplomacy & Statecraft and War & Society respectively. Every effort has been made to trace and contact relevant copyright holders. If any copyright material has not been approved, then could owners contact me so this can be corrected for any future edition? Steven Morewood

Abbreviations

AC ACAD AIR AP BC BL BODL BLPES BP CAB CAC Canal CHAR CHT CP CUL DAFP DBFP DDI DGFP DUFC £E FO GDFY GLLD Hansard HC HE HNKY HMG HNKY JC IOR

Sir Austen Chamberlain Papers Sir Alexander Cadogan Papers Air Ministry and Records Avon Papers Balliol College British Library Bodleian Library British Library of Political and Economic Science Brooke-Popham Papers Cabinet Office and Records Churchill Archives Centre Suez Canal Churchill Papers Chatfield Papers Cabinet Paper Cambridge University Library Documents on Australian Foreign Policy Documents on British Foreign Policy i documenti diplomatici italiani Documents on German Foreign Policy Duff Cooper Papers Egyptian pound Foreign Office Admiral J. H. Godfrey Papers George Lloyd Papers Hansard Parliamentary Debates House of Commons His Excellency Hankey Papers His Majesty’s Government Hankey Papers Joseph Chamberlain Papers India Office Records

Abbreviations IWM LH LHCMA LG MEC NAM NC NBKR NMM OKH PHPP PM RAFM SIM STRN S 81 SM 81 TC TNA UK WO

Imperial War Museum Liddell Hart Papers Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives Lloyd George Papers Middle East Centre National Army Museum Neville Chamberlain Papers Noel-Baker Papers National Maritime Museum Operkommando der Heeres Sir Eric Phipps Papers Prime Minister Royal Air Force Museum Servizio Informazioni Militari Lord Strang Papers Savioia Marchetti 81 Savioia Marchetti 81 Trinity College The National Archives United Kingdom War Office and Records

xvii

Introduction Defending Egypt in the era of appeasement

Egypt’s geographical position as a bridge between Europe and Asia was bound to make it coveted by the Great Powers. Indeed, when Ferdinand de Lesseps completed his great Suez Canal project, the remark was made that he had marked the site of a future battlefield. As the dominant naval power in the Mediterranean since 1798, Britain was bound to covet control of Egypt, especially once a critical sea gateway to the Indian Ocean opened up in 1869. In turn, fascist Italy’s ambitions to supersede Britain and France as the Mediterranean hegemenon could not be complete until and unless Egypt, the former centrepiece of the Roman Empire in the Inland Sea, was acquired. In Britain’s determination to retain its grip over imperial communications and in Mussolini’s ambitions to carve out a new Roman Empire were sown the seeds for the first Anglo-Italian conflict.

The lingering strategic significance of Egypt ‘If you wish to ruin England’, Napoleon considered, ‘you must make yourself master of Egypt.’ His 1798 expedition first drew British forces there to thwart him and from 1882 strategic imperatives led to a protracted occupation. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Egypt’s geostrategic significance remained undimmed as ‘the connecting link that holds together the Eastern and Western world . . . the key to Asia . . . the direct route to India, to the Far East and to Australia . . . the bottleneck of the British Empire’.1 The British Chief of the Imperial General Staff even contemplated building a Maginot line in Syria or Palestine to thwart a German, Russian or Turkish advance against what he described as ‘the centre of the British Empire, the Suez Canal’. In May 1941 the Australian Prime Minister, whose troops were then heavily engaged in defending Britain’s pivotal position in the eastern Mediterranean, described Egypt as ‘one of the great Empire bastions’.2 This status as an imperial power base was equally apparent to Britain’s enemies, with the Italian Foreign Minister writing of ‘the advisability of concentrating the maximum effort against the vital nerve-centres of the British Empire, one of which – Egypt – is a decisive factor for the outcome of the Axis war’.3 The defence of Egypt, or more specifically of imperial strategic and

2

Introduction

commercial interests located there, was a central tenet of British foreign policy from 1882 to 1954. Dominating Egypt was the only sure means of guaranteeing the security of imperial communications, which bisected the Land of the Pharaohs. The Suez Canal – that ‘great ditch’ linking the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea – became a nodal international highway of empire. Rivals saw the wresting of this coveted prize from Britain’s grasp as a potentially mortal blow to her global imperial hegemony. As Leon Trotsky informed the Politburo in June 1923: ‘India, Afghanistan, Persia, Egypt constitute Britain’s Achilles’ heel and we would be great blockheads if we did not wound her there.’4 There are few one-volume studies of the seminal British overseas campaigns of the Second World War that also provide an in-depth treatment of the immediate years preceding the conflict. This is especially true of the defence of Egypt, with Rommel’s dazzling campaigns the inevitable centre of attention while the Italian military challenge generally receives short shrift.5 Yet the latter threat was an ever present in British strategic calculations from the mid-1930s onwards and it was only after its decisive repulse in the first desert victory at the turn of 1940–1 that the Germans assumed the role of principal challengers to British hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean. Again, the defence of Egypt did not suddenly begin in June 1940 when fascist Italy finally came off the fence and entered the fray; it continued from the interwar period and before that. It is little known, for example, that the concept of a defence line at El Alamein was first conceived in the later 1930s.

The appeasement debate and Egypt Appeasement continues to attract historians like moths to a flame but, although new dimensions have been explored, the security of Egypt remains curiously neglected. A re-evaluation of Neville Chamberlain, for instance, hardly mentions the subject.6 Similarly, while the resignation of Chamberlain’s dashing foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, still generates controversy, what is missing from accounts of his departure is the centrality of concerns over the resources that could be spared for the protection of Egypt in the unfolding of events leading up to his departure. There is, too, a glaring gap in the literature on Anglo-Egyptian relations from the mid-1920s to the start of the Second World War from the British perspective, a hiatus that is addressed here. As Paul Kennedy remarked on reviewing the state of the debate on appeasement and British defence policy: ‘it would be useful to have more regional defence studies – on India and Egypt for example – which would add further pieces to the global jigsaw puzzle’.7 The crucial importance of the security of Egypt during the interwar period has in fact generally been badly neglected in the literature, often leading to distortion. One historian erroneously claims that from 1923 onwards ‘the Middle East became a theatre of secondary strategic concern’.8 Such a sweeping statement does not square with the primary evidence, which points to the

Introduction

3

opposite conclusion. The defence of British interests in Egypt was in fact a constant theme in government deliberations. At the 1921 Imperial Conference, for instance, the Colonial Secretary informed Dominion leaders that the future of Egypt was ‘a matter of the actual vital existence of the British Empire’.9 The following year, Egypt’s newly ‘independent’ status was nullified by four reserved points which perpetuated British ascendancy, foremost among which was the security of imperial communications and defence against invasion, a task only British forces were capable of undertaking. The British Army in Egypt remained in title and in actuality an army of occupation. It fell to the Earl of Crawford, standing in for the absent foreign secretary, to deliver the expiatory government statement on the parameters of the ‘special relationship’ with Egypt, which justified Britain’s continued military presence there. The definition of these special relations is an essential part of the Declaration recognising Egypt as an independent sovereign state. His Majesty’s Government [HMG] have laid them down as matters in which the rights and interests of the British Empire are vitally involved, and they cannot permit them to be questioned by any other Power. In pursuance of this principle, they would regard as an unfriendly act any attempt at interference in the affairs of Egypt by another Power, and they will consider any aggression against the territory of Egypt as an act to be repelled by all the means at their command.10 And if there was any doubt about Britain’s determination to maintain its hold over the Delta, the message was rammed home by a circular note to the Powers, warning that any aggression against Egypt would be met with all possible force. This resolve was reiterated after the fall of Abyssinia in May 1936 when Stanley Baldwin responded to a parliamentary question seeking his government’s reaction, should Italy threaten Egypt.11 Though British military resources underwent a serious diminution following the exhaustive effort demanded by the Great War, the resolve to hold Egypt was never to waver. This obligation assumed fifth place in order of priorities in a 1926 Foreign Office memorandum,12 a lower ranking than pertained in practice. While the preceding commitments – the League of Nations Covenant and the treaties of Versailles, Washington and Locarno – were terminated or seriously eroded by the mid-1930s, the longstanding commitment to protect Egypt remained undimmed. Indeed, when fascist Italy threatened this Achilles’ heel of empire in 1935–6, virtually all the available defence resources were amassed to protect the British position there. Following the Italian conquest of Abyssinia and the conclusion of the AngloEgyptian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance, the Opposition asked whether Britain was required to defend Egyptian territory ‘in the event of Egypt becoming the victim of unprovoked aggression’. The answer was decidedly in the affirmative.13

4

Introduction

There was an imperial mindset which influenced British decision-makers. On 26 July 1936 Baldwin and Eden pronounced that Britain would go to war under certain circumstances. The Prime Minister emphasised that Britons would ‘fight to the last man if their own liberties are encroached upon by any nation upon earth’. The Foreign Secretary made it plain that the British desire for tranquillity should not be mistaken for ‘an opportunity for inducing us to abandon direct and vital British interests as the price of peace’. The following summer, a keynote Eden speech underlined that Britain ‘has every intention of defending its national interest in the Mediterranean, as elsewhere in the world’. Again, Neville Chamberlain, the leader most closely associated with appeasing concessions, was loath to negotiate away vital British interests which, notwithstanding the ever-worsening international situation, remained firmly off his agenda. A man of empire, Chamberlain had written in 1920 that ‘Egypt is probably the most important strategic centre in the world . . .’. In July 1924 he drafted what he regarded as a definitive statement of the aims of the Conservative Party. It included a commitment to protect British interests in Egypt and the Sudan. In February 1938, responding to a parliamentary question as to whether the Italian government had ever sought to share in Canal defence, Chamberlain responded in the negative: ‘As there is no such matter, it cannot be discussed.’ Speaking to the Foreign Press Association shortly after Munich, he was at pains to emphasise that ‘we have obligations not only to our own people at home but to those to whom we are responsible in the British Empire and to the allies who are bound to us by treaty’, including Egypt.14 This was intended as a warning to the totalitarian powers that Britain would indeed fight to preserve its vital interests, a theme given increased emphasis as appeasement began visibly to falter. Lawrence Pratt’s pioneering study of British policy in the Mediterranean during the later 1930s demonstrated the importance attached by decisionmakers to securing the friendship of fascist Italy whose military challenge was magnified when combined with simultaneous threats from Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.15 Taking ‘the Least of the Great Powers’ seriously also owed much to ongoing developments in warfare technology; specifically, the enhanced capabilities and operating ranges of bomber aircraft and submarines which carried an especially potent threat within the narrow confines of the ‘Inland Sea’. It is often forgotten that in the mid-1930s fascist Italy not Nazi Germany possessed the world’s largest air force and submarine fleet, lending credibility to its threat against Egypt. But, as will be seen, the reluctance to face down the Italian challenge was as much driven by the pusillanimous stance of the Chiefs of Staff, who consistently steered politicians away from military options and helped provide the backbone to appeasement. The panoramic nature of his study prevented Pratt from devoting sufficient attention to the Egyptian dimension of British strategy. The present work differs fundamentally from Pratt’s in not being predominantly

Introduction

5

Whitehall-centred and affording equal attention to the views of the ‘men on the spot’ – senior diplomatic and military representatives in Egypt. A further significant difference lies in the period chosen for evaluation. Through commencing his study with the immediate aftermath of the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis, Pratt was able to build a strong case in favour of appeasement generally and that of fascist Italy in particular. By contrast, the present study focuses at the outset on the origins and development of that emergency and contends that Britain’s overall strategic position would have benefited from the frustration of Mussolini’s empire-building ambitions at the Abyssinian hurdle. In so doing, it seeks to reinstate the old view that at this crucial juncture a vital opportunity was missed to slow down the inexorable drift towards another world war. As such it associates itself with the counter-revisionist school which argues that British policy-makers did have alternatives to the supine diplomacy they pursued.16

The nature of the Italian threat to Egypt The avoidance of war through appeasement led Britain to sacrifice a succession of countries not deemed vital interests. What critics of the accommodating policy have largely missed is that Britain, despite palpable imperial overstretch, was yet determined to retain the sentinel parts of its empire, both formal and informal, including and especially Egypt. Its ‘temporary occupation’ may have ended in 1936 but the British showed great determination in maintaining their military presence there and the sentinel bases of the Mediterranean shipping route. A frustrated Mussolini considered that Italy was a prisoner in the Mediterranean ‘bathed by a landlocked sea that communicates with the oceans through the Suez Canal, an artificial link easily blocked by improvised methods, and through the Straits of Gibraltar, dominated by the cannons of Great Britain’.17 This was a theme that he returned to again and again. Indeed, now that the fascist archives are giving up their secrets, it is no longer tenable to dismiss Il Duce as no more than an opportunistic ‘sawdust Caesar’. Although Mussolini was prepared to seize opportunities where he saw them, his foreign policy forays were largely preordained. It is now apparent that Mussolini sought ultimately to wrest the supremacy of the Mediterranean from the Western Powers, Britain and France, and that the conquest of Egypt formed an integral part of his grand imperial vision. Had his dreams been fulfilled, then the Land of the Pharaohs would have formed the centrepiece of a new Roman empire in the eastern Mediterranean.18 The intelligence picture has been called ‘the missing dimension of diplomacy’.19 As one of the four primary British embassies around the globe, Rome received copies of printed Foreign Office classified documents. Servizio Informazioni Militari (SIM), the Italian military intelligence service, had an embassy mole, Secondo Constantini, deputy chancery servant, who systematically removed documents for copying from the embassy safe at night via a

6

Introduction

clandestine tunnel. The infiltration began in 1924 with his brother, Francesco and, notwithstanding mounting British suspicions, continued until Italy’s entry into the Second World War. The traffic to the embassy was mainly diplomatic, but there would also have been sensitive military information for the service attachés’ offices. Mussolini was provided with a unique insight into British thinking, which clearly influenced his policy responses and enabled him to play diplomatic games to advantage. In December 1937 Ciano was also able to provide the delighted Japanese military attaché with copies of British plans for the Singapore naval base. Similarly in October 1936 Mussolini cannily utilised photocopied telegrams peppered with unflattering references to the German leadership to entice Hitler into a closer relationship at the expense of the British. When the Anglo-Italian Agreement was concluded, Ciano recorded of the Italophile British ambassador: ‘Lord Perth is moved. He told me: “You know how much I desired this moment.” It’s true: Perth has been a friend. We have dozens of his reports which we obtained proving this.’20 Intelligence infiltration was not all one-way and the British were intercepting and deciphering telegrams between the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome and its embassies and missions abroad. Much of this material has now become available and affords some indication of what Whitehall knew of the Italian situation. That said, the files only contain translated telegrams and not, crucially, any specific reactions of the select group of senior civilian and military officials and politicians privy to their contents. Known as ‘blue jackets’ owing to the colour of the folders, in which they reached their restricted readership, circulated intercepts were destroyed once read and only referred to obliquely under the pseudonym ‘reliable sources’. Again, while M15 has been generous in releasing surviving files, this is not true of M16 or of the Security Intelligence Middle East so the intelligence picture remains far from complete. In any event, it was not easy to divine the mind and true intentions of a dictator, with a macho image to uphold, and one who often operated outside normal diplomatic channels. Perception of Italian intentions, in so far as they could be gleaned, helped determine British policy. Sharp differences emerged between Whitehall departments as to the nature and extent of the threat that lay beneath Rome’s propagandist froth, with Mussolini tending to receive the benefit of the doubt until at least April 1939.

Sir Miles Lampson and the security of Egypt The Foreign Office’s ‘man on the spot’ in Cairo was as likely to come from a military as a diplomatic background. In the period under review a diplomat held the stage. Sir Miles Wedderburn Lampson served as His Majesty’s Representative in Egypt for 12 momentous years (1934–46), the longestserving incumbent since Lord Cromer. A Scot, born at Killearn, Stirlingshire in 1880 of a distinguished diplomatic family with American links, Miles,

Introduction

7

named after a military ancestor who became a general under George Washington, was Eton-educated. Entering the Diplomatic Service in 1903, Lampson’s early career saw him posted to the Far East where he became fluent in Japanese and Chinese. If his reputation was to be forever tarnished by the infamous incident of 4 February 1942, when he surrounded the errant King Farouk’s palace with tanks to bring him to heel,21 it was made in the preceding period. Lampson helped to pull off a favourable treaty with Egypt, which legalised the presence of British forces, a task that had confounded his immediate predecessors. Lord Killearn, as he became in 1943, remained in Egypt beyond normal retirement age until 1946. In his farewell telegram, Killearn recounted how he’d arrived in January 1934 ‘with no previous local knowledge and no local prejudice’ after seven years in China where the lack of vital British interests led him to adopt a detached position. ‘In Egypt’, he reflected, ‘fate had decreed that such passivity was not feasible. Egypt was an essential link in British world security’.22 British dominance was epitomised by the fact that native ministers and leading politicians came to their embassy, the only one in Cairo; the sole exception being the monarch, who received the Ambassador in one of his palaces. The Prime Minister was a regular embassy visitor, granting Britain’s pre-eminent diplomatic representative an access that his Egyptian counterpart in London could only envy. Until 1936, when the Residency became an embassy, the British High Commissioner’s special standing was symbolised by his conveyance in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce preceded by motor cyclists blowing whistles. For longer journeys a special train was laid on. Indeed, the High Commissioner was in fact a quasi governor-general or viceroy in all but name with all the trappings to match. Around 6 foot 5 inches tall, Lampson towered over most Egyptians. His commanding presence was in the tradition of Kitchener and Allenby, who were of similar stature. Fond of grey frock suits with spotted bow ties, Lampson’s was a headmasterly or professorial appearance. Under Lampson, the Cairo embassy remained a potent symbol of British authority, retaining many of its past imperial trappings; it stayed far and away the most senior of foreign missions, with other countries having to make do with legations. But, as Sir Miles was keenly aware, his authority rested on the backing of the supporting imperial garrison, an ever-present in Egyptian calculations as to how far the British lion could be riled before it would roar into action. Lampson was in no doubt that he was the conduit through which Egypt’s pressing defence requirements must be conducted. His was the parochial view (he referred to himself as ‘the local vicar’) which demanded attention. Lampson believed that a showdown with fascist Italy was inevitable and that his duty lay in improving Egypt’s defences even when this meant acting independently of senior commanders. As he reflected: I’ve learnt by sad experience that you cannot rely on the judgement or appreciations of the Military: their training is to do what they are told

8

Introduction without argument. The diplomat’s training is different, and I for one think better; namely to put up, to the best of his ability and as strongly as he can, the reasons he feels doubtful about a particular decision. If overruled that is that; but he has at least warned his Masters to watch their step.23

The military establishment, both in Whitehall and Egypt, came to resent Lampson’s heavy-handed interference. It was Oliver Lyttelton, the Minister of State in the Middle East, who secured military backing for the Abdin Palace incident: ‘I had to get the wholehearted co-operation of the military and it was not altogether easy, especially as the relations between Miles and them are not always harmonious.’ In turn, the War Office resented the support given to Lampson’s incessant reinforcement campaigns by the ‘willowy young gentlemen’ at the Foreign Office.24 As a seasoned diplomat, Lampson knew the inner workings of Whitehall like the back of his hand. In a revealing diary entry he explained his methods over the period 1935–9 thus: It had been my practice in the past to deal more actively with defence measures than I had been doing recently since the arrival in Egypt of so many high-up soldiers and airmen. But the advantage of a telegram home from the Embassy remained the same, namely, that it got automatically circulated not only to the Secretary of State but also to the whole Cabinet and was thus less likely to be ignored than a telegram to a Service Chief.25 Lampson also used highly placed diplomatic contacts in the Foreign Office to add weight to his official communications. Although the use of personal letters to underscore points made in official telegrams was not a peculiar Lampsonian characteristic, what set him apart was his persistence. His letters to colleagues contain revealing insights into the backdrop to policy initiatives. The Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office, formed in 1917, proved generally sympathetic to Lampson’s various crusades to improve defences but, as will be seen, it ran up against stiff opposition from the fighting services and the Treasury whose priorities lay elsewhere. Insights into the fractiousness of the relationship between the diplomats and military have also been gleaned through consulting the original rather than published edited versions of seminal diaries, such as those of Cadogan and Pownall.

The decision-making process Often, the process of addressing Egypt’s security requirements began with the Foreign Office, not least when a measure was deemed politically desirable but lacked military justification. Such differences might be mirrored in Cairo where the ambassador and senior commanders did not always see eye-to-eye.

Introduction

9

Where they did, a joint telegram would be remitted. The Italo-Abyssinian Emergency established the practice of the Chiefs of Staff remitting joint instructions to commanders in Egypt who drew up a periodic combined appreciation for appraisal by service committees before final approval. Of the various standing committees, the Committee of Imperial Defence, formed in 1902 to co-ordinate grand strategy, was the most important. It had a raft of advisory standing subcommittees. By 1936 the Overseas Defence Committee, the Joint Overseas and Home Defence Committee and the Middle East ‘Ministerial’ Committee were remitting recommendations on the defence of Egypt. But at the level of overall defence planning, the Chiefs of Staff Committee, founded in 1923, was by far the most significant. Although the Prime Minister was nominally their chairman, until Winston Churchill assumed the office, they normally convened alone. Their directive was to advise on ‘defence policy as a whole’. This meant that military proposals concerning Egypt could not be considered solely on their merits, but only within the context of their impact on other strategically vital areas. The Joint Planning Committee prepared combined plans according to Chiefs of Staff directives, which the latter reviewed before the Committee of Imperial Defence became involved. Two further committees advised the Chiefs of Staff: the Deputy Chiefs of Staff Committee and the Joint Intelligence Committee (formed in mid-1936), comprised of the deputy directors of intelligence of each service, supplemented as necessary by representatives of other departments. Within the context of competing priorities and scarce resources, the Treasury was frequently unsympathetic towards Egypt’s defence needs except in dire emergencies. A Treasury Emergency Expenditure Committee was established, arising from the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency, which afterwards found permanent status as the Treasury Inter-Service Committee, wherein service officials sought to justify particular defensive measures.26 The perspective taken has primarily been in terms of how Britain defended its interests in Egypt rather than on the perception of Egyptians towards the unequal relationship, except where this impacted on British policy-making. The major threat to Egypt in the period under review emanated from the Italians in Libya and its perceived and actual nature, together with British responses, is accordingly the primary focus. Nor is this intended as a cultural and social history of a key period of Britain’s military tenure of Egypt. Rather, the intention is to provide a focused study of a key strategic component of the British Empire and to link the problems involved in its defence with the foreign and strategic policy debates in Whitehall. The present work concentrates on the means by which successive British governments were able to retain control over a hub of empire considered ‘an outlying territory of the Raj’27 against internal and external threats during the appeasement era and its violent aftermath. Unlike existing accounts which tend to favour one service or another, this study seeks to provide a balanced and integrated perspective on the roles of the Army, Navy and Air Force and their respective contributions to the security of Egypt. Diplomatic

10

Introduction

gambits and military measures were pursued towards the same end: the retention of Britain’s enviable military position in Egypt as the protecting power and guardian of the Suez Canal. Through bringing into full focus the Egyptian dimension of the international crises leading to another world war, a fresh perspective is given to the debates over appeasement and grand strategy during a critical period of British history. This is the first of a projected two-volume history of the British defence of Egypt from 1935 to 1942. The second volume will consider the Axis threat to Egypt from the outbreak of war with Italy to the arrival of Rommel in the theatre, the threat he presented, culminating in his eventual defeat at the second Battle of El Alamein.

1

The British defence of Egypt in the interwar period Strategic imperatives and rationale

In December 1929 Sir Austen Chamberlain, the recently departed Conservative foreign secretary, spoke in the parliamentary debate on the latest attempt to legitimise the longstanding British military presence in Egypt. The relationship between Egypt and ourselves has not been a matter of choice but the result of the geographical position occupied by Egypt as one of the high roads and arteries of imperial communications. It is to that fact that the intervention in Egypt originated. It is to that fact that the occupation of Egypt by British forces is due, and it is, first and foremost, to protect those interests that British forces have continued in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere, as our guarantee for the security of those vital interests.1 British involvement in Egypt occurred over a protracted period. Britain was drawn in by her evolving strategic, political and economic interests in the eastern Mediterranean, the protection of which rendered it impossible for her to vacate Egypt once British forces were established there. Although the motives for the 1882 occupation still arouse controversy,2 the primacy of the security of the Suez short cut to India and the Far East is readily apparent. In essence, the division between economic and military factors is a false one: they are not mutually exclusive, with the Canal serving both as a highway for trade with the lucrative eastern part of empire and as a reinforcement route for warships, troop transports and supplies in either direction. The overriding significance of strategic considerations is nevertheless inherent in the fact that, even after the Egyptian public debt problem was resolved, the British remained steadfastly in occupation. Egypt was too valuable a prize and too vulnerable to a hostile foreign occupation for British decision-makers to ever seriously consider leaving, notwithstanding periodic evacuation promises, confirming French cynicism that the temporary arrangements lasted longest. In fact the ‘temporary occupation’ would endure for seventy-four years. Egypt became a jugular vein of imperial communications through which ran land, maritime, telegraph and later air routes to near and distant parts of the far-flung British Empire. In line with the accretion of Egypt’s strategic

12

The interwar period

significance over the years, the market value of the British Treasury’s investment in Canal shares, dating from 1875, had mushroomed from £24 million in 1898 to £93 million by 1935. Notwithstanding the retrenchment of the 1920s and early 1930s, Britain remained determined to retain her empire and when fascist Italy threatened her vital interests in the eastern Mediterranean in mid-1935 she responded by amassing the largest concentration of forces seen since 1918.

No surrender The close of the Great War marked a watershed in the history of the military base in Egypt. Established in 1882 to guarantee the security of imperial lines of communication with the most richly endowed parts of the empire located east of Suez, the garrison remained firmly entrenched. By 1918 two contradictory developments were apparent: first, the rise of Arab nationalism, partly ignited by the British themselves to help topple the Ottoman Empire but not extinguished by its demise, which infected Egyptians; second, the deepening of the existing military establishment in Egypt which served as a wartime base for operations in the eastern Mediterranean. The one was about to challenge the other and demonstrate, once again, Britain’s determination to protect its critical geo-strategic position in Egypt. Britain harboured no intention of scuttling from Egypt at the end of the Great War. To the contrary, Ottoman collapse created a unique opportunity to expand the British Empire to its greatest extent. Britain eagerly filled the resulting power vacuum in the Middle East and at the Paris Peace Conference successfully argued that it had assumed the Ottoman role of Suez guardian while Egypt was incapable. Moreover, most of Britain’s allies, barring obstreperous Italy, obligingly recognised the British protectorate with even the United States, supposedly committed to self-determination for all nations, great and small, conferring approval in April 1919. ‘There is no doubt’, Lord Derby wrote jubilantly from Paris, ‘that the Egyptian Nationalist deputation had a real douche of icy cold water with President Wilson’s letter accepting our control of Egypt’. General Sir Edmund Allenby, following his appointment as Special High Commissioner to Egypt to restore order, cannily published the American communiqué hoping it would ‘have a calming effect on public opinion, as it was hoped and expected that Wilson w[oul]d. support nationalists’. When an Egyptian delegation was finally allowed to Paris, seeking support for independence, it found itself cold-shouldered by all the Great Powers except Italy. Indeed, the British protectorate and the transfer to Britain of Turkish rights, under the 1888 Suez Canal Convention, were recognised in the Paris treaties of Versailles, St Germain, Trianon and Sèvres, demonstrating Britain’s determination that its tenure of Egypt should form an integral part of the peace settlement.3 The position was not entirely satisfactory. The end of hostilities crystallised two problems for imperial defence: the containment of nationalism balanced

The interwar period

13

against the realisation that Britain, financially and psychologically exhausted by a world war, could not afford to maintain large garrisons outside India. In November 1914 the British General Officer Commanding in Egypt, General Sir John Maxwell, had declared martial law while sweetening the pill with a promise that his government assumed ‘the sole burden of the present war without calling upon the Egyptian people for aid therein’. However, within three days of the announcement, Egyptian artillery units were committed to help defend Suez and by August 1915 a labour corps was established which eventually exceeded 100,000 members, who served not only in Egypt but also Palestine and France. The fellaheen, who constituted the majority of the population, resented being drafted into the corps, the requisition of one-fifth of their camels and British control over the pricing and distribution of cotton. Their seething anger provided a mass base for the political elite to exploit to further the cause of Egyptian nationalism. Widespread rioting erupted in March 1919. The Residency’s abrupt dismissal of a delegation (Wafd) of local politicians, led by Sa’ad Zaghlul Pasha, provided the occasion. It boldly sought immediate independence and in return promised to guarantee the neutrality of Suez and to place Egypt under the protection of the new League of Nations. Denied a hearing in Paris, when the members persisted in their demands, they were taken into military custody and deported to Malta. Upon his arrest Zaghlul was found to possess a newspaper clipping, in English, of Wilson’s Fourteen Points with ‘the rights of small nations’ underlined in red. The British police soon turned the escalating situation over to the military, which was embarrassed with demobilisation in full swing. The revolt was vigorously suppressed with the British, Indian and Dominion troops awaiting embarkation. Their emasculating tactics included driving lorries at rampant mobs, firing into crowds and the vigorous employment of armoured cars, aircraft and mounted troops for dispersal operations. Over a thousand Egyptians were killed, fifty-seven executed and fifteen hundred convicted and imprisoned for the loss of only seventy-five British killed or wounded. Although disorders decreased after the summer, the underlying current of revolt led to the deployment of two warships at Alexandria, four in the Canal and a naval flotilla up the Nile by the end of 1921.4 The bill for suppressing the revolt ran to almost £6 million. To maintain a large military presence would be prohibitively expensive. Seeking a political solution, Lloyd George’s government sent a fact-finding mission to Egypt under Lord Milner, secretary of state for the colonies and foremost government expert on Egyptian affairs. Arriving in December 1919, the mission travelled from Port Said to Cairo in a heavily armed train with protective aircraft hovering overhead. Four years earlier, Milner had confidently asserted that Egypt would in future ‘be as much a part of the British Empire as India or Nigeria’.5 Once on the spot, however, his mission was confronted by a widespread boycott. ‘We have never honestly faced the Egyptian question’, Milner declared, ‘and our neglect to do so is in a measure responsible for the present situation.’ Following meetings

14

The interwar period

with moderate politicians, his mission concluded that Egypt might be granted independence in exchange for an alliance protecting British interests, a concept that became public in the Milner–Zaghlul Agreement of August 1920.6 Up to this point, Milner had been entrusted with negotiations outside of Cabinet jurisdiction. The service departments therefore greeted the proposals with shock, not least the sympathy accorded to native aspirations to confine forces to the Canal Zone. Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War, considered that the protectorate should be maintained, more especially as Britain had assiduously cultivated its recognition by the Great Powers and found support from another arch imperialist, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard, the Chief of Air Staff, emphasised Egypt’s critical importance to imperial communications, with plans afoot to extend the Royal Air Force presence in Egypt.7 During the war, air training schools, maintenance stations and aerodromes were established west of Suez and the final Middle East campaigns all involved aircraft in a salient role. The Air Staff underlined that Egypt was now ‘the keynote of the Royal Air Force scheme’: its cloudless blue skies presented ideal training conditions, providing on average 40 per cent more flying hours than at home; Egypt formed a semi-mobile reserve for the Middle East; and expenses incurred in providing existing workshops and depots would be lost in transferring to the Canal Zone. In short, Egypt could not be replaced; it was ‘the most important junction in the world from an imperial air route point of view’.8 Admiral Beatty, Chief of Naval Staff, further fuelled the debate on Egypt’s future status when he emphasised that the shorter Suez route to the eastern empire was essential to the Royal Navy now that Britain faced two major naval rivals, Japan and the United States, in separate theatres.9 ‘The vital importance of the Suez Canal to the sea communications of the British Empire is an axiom’, proclaimed an Admiralty memorandum; ‘its peculiar danger lies in the fact that it is the narrowest and most easily-blocked portion of our only short route to the East’.10 Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were also anxious that Suez remained firmly under British control. The South African Prime Minister contended that Britain ‘must hold on as grimly as possible’ to the Middle East and that ‘no surrender should be made to present or future political enemies’. At the 1921 Imperial Conference the Australian leader, Billy Hughes, asserted that any menace to Suez affected ‘the whole of the empire vitally’ and denigrated any confinement of forces to the Canal Zone. Already worried by potential future Japanese aggression, Hughes spoke of a three-week period for a rescuing fleet to reach Singapore via the Suez route. In similar vein, William Massey, his New Zealand counterpart, considered Egypt the most important country in the empire after Britain itself.11 The forceful intervention of the services had its effect and in five months of talks in London (July – November 1921) an Egyptian delegation, led by

The interwar period 15 Premier Adly Yeghen Pasha, could not move their hosts on the military question. Lloyd George spoke of dealing with the Egyptian nationalists with ‘fire and sword’ but the reality was that, with imperial overstretch apparent from Ireland to India, such a solution was too problematic. The Egyptian delegation rejected the proposal that ‘British forces should have free passage through Egypt and be maintained at such places and for such periods as shall from time to time be determined’ as tantamount to ‘occupation, pure and simple’. After the talks broke down, Lord Curzon, Foreign Secretary, addressed a note to the Sultan suggesting that his people should not ‘indulge their national aspirations, however sound and legitimate in themselves, without sufficient regard to the facts which govern international life’. Disenchanted, Adly’s Cabinet resigned on 8 December 1921 leaving Egypt once more without a government. As political agitation rose anew, inflamed by the Curzon note, Zaghlul was deported for a second time and stern military measures ensured there was no repeat of 1919. Seeking to break the deadlock, Allenby met more moderate Egyptian politicians in secret to thrash out a compromise formula. He conveyed the gist of this to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff: ‘drop the word “protectorate”, give them a constitution, retain all necessary safeguards, including British troops here, and make further concessions depend on circumstances’. Curzon procrastinated over the proposals, finding ministers wanted a firm treaty commitment before relinquishing the protectorate. Summonsed to London, Allenby threatened to resign along with his leading advisers if his proposals were rejected. Fearing that Allenby would attack his shaky coalition government from the House of Lords, Lloyd George waved aside opposition led by Churchill. In the event, the Allenby Declaration proved acceptable, with a few modifications, because the end of the protectorate and martial law was to be balanced by four reserved points. There was never any question of granting unfettered independence and then trusting the native government to discuss imperial interests sympathetically, as Allenby suggested.12 The House of Commons endorsed the new policy by 202 votes to 70 (the latter figure reflected Labour and Liberal criticisms). As Allenby hoped, the formula proved sufficiently enticing to persuade a moderate nationalist, Sarwat Pasha, to form a cabinet on 1 March 1922. With British forces still conspicuous, Egypt was ironically declared an ‘independent sovereign state’ on 15 March and the Italian-educated Sultan, Ahmed Fuad I, became the first monarch. To mark the change of title, the following day a 101-gun salute was staged in Cairo, Alexandria and Port Said. ‘God has graciously permitted the independence of Egypt to be attained by our hands’, Fuad announced. ‘We are grateful to God and hereby announce to the world that from today Egypt enjoys independence and sovereignty.’ During 19 April 1923 a new constitution, modelled on Belgium’s, was promulgated, thwarting Fuad’s autocratic designs. The intelligentsia hoped that the western model would advance Egyptian membership of the League of Nations. Martial law was finally ended on 5 July 1923, despite the misgivings of the British and

16

The interwar period

European communities, and the exiled Zaghlul was allowed to return and play an active political role.13 These events established the triangular relationship between the Palace, the Wafd and the British Residency which came to dominate the Egyptian political scene. This was later succinctly analysed by Lampson: What was the position? On the throne King Fuad, an astute and unscrupulous Monarch, but a Monarch who in the last resort knew full well on which side his bread was buttered. He might gird at the British and frequently did: but he was fully conscious that the security of his throne depended in the last resort upon British support. Against him – and against us – was the Wafd, the popular nationalist party pledged to secure the independence of the country. It was a three-legged stool – King Fuad, the British and Wafd. When things became difficult we could always rely on King Fuad to beard – and if necessary scotch – the Wafd in their more violent anti-British, i.e. pro-independence, attitude.14 Although Egypt was now a constitutional monarchy, the dynasty resented the constraints placed upon it and whenever possible ruled through a regime sympathetic to palace interests. Under the constitution, the monarch could appoint and dismiss governments, suspend Parliament and his agreement was required to approve legislation. As the most popular and nationalistic party, the Wafd represented the natural party of government, but a broad base rendered it vulnerable to splits, leading recalcitrant members to form splinter parties, while its radicalism often led the British to concert with the opposition to manoeuvre it from power. Until 1936 the Wafd posed by far the biggest threat to the sustenance of British interests in Egypt. Of all native parties, it proved the most reluctant to accept Britain’s unilateral declaration of Egyptian ‘independence’ as anything other than a self-serving sham. Under Zaghlul the party lost no opportunity to indulge in anti-British rhetoric, even taking its case for fetter-free independence to the Lausanne Conference in November 1922. Its memorandum suggested that the reserved points ‘were unjustified by the real conditions of things and attacked Egypt’s sovereignty, both internally and externally . . . [and] were actuated by the desire to keep Egypt under British tutelage’.15 There was much in this. The British High Commission, buttressed by the Cairo garrison, represented a state within a state and its civilian tentacles extended into critical domains of the Egyptian administration, such as policing and financial matters. Indeed, if anything, Britain’s grip on the country remained as tight as ever. In 1921 the European Department in the Ministry of the Interior was created, charged with protecting foreign communities; its activities stretched far and wide as it created personal files on suspect individuals. Again, British police officers occupied the major posts in the cities under the direction of Sir Thomas Russell, Chief of the Cairo Police. Britain also continued to provide the Inspector General of the Egyptian Army. And although Egypt

The interwar period

17

now had a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, its scope for acting contrary to British wishes was very limited.16 On no less than four occasions before 1939 a populist Wafd government was elected only to be dismissed within months under a pretext, the constitution suspended and a minority government, susceptible to palace influence, installed. The Wafd predictably won the January 1924 general election by a landslide but limits were soon set as to how far it could exercise real power. Making apparent its dissatisfaction with the 1922 accord, the new government refused to pay the annual sum of £150,000, fixed in 1907, towards the upkeep of the British garrison on the basis that Egypt was not bound to do so by prior agreement. Britain and Egypt theoretically jointly administered the Sudan, under the 1899 condominium, but in practice the British dominated. Agitation for change culminated in the dramatic assassination in Cairo of Sir Lee Stack, Governor General of the Sudan and Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, on 20 November 1924. En route to the Residency for lunch with Allenby and former Liberal premier Herbert Asquith, the Sirdar’s limousine was ambushed and sprayed with bullets. He was the victim of the Taad’amon, or Vengeance Society, secretly orchestrated by leading Wafdists. At the time of the assassination, Allenby was on his third gin and tonic. Egged on by Archibald Clark Kerr, his principal adviser (who discovered Stack bleeding profusely), Allenby determined on a firm response irrespective of Foreign Office wishes. On the day of Stack’s funeral, 22 November 1924, a sombrely dressed Allenby appeared at Zaghlul’s official residence backed up by a cavalry regiment. Making a point of not saluting either on his arrival or departure, Allenby read out an ultimatum to Zaghlul while outside the British National Anthem was played by trumpeters. While Zaghlul reluctantly agreed to pay the £500,000 indemnity demanded by Allenby, he prevaricated over other demands, leading Allenby to remove Egyptian officers from the Sudan. Faced with humiliating demands, which he considered incompatible with Egyptian sovereignty and the occupation of the Alexandria Customs by British troops, Zaghlul resigned. Both houses of parliament protested in vain to the League of Nations and the successor administration felt compelled to comply with the demands of the British note. A new imperial body, the Sudan Defence Force, based at Khartoum, where two British battalions were permanently established, supplanted Egyptian forces expelled from the Sudan. Faced with the embarrassment of a diplomat, Nevile Henderson, being sent out to control him, Allenby resigned.17 Allenby’s successor, Lord Lloyd, envisaged his prerogative as to uphold the reserved points rather than work towards an amicable treaty. Under his commissionership (1925–9) a series of crises erupted which provoked the exercise of gunship diplomacy. Lloyd became aware that the Minister of War was bypassing the British Inspector General of the Egyptian Army when appointing new officers. More than this, the Wafd proposed to dismiss the latter, increase the size of the army and improve its training. Thereupon Lloyd persuaded his government to send a note to Egypt, whose serious

18

The interwar period

intent was made apparent by the simultaneous dispatch of three battleships to Alexandria. After some procrastination, Zaghlul, once again in power, complied with the terms, having previously maintained that the army did not fall within the scope of the reserved points. A similar pattern was followed when the Wafd government proposed a new law regulating public meetings and demonstrations and restricting police powers of interference. Arguing that the bill would affect the protection of foreigners and minorities, an explicit reserved point, Britain issued a three-day ultimatum, which was backed by news of the imminent arrival of five warships from Malta. Before they reached Alexandria the legislation had been withdrawn. These events illustrated Lloyd George’s private comment that ‘Egypt could not have real independence’. Indeed, it did not have home rule so much as municipal government with the British continuing to pull the important strings.18

The role of Egypt in imperial defence Until 1935 defence planning for the Middle East focused on the containment of nationalism. By 1919 Britain’s external defensive position in the region was vastly improved compared with 1914 when almost the entire area was under Ottoman control, whose territory came within a hundred miles of Suez. Britain was the principal beneficiary of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. At the close of the Great War, Syria, mandated to France, was the nearest foreign-occupied territory to the Canal, a comfortable 350 miles distant. Iraq, before the conflict the scene of potential German exploration and railway enterprise, was brought within the ambit of British influence by the mandate system, which Jan Christian Smuts conceived as a means of enlarging the empire while paying lip service to Wilsonian idealism. By 1918 an imperial army over a million strong was in occupation of conquered territory, which evidenced the vast resources which Britain was prepared to commit to achieve preponderance in the Middle East. The onset of peace brought demands for economies and the infant Royal Air Force, struggling to justify its existence, was not slow in remitting an imperial policing scheme based on air power. Incensed at the transfer of defence responsibilities for Iraq to the Air Ministry, following the Cairo regional conference of March 1921, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff refused to provide the requisite army battalions, compelling the Royal Air Force to raise its own levies and armoured car units to support air policing. The Iraq air control system in fact proved so successful that by 1928 the squadrons employed were halved, leading to the system’s extension to Aden, where aircraft were utilised to repel raids mounted by the Imam of the Yemen. By August 1929 the incursions were defeated, forming the prelude to a treaty of friendship of 1934. A squadron was also engaged in the Sudan on a trial basis between 1927–9 against the insurgent Nuers, with success leading to its permanent retention.19 Trenchard contemptuously dismissed the Egyptian as ‘a chicken-hearted

Map 1.1 The Mediterranean and Red Sea after I. S. O. Playfair, The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1954)

20

The interwar period

savage, which he would remain’, convinced that the dropping of a single bomb would suffice to quell an insurrection. The threatened use of air power in Egypt was put to good use with the Air Officer Commanding Middle East recording his view that air patrols prevented the reoccurrence of serious violence in the Delta during 1921. The early dispatch of an aerial flight from Cairo to Assiut and thence to Aswan had a pronounced result in stabilising the trend of native opinion towards peace and quiet. The flight was talked of the length of the land. The peculiarity of Upper Egypt being of course that having no breadth a single plane passing is seen and discussed by virtually everyone in the country, under which circumstances its propaganda value is very great. . . . The effect of this aerial manoeuvre therefore specially taken in conjunction with the presence of a naval patrol of the Nile may be estimated and is one which it would seem well to repeat, should similar circumstances again justify it.20 Egypt’s changed status from a protectorate to a nominally independent country, generally regarded as the most advanced in the Middle East, placed severe constraints on the employment of air power against rioters. Even Trenchard acknowledged that in densely populated areas, as in the Delta, the aeroplane was ‘an inaccurate weapon and the dropping of bombs or direction of machine gun fire from the air cannot be carried out with such a degree of nicety as to ensure that the innocent . . . should not suffer with the guilty’. In November 1921 the Air Staff barred the use of aircraft against civilians in Egypt except in extreme emergencies and at the discretion of local authorities.21 The primary role of Egypt for the Air Ministry was to house a central mobile reserve to reinforce adjoining areas of British interest. Already a bomber squadron from Cairo had been instrumental in the punitive operations against the ‘Mad Mullah’ of Somaliland and several Royal Air Force units from Egypt assisted in the suppression of the 1920 Iraqi rebellion. The Middle East could not quickly be reinforced from Britain, more especially as in wartime the availability of foreign landing grounds was uncertain. The alternative of dismantling aircraft, crating them for sea transportation, then re-erecting upon arrival, was too time-consuming since the essence of successful air substitution was the capability to harass rebels before a revolt assumed dangerous proportions. In 1922, therefore, a Middle East command was established in Egypt, its headquarters in Cairo. Depots at Abu Sueir and Fuka supplemented supply and maintenance facilities at Aboukir, near Alexandria. Egypt was preferred to Palestine which, as a mandated territory, was only supposed to house minimal forces. As well as Egypt, the command’s operational area encompassed the Sudan, Palestine, Transjordan and Iraq. Its normal routine included ‘watch and ward’ patrols on desert frontiers, photographic surveys and mapmaking, and the development of imperial air routes.22

The interwar period

21

Egypt’s uniquely central geographical position vis-à-vis the empire made it a natural ‘Clapham Junction’ for new post-war imperial air routes. The first to be established, that between Egypt and India, Churchill encapsulated as having ‘the effect of buckling the Empire together in a very remarkable manner’.23 The routes from Britain to Australia and South Africa bisected Cairo, which, by the mid-1930s, with the extension of aircraft ranges, was within six days’ flying time of Cape Town and Singapore. In November 1938 a flight of Vickers Wellesley bombers, which made a non-stop journey from Ismailia to Darwin, Australia, a distance of 7,162 miles, achieved a world long-distance record. Part of the Long Range Development Flight, they were the first aircraft to incorporate the Barnes Wallis-designed geodetic construction as well as being modified with extra fuel and oil lubrication tanks. The Air Staff, like the Admiralty, regarded Egypt as an advanced post on the route to the East. Indeed, the Royal Air Force, operating from Egypt, pioneered Imperial Airways routes on condition that the airline’s facilities became available in wartime. Plans were made for inter-command reinforcements extending as far as India. By 1930, on several occasions, Palestine and Transjordan’s air forces had been strengthened and squadrons interchanged between Egypt and Iraq, with the latter despatching a squadron of heavy transport bombers to India’s troubled north-west frontier.24 Royal Air Force successes in control operations briefly brought into doubt the relevance of ground forces for imperial policing duties; Indian army units being withdrawn from Aden in 1929. The garrison in Egypt largely avoided the acrimonious inter-service debate since the methods employed elsewhere by the Royal Air Force were judged improper in a civilised country. There was, too, the irony that the army protected Royal Air Force bases in Egypt. Although contingency plans existed to send part of the standing garrison to the Anglo-Iranian oilfields, no threat in fact developed since Iraq and Saudi Arabia, the only states with forces close enough to pose a danger, were both well disposed towards Britain. Rather, it was over disturbances in Palestine that troops stationed in Egypt fulfilled an external role following the ‘Wailing Wall’ incident in Jerusalem of August 1929. The holy city could hardly be bombed and armoured cars were rendered impotent by its narrow streets, which prompted the hurried dispatch of a battalion each from Egypt and Malta to suppress the rising. The War Office seized on this as an example of how conventional ground forces remained axiomatic for imperial policing. It successfully applied the brakes to Trenchard’s outlandish scheme of that year for further widespread air control, including the replacement of naval sloops in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea with flying boats. As a distinguished air officer later recalled: ‘It was rather as though someone had suggested substituting a motorcycle rally for the Derby.’ Again, in 1931 two companies were flown from Egypt to help suppress riots in Cyprus while the following year a mutiny by the Assyrian levies prompted a battalion to be flown from Egypt to Iraq to defend Royal Air Force bases there. These instances illustrated the vital importance of army and air force collaboration in imperial policing.25

22

The interwar period

On the eve of the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis, the garrison in Egypt consisted of six infantry battalions, three cavalry regiments and six artillery batteries. Its relatively small size reflected the vast manpower cuts in the British Army since 1918, the generally tranquil internal situation and the absence of an external threat. There were no tanks, only a company of Rolls Royce armoured cars. The preponderance of infantry in the total evidenced the fact that internal security and the protection of ports and aerodromes were paramount. Indeed, the main prospective enemy was the Egyptian Army, now removed from the Sudan where it was mainly based, for which reason the peacetime garrison was stronger than before 1914. The Internal Security Scheme, designed to cope with serious anti-British and anti-European riots, envisaged the defence of essential points, such as power stations, bridges, telecommunications centres and water purification plants, and the deployment of compact flying columns to deal with trouble spots. Although annual manoeuvres practised defence against invasion, the overwhelming focus was on internal security, with the scheme constantly practised and updated. Internal security was the preserve of cavalry and infantry assisted by armoured car units. In combination with the extensive intelligence network orchestrated by the European Department of the Ministry of the Interior, existing British forces were well placed to keep the lid on Egyptian nationalism.26 A role the Army continued to play, in conjunction with the Navy, was in the protection of the extensive imperial cable and wireless system. In 1935 the total length of global submarine cables was 350,000 nautical miles, over half of them British-owned. All Red Sea and Indian Ocean cables were British except for a solitary French line. Alexandria, Cairo, Port Said and Suez provided intermediate linkage points in the labyrinthine empire network. By the 1930s ‘automatic relaying’ eradicated interference with messages en route. The inter-communications system in Egypt was up to European standard and, under the terms of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaty, Britain secured the right to its use during an international emergency or in wartime.27 The Great War demonstrated that oil and its by-products were essential to all modern fighting forces. The conflict stimulated the development of oil refineries at the ports of Suez and Abadan and the transportation of northbound oil fuel to service the Allied fleets. Although all but 20 per cent of Britain’s wartime oil requirements in fact derived from the United States, the high cost of this source, its insecure nature and the expectation that American reserves would soon dwindle persuaded the services to seek alternative arrangements. In 1919 the Chief of Air Staff recognised that the Middle East ‘contains great reservoirs of oil fuel, upon which commodity our air power and sea power will depend’.28 This realisation formed an additional reason for Britain’s entrenched position in the region following the Great War. Through her stranglehold on Suez, Britain might deny hostile powers access to the oilrich Persian Gulf. The Royal Navy, which began conversion from coal to oil-burning in 1912, enjoyed a long-term contract with the Anglo-Iranian Oil

The interwar period 23 Company to meet its demands. Iranian oil production stood at 1.3 million by 1920, increasing to 7 million tonnes by the mid-1930s, and by 1939 up to 14 million tonnes of crude per annum could be processed at Abadan, the world’s largest oil refinery, whence oil was moved over 150 miles by pipeline. Indian forces were designated to protect the southern Iranian oilfield. Iraq, another area of major oil exploration, was under British mandate until 1932 when, like Egypt later, it was granted independence only on condition that British forces might remain. Following a major discovery at Kirkuk in 1927, Iraq became an important oil producer from 1935, in which year its output of 3.7 million tonnes merited eighth place on the list of world producers. Hopes that Egypt too might prove a significant source of oil deposits were frustrated, although the amount discovered proved sufficient to meet local demands. For the requirements of forces designated to defend Egypt, the region’s oil supplies were ideally placed. Even when the Mediterranean was closed to commercial traffic (as in the latter stages of the 1914–18 conflict), oil could still be brought into Egypt via the two refineries at Port Suez provided the Red Sea remained open. The Canal ports and Alexandria all featured oil storage facilities. The completion of the Baghdad–Haifa pipeline in July 1934 meant that Iraqi oil could be switched between the Abadan and Haifa refineries (the latter became available in mid-1940). By the late 1930s one-twelfth of Britain’s normal oil supplies came from the Mediterranean. In 1938 the combined annual wartime oil requirements of army and air forces in Egypt were calculated at a very modest 50,000 tonnes, a figure that would rise dramatically. The Mediterranean Fleet could be supplied from Haifa on Palestine’s Mediterranean coast (the largest port in the eastern Mediterranean) and fuel oil reserves at Alexandria and Malta. This proximity to abundant oil supplies furnished the Allied forces with a decisive advantage over the Axis in the region during the Second World War. In August 1936 the envious Italian Minister in Cairo, Pellegrino Ghini, considered that there were five principal objectives underlying Britain’s special relationship with Egypt. These were: the defence of Suez; the military, air and naval control of the country; a privileged position, which allowed Britain to control Egypt domestically and to prevent it acting independently on the international stage; the economic domination of Egypt; and maintaining the status quo in the Sudan.29 The British might pay lip service to international treaties, such as the Canal convention, and humour the notion of Egyptian ‘independence’, but when it came to upholding their interests they were steadfast. To all intents and purposes Egypt was an integral part of the British Empire and by hook or by crook the British were determined to remain the protecting power notwithstanding the growing threat to the metropolis from Nazi Germany and to lucrative possessions in the Far East from Japan. Added to these, suddenly and unexpectedly, a further challenge arose from fascist Italy, which compelled Britain to demonstrate its resolve to defend Egypt to the hilt.

2

The defence of Egypt and the onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

The studies generated by the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis largely miss the imperial subtext. Britain’s decision-makers sought to manage the escalating dispute by persuading Mussolini not to make war on Abyssinia. But they also recognised, somewhat belatedly, that if these efforts failed, prompting League punishment against the imperious aggressor, they must be prepared to withstand any retaliatory Italian ‘mad dog’ attacks against imperial interests in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. This meant primarily securing the defence of Egypt. Thus, as Mussolini was massing his forces to invade Abyssinia, once the seasonal rains subsided, at the same time the British were gathering army, navy and air force units in the region lest the imposition of League sanctions provoked a hostile Italian reaction. This chapter will explore the onset of the crisis principally from the perspective of the demands of imperial defence centred upon Egypt.

The emergence of the Italian threat Benito Mussolini can be seen as an extreme nationalist intent on recreating Rome’s imperial glory. Corsica, Malta, Nice, Savoy, Tunis and Egypt were regarded as having been stolen by Britain and France. Converting the Mediterranean into an Italian lake (mare nostrum) and carving out a neoRoman empire at the expense of the Western Powers lay at the heart of his foreign policy.1 While Mussolini’s grandiose ambitions ultimately foundered, they need to be borne in mind to understand his developing policies towards Britain and Egypt. Mussolini’s fanaticism surfaced at Fiume in May 1919, two months after he founded his fascist movement, when he revealingly declared that ‘. . . the first thing to be done is to banish foreigners from the Mediterranean, beginning with the English. We must give every possible aid to the revolutionary movement in Egypt – that ancient Roman colony, the natural granary of Italy.’2 Once in power, wiser counsels prevailed but the grand objectives remained. Initially, Mussolini cultivated good relations with Britain, whose embassy was the first to entertain him at a formal dinner. In December 1922 he obligingly came to London to collaborate over war debts and reparations, even recording a friendly speech, in broken English, for

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

25

British Movietone News. Mussolini reassured the British Ambassador in Rome, Ronald Graham, that fascism was not intended for export. In line with this, his bombastic speeches were generally interpreted by the Foreign Office as primarily designed for domestic consumption and not to be taken literally, a tendency that would continue in influential British government circles even when it became palpably untrue. The one blemish on Mussolini’s record was the Corfu Incident of 1923. A threat of remedial action by the Royal Navy, under the auspices of the League of Nations, forced him to desist from occupying Corfu town, following the murder of General Enrico Tellini, after face-saving compensation from Greece was agreed. But this episode was soon forgotten when fascist Italy acted as a guarantor of the all-important Treaty of Locarno in October 1925 sanctifying Germany’s western borders. Mussolini also cannily emasculated his imperial ambitions for the moment, toning down his rhetoric and emphasising that Italy was a peace-loving nation.3 Under the direction of Austen Chamberlain, who developed a warm regard for Mussolini that was reciprocated, the Foreign Office made belated efforts to compensate Italy for its ‘mutilated victory’ of 1919. In December 1925 Jarabub, on the Libyan border, along with Transjubuland, adjoining Italian Somaliland, were ceded to her. In conceding Jarabub, the Foreign Office overrode Egyptian protests and the Air Council’s objection that the redefined frontier would render the port of Sollum, near the border, useless as a wartime base.4 Later, this prophecy was vindicated but at the time the gesture seemed justified. Indeed, during this period, Mussolini gained his fair share of admirers among British statesmen. Churchill equated the Italian leader to a Roman Caesar who had courageously dispelled the internal communist threat. Chastened by the Corfu Incident, three years later, in 1926, Mussolini rejected the proposals of the Italian Legation in Egypt to adopt an anti-British policy there: ‘It is childish to challenge Britain in this field and face her hostility.’ Two years before, he had personally called on the British Embassy in Rome to offer his support for Britain’s anti-terrorist measures in the wake of the Stack assassination.5 Behind the scenes, however, more sinister developments were afoot. During 1925 Mussolini privately aired his resentment that ‘Gibraltar, Malta, Suez, Cyprus represent a chain that permits England to encircle, to imprison Italy in the Mediterranean’.6 This was a theme that he would return to again and again. In 1926, the year when his outward display of friendship towards Britain reached its zenith, ‘Mussolini had informed the armed forces leadership of his intentions to conquer the Mediterranean basin, necessitating some form of conflict with Britain and France’.7 The long gestation period of this strategy is attributable to Mussolini’s recognition that, as yet, his country lacked the military strength to successfully challenge western dominance as Corfu had amply demonstrated. Il Duce occasionally showed his true colours (in 1928 publicly demanding the revision of the peace settlement) but his conservative military establishment restrained him from impulsive foreign adventures.8

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The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

The period 1924–33 (the so-called ‘decade of good behaviour’) may now be considered as an interim phase when Mussolini consolidated his dictatorship, pacified rebellious populations in Libya and Italian Somaliland and laid the ground for a more aggressive foreign policy founded on air power and its latent potential. In January 1923 the army and naval air services were combined to form the Regia Aeronautica. A strategic bomber force became the answer to the Royal Navy’s resented dominance of the eastern Mediterranean, promising a quick war that would overcome Italy’s vulnerability to naval blockade. Air bases were established on Rhodes and Leros in 1928 and capacity in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland was transformed to support substantial air forces. The centrality of air power to Italian military projection was critical. As a leading British air commentator reflected in 1938: It is astonishing what a vast change for the better in Italy’s strategic situation the development of military aviation has brought about. A few years back it was, for a would-be Great Power, of the weakest. To all intents and purposes she has the lengthy coastline of an island, largely unprotected, and with nearly every chief town built on the sea . . . It is in being the air power on the spot, locally based, with establishments and productive plants in her own backyard, flying familiar airways, and with a mere midway bottleneck, between Sicily and Tunis, to guard, that the key of Italy’s renaissance is to be found.9 The Italian air theorist, General Guilio Douhet, preached that air power alone could now achieve victory in wars, providing an attractive philosophy that was uncritically accepted in air circles around the world. In the Italian case his doctrine was manna from heaven. The air force Chief of Staff, General Armani, even went so far as to proclaim that ‘for us the Mediterranean is only a puddle!’ Air Marshal Italo Balbo, a friend of Douhet who embraced his ideas, became air force chief and prioritised bomber production. In retrospect, it is apparent that Mussolini’s outwardly benign countenance allowed him to steal a march on Britain and France. By the late 1920s military expansion gave Il Duce the world’s second largest air force, third largest army and fifth largest navy. At a time of general disarmament this was a false position and, as became apparent later, the veneer concealed a lack of proper planning, thorough training and integrated inter-service cooperation. Mussolini also acted to consolidate the existing empire, initiating a brutal subjugation policy against the Senussi in Libya and Somali tribesmen. By the early 1930s the campaigns had succeeded and Mussolini could commence empire-building in the near future. In July 1932 Mussolini removed the Anglophile Count Dino Grandi as foreign minister, dispatching him to the London embassy with himself taking over the foreign policy reins. Finally and crucially, in January 1933 a fellow fascist regime came to power in Germany. Although Il Duce was initially wary of Adolf Hitler, growing Nazi

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

27

military power would soon provide the distracting influence Mussolini craved to pursue his imperial ambitions.10

The origins of the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis: the Egyptian dimension At his first Cabinet, Mussolini spoke of the need to stimulate nationalism as a means of undermining Anglo-French influence in the Islamic world.11 By the early 1930s there were increasing signs that Rome was prepared to foment trouble for the British Empire. Seeking a protectorate over the Red Sea Farsan Islands and the Yemen, Mussolini supplied the Imam with arms and encouraged him to attack Aden. Another avenue for destabilising the heart of Britain’s empire was through subsidising Jewish emigration to Palestine. Mussolini also backed attempts to preserve the official use of the Italian language in Malta. Egypt had formed the centrepiece of the old Roman empire in the Middle East and during 1934 Mussolini privately remarked that ‘We must have Egypt; we shall only be great if we can get Egypt.’12 With the British firmly in control of the ex-Roman colony there was no immediate prospect of this, but in the meantime Italian policy sought to stimulate nationalism to undermine British hegemony. In 1928 the Italica, a semi-official Italian society for propaganda abroad, chose Egypt as its first goal. Exhibitions of Italian books; lectures glorifying Italian history, literature and music; opera seasons staged at the Music Conservatoire in Cairo – all sought to woo the natives. The Italian community in Egypt, second in size only to the Greek, consisted of pure Italians, Italian Arabs and Italian Jews, and represented an ideal medium for Rome to transmit cultural propaganda. Of the 70,000 Italians resident in Egypt by the mid-1930s, no less than 25,000 belonged to the local fascist organisation, which kept abreast of the official party line. Egyptianbased branches of Italian banks employed retired army officers, providing a forgiving service to natives, often allowing debts to be reduced or even written off. In larger towns cheap Italian schools introduced natives to fascist ideals while students enjoyed free trips to Rome. Several local newspapers were bribed, providing another means of influencing the intelligentsia. The most spectacular Italian propaganda exercise of this period involved the royal tour of Egypt in February 1933 which encompassed trips to the Pyramids, processions through Cairo and Alexandria streets bedecked with Italian flags, and lavish banquets at the Italian Legation and Abdin Palace, the Cairo residence of King Fuad.13 Italian attempts to woo Egypt were well underway when, on 18 March 1934, Mussolini announced his policy of cultural expansion in Africa and Asia. This represented a shift in tempo away from a cautious foreign policy. The same month radio stations Bari and Roma initiated Arabic propaganda broadcasts on the medium and short wave lengths, whose recipients included Egypt, Morocco and Palestine. Prevailing illiteracy rendered radio an ideal

28

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

propaganda medium. Arab cafés conveniently kept a wireless set on all day, ensuring a captive audience. Initially, broadcasts were mainly concerned with culture and their content was not overtly anti-British.14 Widespread distribution of cheap Italian wireless sets nevertheless furnished Rome with a ready-made vehicle with which to assail and mock Britain when the occasion arose. Territorial encroachments provided a further mechanism to expand Italian influence. These incremental increases to imperial boundaries in fact originated in the late 1920s when the British Foreign Office largely turned a blind eye in the interests of maintaining good relations with Rome. But by the early 1930s they became increasingly difficult to ignore. An Italian military survey party at the Oweinat Well, first detected by air patrols in October 1932, was still encamped the following May. There was also disturbing evidence of an aircraft landing ground at the Sarra Triangle. Both areas lay within the undemarcated Libyan-Sudanese border and were regarded as strategically important since they controlled the caravan routes to the Sudan and French Equatorial Africa. Britain responded by ordering the Sudan Defence Force to occupy Merga, another border point, as a counter-move.15 The Foreign Office was concerned that Italian infiltration of the unadministered territory of north-west Sudan would continue unless it broached the issue. Following approaches to the Italian Foreign Ministry, negotiations opened in Rome in November 1933, but collapsed after the Italians produced an obscure Turkish map to support their occupation. In the meantime monitoring Royal Air Force reconnaissance patrols continued to watch the position. Maurice Peterson, the Foreign Office negotiator, recorded the strategic reasons why the British had broken off negotiations: Whether or not their object is, as has been suggested, to push the frontier of Libya eastward to a point from which they can communicate by air with the Italian Colony of Eritrea on the Red Sea by a single ‘hop’ – i.e. without having to make a descent on Sudan territory – or whether their object is to get within striking distance of the Nile itself, where great irrigation works . . . offer a target to air attack, the net result seems to be that the Italians are presenting, by their latest claim, albeit most gradually, the type of threat to the middle Nile as the French did to the Upper Nile at the time of Fashoda.16 Talks resumed in July 1934 when Italy surprisingly conceded British claims after they in turn produced an ancient map to substantiate their case. Peterson suspected an ulterior motive for the sudden Italian climb down and suggested designs upon Abyssinia were the cause.17 On 5 December 1934 the Wal Wal incident occurred when Abyssinian and Italian forces clashed on the disputed frontier between Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland, resulting in fatalities on both sides. The resultant controversy over culpability provided Mussolini with a convenient pretext to threaten

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

29

Abyssinia. His decision was far from impulsive – Il Duce had contemplated invasion since at least 1925 and military planning became more definite in 1932 when Marshal Emelio De Bono was sent to east Africa to investigate the possibilities. If Italy was to link up its existing colonies there – Eritrea and Italian Somaliland – then Abyssinia must be absorbed. Mussolini issued a secret directive on 30 December 1934 prioritising ‘the destruction of the Ethiopian armed forces and the total conquest of Ethiopia’. Privately he remarked, in March 1935, that ‘afterwards we shall conquer Egypt and the Sudan!’18 During the lengthy military build-up, which began in autumn 1934 and therefore preceded Wal Wal, Italian diplomacy was directed towards ensuring that neither Britain nor France would interfere. Rome refused to instigate the arbitration procedure under the 1928 Italo-Abyssinian friendship treaty – Mussolini considered the incident ‘an act of self-defence’ – and resurrected his Corfu tactics by demanding compensation as well as formal recognition of the disputed territory as Italian. Abyssinia, admitted into the League of Nations in 1923 despite practising slavery, then referred the issue to the

Map 2.1 Abyssinia and surrounding territories, Naval Staff Intelligence Department, January 1935, after TNA ADM 223/828

30

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

League Council at Geneva. France and Britain were the League’s two leading lights and Mussolini hoped to convince them, as fellow imperial powers, that he should be left alone to deal with backward Abyssinia. In January 1935 France and Italy resolved their colonial differences and Rome received the strong impression that its planned invasion would be tolerated in Paris. The same day, 7 January, De Bono, designated to command Italian forces, set sail for east Africa via Suez. On 17 January, the day following his arrival at Massawa, Mussolini officially became Italian colonial minister.19 Only the British might now stand in the way of Il Duce’s imperial adventure.

The British response to the growing Abyssinian Crisis A 1931 memorandum indicates that the British Chiefs of Staff were loath to take fascist Italy seriously. Field Marshal Sir George Milne, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, emphasised that Italy was in no economic position to wage a protracted conflict. Ravaged by the Great Depression, its perpetual need to import almost all its raw materials and around 20 per cent of its foodstuffs was a key weakness. The budget deficit was exacerbated by existing colonies, rendering further expansion unlikely. Similarly, until 1935, the Admiralty treated the Italian naval build-up in terms of Italo-French rivalry rather than as a threat to imperial interests in the Mediterranean. The Chiefs of Staff’s lugubrious attitude towards the mounting Abyssinian crisis needs to be considered against the background of a deteriorating global strategic position. The prospect of war loomed in two separate hemispheres as Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany withdrew in quick succession from the League, refusing to abide by the Versailles modus operandi. Although, in November 1933, Mussolini too had declared Geneva’s principles unworkable, the same month the British Cabinet, following the Committee of Imperial Defence’s recommendation, elected to categorise Italy, with France and the United States, as a friendly power against whom no major defence preparations were required. In retrospect, this decision was unwise, but there were rumblings against it at the time from Admiral Sir William Fisher, the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. His fears stemmed from the ominous growth of the Regia Aeronautica, which now boasted an estimated 1,500 first-line aircraft. With ever-increasing operational ranges and a multitude of air bases now established in Libya, Sicily and the Dodecanese, alongside metropolitan stations, Italy could potentially wrest control of the Mediterranean from western fleets if Douhet was vindicated. Such a war promised to be of short duration, thereby overcoming Italy’s recognised inability to sustain a protracted conflict unaided owing to her lack of indigenous raw materials and weak industrial base. The importance that Mussolini attached to the air factor is apparent from his close involvement in the Regia Aeronautica’s creation in 1923, his assumption of the position of air minister in January 1926 and undergoing personal flight training – later, in

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

31

1936, he qualified to pilot triple-engine bombers. From the mid-1920s the Regia Aeronautica began experimenting with gas (Douhet advocated the use of high explosive and poison gas), first deploying it against the defenceless Senussi. Its chief, the dynamic Balbo, led two spectacular flight formations spanning the eastern and western parts of the Mediterranean, which were designed to demonstrate Italy’s capacity to bomb key targets in the region.20 From April 1933 the far-sighted Fisher warned his superiors of the parlous state of anti-aircraft defences at Gibraltar and Malta, the principal Royal Navy base in the Mediterranean. Since the latter was now within easy bombing range of southern Italy, Sicily and Libya, the admiral considered that its weakness could only encourage Rome to challenge British supremacy.21 However, Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, an old colleague under whom Fisher had served in the Mediterranean, refused to consider Italy as a likely enemy, deeming the Far East and Western Europe more pressing defence priorities. The First Sea Lord had already responded lukewarmly to remonstrations from his French counterpart over Italian naval ambitions, reassuring him that Rome only sought parity for prestige.22 As late as 5 January 1935, shortly after Abyssinia brought the Wal Wal incident before the League Council, Fisher learned to his consternation that his concerns remained under review. Even in April, by which time Italian designs upon Abyssinia were transparent, the Chiefs of Staff Annual Review considered no attack on Malta likely in the near future, attaching no urgency to the augmentation of anti-aircraft defences there. Italy’s subsequent attack upon Abyssinia and her accompanying menacing posture towards British interests in the Mediterranean would be seen by Fisher as a vindication of his views and a repudiation of those of his government.23 The dilatory attitude evident over Malta was symptomatic of the British government’s initially lukewarm response to the Abyssinian question. An inter-departmental committee, established in February 1935 to investigate British interests in Abyssinia, took five months to report. British policy was posited on the assumption that Il Duce would obligingly maintain his antiNazi stance following his timely prevention of Anschluss in July 1934. Nonetheless, as the British establishment grasped the implications of ongoing developments, it sought to use gentle persuasion to persuade Mussolini to keep in line. On 22 February 1935, after Italy had committed two divisions to east Africa via Suez, Sir Eric Drummond, the British Ambassador in Rome, reminded the Italian government of the terms of the 1906 Tripartite Agreement on Abyssinia between Britain, France and Italy. Under its terms no party intervened ‘except in agreement with the other two’.24 Overshadowing the issue was the larger one of the escalation of the German threat following Hitler’s denunciation of the military restrictions of Versailles in March. German air expansion, combined with the reintroduction of military conscription, signalled an intention to overturn the post-war peace territorial settlement by force if necessary. Mussolini took advantage of AngloFrench concern to stage a conference at Stresa (11–14 April) in northern Italy

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The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

to form an anti-German front. Such a gesture, he calculated, would lead the Western Powers to humour his designs on Abyssinia and warn Nazi Germany off Austria, allowing fascist Italy to fight an African war to a successful conclusion. Anthony Eden, the Lord Privy Seal and most vociferous proLeague minister, was too ill to attend. Abyssinia was not discussed at ministerial level because all sides wanted to avoid this thorny issue inhibiting a collective response to Berlin. The ailing Ramsay MacDonald, attending his final international conference as prime minister, later wrote that Mussolini had not even whispered the word ‘Abyssinia’ in his ear. Nevertheless, as Robert Mallett has persuasively argued, the traditional view that Il Duce left the conference with the conviction that Britain would not stand in his way is erroneous. Experts on Abyssinia were in fact on hand from both sides and Mussolini was extremely anxious to procure the green light for his impending invasion. In the backroom discussions, however, it was made abundantly clear by Geoffrey Thompson, head of the Abyssinian Department at the Foreign Office, that British public opinion would not tolerate an invasion of Abyssinia, which in turn ruled out a passive response from his government. Italian officials, dangling the German bogey, warned that force might well be necessary, but conspicuously failed to extract any assurance that this would not adversely affect Anglo-Italian relations. Indeed, Thompson urged caution and made it clear that his government could not ‘actively assist Italy to attain her Ethiopian objectives’. Mussolini’s hackles rose further when Sir John Simon, the British Foreign Secretary, impudently raised the Abyssinian dispute at the Geneva Assembly. The upshot of this was that on 30 April, Count Grandi, the Italian Ambassador to London, saw Sir Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, to communicate a plea from Mussolini for a more sympathetic attitude. Vansittart could only offer support for a peaceful resolution. He warned that should Italy pursue a military solution, British public opinion would react adversely since ‘it would look like a case of a larger power bullying or even eating a little one’. Grandi also pressed, without success, for Britain to define its interests in Abyssinia. This state of affairs prompted an infuriated Mussolini to order Admiral Domenico Cavagnari, his naval chief, to begin planning for the possibility of conflict with Britain as well as Nazi Germany. The prospect of British naval forces massing in the eastern Mediterranean to interdict Italian supply lines to east Africa via Suez now emerged as an unwelcome and unsettling threat to Rome.25 For the moment, an uneasy calm prevailed, notwithstanding the military traffic that continued to pour through Suez to east Africa as fascist Italy massed its forces for invasion. London held out the hope that, given the growing German danger, Mussolini would not wish to tie down any large forces outside Europe. Vansittart had said as much to Grandi and persuaded Sir Austen Chamberlain to repeat the message, hoping his old influence still resonated with Rome. At this time, Lampson’s father-in-law and Alessandro Lessona, Italian minister for the colonies, visited him, en route to Eritrea.

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The High Commissioner was left in no doubt of Italy’s designs on Abyssinia. A perturbed Lampson echoed his government’s views when he recorded that the whole adventure seemed . . . a most risky and ill-advised affair – and just at a time when a big political crisis raged in Europe. It was difficult to understand how Mussolini had let himself in for this African commitment when he surely required all his forces and resources at home.26 On the contrary, Il Duce was convinced that the Abyssinian question must be resolved before the Nazi peril became acute. Berlin was secretly pleased that the Mediterranean crisis was moving ‘the main thrust of Italian policy away from Austria to the Red Sea’.27 Mussolini assuaged the nervousness of the Italian High Command at the prospect of Hitler taking advantage by secretly securing French agreement to commit two divisions in the event of a new Austrian crisis. This military accord provided insurance lest Hitler broke his public promise, of May 1935, that Germany harboured no intention of interfering in Austrian politics or of annexing Austria. Now that Italy’s own ‘demilitarised zone’ had been secured, Mussolini grew bolder. On the anniversary of Italian entry into the Great War, he ominously told a fascist gathering: ‘Let no one hold any illusions in or out of Italy. We are tolerably circumspect before we take a decision, but once a decision is taken we march ahead and do not turn back.’ At the same time, Captain A. L. Kennedy, The Times’ diplomatic correspondent and leader writer, saw the Italian Ambassador to London. ‘Grandi laughed’, Kennedy recorded, ‘when I said Mussolini was in warlike mood; but he agreed; & added, “you know Mussolini” ’.28 When the Maffey Report on British interests in Abyssinia was at last completed in June, the headwaters of the Nile at Lake Tsana were identified as the only important concern. Despite providing 80 per cent of Egypt’s irrigation water, Abyssinia had consistently frustrated Britain’s desire to construct a dam there to regulate supplies. Abyssinian opposition suddenly melted in April 1935. Soon afterwards Rome sounded out London over guaranteeing Tsana’s control in exchange for non-intervention in the Italo-Abyssinian dispute.29 Neither option was practical politics. The report took comfort from the expectation that Italy would take several years to conquer Abyssinia. Indeed, it couched its concerns over a potential future Italian threat in such moderate language that the Cabinet failed to consider the findings until late August. The Italians saw the report much sooner, purloining a copy through their agent in the British Embassy in Rome.30

The position in Egypt A much greater danger vis-à-vis fascist Italy was being felt in Egypt. In January 1934 Tripolitania and Cyrenaica were officially combined into Italian Libya. The same month Balbo arrived in Tripoli as the new governor

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The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

where, coincidentally, the First Destroyer Flotilla of the British Mediterranean Fleet was paying a courtesy call. Balbo entertained its officers in his palace; Italian parties were shown around a British destroyer with British parties inspecting Regia Aeronautica units; there were a series of football matches. The glad-handing took place against an uneasy setting following the brutal suppression of the independence-seeking Senussi Arabs. Approximately 150,000 were slaughtered between 1922 and 1934. The Italians employed every conceivable means of subjugation including the use of gas bombs, destruction of livestock and crops, concentration camps and summary executions. At the conclusion of the campaign the rebel leader, Omar-El-Mukhtar, was publicly executed. Surviving rebels sought refuge in Egypt, spreading stories of Italian atrocities that influenced native preference for British dominance as the lesser evil.31 Throughout 1934 high-ranking Egyptian officials made apparent to the Residency their fear of the Italian threat from the west.32 Just a poorly equipped native battalion guarded Sollum and, together with a local detachment at Siwa Oasis, represented the only permanently stationed troops in the Western Desert. Lampson toured the area in June 1934 when interest in it was predominantly archaeological rather than strategic. Few could have foreseen that the picturesque resort of Mersa Matruh was about to become the British Army’s principal forward base in the Western Desert. At this time, the future Second World War seminal battleground was little more than a curiosity. It was only explored in a private capacity by Captain Ralph Bagnold and friends from the Royal Signals whose expeditions on the Italian side would provide invaluable knowledge of the geography of the vast sea of sand.33 The most obvious manifestation of Italian war preparations against Abyssinia was the ever-increasing number of ships laden with troops, equipment and supplies which daily passed through Suez. Until 1933 Italian Canal traffic constituted 5 to 6 per cent of total net tonnage, warranting only fifth place among users. During 1934, when Abyssinia loomed on the horizon, the share rose to 6.56 per cent (gaining fourth spot) and the following year Italy would move into second place behind Britain, the perpetual front runner. In May 1935 the Suez Canal Brigade commander calculated that 45,000 Italian troops had made passage since October 1934, leading him to conclude that military operations would commence in September. An indication of the Italians’ warlike spirit came on 11 June when an auxiliary arrived at Port Said. After a British constable requested its captain to fill in the usual entry forms, he tore them up and cast them overboard ‘as there is a war on’. Only after the local Italian consul intervened were the forms eventually completed.34 From August there was a noticeable escalation in military traffic through Suez, marking Italy’s final build-up before the widely anticipated autumn offensive, following the closure of the east African rain season. Rome betrayed its anxiety over continued Canal access through press articles highlighting British obligations under the 1888 convention and the Italian Consul

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35

at Port Said made strong representations to prevent Suez being sabotaged.35 The critical importance of an open Canal led the Italian Foreign Ministry to instruct the Alexandria Legation, in a communication intercepted by British intelligence, to establish an intelligence service ‘to enable us to be quickly and accurately informed of whatever may happen or be prepared on the banks of the Canal’.36 Italian concern was again evidenced when the Minister in Cairo demanded to know whether Egypt intended to close Suez. Count Paglioni’s failure to procure a satisfactory response was seen by Lampson as the reason behind his sudden recall to Rome. Evidently Italy then decided on scare tactics, for on 31 August, the Residency learned of a warning conveyed by the Egyptian Minister in Rome: ‘it would be inadmissible that closing would be decided without Italy being heard. Such closing would have as an immediate result, a declaration of war against Egypt’.37 Mussolini’s massive reinforcement of Libya just prior to the attack on Abyssinia gave substance to this threat. It certainly succeeded in frightening the Egyptians. Sensing growing British opposition over Abyssinia, Italy increased its intrigue in Egypt. Radio Bari transmitted daily from April 1935 and sections of the local press were bribed to carry sensationalist anti-British stories. In June, Mohammed Ali, an Anglophile Egyptian prince, called at the British Foreign Office in Whitehall. He disclosed that two Italians recently toured Egypt to publicise their government’s determination to invade Abyssinia. Should Britain stand in the way, they had warned, then Malta would be destroyed within 24 hours and the remnants of the British fleet driven from the Mediterranean.38 This information prompted the Foreign Office to urgently investigate Malta’s defences. It emerged that the Air Ministry had failed to remit any concrete proposals since the last review in October 1934. The Committee of Imperial Defence now counselled the impossibility of bringing the naval base’s defences up to standard in reasonable time, occasioning great alarm within the Foreign Office.39 The first consideration of the Italian air threat against Egypt arose from King Fuad’s remark that it was pointless to expand his army because it could not prevent the destruction of key reservoirs by bombing, which would flood the Delta. Lampson, still feeling his way in his new post, responded by initiating an investigation. Major-General Sir George ‘Rosey’ Weir, General Officer Commanding British Troops in Egypt, advised that ‘owing to the distance from potential enemy aerodromes, the strength of structures and the narrowness of the targets the probability of effective damage being done to the barrages is at present remote . . .’ The greatest potential danger came from the west which persuaded Weir to recommend an intelligence system be organised in the Western Desert. Otherwise Italy might furtively establish petrol and bomb dumps in the sparsely populated landscape to bring her bombers within striking distance of the nearest barrages. Italy normally based seven squadrons (63 aircraft) in Libya, with an operational range of 300 miles, although longer-range bombers from the mainland could easily reinforce these. Air Vice-Marshal Maclean, Air Officer Commanding Royal

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Air Force Middle East, felt that the issue raised the prospect of an attack by Italy which the present military and air forces in Egypt were inadequate to meet.40 The Air Staff began considering Mediterranean reinforcements on 12 August. As before, Malta was judged impossible to defend – although, ironically, the four squadrons allocated to the island were actually more than those available in 1940. Aden, with Perim and the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, was regarded as strategically essential both to the favoured route to India and Singapore and as a reinforcement channel for Egypt should the Mediterranean become closed. Yet the Red Sea’s narrow waters invited air attack from proximate Italian air bases in Eritrea and Somaliland. Two squadrons (light bomber and fighter) were accordingly earmarked to join Aden’s existing bomber squadron, the maximum that existing accommodation would allow. Egypt might be bombed from Libya (especially Tobruk) and the Dodecanese. Some fighter cover, particularly for the Canal Zone, was considered desirable to augment the existing four bomber and army cooperation squadrons, together with a long-range bomber squadron. Since Khartoum was within bombing range of Eritrea, two light bomber squadrons and one fighter flight were to be based there; a further two fighter flights would proceed to Mombassa, Kenya, against which only diversionary air strikes were possible.41

Countdown to war In June, Mussolini obstinately refused to be deflected by the Zeila proposal, rejecting it out of hand and threatening Eden, its emissary, now the Minister for League of Nations Affairs, with Italian withdrawal from Geneva. Mussolini insisted ‘that the intention of Italy was to have direct dominion over the outlying zones and control over the central nucleus [of Abyssinia] . . . a regime after the pattern of Egypt or Morocco’. This resonated with remarks Mussolini made to Drummond, on 21 May 1935, when he envied Britain’s position in Egypt whereby ‘independence’ did not conflict with British interests. Briefly Vansittart toyed with the idea of conferring a mandate on Italy along similar lines but soon jettisoned it as impractical.42 In late June the League of Nations Union Peace Ballot indicated overwhelming British public support for the League and collective security, including military sanctions, against an aggressor. With a general election on the horizon, the National Government could not ignore public sentiment. There was also increasing nervousness, especially at the Admiralty, at what a deranged Mussolini might do. The following month the Cabinet directed the Committee of Imperial Defence to consider the strategic implications of the imposition of sanctions under Article XVI of the League Covenant. Chatfield, fearful for the safety of the Mediterranean Fleet, strongly urged military preparations in advance.43 In April, Italy had announced a substantial new air force programme. By early August its aircraft industry was concentrating on the production of

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heavy bombers, especially of a new type, the Savoia Marchetti 81. With a reported top speed of 180 mph, it could allegedly carry a 2,000-pound bomb load for a radius of 248 miles. Such an advanced design might seriously embarrass the Royal Navy within the confines of the Mediterranean and Red Sea as well as posing a threat to British garrisons and communications throughout the region. Drummond, quoting a reliable source, indicated that six Savoia Marchetti 81 squadrons (36 aircraft) were earmarked for east Africa once produced. Other intelligence suggested orders had been placed for 400 of this type, many of which could be deployed to Libya to threaten Egypt.44 The hyperactivity gave credence to Italian threats against Malta, whose authorities were apprehensive of a surprise air attack. A ministerial meeting was convened which agreed to bring the island’s defences up to the approved scale. Nonetheless, Malta’s authorities remained adamant that the naval base was ‘utterly defenceless against an air attack such as Italy might launch against it’, which rendered essential the transfer of Fisher’s fleet to the comparatively safer havens of Alexandria and Haifa. The necessary orders went out on 7 August when the Commander-in-Chief was ordered to cancel the scheduled summer cruise to Adriatic and Italian ports. The Greek port of Navarino, codenamed ‘Port X’, was earmarked as an operational base in the central Mediterranean should hostilities break out.45 In July, Joseph Avenol, Secretary-General of the League, visited London and confided to Kennedy his conviction ‘that Mussolini was making his supreme throw – staking everything; he would be master of Abyssinia: as well as Italy; or lose all’. This conviction was not lost on senior ministers and, orchestrated by Neville Chamberlain, what he termed ‘the Big Six’ – Baldwin, Hoare, Simon, Ramsay Macdonald, Eden and himself – held impromptu meetings to review the position. The Chancellor set out the principles that should govern policy on 5 July. The ideal way out is to persuade Mussolini to abandon the use of force. The only way to do this is to convince him that he has no choice. If we & France together determined that we would take any measures necessary to stop him we could do so quite easily. We could e.g. stop the passage of his supplies through the Suez Canal. If the French would agree to play their part, the best way would be to go privately to Mussolini & warn him of our views & intentions at the same time assuring him of our desire to save his face & get him the compensation from the Abyssinians. If the French would not play, we have no individual (as opposed to collective) obligations and we should not attempt to take on our shoulders the whole burden of keeping the peace.46 The French, however, evinced no enthusiasm to face down Mussolini and every inclination to save his face and humour his ambitions. During 19 August the last-ditch tripartite talks in Paris collapsed, prompting the Admiralty to

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order the Mediterranean Fleet to be at 24 hours’ notice for war from 22 August. This followed an alarmist report from the head of British intelligence in Italy, conveyed by Vansittart from Paris, that the belief had taken hold in Rome that the British Empire was ‘in full decrepitude and thinks that a new Roman Empire could ultimately take at least a part of its place in the sun . . . they now believe they can defy England with impunity and even take her on with almost advantage’. Indeed, a member of the Italian delegation in Paris openly spoke of an attack against Malta. The Committee of Imperial Defence’s assistant secretary caught the mood. It looks as if Italy will have to take her medicine [sanctions], with what effect on Musso one can’t say. He may go completely mad if he’s thwarted, or even spoken to roughly. Anyhow, it’s bound to lead to a regrouping of the Powers. If the League is weak it is bust, if it is strong Italy will leave & the League weakened thereby to fatuity. Increasingly it looks as if Musso had megalomania, it seems to be his private show entirely, but for the moment he has Italian enthusiasm behind him. How long will it last?47 Admiralty unease at the prospect of Italian air attacks led it to instruct Fisher that an attack on Malta was to be considered a casus belli to which he might respond immediately without awaiting instructions.48 At the start of August, Sir Samuel Hoare, Simon’s successor, publicly warned Italy in the House of Commons against attacking Abyssinia. On the eighth, with his service chiefs exhibiting grave concern at the prospect of an Anglo-Italian conflict, Mussolini sent a highly confidential letter to Grandi instructing him to try to establish whether the British meant business. His initial efforts were inconclusive and he was in the dark about precautionary measures and their import. After an emergency Cabinet was called which brought British ministers hastening back from summer retreats, Grandi was able to throw more light on the situation. What emerged was a resolve to protect British interests in case of Italian attacks: the Home Fleet would assemble at Portland, Fisher’s fleet was to be strengthened, Malta and Aden’s anti-aircraft defences improved, and Royal Air Force Middle East reinforced.49 Grandi, with access to well-connected sources, reported on the conclave in some detail. His insights, which were intercepted by British intelligence, contrast starkly with the temperate official record. Allegedly MacDonald employed ‘alarmist language’ while Eden, already denounced by Italian propaganda as ‘public enemy number one’, was ‘trying to push the Cabinet into taking extreme measures against Italy’. The Italian Ambassador summarised Eden’s position: Italy is contemplating action which is not only . . . prejudicial to British interests in Abyssinia but also constitutes a potential threat to the security of British possessions on the African Continent. As proof of these is

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

39

adduced the report of our intentions in regard to the Nile . . . report was made on [Italian activity in Egypt] . . . by Lampson . . . now in London . . . who had a talk with Hoare yesterday. Foreign Office is also said to be in possession of alleged documentary evidence of assistance given by Italian agents to Egyptian nationalists in their anti-British activities. These are the arguments . . . now being used by the enemies of Italian action and with which Eden hopes to win over those Conservative ministers who had hitherto maintained that the conquest of Ethiopia by us does not constitute a danger to the British Empire. Grandi further reported on a meeting of senior Conservatives. It concluded that the government ‘might have national interests to protect independently of League action’, a view fuelled by British correspondents in Rome who conveyed rumours ‘about an alleged Italian plan to conquer Ethiopia and use it as a starting point for action in the Sudan and in Egypt’. Grandi purposely drew Mussolini’s attention to this development for ‘it is essential to prevent the problem from getting off League of Nations ground on to the ground of British national defence, wherein is the only danger’.50 The following day Grandi related two protracted Cabinet meetings involving twenty-two ministers. Eden looked to Conservatives for support for ‘considering the question not from the point of view of the necessity to satisfy Italy’s need of expansion but from that of the adventurous designs that Italy might have upon Egypt and the Sudan, and therefore from the point of view of security and defence of British interests and British prestige . . . in the Mediterranean’. With relief, Grandi telegraphed that Eden failed to persuade the Cabinet that any immediate decision was necessary, so Hoare’s view prevailed that further diplomatic efforts should be pursued rather than ‘take any initiative that might lead to irrevocable consequences’. Indeed, Baldwin and several other ministers had already left London to ‘resume their interrupted holidays’. And to reassure British opinion Mussolini granted an interview to the Daily Mail’s congenial political editor, George Ward-Price, in which he denied that there was any clash of interests between fascist Italy and Great Britain in Africa. The Cabinet had in fact elected to send the entire Home Fleet to Gibraltar on 29 August, but the extent of Britain’s naval posturing was scaled down by Chatfield, fearing it too provocative, in a Defence Policy Requirements Committee meeting the following day. Indeed, Chatfield not only held back the Home Fleet at Portland but he denied the Mediterranean Fleet the full-authorised reinforcements. The committee’s secretary recorded his incredulity. ‘A very interesting example’, he thought, ‘of the “military” people holding back the statesmen for the former are always accused of being pugilistic and demanding measures on military grounds which are politically dangerous.’ On this occasion, ministers ‘were prepared for much more than was actually settled’. Nevertheless, the posturing to deter ‘mad dog’ action was palpable enough, with the Mediterranean Fleet set to be reinforced from eastern stations, the

40

The onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency

standing Egyptian garrison strengthened from 10,000 to 20,500 troops and 35 first line aircraft added to the five existing squadrons of Middle East Command.51 Fourteen British warships arrived suddenly and dramatically at Alexandria in late August, spearheaded by the capital ships Revenge and Valiant and aircraft carrier Glorious. Early the following month another aircraft carrier Courageous, escorted by 14 destroyers, journeyed from Portland to Alexandria at a speed of 20 knots, passing at night through Gibraltar and the Malta Channel with all ships darkened. By September, Royal Navy and Dominion vessels from as far afield as Colombo, Hong Kong and the Falklands were massing in the Mediterranean and Red Sea; by 20 September some 120 ships were being deployed. The Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation, originally intended for Singapore, was sent to Alexandria in preparation for a possible move to Port ‘X’. It would take Royal Air Force reinforcements somewhat longer to arrive, given the need to crate aircraft and ferry them by sea from Birkenhead.52 The sheer scale of British measures in the eastern Mediterranean certainly gave Italy pause for thought. ‘What have these ships been sent for?’ Mussolini indignantly asked Ward-Price. ‘We don’t like it. They are the equivalent of a pistol pointed at the breast of Italy.’53 Mussolini was not slow to emphasise the potential consequences, should Britain oppose his invasion plans. Early in August he ensured maximum publicity for Regia Aeronautica exercises against warships through his own conspicuous attendance. Later in the month he reiterated the claim that his air force could destroy Malta in half an hour, inflicting a crushing blow on the Mediterranean Fleet. Egypt, he suggested, presented no obstacle in view of jumping-off grounds on the Libyan frontier and the fact that Royal Air Force aircraft were ‘slow and old fashioned and no match for the Italians’.54 Intimations were made to Hoare that, while fascist Italy did not believe it could defeat Britain, it would be satisfied to take the heart of its empire down with it in the event of armed opposition. Underscoring this point, Il Duce ordered fleet ‘manoeuvres’ as British naval reinforcements sped eastwards through the Sicilian Channel. British warships spotted Italian submarines lurking menacingly outside Alexandria, Malta and Cyprus. Mussolini had indeed touched a raw British nerve, Chatfield fearing privately that if it came to war ‘we shall have many losses in ships and men, thereby our world position as a naval power will be weakened’.55 The other means by which Mussolini hoped to influence a conciliatory British policy was through his escalating threat to Egypt. On 2 August Lampson reported that 1,500 camel corps soldiers (Arabs under Italian officers) were observed between Bardia Soluman and Ghaboub near the frontier. To further exploit Egyptian anxieties, Mussolini moved troops up to the barbed wire fence demarcating the western frontier, whose original purpose was to prevent rebel Senussi from escaping, but which now took on a new significance as an invasion point. In September three Italian army divisions (Cosseria, Assietta, Metauro) were sent to Libya with Rome claiming,

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absurdly, that their presence was necessitated by the ‘threat’ posed by exiled Senussi in Egypt. Hoare also learned indirectly, through the French, that the reinforcements were purportedly a response to the prospect of sanctions. The Italians then changed their explanation again, with Baron Pompeo Aloisi suggesting that the reinforcements were sent to Libya to acclimatise before proceeding to east Africa.56 Although the real intention – to intimidate Egypt and create problems for the British administration – was clearly understood in Whitehall, for the moment the War Office remained unperturbed, confident in the belief that the formidable logistical difficulties posed by the Western Desert restricted any attacking force to an infantry brigade.57 The Italian records show that this unflappable attitude had some justification. On 7 August the Italian Deputy Chief of Staff, General Alberto Pariani, turned his attention to contemplating a ground war launched from Libya and Eritrea against Egypt and the Sudan, should Britain close the Suez lifeline to east Africa. Obviously if they [British] closed the Suez Canal we will have to reopen it. To this effect we will evidently have to launch an offensive from Cyrenaica. In general terms this would probably mean temporarily going on the defensive on the Abyssinian front in order to go on the offensive against Egypt. As a result, Pariani authorised three strategic studies. From Cyrenaica the possibilities were either an offensive along the coast towards Alexandria or the much more formidable indirect desert route between Siwa and Wadi Halfa on the River Nile. From the other direction the route for study was from Eritrea against Port Sudan and thence to Wadi Halfa. The inner mood in Italian military circles was, however, far from optimistic and contrasted sharply with the bombast of Rome’s propaganda.58 Italian unease over the build-up of British forces in the Mediterranean and Red Sea was transmitted to Hoare via Pierre Laval, the French Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, who sought assurances that military sanctions, and especially the closure of Suez and a blockade of Italy, were not contemplated. Laval feared that a dangerous incident might precipitate a wider conflict if the Italians were kept guessing. After some reflection, Hoare responded with a personal message to Mussolini, conveyed by Drummond. As ‘an old friend of Italy’ he could state that there was no intention of destroying the Italian fleet or humiliating Italy. Rather, British reinforcements were a response to months of really violent anti-British propaganda, particularly in Egypt and the Near East. We have done nothing more than our duty in taking these precautionary measures. In no way have they been provocative . . . there has been no intention of closing the Suez Canal or military sanctions.59

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Britain would, however, play its full part in collective security. Mussolini took notes when the message was conveyed and spoke, prematurely, of a détente. ‘He solemnly assured me’, Drummond reported, ‘that he had not the slightest intention and never would of injuring or affecting British interests either direct or indirect’. The interview lasted almost an hour and it seemed to Drummond that Mussolini was in a trance, ‘calm, affable and unperturbed’. Nevertheless, Rome was not sure that Perfidious Albion was playing with a straight bat. Indeed, Hoare’s efforts to calm Italian nerves were not entirely successful for, on the afternoon of 30 September, Grandi sought out the Foreign Secretary to try to extract further clarification. ‘I told him that I could give him no answer’, Hoare reported. He only offered the sop that further reinforcements were withheld for the moment given improved relations ‘but warned if [the] situation deteriorated [they] would have to go and especially a division to Egypt unless Mussolini withdrew reinforcements to Libya’. Hoare closed the encounter with a warning that there remained a danger of an Anglo-Italian war, not least because public opinion would create a highly charged atmosphere in response to events in Abyssinia. ‘In such a situation’, he warned the ambassador, ‘it would become more and more difficult for men of goodwill to prevent the extension of the trouble’.60 In 1935 both Nazi Germany and Japan officially ceased to be in the League. Though still a member, fascist Italy began flagrantly to flout the rules. Her defiance reached a crescendo at dawn on 3 October when three army corps (110,000 troops) invaded Abyssinia from two directions and the Regia Aeronautica launched penetrating bombing raids, immediately establishing Italy’s technological superiority over an opponent whose fighting methods harked back to feudal times.61 The previous day Mussolini delivered a speech making it clear that he was prepared to tolerate economic sanctions but threatened war if military sanctions were imposed. He also appealed directly to British public opinion. I decline to believe that the real British people which has never had any dispute with Italy is disposed to take the risk of plunging Europe into a disaster in order to defend an African country universally branded as a country without a trace of civilisation.62 British public opinion saw matters rather differently and clamoured for action in support of Abyssinia. Four days later the League denounced fascist Italy as an aggressor. The application of sanctions now became inevitable, raising the prospect that Mussolini might respond with ‘mad dog’ attacks against British interests in the Mediterranean. As one authority remarked, during the summer Anglo-Italian relations plummeted ‘as the crisis metamorphosed from an Italo-Ethiopian regional dispute into a full-scale international emergency’.63 Not only had the Italo-Abyssinian War begun but also the ‘Italo-Abyssinian Emergency’, as the crisis is

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significantly referred to in British official archives. The capacity of on the spot forces to withstand Italian attacks and the potential implications for Britain’s world-wide position now came to the forefront in the National Government’s calculations regarding the most prudent policies to pursue at Geneva.

3

Defending Egypt during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency First phase, August–December 1935

The extensive literature on the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis obviates the need to reprise its tortured course and diplomatic machinations. Rather the focus will be on the neglected imperial defence aspect, especially the security of Egypt, and the bearing this had on developments. Such an approach not only provides a fresh perspective but also brings to the fore the capacity of British forces in the Mediterranean, radiating from Egypt, to withstand an Italian onslaught and successfully apply military sanctions. It will be suggested that service chiefs, who considered this episode an unwelcome aberration impinging on existing plans, magnified perceived vulnerabilities to close off any prospect of a resolute response. In particular, there developed a gulf between the Chiefs of Staff and the men on the spot, the former exhibiting more concern at the knock-on effect on fledgling rearmament programmes against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the latter seeing the emergency through the prism of their station. This led to a disjunction: between overcaution and pessimism on the one hand and emboldened optimism and daring on the other. The ultimate outcome was myopia.

Policy imperatives and dilemmas Before considering defence preparations surrounding Egypt, some of the wider issues impinging on British strategy should be noted. Beneath the froth of the Baldwin government’s cynical rhetoric espousing collective security, its echelons lacked congruence beyond a general desire to avert provoking a European conflict. Italy was seen from a myriad of vantage-points: as a buffer against Anschluss, as a fellow imperialist, as a growing threat to empire. In turn, these perspectives received a different emphasis from sectional interests. The Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office saw current developments as foreshadowing a long-term Italian menace to British interests in the eastern Mediterranean. Service departments, supported by the Treasury, Vansittart and his close ally, Sir Maurice Hankey, longstanding secretary to both the Cabinet and Committee of Imperial Defence, took a contrary position. Dismissing the Mediterranean crisis as temporary, they assumed that Mussolini’s adhesion to Stresa could

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survive provided he was not seriously impeded in the Horn of Africa. This formidable combination was not prepared to confront fascist Italy to the point of war in order to save the credibility of an international peace organisation regarded with disdain and dismay in military circles, especially within the Admiralty. The service chiefs feared that if Britain acted as the world’s policeman over Abyssinia, then it could well be asked to repeat this role elsewhere, thereby threatening to stretch finite defence resources to breakingpoint. The Chancellor shared this viewpoint. ‘But if in the end’, wrote Neville Chamberlain, ‘the League were demonstrated to be incapable of effective intervention to stop this war it would be practically impossible to maintain the fiction that its existence was justified at all’.1 Against this background, Mussolini set the agenda when he publicly warned that should economic sanctions assume a military character, it meant war. The world misinterpreted Hoare’s Geneva address of 11 September, coinciding as it did with the massing of British forces in the Mediterranean, as indicating that Britain meant business. The expectation of an imminent Italo-British military confrontation was to misunderstand the position. Britain sent reinforcements not to uphold the League Covenant through coercing Mussolini but rather to dissuade him from attacking imperial interests. The reluctance of the French to take any concomitant military steps served both as a convenient excuse for British inaction and accentuated the reluctance of the Chiefs of Staff to risk losses for a cause in which they did not believe. Bringing down Mussolini was simply not on the agenda. From Rome, Drummond warned of the likelihood of a communist takeover if Il Duce were unseated, an unwelcome prospect to the Conservative-dominated National government. Pessimistic assessments of Italian prospects against Abyssinia prevailed in military circles in Britain and elsewhere. ‘I think that Mussolini will come to an impasse in a year’, opined one contemptuous British general, ‘and then the League will be asked to restrain the Abyssinians and save the Italians’.2 The massive Italian military commitment against Abyssinia ought to have modified such prejudices, which also failed to reckon with Mussolini’s willingness to deploy terror tactics to achieve victory over backward peoples, a trait he had already displayed in Libya. Unconfirmed reports that mustard gas was passing through Suez should also have rung alarm bells but the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was convinced that Il Duce would not risk the apoplexy of international opinion and authorise its use.3 Conversely, an Abyssinian success on the scale of Adowa was feared within Whitehall because it was likely to inspire nationalists throughout the Middle East to take up arms against their imperial masters. Even a League stalwart conceded that it ‘would be a great disaster if the Italians were entirely defeated by the Abyssinians’, for which reason he felt it imperative that a Geneva-sponsored solution prevailed. The French minister in Addis Ababa went so far as to suggest that ‘an Italian success was called for in order to save

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the prestige of the white man’. When fascist Italy did indeed suffer a serious military reverse in December, British and French colonial authorities became apprehensive. Sir Arthur Wauchope, British High Commissioner in Palestine, feared an Arab revolt, stoked up by Italian bribery, should a European conflict erupt over Abyssinia. The extension of sanctions, he warned his dinner guest, General Charles Huntzinger, Commander-in-Chief of French forces in the Levant, would be disastrous, for no colonial power could afford to see ‘the triumph of a Black country against a European nation’.4 Underlying the Baldwin government’s passivity were its senior military advisers’ lukewarm submissions whenever the prospect of resolute action was considered. Privately, Chatfield saw no reason to oppose Italy’s absorption of Abyssinia and castigated his government’s pro-Geneva stance as a ‘disaster’, convinced that ‘Mussolini will go on with his war despite the League . . .’.5 Disarmament and the provisions of the Washington Naval Treaty had shrunk the core of the British battle fleet to just 15 capital ships compared with 29 (plus 13 under construction) in August 1914, not to mention a hefty assortment of pre-Dreadnoughts. Then, unlike now, France had played its part in the Mediterranean. The Chiefs of Staff, orchestrated by their pessimistic chairman, cautioned that, even with French assistance, the Royal Navy could expect losses which might render it temporarily incapable of fulfilling its worldwide responsibilities. Moreover, aero-naval arrangements to reinforce Singapore, the fulcrum of Far East defences, could not be counted on while the emergency lasted. Any Royal Air Force casualties would jeopardise the aim of attaining bomber parity with the Luftwaffe by April 1937.6 The Army Council viewed the Mediterranean crisis as an unwelcome interruption to its mechanisation programme for war in western Europe. ‘It’s no good, Rosie, the Army can’t play’, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff cautioned Weir before his return to Egypt following summer leave.7 The services’ irritation at the turn of events was epitomised by a Royal Air Force officer’s caustic reference to ‘this silly African business’.8 It was no wonder that the overstressed Hoare would castigate the Chiefs of Staff as ‘the worst pacifists and defeatists in the country’.9 The reconstituted Defence Policy Requirements Committee reported in November 1935 that available resources were inadequate to the task of meeting three hostile powers: Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and a power (by inference fascist Italy) astride the main lines of communication between western Europe and the Far East.10 The tri-power threat to Britain and her empire became the criterion by which the Italian threat was measured. The Chiefs of Staff’s strategic assessments of this period are characterised by a barely disguised contempt for Italian military capabilities when viewed in isolation. But in the context of global over-extension, there was a marked reluctance to test dismissive assumptions because of the need to conserve finite defence resources for deployment against what was regarded as more formidable opposition. Such arguments failed to recognise that weakness over Abyssinia was likely to encourage hotheads in Berlin and Tokyo who saw the crisis as a

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barometer of British resolve, for it was apparent to all that British forces were best placed to stifle Italian aggression. The Chiefs of Staff’s unwillingness to become embroiled in conflict was soon evidenced over Lake Tsana. Cognisant of the Maffey Report’s concern that fascist Italy might interfere with the flow of its waters, the Foreign Office mooted the possibility of a forestalling military expedition. Service reports were overwhelmingly against. As well as Italian ground and air forces, Abyssinian tribes might oppose, leading to the conclusion that at least one infantry division and 11 aircraft squadrons would be required. The Chiefs of Staff were not amused by the Foreign Office analogy with Fashoda: even were an expedition to reach Tsana ahead of the Italians, ‘it appears to us that on this occasion we should be filling the role of Marchand and the Italians that of Kitchener’.11 The lake was in fact to be occupied by an Italian column in April 1936, fuelling Rome’s propaganda line that Britain was incapable of defending either Egypt or its interests. The German Führer was unimpressed with British timidity. ‘Instead of sanctions’, he told the British Ambassador in Berlin, ‘she [Britain] should have sent troops to Lake Tsana, should have staked out her vital interest there, and settled matters afterwards in a friendly manner with Italy’.12 Ronald Campbell, head of the Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office, considered the wider implications of an Italian victory over Abyssinia in a memorandum, which warned that fascist Italy would then be able to threaten Egypt from both east and north. The Secretary of State for the Colonies made similar points to Baldwin, adding that to stand aside would confirm Italian propaganda’s portrayal of an effete Britain cowering before an all-powerful Italy. Ultimately there would be no option but ‘to meet the Italian challenge to our prestige, power and interests by force or go under in Africa and the Mediterranean’. At the same time, Lampson warned that once Italy absorbed Abyssinia, ‘existing forces in Egypt and the Sudan would be completely incapable of coping with the situation which might arise’.13 Such views failed to resonate with the services. The Air Staff dismissed Campbell’s presentiments as conjecture, refusing to support referral to the Committee of Imperial Defence, willing only to provide ‘a reasonable measure of security’ for Egypt.14 War Office insistence, upheld by the Chiefs of Staff that only military targets could receive anti-aircraft protection, alarmed the Foreign Office. The Admiralty sprang to the War Office’s defence, pointing out that the air defence of Cairo would involve ‘a vast undertaking, comparable to the anti-aircraft defences of London’. No further anti-aircraft personnel were available without mobilisation (debarred by Cabinet on 22 August 1935) and given the prevailing Japanese threat, the Admiralty was unwilling to remove anti-aircraft personnel from the Far East. Moreover, parlous existing stocks of anti-aircraft ammunition were already committed. Egyptian population belts were consequently denuded of anti-aircraft protection, a shortcoming felt acutely by Hoare.15

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The fighting services’ indifference to developments in the eastern Mediterranean led Vansittart to prompt Lampson to protest. His telegram was the first of a stream of alarmist submissions, which outlasted the crisis and eventually made Lampson’s name anathema to the Chiefs of Staff. His allegation that ‘a dash across the Western Desert by a fleet of low-pressured Fords is . . . by no means an impossibility’ coincided with reports that Rome had ordered some in the United States. Although Hoare managed to persuade the Defence Policy Requirements Committee to dispatch an additional brigade, thereby raising the existing six battalions up to full complement, the Foreign Office was hardly reassured. ‘It was like extracting eye-teeth’, Vansittart lamented, ‘and the War Office professed complacence and faith in their ability to cope with clouds of Italians on unrevealed resources’.16 Soon afterwards the committee met again to consider Lampson’s recurring request for a full division, which Hoare backed with intelligence suggesting fascist Italy had moved six further aircraft squadrons to Libya. Lord Halifax, Secretary of State for War, saw no reason for alarm. The military situation in Egypt ‘was not one which need cause us serious anxiety . . . you can feel assured that the Army in Egypt will be able to do what is asked of it’. Of more concern was the deteriorating internal situation in Egypt (see chapter 5), leading to two Indian battalions being placed at short notice to move.17

Preparations for war The prospect of ‘mad dog’ attacks meant that Egypt’s defences needed to be brought up to their highest state of preparedness since the Great War. Yet available resources were far from ideal as the crisis caught Britain betwixt and between disarmament and rearmament. In September fleet anti-aircraft ammunition stocks were ‘only sufficient for one week! That being because it had been based on the assumption of fleet actions – not to defend a fleet sitting, much of its time, in an anchorage within air range of an enemy’. Indeed, the Army Master-General of the Ordnance would recall that early in the crisis ‘there was for a week not a single round of anti-aircraft shell in England’.18 Resources were also severely stretched in meeting army requirements. The day before the Italian invasion the War Office reported general ammunition stocks already depleted by half with motor transport, tank and armoured car reserves non-existent.19 The situation induced the War Office to seek authority to replace as it dispatched leading to the establishment of the Treasury Emergency Expenditure Committee, constituted of Treasury and service officials, which gained permanent status as the Treasury Inter Service Committee the following spring. The situation was not altogether unwelcome to the defence services, which sensed an opportunity to benefit from the emergency. ‘There’s nothing like a good fright for opening up the purse strings’, Pownall wrote gleefully in his diary.20 The Treasury was understandably at pains to contain costs. By February

Map 3.1 Egypt and surrounding countries, Naval Staff Intelligence Department, February 1935, after TNA ADM 223/828

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1936 the running total of emergency expenditure stood at £4.3 million for the Navy, £1.7 million for the Royal Air Force and £1.5 million for the Army.21 Priority was accorded to anti-aircraft ammunition production with manufacturers enticed with three-year contracts. Two old cruisers were to be reequipped as anti-aircraft ships to augment Mediterranean Fleet air defences. Rome’s affirmation of its adherence to the 1925 Geneva Protocol outlawing gas warfare was wisely regarded as no guarantee of compliance; anti-gas stores were accordingly made available. A virtual sine qua non of Treasury approval was the assurance that procured equipment could be utilised after the present emergency. The War Office acquired 33 French Hotchkiss antitank machine guns to defend Mersa Matruh with this undertaking. Similarly, the purchase of boom and net defences followed an Admiralty undertaking that they would be of longstanding value. The Treasury Emergency Expenditure Committee’s remit extended to endorsing on-the-spot procurements, such as the acquisition of aviation fuel from Borneo and the purchase of heavy-duty Ford cars to protect Suez. While fascist Italy struggled to meet its oil requirements (even purchasing large quantities from British stocks at Aden), no such difficulties attended the needs of British forces. Even if bombing destroyed the substantial reserves accumulated at Alexandria and Suez, other proximate supplies were available. Royal Air Force Middle East’s February 1936 request for five months’ supplies at war consumption was easily met. A constant theme was accommodation. Following Weir’s protests against bivouacking under canvas, the more expensive alternative of huts was acceded to. Later the Royal Air Force too secured hutments for its personnel after the Treasury relented following the collapse of Hoare–Laval.22 The hectic preparations contrasted with Field Marshall Sir Archibald Montgomery-Massingberd’s flippant disregard for any threat that might arise. The day of the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, he complained that ‘the alleged danger to Egypt from . . . Libya [was] always cropping up’. It troubled him not one iota. Italian posturing across the Egyptian frontier was immaterial since logistical difficulties and known shortage of lorry transport should restrict a raiding party to 5,000 troops – an infantry brigade and a light tank battalion.23 Still more difficult was a full-scale invasion. There was some veracity in the Chief of the Imperial General Staff’s attitude. The existence of the Libyan Sand Sea, impassable to motorised transport, reduced potential invasion routes to four of which only the first two were practical. Sollum – Mersa Matruh – Alexandria was not strictly speaking a desert route since it hugged the Mediterranean. From Sollum, on the frontier, to Mersa Matruh, the first town of significance, was approximately 150 miles with Alexandria 200 miles further beyond. The coastal road was broad and solid, interspersed by rough stretches, as suited as desert conditions could be to infantry and mechanised vehicles and holding the advantage of reasonable water supplies. Its drawback was exposure to naval bombardment. The Siwa – Mersa Matruh – Alexandria route was also practical. Siwa Oasis, with a plentiful supply of water, was only 30 miles from the Libyan frontier. Thence

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to Mersa Matruh, some 200 miles, there was a reasonable road, capable of carrying light military transport, with the potential to accommodate heavier vehicles. Recently discovered old cisterns en route offered further water supplies. By contrast, the Siwa – Cairo route was hugely problematic. A desert track cut across the Qattara Depression directly from Siwa to Cairo, a formidable distance of over 400 miles. Except for the virtually useless oasis of Maghra, there were no water sources throughout its length. Furthermore, the track was barely distinguishable while the heavy sand and salt marshes of the Qattara Depression rendered it virtually impassable to normal transport. Heavy vehicles were out of the question and it was extremely doubtful whether infantry could march this route. Finally, the Oweinat – Dakhla – Assiut route presented almost insuperable difficulties. From the Oweinat well, a desert track led to the large oasis of Dakhla, over 400 miles away. There was no known water along this route and the sand was so heavy that only a specially equipped desert exploration expedition could hope to negotiate it.24 Geological factors thus reduced the attacking possibilities for an invader and simplified the problems facing a defending force. So too did the Escarpment, representing the ascent from the coastal strip to the Libyan plateau, rising to some 500 feet above sea level, which could only be crossed by motor vehicles through select points west of Sofafi. Away from the sandy coastal strip, the accessible areas featured limestone rock below the fine sand or clay surface. Rocks of various sizes punctuated the scrub-strewn landscape, which appeared flat to the eye but in fact featured innumerable undulations. Such characteristics rendered desert driving difficult and strained the springs and tracks of crossing vehicles. Climactically, the summer months were marked by intense heat, which forced the Residency to move from Cairo to Alexandria with its cooling sea breeze. During winter it was cold and heavy rain was a strong probability. Throughout the year temperatures plummeted at night. In spring and summer a frequent hot wind blew in from the Sahara, creating clouds of fine sand and reducing visibility to a few yards. A final consideration influencing the planning and execution of war plans was the fact that places of concealment were few and far between. This was reassuring with the War Office calculating that six months of preparations would be required to mount a full-scale invasion of Egypt. A military build-up could hardly be clandestine affording ample time for defensive preparations. At the same time, remaining back in the Delta was not an option because of the need to deny Italian forces the chance to establish forward advanced air landing grounds inside Egypt and the concomitant need to establish and protect Royal Air Force bases to maximise the limited range of bombers. Sollum was within field gun range of an Italian army post, rendering Mersa Matruh, 130 miles further back, much safer as a principal army–air force base in the Western Desert. Accordingly, in October, 13th Infantry Brigade, commanded by Brigadier J. H. T. Priestman, moved forward there. Over the next month, a squadron from 11th Hussars, an anti-aircraft battery, two field companies, Royal Engineers, two infantry battalions and various service

Map 3.2 The Western Desert of Egypt 1940 after I.S.O.Playfair, The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1954)

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detachments joined it. The force was mechanised and charged with converting the sleepy port into a defendable forward base. At the same time, work commenced on extending the Western Desert Railway from Fuka to Mersa Matruh to facilitate provisions and reinforcements, a task completed in May 1936. Simultaneous improvements to the harbour were undergone to accommodate seaborne supplies. The principal role of the Army became to deny fascist Italy any advanced landing grounds inside Egypt. Conceding just 40 miles of territory meant all Italian bomber types could reach Alexandria rather than just Savoia Marchetti 81s and flying boats. Savoia Marchetti 81s, with a reported range of 480 miles, could operate from 180 miles inside Libya and still reach Alexandria. To attack their bases, Hawker Hart and Fairy Gordon bombers, with a restricted range of 200 miles, needed to refuel at Sollum or nearby. It was decided that bombers would operate east of Sollum, 25–50 miles further back, still leaving Tobruk within striking range. The main advanced air base was pushed forward of Mersa Matruh (Mersa Matruh East). Weir was prepared to locate mobile forces at Sidi Barrani, 45 miles east of Sollum, with the intention to make it strong enough to force Rome to deploy a division to overwhelm it. The deployment would protect advanced landing grounds in the hinterland – which Air Chief Marshall Sir Robert Brooke-Popham described as ‘one vast landing ground’.25 In war the Royal Navy could make its presence felt by shelling an invasion force which chose the coastal road; interdicting Italian supplies to Libya and east Africa; ensuring supplies reached Egypt through the Mediterranean and Red Sea; and bombarding Italy’s vulnerable coastline. The achievement of these tasks in turn depended on the ability to withstand air and submarine attacks. The development of asdic, an early form of echo sounder, made the Admiralty confident of defeating the underwater threat. Reassurance was also drawn from the knowledge that the majority of Italian submarines could not operate at great depths or submerge quickly, rendering them vulnerable to flying boat patrols in the clear waters of the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Indeed, Italian submarines lurking off Malta were spotted by aerial reconnaissance and brought to the surface by destroyers dropping dummy depth charges.26 The prospect of a pre-emptive strike to cripple the Mediterranean Fleet while it was in Alexandria harbour led to constant exercises against all forms of attack. Ships were placed at two-and-a-half hours’ notice for sea (compared with four hours in 1940), shore leave was restricted and blackouts enforced at night. The Navy was not at war, but acted as if it were. On 18 October 1935 this heightened state of readiness prevented the fire-stricken Italian liner, Ausonia, from drifting into an ammunition ship when fire parties boarded her and destroyers towed her to a safe part of the harbour. Because differing seawater densities rendered asdic ineffective, underwater indicator nets and anti-submarines patrols were intended to keep Italian submarines at least two miles from the harbour entrance. Anti-torpedo baffles were also deployed so submarines could not hit ships in port. These

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measures would probably have proved effective since the Italians then lacked midget submarines, which later incapacitated two capital ships at Alexandria. The prospect of a motor torpedo boat attack was catered for by an anti-boat boom and coastal batteries sited near the harbour entrance, augmented by the firepower of a cruiser and destroyer when the fleet was in port.27 Alexandria’s air defences were designed to engage bombers before they reached dangerous positions. Anti-aircraft resources – some of them located in the forts bombarded in 1882 – eventually amounted to 16 guns and 27 searchlights. A dozen Hawker Demon fighter aircraft, stationed 13 miles away at Amriya, plus a flight at Mersa Matruh, added to the standing defences. The fleet’s fighter component and anti-aircraft defences also needed to be reckoned with when it was in port. Observer posts were located 75 miles into the Western Desert and sea patrols extended up to 150 miles beyond Alexandria to furnish adequate warning of approaching bombers. Admiral Fisher anticipated sufficient notice to be able to man all anti-aircraft batteries and scramble fighters and became ‘tolerably sure that the enemy, and not we, would suffer most’ in the event of war.28 On 31 October 1935 the Joint Planning Committee concluded that provided Egypt and Aden were held, ‘the successful outcome of the war is certain’.29 With the Mediterranean closed, the Red Sea would become the main reinforcement channel for Egypt. Rosario Quartararo contends that it ‘remained the weakest point of British defences’.30 But this was far from constituting a blind spot in British calculations. Italy possessed an estimated 400 aircraft in the region which, until their supplies were exhausted, constituted a hazard to shipping. Royal Air Force aircraft, based at Aden and the Sudan, were designated to attack Italian air bases in Eritrea while the Royal Navy was confident of dealing with any Italian naval forces in the vicinity. A similar strategy was evoked in summer 1940, when British forces soon gained the upper hand.31

A clash of attitudes: the men on the spot and the Chiefs of Staff The Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet made frequent visits to Admiralty House at Valetta during the emergency and discerned that ‘the Mediterranean atmosphere [was] quite different from what it was at home. Their one thought was operations’.32 Throughout the emergency there was a distinct hiatus in attitudes: in the prospective war theatre all three fighting services were prepared to do their duty and were supremely confident of victory whereas in London a sense of gloom, foreboding and irritation pervaded deliberations. This disjunction was soon apparent. From the start, Admiral Fisher, whose flagship Resolution was aptly named, misread his government’s intentions, anticipating the imminent application of military sanctions, including denying Suez to Italian vessels. Fisher’s offensive spirit sprouted plans to take the fight to the Regia Marina

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at Catania, Port Augusta and Taranto. Known affectionately by his men as ‘the tall Agrippa’ or ‘W. W.’, Fisher was the embodiment of the zeal of officers and ratings that they could better the Italians. His gung-ho attitude typified the rank and file, deriding the posturing Il Duce with his histrionic speeches as ‘Gassolini’. Fisher proudly commanded the Royal Navy’s most efficient fleet at the time and was not afraid to take calculated risks against what he regarded as inferior opposition.33 In stark contrast, the Admiralty was most concerned about the possibility of losing any precious capital ships, not least because four of the existing fifteen were already laid up, undergoing modernisation. While there was no doubt over being able to suppress the Italian military threat, the great fear was that Japan might take advantage of any naval losses in the Mediterranean. There was no question, therefore, of exploiting a local supremacy in heavy ships, notwithstanding the fact that fascist Italy possessed only four capital ships, two of which were in dry dock, with those in service considerably outgunned, boasting 12-inch against 15-inch guns.34 The air threat was a dominating factor but it worked both ways. Fisher could call on two aircraft carriers where the Italians had none. Moreover, unlike some crusty admirals, Fisher recognised the value of air power: He [Fisher] said that ‘in every problem’ that faced the fleet in the Mediterranean, it depended on the fleet aircraft for effective action – for ‘driving home’ any stroke. This was because the Italian ships were faster than the British, and so could only be reached and overtaken by aircraft. In fleet aircraft we outnumbered the Italians. He had 90 on the two carriers excluding the ones on warships – these could not be picked up again, so could only act as ‘cuckoos in the nest’, i.e. would have to land on other territory.35 The contrast in attitudes was bound to cause friction. A subsequent appraisal of Fisher depicted him ‘as having got rather excessive wind up’ at this time. Fisher was incensed upon receiving the Chiefs of Staff’s conclusion that the ‘weakness’ of his fleet made French support a prerequisite of military action. Indeed, Fisher privately considered he did not need the reinforcements afforded him since he felt able to ‘blow the Italians out of the water with the ordinary Mediterranean Fleet’.36 Fisher responded to the defeatist memorandum in strongly dissenting terms, audaciously proposing to move the Home Fleet from Gibraltar to Malta to link up with his own force, utilising fleet fighters for air defence, as a preliminary to a major offensive against Italian shore bases on Sicily and the mainland. Authorisation would have turned into reality the Italian naval command’s nightmare of an ‘English battle fleet, escorted by a powerful mass of destroyers . . . able to ramble about the Mediterranean inflicting whatever damage it wants to our scarcely defended coast’.37 The Admiralty would have none of it, fearing the consequences of exposing the cream of its fleets to the unknown quantity of air

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attack, insisting that Fisher moved his fleet from Malta to the relative safety of Alexandria.38 Failing a decided deterioration in the situation, the War Office was loath to authorise additional reinforcements. Montgomery-Massingberd was puzzled by the assumption of an invasion column proceeding along the coastal road where it would be vulnerable to bombing and naval bombardment. Weir responded that aero-naval assistance was not guaranteed and warned that one division could occupy Sidi Barrani unless forestalling action was taken. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, blinkered in other ways, recognised the need for inter-service planning, leading to the Joint Planning Committee producing the first combined paper on the defence of Egypt. Colonel Hastings Ismay, the Committee of Imperial Defence Deputy Secretary, was delegated to take out the appreciation to ensure secrecy and become apprised of the local commanders’ views. At the same time the Chiefs of Staff, no doubt with Fisher in mind, made it clear that its ‘issue must not be assumed to connote any deterioration in the international situation which, at the date of these instructions, offers some hope of improvement’. This was disingenuous for recent efforts instigated by Mussolini to reconstitute normal Mediterranean dispositions had floundered, not least because Britain could not risk denuding Egypt’s defences while the Abyssinian Crisis continued.39 An inter-service gathering in Alexandria on 20 November endorsed most of the memorandum. The main discussion centred on the feasibility of establishing Port ‘X’ at the outbreak of hostilities. Fisher was shocked by information that the range of the Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation’s 3-inch anti-aircraft guns (15,000 feet) fell 5,000 feet short of the level from which Savoia Marchetti 81’s were expected to bomb. Thus ‘the main effect of the anti-aircraft guns would be not to bring down enemy aircraft but merely to reduce the accuracy of their bombing’ – a judgement vindicated by later war experience. Fisher now proposed retaining Alexandria as his main operational base and abandoning Port ‘X’. Italian nationals at Alexandria had audaciously informed British naval officers of the existing plan, departure times could not be concealed, the convoy’s maximum speed was restricted to ten knots over 500 miles and, most decisively, Port ‘X’ lay within range of all Italian bomber types. A number of advantages would accrue from the revised plan. First, harnessing the Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation’s antiaircraft resources lessened the risk of severe damage being inflicted on the fleet at Alexandria. Second, the main direction of air attack would emanate from Libya, where the Royal Air Force could destroy bombers on the ground. Third, in the absence of an initial decimation of the Mediterranean Fleet, other nations might be encouraged to actively assist. Because of the previous security leak, only a select number of officers were privy to the proposed changed strategy. Disclosure might lead fascist Italy to deposit large aeronautical supplies in Libya whereas, once hostilities commenced, stocks of aviation fuel, bombs and spare parts could only be replenished by sea, rendering them vulnerable to naval interception.

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To relieve Port ‘X’, several naval operations against the Italian and Sicilian coastlines were planned. These would remain, but special attention was now to be accorded to the Libyan coastline. The ideal was for the Army to advance and storm Tobruk, the most forward Italian port, but the commanders estimated that at least another division was required to achieve this objective. As an alternative, an aero-naval plan targeting Tobruk was formulated. Should fascist Italy invade Egypt along the coastal route, then the Royal Air Force would switch temporarily from its task of destroying Regia Aeronautica maintenance organisations to attack invasion columns with the Royal Navy adding a destroyer bombardment.40 Although Chatfield was not enamoured with Fisher’s proposals, believing that it would prove more difficult to dominate the central Mediterranean from Alexandria, he gave his blessing with the proviso that Port ‘X’ might be revived later to press home the campaign.41

The imperial defence dimension and the Hoare–Laval Pact The Baldwin government fought the November 1935 general election campaign under the canny slogan ‘All sanctions short of war’. This meant that it skirted round any measures, which promised to halt Italian aggression in short order, in favour of slow-burn economic sanctions. Infected by the service chiefs’ caution, Hoare had written to Eden on 16 October: ‘I feel myself that it is essential that we should go slow.’ This would also provide more time for defence measures to be perfected in the Mediterranean. While privately recognising the effectiveness of such a measure, publicly Neville Chamberlain poured scorn on Lloyd George’s suggestion that Suez be denied to Italian vessels to induce negotiations as bound to provoke general hostilities, since Mussolini had said as much. Labour also supported Canal closure, leading Hoare to issue an official statement, accusing the Opposition of being ‘warmongers’. The Foreign Secretary emphasised that while his government would play its ‘full share in collective security’, it refused to take unilateral action.42 This half-way house ploy worked with the gullible electorate, which returned the government to office with a resounding majority of 247. Four days later the League imposed limited economic sanctions on Italy. The contrived absence of measures that would have a crippling effect on the aggressor played to Mussolini’s toleration level. Indeed, Fulvio Suvich, the Italian Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, reassured Il Duce that the economic embargo was sufficiently benign to allow time to complete the conquest of Abyssinia provided Italian forces did not become bogged down. Then, much to London’s embarrassment, Canada broke ranks and tabled an oil embargo for consideration at Geneva.43 Italy lacked natural oil reserves and threequarters of its normal petroleum imports emanated from League members. American oil producers had already significantly increased their supplies to fascist Italy but the Roosevelt administration now mooted the prospect of a

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voluntary embargo. A series of high-level meetings convinced Mussolini that if oil supplies were terminated and Suez closed, then his forces in the Mediterranean and Africa could operate on stockpiles only until the following March.44 The British authorities were in fact aware of Rome’s existing shortfall, specifically in east Africa, but alarmist estimates that general Italian oil stocks could sustain ‘mad dog’ operations for as long as four months precluded vigorous support for an oil embargo.45 This was symptomatic of how imperial interests took precedence over those of Abyssinia and the League. The Italians lost no opportunity to try to frighten the British into thinking that they would inflict mad-dog injuries on their precious empire if an oil sanction were implemented. ‘From all sides’, Hoare would inform Parliament, ‘we received reports that no responsible government could disregard, that Italy would regard the oil embargo as a military sanction or act involving war . . .’.46 Mussolini told the Fascist Grand Council that he would indeed reply with war against Britain and ensured his train of thought was an open book. To reinforce the message, an emissary warned Vansittart that his leader was ‘in despair and has lost his head’. So effective was Mussolini’s scaremongering that the War Office even began preparing an emergency scheme lest Il Duce carried out his threat to bomb London! Admiralty intelligence noted that the prospect of an oil embargo had whipped up a storm of indignation in Italy directed against the perfidious British.47 Signor Mussolini in a speech delivered before an Italian Chamber keyed up to a pitch of wild and potentially even dangerous enthusiasm, declared that the advocates of sanctions had miscalculated both the spiritual and material resources of Italy and declared his determination to resist the ‘economic siege’ at all costs, against all coalitions however numerous. In short, the Italian attitude seems to be that it is better to die fighting than be forced to submit to sanctions.48 ‘The fact [is]’, warned the Chiefs of Staff, ‘that we are dealing not with a normal nation, but one under the control of a desperate dictator who will be prepared to take greater risks . . .’ Such was their concern that they now authorised Weir’s request for mechanised reinforcements, including 1st (Light) Tank Battalion and a medium tank company. Underlining the need for vigilance were intelligence reports. These suggested that Italy was deploying forces on the Libyan-Egyptian border and that aeroplanes, motor transport and stores were arriving in Cyrenaica. Moreover, it was rumoured that the withdrawn del Matauro division might return there, along with the Trento motorised division, described as ‘particularly suitable for action from Libya’.49 These developments are open to interpretation: as either lending substance to Mussolini’s calculated bluff or as representing genuine preparations for conflict with Britain. They are not mutually exclusive: Mussolini ideally wanted to cajole the British away from backing an oil sanction but

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also needed to ready his forces if he failed. Baldwin’s government, from the military to the diplomats, was inclined to risk aversion when the heart of empire was under threat. ‘We are’, Vansittart lamented, ‘not in a position to call bluffs. We had better get on with peace-making . . . as soon as possible’.50 The possibility of precipitate Italian military action against imperial interests now came to the fore and prompted Hoare to direct the Defence Policy Requirements Committee to investigate the latest situation on anti-aircraft ammunition. Intelligence on the earlier position had convinced Mussolini he could invade Abyssinia without risking British intervention when his senior military advisers were wavering. King George V, a visitor recorded, is very pessimistic and says that there is only a few hours ammunition for a fleet action and hardly any anti-aircraft [guns]. I believe that is partly true but Archie says they are working 24-hour shifts making it. The Admiralty are very windy as to air attack on the fleet by Italian aircraft. I have told everyone I simply do not believe Mussolini is mad enough to risk war with us as if he did at least his troops in Africa starve. But there is no doubt that his anti-sanction press has much alarmed the public.51 At the specially convened Defence Policy Requirements meeting, only one service minister, the maverick Alfred Duff Cooper, the newly appointed Secretary of State for War, was prepared to offer Hoare any comfort. He revealed that anti-aircraft production had doubled to 8,000 rounds per week and postulated that current stocks at Mediterranean and Red Sea ports were sufficient to defend them against 300 air raids. This seemingly healthy picture was then undermined by Brigadier-General John Dill, the Director of Military Operations and Intelligence, who emphasised that it was difficult to calculate ammunition expenditure, which depended on the weight of air attack. Admiral Sir Bolton Eyres-Monsell, First Lord of the Admiralty, then interceded with the revelation that the Mediterranean Fleet only carried sufficient anti-aircraft ammunition for 22 minutes continuous firing at long range and 13 minutes at short range. This statement was misleading – possibly deliberately so – since air raids would take seconds, leaving ample ammunition to repel a multitude of attacks, a fact recognised elsewhere by the Third Sea Lord. Moreover, the meeting did not address the fundamental issue of whether the Regia Aeronautica was capable of mounting sustained and effective assaults.52 ‘Our safeguard’, noted the well-informed military analyst, Sir Basil Liddell Hart, ‘is that the Italians are in want of a “piercing” bomb – their ordinary ones are insufficiently penetrative’. As it was, the pessimistic conclusion that Hoare drew from the meeting was just as the service chiefs would have wished. The embattled foreign secretary, Pownall recorded, implored the service departments to ‘do this, that or the other, including the production of more anti-aircraft ammunition than it was physically possible to produce’.53 The meeting takes on an even greater significance in the events leading up to Hoare–Laval when it is considered that only the previous

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day Hoare was unconvinced by Hankey’s barrage of arguments against an oil sanction. Then Hoare predicted that not to support the measure would render the League impotent and went so far as to state that he was ‘prepared for a big row on this, and would resign if the oil sanction was not accepted’.54 That he elected instead to go to Paris would forever taint his reputation. The growing pressure on the Foreign Office to avert a showdown with fascist Italy and sideline an oil embargo is evident from Pownall’s diary: it is pretty clear that Musso will react instantly, & likely to the point of war, against an oil sanction. If he feels that foreshadows his end, in say four months’ time, he may choose to ‘go down fighting’. With our defences in their present state (& granted we wouldn’t lose against Italy) is it really worth while to? On a European war with all its losses, in life and money, & with all the risks of it spreading into a general conflagration – just to stop a colonial war? I think NOT, so does Hankey & he is working on the PM and Sam Hoare.55 Following his meeting with Hoare, the persistent Hankey wrote to Baldwin to impress upon him the strategic dangers surrounding an oil embargo. True, there was no question of prevailing against the Italians, with or without allies. But Berlin and Tokyo might take advantage; the danger of losing capital ships in the narrow confines of the Mediterranean basin was acute; and Italian bitterness would fester for years, endangering the Suez route to Singapore. This scenario was sketched out against a background of disquieting increases to German and Japanese armed forces. The Toyko embassy warned that the Japanese General Staff saw in Britain’s present difficulties an opportunity to invade China. The Berlin embassy depicted Nazi Germany as an armed camp, with the ambassador warning starkly that Abyssinia ‘was not the only pebble on the beach’. Vansittart seized on the apocalyptic dispatch to implore Hoare to act before it was too late. ‘We must not have the oil sanction’, he warned bluntly, ‘or the Duce will make war on us’.56 Hankey and Vansittart’s orchestrated pressure on Hoare began to bear fruit. Embracing an oil sanction, implored Vansittart, would be madness ‘because our measures of defence and supplies of munitions are startlingly deficient’, there was no guaranteed support from other Mediterranean powers, and ‘it must be clearly understood that we are neither the League’s policeman nor its whipping boy’.57 At this point Laval stepped in and, with muted British support, postponed the Geneva meeting to consider imposing an oil embargo, originally tabled for 29 November. Hankey compiled a Cabinet paper on French unreliability, which Vansittart embellished with supporting evidence, as it became available. It was held in reserve lest ministers inclined towards backing an oil sanction. Adding to the gloomy picture was the revelation that the French could render no air support from Tunisia until April 1936, before which bombers with the necessary range would be

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lacking. Other potential League allies, such as Greece and Turkey, were similarly reticent in coming forward with tangible military assistance. Indeed, the British commanders in Egypt assumed they ‘would have to bear the brunt of Italy’s attack for some time’, an attitude abhorrent to the Chiefs of Staff since unilateral action increased the risk of losses.58 Two meetings orchestrated by the Chancellor, who was disturbed by the floundering Baldwin’s lack of clear leadership, ended with Hoare ‘inclined to hold up the embargo long enough to allow further conversations in Paris to test out the possibility of a general settlement’.59 The situation reached a climax on 2 December when a three-hour Cabinet considered an oil sanction. Baldwin set the tone when he warned his colleagues that in Mussolini they ‘were not dealing with a normal kind of intellect’. Naval and air ministers insisted their services were unready for conflict, which necessitated keeping ministers ignorant of the optimism prevailing in the Mediterranean theatre and harped on the losses expected from bearing the brunt of a League war. Duff Cooper again broke ranks, declaring the anti-aircraft position satisfactory after increased production; further delay would make no difference to the state of preparations. But his dissenting voice carried little weight, being that of a new minister not yet conversant with the intricacies of imperial defence, a flaw gleefully exposed by other ministers. Philip Cuncliffe-Lister, Secretary of State for Air, maintained that the only means to deflect Italian air attacks on Egypt was to bomb northern Italy which ‘depended on complete cooperation with France’. The view that fascist Italy’s vulnerable geostrategic position rendered remote the prospect of provoking mad dog action was shot down when secret information was produced showing that ‘the Italian threats of an active retaliation had been implemented by actual preparations’.60 Cabinet minutes are opaque on details. Allusion might have been made to the rumour that Mussolini had organised a ‘death or glory’ bomber force to assail British warships; to military activities in Libya such as the mounting of anti-aircraft defences in Tripoli; to the expectation that 150 Savoia Marchetti 81s would become available by the New Year. What is known is that Hankey impressed on Baldwin that Italy was ‘rapidly’ producing long-range bombers for deployment against the British fleet. British intelligence was also aware of Italian plans to sabotage Royal Air Force bases and aircraft in Egypt. Drummond’s alarmist reports from Rome, warning that Mussolini was near breaking point and ‘determined to perish gloriously . . . by attacking us’, may also have been deployed as supporting evidence to desist from provocative action.61 Much to the relief of the service chiefs, the cautious Cabinet elected to explore the chances for peace in Paris while also sounding out the French on staff talks. Time was now precious with Geneva due to consider an oil embargo on 12 December. Over the next three days Vansittart held intensive talks with Grandi over a territorial settlement. The day before the Paris summit, Eyres-Monsell had emphasised to the Defence Policy Requirements Committee that fresh sanctions must not outstrip the arrangements for

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military cooperation. At this, Chatfield stressed that Britain was the only League member that was militarily prepared. ‘That being the case’, he warned, ‘Italy was the more likely to take the bit between her teeth, and if she did so we should be left alone for a considerable time to take the brunt’. Hoare was accompanied across the Channel by junior service officers rather than the Chiefs of Staff, whose presence, it was felt, threatened to send out the wrong signals to Rome. The Foreign Secretary was officially bound for a much-needed Swiss vacation and his Paris stopover on the fateful weekend of 7–8 December was presented as routine. At the opening meeting at the Quai d’Orsay, early on the evening of 7 December, Laval was at pains to stress that Mussolini regarded an oil sanction as a ‘military measure’ and he was convinced he would reply ‘by some desperate resolution’. Hoare responded that an outbreak by Italy was not out of the question and it if were to occur it would infallibly be directed against the Mediterranean Fleet or against Egypt . . . the petrol sanction would undoubtedly increase the danger of a ‘mad dog’ act. He agreed with M. Laval that negotiations must be pressed on. At the ensuring talks Hoare elicited Laval’s promise of French support in the event of an Italian attack upon the British fleet. The Foreign Secretary left on Sunday evening, having secured a territorial arrangement, leaving others to explore the strategic position. As he left, Major-General Ronald Adam, General Staff Operations and Intelligence arrived in Paris, where Colonel Heywood, the military attaché, who was to act as interpreter, greeted him. Next day they went to see General Maurice Gamelin, who Adam recalled as ‘a small pleasant man with dyed hair, but not a convincing chief of staff’. The succeeding staff talks over the Monday and Tuesday confirmed the suspicion that French military intervention would prove well-nigh impossible to obtain in practice. Oblivious to the secret Franco-Italian military accords, British service delegates innocently requested their hosts to move troops to the Italian frontier to coincide with the strengthening of sanctions. Adam later recalled: When the row of wall maps at the French War Ministry was unfolded, they all finished at the Swiss frontier and none included Italy. It was clear that France was not considering a war against Italy and the conversations were really only concerned with general matters . . . The French Chief of Staff [Gamelin] and his deputy were very kind . . . but we never discussed matters of real importance such as the defence of Egypt.62 Gamelin even referred to his Italian counterpart, Marshal Badoglio, as a ‘friend’ and clearly did not relish a conflict. He was lukewarm about the prospect of deploying French reserves in Syria for the defence of Egypt. The British air delegate reached a similar conclusion upon discovering that

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Tunisia was unprepared for bombing operations against Tripoli and Sicily and that only skeleton air defences existed in southern France. The only tangible assistance offered was forewarning of any Italian bombers crossing the French border headed for London. Other measures amounted to mobilisation which Laval was unwilling to approve. Vansittart reported from Paris that ‘in the air the real danger lies . . . the cupboard is remarkably bare and I do not think with the best will in the world there is any really efficient action whatever that the French Air Force could take to relieve the pressure on us either at Alexandria or Malta’. The double-dealing Laval had produced a huge dossier ‘proving’ that Mussolini intended to attack British interests were oil sanctions imposed and warned that the French public would not support Britain unless a peace proposal was first dangled before Il Duce and rejected. Vansittart’s peace plan with Grandi was refined. Yet even its revised form (oddly seen as something of a triumph by Hoare’s negotiating team as Adam arrived) could not disguise its true purpose to sell out Abyssinia and convert it into a virtual Italian protectorate.63 The public furore that greeted the leakage of the Hoare–Laval Pact by a French journalist rocked the Baldwin government and led to Hoare being made a sacrificial scapegoat. In any event, Mussolini had no intention of being denied his conquest and would not be browbeaten to the negotiating table under the threat of an oil sanction. For British public opinion the Hoare–Laval proposals went much too far; for Mussolini they did not go anywhere near meeting his requirements.64 A few days before the emergency parliamentary debate of 19 December, the day following Hoare’s resignation, Baldwin secretly met Sir Austen Chamberlain and other leading League of Nations Union figures. He argued that the danger posed by a resurgent Germany did not warrant risking conflict with fascist Italy in the absence of effective support from other League members. At the same time, he gave an undertaking that sanctions would continue, offering his opinion that, in conjunction with fascist Italy’s recent setbacks in Abyssinia, they would considerably weaken Mussolini’s position by the next rains. Chamberlain, though considering the pact a mistake, was not unsympathetic. ‘Mussolini’, he conceded, ‘is a real danger and . . . he might very likely go on and commit suicide, even if it meant he had lit an enormous funeral pyre in the process’.65 In the absence of Churchill and Lloyd George, Chamberlain was Baldwin’s most formidable parliamentary opponent but he was won over by the Prime Minister’s cunning intimation that he would succeed Hoare. Rather than assailing a cornered government, therefore, in the debate, Chamberlain directed his fire at the new hesitant Labour leader, Clement Attlee, and succeeded in winning over Conservative backbenchers.66 Baldwin was conspicuously silent in Cabinet and equally reticent in Parliament, claiming sanctuary behind the veil of national security – ‘hidden truths’ – while hinting that defence deficiencies formed the backdrop to Hoare–Laval. In his resignation speech, Hoare claimed, incongruously, that if Britain acted alone (‘Not a ship, not a machine, not a man has been moved

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by any other member state’ he protested) the League would collapse. Simon recorded that Hoare’s colleagues were mystified by his contention that he had been ‘pressed on all sides’ to negotiate and attributed this ‘gaffe’ to his poor state of health. That pressure was in fact very real. Earlier, Hoare confessed to the Chancellor that he ‘had been warned off by so many people that he had been nervous’ of divulging his own thinking. Hankey and Vansittart, backed by the service chiefs and their ministers, secured Baldwin’s collusion to head off any possibility of an oil sanction. Four days after his resignation Hoare wrote revealingly to Baldwin. ‘I have succeeded in doing what you wanted me to do. I have kept the country out of war. This result is an immense relief to me and I care not what may be the personal consequences to me.’ Hoare’s readiness to play the role of stooge was eased by the promise of an early return to high office.67 Upon learning the details of Hoare–Laval, a horrified Eden saw Baldwin at the Foreign Office. Hoare’s successor could not believe that either Abyssinia or the League would endorse its terms, to which the Prime Minister responded laconically, ‘Well that lets us out doesn’t it?’68 Actually it did not for at the close of 1935 the Abyssinians launched a successful counteroffensive which momentarily fostered hopes that the Italian invasion had been brought to a standstill. The retired British military pundit, General ‘Boney’ Fuller, remitted a telegram from the field which described the Italian position as ‘Hopeless, helpless, paralytic’ – the ill-equipped native forces having even managed to capture some tanks. Fuller went so far as to predict that when the rain season came in March, the Italians would have to withdraw as their new roads could not stand supply traffic.69 The emergency, therefore, was far from over and the additional forces protecting Egypt were still required, more especially as the prospect of an oil embargo now resurfaced and with it the renewed possibility of Italian military retaliation.

4

Defending Egypt during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency Second phase, January–July 1936

On New Year’s Eve the British Consul at Alexandria, witness to the round-the-clock exercises at the port, wrote of the military position in optimistic terms: The stage is fully set for a return next month to consideration of the fateful oil sanction. Italy’s bête noire, Eden, is now in full command of Great Britain’s foreign policy and all Europe is looking to his lead. . . . The Renown, a super museum piece, is leaving her sister ship Hood at Gibraltar and due here herself in a day or two to join this really remarkable array of naval strength, which is in the pink of condition for killing and being killed, and backed by coast defences which have been perfected for months, flanked by wire and trench systems from the Mersa Matruh – Siwa line to the western gates of Alexandria – these held by I cannot say how many British and Egyptian troops, and protected overhead by squadron upon squadron of ’planes which the freighters have been ceaselessly unloading here, in addition to the complements of two colossal aircraft carriers of the Fleet Air Arm. All this is defensive awaiting attack.1 The collapse of Hoare–Laval meant that the possibility of military action by British forces in the Mediterranean remained more especially if the nettle of an oil embargo was finally grasped. Against a background of improving defences in Egypt, and under the pressure of public opinion, British support was extended towards a technical enquiry at Geneva into the impact of cutting off Italy’s League-derived oil supplies. On 23 January 1936 Britain published the satisfactory responses of France, Greece, Turkey and Yugoslavia respecting its interpretation of Article XVI of the League Covenant, prompting Italian protests and an unsigned article by Mussolini in Popolo d’Italia hinting at a reconfiguration of Italy’s Locarno obligations. The new French government was now willing to allow the Royal Navy to use their port facilities while the Turks would permit British warships, exposed to air and submarine attack, to take shelter in the Black Sea.2 Notwithstanding these developments, the Chiefs of Staff remained uncomfortable at the prospect of becoming embroiled in an unwanted conflict.

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The capacity to defend the Egyptian power base On 7 October 1935 the squadrons at Mersa Matruh were renamed Truforce and placed under the command of Group Captain McClaughty. The unit then comprised of five bomber, two fighter, a bomber transport and two army cooperation squadrons. Against it, Italian air forces in Libya were estimated by February 1936 to include three fighter and at least one Savoia Marchetti 81 bomber squadrons. The Italians were known to have done considerable work in organising Cyrenaica to facilitate aircraft movement. Comfort was derived from the fact that while further Savoia Marchetti 81 squadrons could be flown in from the mainland, their continued maintenance presented considerable difficulty. Royal Air Force Middle East calculated that a squadron of nine aircraft required 24 tons of bombs and fuel per sortie. It was therefore probable that Savoia Marchetti 81s would be located close to supply points, such as Benghazi and Tobruk. By early 1936 Truforce boasted longer-range Vincent and Valencia bombers, which could penetrate 625 and 400 miles respectively into Libya from the Egyptian frontier, affording greater scope to neuter the Italian air threat.3 A central tenet of Royal Air Force strategy was the rapid nullification of the Regia Aeronautica through attacking grounded aircraft. On the first day of operations light bombers would bombard general-purpose and seareconnaissance squadrons in the Bardia and Tobruk areas; fighters and bombers were to destroy fighter aircraft at El Adem; Vincents would focus on Savoia Marchetti 81s, after their positions were ascertained by aerial photography. These operations would continue into the following day with a view to neutralising opposition to the aero-naval force designated to attack Tobruk on the third day of hostilities. Since Savoia Marchetti 81s posed the greatest threat attacks on their bases would be continuous unless there was an invasion of Egypt. In spring 1936 three major exercises tested the feasibility of Truforce’s strategy. The first demonstrated the practicability of rearming and refuelling at advanced landing grounds when fighters and army units would protect bombers on the ground. Ten advanced landing grounds situated forward of Sidi Barrani provided a choice of interim stops, further reducing vulnerability to air attack. The second exercise involved supplying advanced landing grounds, for which purpose 55 Ford V8 trucks were employed, while the final exercise tested the whole strategy. Brooke-Popham, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, concluded that ‘McClaughry’s plans and organisation were very thorough and efficient and the general scheme worked very well’.4 The British Army’s role was primarily a defensive one revolving around holding Egyptian territory as far forward as possible to secure advanced landing grounds. There was never any intention of invading Abyssinia to expel the invaders who, once their supplies through Suez were severed, would be in no position to mount an invasion of Egypt via the inhospitable Sudan and with hostile tribesmen in their rear. Libya thus represented the most probable direction from which an incursion might materialise. To meet this

Map 4.1 The Western Desert Strategic Arena after source unknown

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threat, extensive defensive work was undertaken at Mersa Matruh and Sidi Barrani, including anti-tank emplacements, interconnecting trenches and gas-proofed dugouts.5 Gusting sandstorms were a constant hazard, often reducing outpost personnel to wearing gas masks, preventing tents, stores and aircraft from being swept away, and removing dust from aero-engines, whose average life between overhauls fell from 400 to 100 hours. Expedients such as covering air intakes and exhausts and erecting windbreaks were introduced to reduce the problem. A light tank division arrived without special air filters, leading the chief designer of Morris Motors to spend time in Egypt fitting new engines. 64 Fighter Squadron, newly formed at Heliopolis in March 1936, was stationed away from Mersa Matruh to maintain its efficiency. Tanks were also held back from extensive exercises until it became apparent that an oil sanction would not be applied.6 The failure to establish a mechanised force prior to the emergency reflected the army’s reduction to a ‘Cinderella service’ and consequent inability to develop armoured forces at home and overseas concurrently. The lack of a tangible external enemy until the mid-1930s saw India receive priority in tank allocation abroad, leading to only 36 light Mark IIIs being based in Egypt from 1933 with 6th (Light) Battalion, Royal Tank Corps. That year the local experimental establishment was closed on financial grounds and the rigours of the desert beyond the Delta training area had yet to be experienced. As a result, there was little real appreciation of what desert terrain entailed for tank wear and tear.7 The training areas employed – established at least 18 miles from the frontier lest fascist Italy misread British intentions – featured countless stones and hard sand hummocks. In theory Egypt’s wide frontages presented better training conditions than Salisbury Plain and Major-General Sir Percy Hobart, Inspector Royal Tank Corps, came out in the hope of ‘demonstrating the folly of handing over tanks and the control of mechanised forces to cavalry’.8 In practice, 1st Battalion had just 10 of 63 tanks still available with sufficient spares to maintain them after 500 miles’ training. Tanks built for European warfare performed indifferently: obsolete Mark IIs with inadequate single suspensions faring worst; Mark IIIs and IVs, assisted by double spring suspensions, proving reliable; the new Mark V, brought out for trial with similar suspension, was judged mechanically sound and tactically superior. No wonder servicemen referred sarcastically to ‘the immobile farce’.9 In the context of 1935–6 the question to be addressed is whether fascist Italy could have exploited the weakness of British armour. Hobart nurtured no doubts as to who would triumph if it came to war, contemptuously dismissing opposition tanks as ‘nothing but glorified Carden-Loyds’ lacking turrets and mounting thin vulnerable armour. Countering them simply required ‘ensuring our mediums are always manoeuvred at long-range where their three-pounders will hit but enemy return fire will be innocuous’. Italy’s

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most advanced tank, the CV35, fielded just two forward facing machine guns as armament which Abyssinian infantry had already demonstrated could be bent and immobilised by approaching undetected from behind and whose manifest weaknesses were soon exposed by Soviet medium tanks in Spain. Italian armour in Abyssinia also suffered its share of breakdowns, a situation compounded by a shortage of mechanics. The limited exercises orchestrated by Lieutenant-General Vyvyan Pope, a tank advocate assigned to command the Mobile Force, were successful and provided an antecedent of later tactics. Speed and armour were prioritised. Ironically, it was the cavalry regiments that mastered the desert best of all, operating their armoured cars supremely well. Pope’s staff officer recalled them as being ‘absolutely first class’ and they were to demonstrate their ability to skirmish in 1940. These units could well have proved sufficient to guard advanced landing grounds, which was, after all, the Mobile Force’s primary assignment, with only a limited infiltration into Libya under contemplation in the event of war.10

Too far and too fast The Hoare–Laval débâcle prompted the Chiefs of Staff to request a further combined appreciation from the commanders in Egypt. With its rocky terrain rendering trenches problematic, Weir had earlier described Sollum as a potential ‘Gallipoli beach’, leading to the deployment of a detachment of British infantry with motor transport to facilitate the evacuation of the standing Egyptian battalion should hostilities appear imminent. Now, in stark contrast to his earlier position, Weir proposed to base the Mobile Force at Sollum. He contemplated operating up to 40 miles inside Libya to push forward advanced landing grounds. A week after war commenced, the General Officer Commanding envisaged an attack upon Italian communications west of Tobruk, including the water pipeline believed to run west from Derna. The Chiefs of Staff took alarm at these proposals, lest they provoked Rome into conflict. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff even accused the men on the spot of ‘going too fast’ and too far. It took little persuasion for Montgomery-Massingberd to convince his colleagues to rule against the proposed Sollum deployment on political and military grounds.11 Weir was clearly thinking in terms of an imminent offensive to coincide with the imposition of an oil embargo. Like Fisher, he took issue with the Chiefs of Staff’s caution, pointing out that, due to their recent setbacks in Abyssinia, Italian dispositions were in a state of flux. The Assietta division was being transferred from Libya to Eritrea and would not be replaced until early March; the Trento mechanised division was held back at Benghazi having recently lost its commander, General Manzoni; native forces in Libya were in process of reorganisation. Weir ventured that the war potential of the Italian Army would be at low ebb for some six weeks, providing ample time to consolidate the position at Sollum. Intelligence sources supported the conclusion that there was currently no military activity near the frontier and

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the weakened Libya garrison would be unable to mount an offensive into Egypt. Italian troops on the Egyptian frontier were reported as anxious to avoid incidents and a War Office report noted that ‘it is now the feeling of everyone associated with intelligence work in the Western Desert that at the moment everything is quite “dead” in the Italian forward areas’.12 In fact at this time fascist Italy was preoccupied with pouring reinforcements into Eritrea in preparation for a massive onslaught intended to turn the tide in Abyssinia. Balbo had openly opposed Mussolini’s east African adventure, fearing it could threaten the fascist regime’s existence through provoking conflict with Britain and France. ‘We are sitting in a circle of fire’, he lamented to the German Consul at Naples in February, fearing the worst. As is now apparent, Balbo did not believe he had sufficient troops to invade Egypt successfully. Admiral Cavagnari was similarly downcast, seeing no real possibility of breaking the British stranglehold on Suez if it came to war. Moreover, unlike the British, the Italians had not engaged in inter-service discussions.13 Despite the favourable strategic scenario presented to him, MontgomeryMassingberd refused to alter his position. To him the key point was that it would not be Britain but Italy that would initiate hostilities and if it did so would be ready. This attitude presupposed the continuance of ineffective sanctions that Mussolini could countenance. When Dill was sent to Egypt to discuss the matter further, he concluded that victory over British forces was unattainable for fascist Italy. After inspecting defences in the Western Desert, he told Lampson that he did not believe the Italians could overcome them. The difficulties presented by desert warfare and the Italian inability to maintain forces effectively made it doubtful, in his view, whether they could advance beyond 70 miles of the Cyrenaican frontier. Dill counselled that it would be unwise to risk an initial reverse at Sollum, not least because the Italians could only hope for a spectacular early success before eventual defeat. Although Dill’s paper was ready for consideration by 26 February, the Chiefs of Staff did not review it until the end of March.14 Their dilatoriness reflected their continued reluctance to seriously consider an Italo-British conflict and the supervention of the Rhineland Crisis. The service chiefs’ timidity was again evidenced by their chairman’s strategy in presenting evidence before the Committee of Imperial Defence Sub-Committee on the Vulnerability of Capital Ships to Air Attack, appointed early in 1936.15 In 1925 Liddell Hart predicted that in wartime the Mediterranean would become a bombing and submarine alley necessitating its abandonment in favour of the Cape of Good Hope route to the Far East, India and the Middle East. The Italo-Abyssinian Emergency gave added poignancy to the long-running dispute between air and naval protagonists in the ‘bombs versus battleships’ controversy. A Liberal Member of Parliament accused the Royal Navy of being transfixed ‘at Alexandria, Haifa and Aden . . . completely at the mercy of the Italian Air Force . . . like sitting rabbits against hawks’.16 Apocalyptic articles favouring the air lobbyists regularly

Second phase, January–July 1936 71 featured in the daily press.17 In March 1936, following intensive anti-aircraft practice firings, which claimed six Queen Bee wireless-controlled target aircraft, Fisher wrote to assure Chatfield that a ‘big formation of Savoia Marchetti 81s, approaching to bomb the fleet, and keeping together, is now a pleasant dream, certainly not a nightmare’. Even Brooke-Popham was impressed by the exercises – it was a rare occasion when an air force officer praised his rival service’s anti-aircraft proficiency. Further reassuring news came after a high-ranking military officer visited Alexandria. On the ground it appeared to him that hostile bombers could not miss the fleet, but after flying over the port at 13,000 feet he drew the opposite conclusion, the area of water actually occupied by the assembled ships amounting to only 1.4 per cent. The First Sea Lord skilfully deployed this and other evidence gathered from the Mediterranean to defend successfully the credibility of capital ships, galvanising support for the new battleship programme. However, he remained reluctant to see his theories put to the test by the Regia Aeronautica: ‘we should lose some ships inevitably and so weaken our imperial defence position, until our navy has been rebuilt’.18 As with the state of British defences in Egypt, the quality of intelligence on Italian intentions and capabilities failed to move the Chiefs of Staff except where the data underpinned their risk aversion. At the start of the emergency Rome had stopped volunteering information about its armed forces, which prompted Fisher to ask sarcastically whether he should send officers to picnic on Sicily to spy on the Regia Aeronautica. An Air Ministry intelligence officer conceded in December 1935 that estimates of Italian first-line strength were little short of guesswork, reflecting the contradictory nature of sources. Indeed, Brooke-Popham regarded drawing up the Regia Aeronautica order of battle as futile since Libya could be reinforced within a day.19 Inter-service intelligence coordination in Egypt was non-existent before the emergency and it was several months before an effective intelligence operation was functioning. The Royal Air Force had hitherto relied on the army, which in turn largely depended on civilian organisations. Once begun, Royal Air Force intelligence gathering was distrusted by the other services. Italian wireless traffic in Libya was intercepted from Egypt but arguments arose over whether this should be interpreted on the spot and by which service.20 Reacting to British sensitivities on bombing, the Italians naturally played up their air strength. In February 1936 press photographs showed Mussolini proudly inspecting a line of Savoia Marchetti 81s. Balbo resorted to flying the same Savoia Marchetti 81 squadron, with ever-changing markings, around Libya, in an effort to confuse the British as to the true position. European and Arab travellers passing through Libya were utilised for eyewitness accounts of military activity. The Air Ministry later characterised their accounts as ‘sparse and lacking in essential details [which] may have been explained by the fact that the Italian military preparations were possibly not as great as at first suspected’. To improve the intelligence picture, from the start of 1936 oblique infrared air photography at a discreet distance was

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initiated. One result was to reveal that the plan for Tobruk’s defences, procured earlier, was now outdated.21 The intelligence picture was not entirely bleak and confused. From spring 1935 Italian naval movements through Suez were monitored, leading to monthly reports, based on data provided by Canal police and British warships at Suez and in the Red Sea. Again, Italian naval codes were broken with regularity. In 1935 the section dealing with Italian naval traffic was expanded and the Director of Naval Intelligence was kept fully apprised of the activities of the Regia Marina which, despite frequently changing its codes, conveniently remitted political leaders from the daily press, giving British code breakers a firm foundation on which to work. The locations of Italian submarines were known, as was the exact location and defences of forts in north and east Africa. But, in keeping with its position that this emergency was not critical, the Admiralty elected not to circulate such information lest its source was compromised. It even continued to distribute details garnered by less reliable sources even when it knew these to be false.22 In a genuine crisis situation, frontier incidents, real or alleged, might be expected to precipitate conflict. Until February 1936 nothing resembling a border clash had transpired on the Egyptian–Libyan border. ‘I went up to Sollum to look at the Dago sentries’, wrote The Times’ Egypt correspondent to Liddell Hart. ‘As soon as a car goes from our wire towards theirs, they run like hell.’ A reliable source reported that Italian patrols were under strict orders not to become involved in any confrontations when British or Egyptian patrols crossed the frontier. Should they decline to retire, the patrol would withdraw and report to higher authority. The inverse did not always apply. On 20 February Lampson reported that the Egyptian Camel Corps had arrested an Italian party, comprising a sergeant major, three soldiers and a civilian, at Melfa, four miles inside Egypt. The incident was kept out of the press. Interrogations brought forth the claim that the party was lost, a story given substance by the absence of incriminating photographs but contradicted by the party’s proximity to an airfield when discovered. General Headquarters opposed their return, since they now knew of the airfield and the defenceless state of Siwa. Initially the Foreign Office concurred until Balbo retaliated through the arrest of three Egyptian Frontiers Administration personnel plus Captain Alexander (11th Hussars) at a frontier post after being lured by professions of ‘friendship’ and offers of coffee. Thereupon the Italian Consul at Sollum intervened to secure their release. The Italian party remained interned until 12 March when the Egyptians, more fearful still of Italy because of its use of poison gas, pressed for their release and the War Office then consented. A contemporary British officer recalled: ‘Our instructions were clearly to observe and report and not to take action which would aggravate the political situation.’ In April the Egyptian government similarly instructed its camel corps and armoured car patrols: ‘care is required when on patrol duties so as not to offend our neighbours. In no cases should you

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stop opposite an Italian post which causes annoyance.’ There were no more incidents.23

An oil embargo: so near yet so far The service chiefs’ seething anger against what they considered the dangerous concentration of forces in the Mediterranean boiled over in Cabinet on 17 February. Lord Swinton, secretary of state for air, complained that the allimportant Royal Air Force expansion scheme demanded that home squadrons earmarked for southern France or Tunisia should be stood down and non-essential personnel in the Middle East removed. The imminent rains in east Africa and the rising heat in north Africa rendered Italian military operations against Egypt improbable. At the same Cabinet, Eyres-Monsell, who privately castigated his government’s ‘terrible muddle in foreign policy’, seized the opportunity to deprecate the interruption occasioned to the naval modernisation programme, which seemed all the more urgent following Japan’s withdrawal from the second London naval conference. The First Lord was frustrated by Eden, who reminded his colleagues that Geneva’s consideration of an oil embargo rendered the situation uncertain, while there was also ‘the danger that Italy might succeed in her aims’.24 The ascendancy of the League’s ‘golden boy’, combined with the fact that the angry outcry against Hoare–Laval remained heavily on ministers’ minds, prevented any withdrawal of forces from the Mediterranean at this stage. Eden had enamoured himself with League supporters through a series of speeches reiterating British support for the League against Italian aggression. Professor Gilbert Murray, the League of Nations Union chairman, was persuaded not to pressure the new foreign secretary with public demonstrations, delegations or embarrassing revelations, such as news from the League of Nations Union group at Port Said that petroleum was being carried to Abyssinia in British ships.25 News that Italy had bombed Red Cross units and was liberally spraying mustard gas from the air in Abyssinia only intensified public expectations that firm action would now be taken. Indeed, Rome’s belated publication of the Maffey Report, on 20 February, many months after a copy was purloined, can only be seen as a desperate measure. Grandi had requested a copy to feed the criticisms of anti-sanctions Conservatives and considered its publication on the eve of the Commons debate on an oil sanction, tabled by Labour, to be ‘timely’.26 By mid-February, Eden’s honeymoon with League stalwarts was over. Like his predecessor, he was swept up in the swirling opposition in government circles to war with fascist Italy, giving rise to mounting criticism. His recent speeches were considered vague, brimfull of platitudes but devoid of firmness. On 21 February a League of Nations Union deputation visited Downing Street to demand that the government support an oil sanction and consider further extreme measures, such as closing League ports to Italian commercial vessels. Two days later the main opposition parties censured

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the government over its lukewarm attitude in the parliamentary debate. Grandi reported to Rome that a leading article in The Times against an oil sanction ‘was inspired by Eden and the Foreign Office’. Eden had reassured Grandi privately that his speech in the debate on oil would be objective and allude to the report of the Committee of Five as a possible means to conciliation. He was as good as his word. The Italian Ambassador, observing from the galleries, reported to Rome in reassuring terms: Eden resisted the onslaught of the enemy in the House by refusing to make any undertaking as to what England’s attitude would be and above all by endeavouring to undramatise the situation. He made the first attempt to bring the question of Abyssinia and sanctions [into perspective] . . . by drawing attention rather to the dangers of German rearmament and the problems of British national defence.27 Flying in the face of the evidence, Eden insisted that the cumulative effect of existing sanctions would bring the cessation of hostilities. Incredulously he characterised an oil embargo as no different from existing measures and claimed that over the past year the League ‘had grown in authority and prestige . . .’. It was a limp and unconvincing performance which failed to stem the chorus of criticism.28 When the Cabinet convened two days later, public opinion was uppermost in the discussion. Baldwin now favoured an oil sanction, not least because the support of the pro-League labour movement was vital to rearmament. The current risk of ‘mad dog’ attacks was judged ‘negligible’ while Duff Cooper reported reassuringly that the military position in Egypt ‘was now much more satisfactory’. Not all ministers were persuaded, however, and the predictable outcome was compromise: Eden could endorse an oil sanction at Geneva but must refrain from taking the lead.29 Faced with a hint of British resolution the French once again resorted to stalling tactics, insisting that the League must first explore a negotiated settlement. A secret meeting with Pierre-Etienne Flandin, his French counterpart following Laval’s fall from office, persuaded Eden to defer the issue for a final decision by his Cabinet. Paris insisted that to implement the punishment would result in fascist Italy leaving the League – though it was hardly observing membership rules – and in Hitler taking advantage by remilitarising the Rhineland. Behind the scenes, Mussolini threatened to abandon Geneva and the Stresa Front, scare tactics that were combined with a sweetener: ‘Everything is possible if new sanctions are not applied.’30 The League’s Committee of Eighteen was not due to reconvene until 10 March. Three days earlier German troops marched triumphantly into the Rhineland, Hitler having received intimations from Mussolini that he would not participate in any punitive measures brought by the other Locarno guarantors, Britain, France and Belgium. The Rhineland Crisis lent credence to the service chiefs’ case that Britain was perilously exposed to a German

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attack. In fact the government contemplated no military riposte to remilitarisation – French efforts in this direction were rebuffed – and had been actively considering the Rhineland’s return as part of a general settlement.31 Nevertheless, the Chiefs of Staff, without instructions, directed the Joint Planning Committee to report on immediate prospects in a conflict with Nazi Germany. This led them to stress that current dispositions rendered Britain incapable of dispatching a field force to the Continent, of defending itself against air attack, or engaging German pocket battleships. The inference was clear: ‘if there is the smallest danger of being drawn into commitments which might lead to war with Germany, we ought at once to disengage ourselves from our present responsibilities in the Mediterranean, which have practically exhausted our meagre forces’. Even were such a withdrawal approved, while the Royal Navy could redeploy within ten days, it would take the Army two months and the Royal Air Force up to four months to remove their reinforcements and make them operational again. In Cabinet, service ministers took up the clarion call for an end to the emergency. Swinton remonstrated: ‘with so many aircraft and airmen in Egypt the air position at home was deplorable’. For the Army, Duff Cooper suggested the proposed international police force for the Rhineland ‘would render the position worse than ever’. The Rhineland Crisis also wrong-footed the League of Nations Union with a leading light lecturing its meeting on 12 March in similar vein to the Chiefs of Staff and their ministers: ‘Austen [Chamberlain] would bring the Fleet back from the Mediterranean. The peril is now in Europe.’32 By mid-April it was apparent that even if an oil sanction were soon adopted, it could not alter the outcome of the Italo-Abyssinian conflict. In any event, Rome’s judicial participation in Locarno conversations (though not staff talks in protest at the continuance of sanctions) rekindled hopes that the Stresa Front might be reconstituted. The conundrum was encapsulated in the Chief of Air Staff ’s missive to Brooke-Popham: I do not see how there can be, in reality, sanctions against Italy at the same time as we are actively cooperating with them [sic] on the Franco-German frontier. . . . You can take it that there is no chance of a war with Italy at the present time. However, if the German affair is settled in the next few months, and the Italians and Abyssinians continue to fight, the situation, which has obtained during recent months might again exist in the autumn, when campaigning . . . becomes possible again in north-east Africa.33 The premises of this assessment – that Abyssinia would hold out indefinitely, making Italy conclude that victory was not worth the candle – soon proved unsound. The Italian offensive, initiated on 11 February, was driving the Abyssinians back in headlong retreat after they rashly abandoned guerrilla tactics. Bombing unprotected villages and the liberal spraying of mustard gas from the air continued apace as Mussolini went all out for a victory he could

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sell at home and abroad. Moreover, the assumption that the seasonal rains would soon stall the Italian advance was belatedly realised to be false – heavier rains not falling until June.34

The Suez Canal closure issue Italy’s share of net tonnage passing through Suez would reach 20.2 per cent of total traffic in 1936, its highest ever share, a position entirely attributable to sustaining its massive military campaign in Abyssinia. The prospect of Canal closure led Mussolini to threaten war on more than one occasion. As early as June 1935 Vansittart had instructed the Foreign Office’s legal adviser to investigate the Suez dimension of possible retributive measures against Italy. He was informed that closure could only be justified as part of general League measures and even then might prove ineffective should Italy route her supplies via neutral vessels. Significantly, Vansittart considered the memorandum to be of purely academic interest, decreeing that such action was ‘inconceivable’ as it would have the wider effect of driving Rome towards Nazi embraces.35 In fact, although Article I of the 1888 convention specifically forbade closure, it did not preclude naval action beyond the three-mile territorial waters limit and Britain and France had set a precedent in the Great War by denying Canal access to enemy vessels. Indeed, this was the view taken by the President of the Suez Canal Company, the Marquis De Vogue, when the Italian Ambassador in Paris approached him on the subject.36 Rex Leeper, head of the Foreign Office News Department, made a point of briefing the League of Nations Union on government policy towards closure. On 13 September 1935 Professor Murray raised the question whether and at what stage an attempt would be made to prevent further troops or supplies going through the Suez Canal. He [Leeper] said he realised that this was the obvious step which public opinion expected; but it would certainly precipitate war, and the government were doubtful whether we were strong enough in the eastern Mediterranean to plunge into hostilities until we had very active French support. Moreover we were solely responsible for the defence of Egypt. He said it was more than probable that war would come; but that it would be better that it should come by the violent resistance of Italy to sanctions, than by the League powers in any way taking the initiative.37 Such briefings did not deter the League of Nations Union from clamouring for decisive action. On 10 October its executive committee issued a statement pledging support for any measures to end the war. ‘We believe’, it asserted, ‘that the great mass of the people of this country would support full use of the collective authority of the League to cut all communications between Italy and the African colonies’. The Labour Party was similarly gung-ho about the closure of Suez to Italian vessels and, lest it won the 1935 British

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general election, Mussolini had ordered De Bono to capture as much Abyssinian territory as possible before the event.38 Safeguarding Suez was a vital ingredient of contingency war plans. Yet, the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office were acutely sensitive to the fact that Canal defence preparations might be misconstrued in Rome. Although Chatfield’s notion of controlling boomships at either entrance was incorporated into the Suez Canal Defence Plan (see chapter 11), Admiral Fisher was debarred from making any signals referring to their use. Were Italy to become aware of this plan, it would be impossible to convince her that these ships were not intended to close the Canal against her shipping whereas they are in fact intended as a means of controlling shipping, with the primary aim of resuming traffic as soon as possible.39 Since the Italians were in fact reading British naval signals, this was a wise precaution. The Suez defence scheme, designed primarily to meet a Far Eastern crisis, had to be adapted to the present situation. Vansittart suggested that emphasis should be placed on the desire to prevent blocking and Lampson was firmly instructed not to discuss British intentions with the leak-prone Egyptians. Again, the Admiralty was sensitive to the War Office’s suggestion to create the post of ‘Fortress Commander, Suez’, as this would only invite Italo-Egyptian charges that Britain was about to fortify the Canal in contravention of the 1888 convention.40 The Naval Plans Division considered that Italian ‘mad dog’ activity might include an attempt to block Suez and ‘to be effective our counter measures must include the placing of boomships, sentry booms and the detention for very close examination of all Italian vessels approaching the Canal’.41 The dilemma was that such action seemed likely to provoke the very scenario it was intended to prevent. Whilst moderate portions of the Suez defence scheme were implemented, therefore, more drastic precautions were held in abeyance, to be effected only if hostilities became certain. Garrisons for terminal ports, armed guards for merchant ships and transport remained in Cairo; guns and port batteries were stored at Alexandria. Four boomships were requisitioned but not deployed; two squadrons were earmarked to prevent air attacks to sink shipping and two destroyers held at Alexandria, ready to move to the Canal (one at either end) if required.42 In January 1935 Colonel Venditti, an officer of the Chemical Warfare Arm of the Regia Aeronautica, was sent to Eritrea to report on the employment of poison gas against Abyssinia. He concluded that climatic, terrain and aridity factors only rendered it possible to successfully employ certain types of gas which, because of the air currents, needed to be deployed in greater quantities than in a European theatre to achieve the same effect. Thus use was confined to hyper-chlorine, arsenic and ypriti (mustard gas). It was recognised that the Abyssinians had no defence against such weapons and, after establishing an

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infrastructure, Venditti placed orders in August 1935. Some modifications were made by higher authority but by early September some 300 tons of hyper-chlorine had arrived at Massawa, transported through Suez in the banana boat Cecchi, which could refrigerate the liquid gas. De Bono elected not to use chemical weapons, a decision that was initially continued by his successor from November, Marshal Pietro Badoglio. In the meantime substantial quantities continued to be sent from Italy through Suez to offload at Massawa. When the campaign became bogged down Mussolini, on 28 December 1935, personally authorised Badoglio (northern front) and Marshal Rodolfo Graziani (southern front) to employ chemical weapons on a vast scale to ensure rapid victory. In fact Badoglio had already commenced employment (on 20 December) to slow enemy advances. Although the army fired some gas in artillery shells, it was nervous about deployment close to its front lines and the principal purveyor of mustard gas warfare was the air force. After experimenting with gas bombs, it was found that the most effective transmission of the colourless oily liquid was through sprayers attached to aircraft, which proceeded to drench troops, civilians and livestock indiscriminantly from above. Gas bombs still continued to be employed with 972 dropped over the period from 23 December 1935 to 29 March 1936. Early in January, wary of the next round of Geneva meetings, Mussolini ordered the suspension of operations. Following representations from Badoglio, who was anxious to resume the use of gas, on 19 January Mussolini authorised him to use all the means at his disposal to prosecute the war.43 The Italians were anxious to hide their use of terror weapons from the world and Badoglio did not even allow domestic correspondents into the affected war zones. The secret could not remain hidden for long. On 7 January 1936 Captain Taylor, assistant military attaché at Addis Ababa, reported a wounded man at Bulale who received liquid on his face from a nearby bomb and was badly blistered and suffering from ulcers. ‘After a bomb has burst’, the report read, ‘a strong smell of garlic is given off. The liquid blackens the ground and vegetation is corroded’. More telling evidence emerged when a bomb, dropped near Dagahbur on 30 December 1935, failed to detonate fully. Upon examination it was found to contain two pints of liquid which were subsequently examined by the Chemical Defence Research Department and identified as BB: dichlorodithyl sulphite, the vesicant ingredient of mustard gas.44 On 17 March 1936 Abyssinia made an official protest to Geneva. Sir Sidney Barton, the British Minister in Addis Ababa, conveyed the Negus’s protest, adding: ‘I know for a fact, that suffering is appalling’. At the end of the month, Lord Cecil raised the issue in the House of Lords, asking whether the government was aware of a telegram from the daughter of the Negus in Abyssinia, which he quoted: For seven days without break enemy have been bombing armies and people of my country including women and children with terrible gases. Our soldiers are brave men and we know that they must take consequences

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of war. Against this cruel gas we have no protection, no gas masks – nothing. This suffering and torture is beyond description, hundreds of countrymen moaning and screaming with pain. Many of them are unrecognisable since the skin has been burned off their faces. What, he demanded impertinently, would the government do after yet another breach of a treaty obligation by Italy?45 Although the Chiefs of Staff considered that Italy’s clear infringement of the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol could not pass without some rebuke, there was an unwritten assumption that as this had happened in the remote Horn of Africa against a backward people, it was not terribly serious. Rome responded with a counter campaign, highlighting Abyssinian atrocities, which extended to Mussolini sending graphic photographic evidence with a personal letter to Eden. Il Duce referred to ‘the horrible mutilations and tortures inflicted by the Abyssinians to the Italians, soldiers and workers, who have had the terrible misfortune of falling into their hands’. While not admitting to breaching the gas protocol, Rome argued, with some effect, that it reserved the right to retaliate against atrocities.46 A meeting of ministers on 30 March, the morning before Cecil delivered his rebuke in the afternoon debate, preferred to leave the Committee of Thirteen to handle the issue. It had asked for Italian comments on the allegations. Eden went furthest when he suggested that if there was no response soon ‘we ought to stir them up’. Eyres-Monsell would have none of it and ‘reminded his colleagues that we could not stir up trouble everywhere at once. If Italy was to be antagonised we should be powerless in northern Europe’. On 6 April the Cabinet learned that the evidence for Italy’s use of poison gas – whatever her denials – was overwhelming. But there was no stomach for a confrontation with Italy and the main issue was how to ameliorate public opinion. The answer was for Eden to propose an impartial enquiry at Geneva.47 An investigation into the conveyance of asphyxiating material through Suez found the Canal Company making a variety of excuses. Neither the Canal convention nor the Geneva Gas Protocol allowed for the stopping of poison gas shipments. M. Bonnet, the Director General, expressed incredulity at Eden’s statement in the press that 200 tons of poison gas had passed through Suez. Pleading ignorance of the quantities and types of gas conveyed, he stated that Italian vessels were only required to declare ‘the weight of “munitions” without specifying their nature’. This was at odds with Abyssinian claims which identified the ships involved and the dates they made passage. According to the Abyssinian figures, between 25 June and 25 December 1935, 265 tons of asphyxiating gas, 45 tons of mustard gas and 7,483 gas bombs passed through Suez. Following these were 4,700 asphyxiating and tear gas bombs on 4 January 1936, it was claimed, carried on the SS Sicilia.48 At the meeting of the Committee of Thirteen at Geneva on 9 April, Eden revealed that ‘Italy had declared considerable quantities of poison gas on passage through the Suez Canal’. Two days earlier a distraught Barton had cabled that

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Second phase, January–July 1936 The most urgent and tangible help would consist in elimination of gas from Italian armoury . . .. The whole atmosphere here is poisoned both literally and metaphorically by this worst example of Italian frightfulness and an official statement of British view would do something to reduce prevailing bitterness.49

Where the Baldwin government tinkered with an oil embargo, it never seriously considered denying Suez to Italian ships, whatever their cargo, as it seemed certain to precipitate war. On 6 April Eden informed the Cabinet that ‘the only effective action at the present stage would be the closing of the Suez Canal’, but neither he nor any minister supported such a measure. Now that an Italian triumph over Abyssinia was in sight, a group within the Foreign Office proposed tabling closure at Geneva, not with serious intent but with a view to foisting the blame for failure on France after its inevitable opposition. Vansittart effectively quashed the idea on 25 April.50 Ministers were periodically harangued in the House of Commons over the number of Italian troops that had been transported through Suez. After answering such a question on 19 February 1936, Eden remained silent when faced with the follow up: ‘Can the Right Honourable Gentleman say how much longer this traffic through the Suez Canal is going to be tolerated?’ Once it became known that Italy was ruthlessly and indiscriminately employing mustard gas in breach of its international obligations, the cries for closure gained a new head of steam. During 27 April, Frederick Cocks (Labour, Broxtowe) asked Eden when the League would take steps to stop the passage of poison gas through the Canal, while Captain Sir William Brass (Conservative, Clitheroe) demanded to know whether the asphyxiant was enclosed in bombs or cylinders. The befuddled Foreign Secretary refused to make a statement before the next League Council meeting, set for 11 May, and confessed his ignorance on the latter point. Two days later Geoffrey Mander (Liberal, Wolverhampton East) questioned Eden as to whether the government proposed to send gas masks and medical supplies for gas wounds to Abyssinia. He also demanded action ‘to prevent the passage of poison gas through the Suez Canal to be used, in breach of treaty obligations, against the population, civil and military, of Abyssinia, by the Italian forces’. On the defensive, Eden could only refer to his previous answers. Outside parliament the League of Nations Union received a more forthright answer to its enquiry as to what steps were being taken to stop poison gas shipments. Cranborne responded that the 1888 convention did not cover this issue and there was no international agreement on poison gas ‘which deals with its transportation either through the Canal or anywhere else’.51 League sympathisers continued to press for Canal closure with Churchill now joining in the clamour. The government was keen to dampen down any expectations and it began signalling that it regarded the Abyssinian cause as beyond redemption. On 4 May Baldwin and Eden impressed on a League of Nations Union delegation that the Geneva system must be reassessed in the

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light of the present failure. A restless and highly critical House of Commons put Eden on the defensive two days later in a tense debate. Hugh Dalton opened for the Opposition with a devastating indictment of the government’s dilly-dallying policy. ‘It was gas that finally destroyed the Abyssinian resistance’, he declared, demanding action to punish Italy for its breach of the Geneva Protocol. An exasperated Eden responded: There was only one sanction that could be immediately effective and that sanction was to deny to Italy the use of the Suez Canal. That sanction must have inevitably entailed military action; there is no doubt of it. That military action must, in my judgement, have led to war . . .. We imposed sanctions that could not be immediately effective, and we knew it; but if the war had lasted a year they would certainly have played their part in the final settlement. If Honourable Gentlemen wish to take military action I must warn them that you cannot close the Canal with paper boats. Such an insult to the Royal Navy’s capabilities, unthinkable in earlier times, was quite in keeping with the Baldwin government’s insistence that it could not and would not act unilaterally. Eden maintained that the Canal could only be closed by collective League action, blithely contending that there was no prospect of a unanimous League resolution for closure while refusing to table such a motion.52 The prospect of closure, either by Britain alone or at the behest of the League, alarmed Chatfield, who conveyed his anxieties to Eden via Hankey: Now it is to our basic Imperial interests that the Canal should always remain open and free and one of our main planks of Imperial strategy rests on our intention to keep the Canal open by force rather than to allow any Power, for its own purpose, whatever it may be, to close it. This principle is unaffected by the fact that we might consider it necessary to close the Canal in emergency and take prior right for our war vessels to use it for a period, as although we do this we keep the Canal open. Concerned above all that closure now ‘might weaken our international position on seizing the Canal’, Chatfield beseeched ‘that this country stands rather for preserving an open Canal rather than that any other Power, or even the League, should ever be able to close it for any military purpose’. He further emphasised that if an Anglo-Italian war broke out, the intention was not to close Suez but prevent enemy ships from using it by confronting them outside the Canal’s territorial waters. ‘If I remember aright’, Eden responded defensively, ‘I did not say “close the Canal” in my speech in the House but deny to Italy the use of the Canal’.53

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The end of the emergency Eden’s memory failed him on this occasion but it made no difference. Although he came to believe that Mussolini could and should have been stopped in his empire-building by decisive British military action, at the time of Abyssinia’s impending collapse he did not pursue such a line. Often portrayed as being usurped by the Chancellor’s ‘midsummer of madness’ speech in June deprecating persisting with sanctions for a lost cause, in actuality Eden became resigned to failure much earlier. D. R. Thorpe, his most recent official biographer, reveals that on his appointment he adopted a policy of ‘pause and take stock’ rather than pressing for an embargo on oil as he had done before. ‘Although Eden returned to the question in Cabinet on 26 February’, Thorpe admonishes his subject, ‘the pause entailed a loss of momentum in the months before Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in March’. On 5 April, he discussed sympathetically the Air Ministry’s desire to withdraw squadrons from Egypt and later that month, at Geneva, informed Baron Aloisi, chef de cabinet at the Italian Foreign Ministry, that he no longer believed in sanctions. An important consideration influencing his attitude was the fear that Hitler would take advantage of a Mediterranean conflict to march into Austria.54 The service chiefs found Eden’s attitude very accommodating. When Rome – fearing last-minute British military intervention to save Abyssinia – moved substantial forces to Libya early in April, there was hardly a ripple in Whitehall. As the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff minuted: Some months ago there appeared to be a chance that Italy, incensed by our attitude and misunderstanding our motives, and disappointed with the course of the campaign in Abyssinia, might risk all in an attack on our fleet and the consequent conflagration in Europe. But today, with Addis Ababa in sight, with French policy openly favourable, with Hitler’s adventitious entry into the Rhineland, there does not seem to be one single reason why Italy should turn from her successful campaign in order to commit some act which would bring the forces of Europe against her.55 Annoyed that the Cabinet authorised some air force but not naval personnel to be withdrawn from the Mediterranean, Chatfield unofficially began to bring some ships home. Justification appeared when, following the Abyssinian emperor’s flight, Italian forces entered his capital on 5 May. Although the whole country was far from subdued, the British did not quibble with Mussolini’s proclamation of victory the same day – ‘Ethiopia is Italian’ – to a jubilant crowd before the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.56 Mussolini granted an interview to Ward-Price of the Daily Mail to emphasise that he sought no quarrel with the British Empire, harboured ‘not the least or remotest hankering after Egypt’ and cherished ‘no political

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interest at all in the Sudan and none in Palestine’. The hollowness of these assurances would become apparent but in summer 1936 Baldwin’s government was in no mood to continue to support, however inadequately, the Abyssinian guerrilla resistance which lay beyond Addis Ababa. As Simon candidly informed Parliament in a raucous debate on the situation: ‘I would not have a single British ship sunk to save Abyssinia.’57 Britain’s solitary gesture was to refuse to accord de jure recognition of the Italian conquest. As a first step towards normalising Anglo-Italian relations, the Cabinet backed the lifting of sanctions. For once, Britain was not loath to take the lead at Geneva, engineering their official termination on 3 July. Eden found no sympathy for guaranteeing Greek and Turkish independence to reassure these small powers against Italian retribution for joining the sanctions front. The Chiefs of Staff considered that such a step could only annoy Rome, thereby upsetting the Defence Requirements Committee’s aim of ‘a tranquil Mediterranean without commitments’. What the service chiefs wanted above all was ‘to return to a state of normal distribution which will permit us to be more ready to defend our interests at Home and in the Far East’.58 The fleet began dispersing from Alexandria in mid-July – though some units were soon stationed off Spain following the outbreak of civil war there. Royal Air Force squadrons commenced withdrawl from Egypt in August with all reinforcing aircraft redeployed by the end of 1936. Egypt’s internal situation and events in Palestine delayed the pull out of several army units, but most land reinforcements were back in Britain by October. Anti-aircraft, coastal and other defences in the Western Desert were dismantled; base defence organisations demolished and their personnel returned home by September. By the end of October, Matruh’s defences were dismantled, their details deposited with Headquarters British Troops in Egypt lest a future emergency arose. At a private dinner on 11 June, Baldwin provided a frank defence of his government’s stance in the recent emergency. War, he said, was the easy option: it would have been popular and ultimate victory was certain. The cost in capital ships and aircraft, however, would have weakened defence capabilities over the next two critical years for no advantage since fascist Italy was a prospective ally against Nazi Germany. The Prime Minister was reflecting the view of the more powerful echelons of his government, which greeted Italian victory over Abyssinia with undisguised relief. Not the least of the relieved was Neville Chamberlain, the leader-in-waiting, who considered that the recent crisis demonstrated the futility of collective security and stood ready to believe Mussolini’s pledges about his future conduct.59 But there was an alternative perspective on events: the ‘on the spot’ assessment of the commanders in Egypt which contrasted sharply with the pusillanimity of the service chiefs. Some inkling of it emerged when Admiral Fisher and his wife, just returned from the Mediterranean, dined with the Conservative backbencher Leo Amery, along with two other admirals, including Chatfield. Their host recorded the debate that ensued over dinner.

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Second phase, January–July 1936 Fisher was very strong on the view that the Navy would have made short work, not only of the Italian surface fleet, but of their submarines and aircraft as well, and is rather sorry that the issue was not pushed to the point of war last autumn, being very much unimpressed by some of the big talk in Italy during the last few years. Chatfield was more of my view, that if we had left Italy alone she would have moderated her ambitions in face of the practical difficulties of colonial conquest and organisation, and would have been more dependent on us. He rightly laid stress on the impossibility of having any naval strategy under a system of collective security, which means you may have a different enemy at any moment.60

Soon afterwards The Times’ editor, Geoffrey Dawson, gained an insight into the fighting spirit of the Mediterranean Fleet – scurrilously portrayed by the government as outdated and unprepared – when he too encountered its recently retired commander-in-chief. Dawson found Fisher ‘very insistent that the Italians would have had short shrift in the Mediterranean’. This would have been music to Hoare’s ears. He believed that ‘if only the government had stuck to their guns it would have been alright, but he evidently had the poorest opinion of them individually and collectively’.61 The failure to either prevent fascist Italy from subduing Abyssinia or to adopt a position of indifference produced a halfway-house policy that led nowhere. As Robert Mallett has demonstrated, British military posturing in the Mediterranean served only to convince the Italian High Command that it must prepare for a future conflict against Britain. Mussolini, wallowing in victory, contemplated further imperial triumphs at the expense of Britain and France when the moment was right.62 The Mediterranean crisis, therefore, did not end in 1936 with the close of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency, which, in so many ways, marked only its beginning. An important ramification of Britain’s failure to coerce fascist Italy was a dramatic loss of standing throughout the Middle East. ‘The lack of any definite British foreign policy except that of invoking the obviously unworkable ideal of collective security’, Ward-Price reported, ‘has damaged British prestige. Britain is thought throughout the Middle East to be “on the run” ’. The loss of respect was accentuated by the hesitant response to the revolt in Palestine, which had erupted in April.63 British officials in Egypt felt this keenly. On 7 May, Lampson advised Eden of the repercussions: ‘belief that England has suffered reverse and fear of the power of Italy’. In summer 1935, with the Mediterranean Fleet’s dramatic arrival at Alexandria, the jubilant Egyptians believed that Britain ‘would fight and win’. Thereafter the Egyptian mood degenerated into one of physical fear coupled with the growing suspicion that in the event of an Italian attack [Britain] would be unable to guarantee adequate protection, and that resistance would be hopeless, a view particularly

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fostered in a naturally unwarlike people by the recent use of gas which has greatly affected the Egyptian imagination. The fellaheen were ‘unshakeably convinced’ that Britain, aware of the consequences of an Italian conquest of Abyssinia, ‘galvanised the League into reluctant action and . . . only stopped short of war from fear of defeat’. The ramification of Italian victory ‘is the direct question . . . of our physical capability to defend Egypt and the Sudan against invasion from a consolidated Italian Abyssinia with Libya on the other flank’. Campbell considered Lampson’s dispatch was ‘a melancholy confirmation of the prognostications of the [Egyptian] Department a year or more ago’. ‘Our timetable is all wrong unfortunately’, bemoaned Vansittart. ‘We cannot think only of the Near East: we have to think of the Near East and Europe . . .. It is no use, but on the contrary highly dangerous, to think of heroic measures . . . till we have got the necessary material weight behind them.’ He took the sanguine view that Britain’s prestige would rebound once rearmament stiffened its diplomacy.64 In his final report Admiral Fisher suppressed his frustration and put the best gloss on the outcome of the crisis: ‘. . . the fleet was completely ready and [I] hope that this fact was . . . a contribution to peace’. The Baldwin government saw Mussolini’s failure to attack British interests in the eastern Mediterranean as a victory of a kind. The assumption was made that normal relations could be resumed with fascist Italy, enabling the service chiefs to focus once more on planning and preparations against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Immense risks were now being taken with Egypt’s security but for the moment, in view of Mussolini’s reassuring noises, these appeared justified. On 11 August, Ghigi, the Italian Minister in Cairo, called on Lampson to express relief that hostilities had been avoided and to disclose that Italian reinforcements to Libya had been withdrawn and Balbo was on summer leave. In short, the emergency was ‘over’.65

5

The making of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance The military aspects

If there was one bright spot to emerge from the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency it came in the consummation, after two failed attempts, of a treaty with Egypt, which provided the British military base with a legal basis. ‘The difference between this and previous discussions’, the secretary of the British treaty delegation observed, ‘was that now both sides really wanted a treaty’.1 There was, finally, reconciliation – albeit temporary – between the demands of Egyptian nationalism and British imperial security. This outcome was not easily achieved and the draft military clauses – the essence of the agreement for Britain – consumed the greater part of negotiations.

The background to negotiations The reserved points of 1922 were meant to be a temporary arrangement before a politico-military treaty formalised the Anglo-Egyptian relationship. That no treaty materialised despite successive efforts was due to two obstacles: first, extreme Egyptian nationalism, as personified by the Wafd; second, the obdurate refusal of the Chiefs of Staff to countenance radical military concessions, such as transferring the control of Suez, or to concede the possibility of an eventual end to Britain’s military presence. Even the first Labour government took its cue from the defence chiefs when it rejected out of hand Zaghlul’s demand that British forces be removed to Palestine, trusting Egypt to safeguard imperial communications. Ramsay Macdonald, the Prime Minister, informed Zaghlul in no uncertain terms ‘that the whole of the British imperial strategy turned upon the safety of the Suez Canal and the British government must be in a position to protect it’. The result was deadlock. The implicit treatment of the Egyptian armed forces as an enemy within to be coerced and constrained from assuming a threatening capability towards the military base compounded the situation. The native army was starved of modern armaments and ammunition and directed by British officers who monopolised all ranks from major upwards. At first the Air Staff resisted an Egyptian air force, only giving way on condition that aircraft were British manufactured; their role restricted to general purpose, no bombers being allowed. Again, British instructors alone might train native pilots while

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aircraft machine guns were tolerated only after a report showed they could not be discharged on the ground given their dependence on slipstreams for cooling. The British controlled ammunition and furnished aircraft dilatorily, with the Egyptian Air Force comprising only 18 antiquated machines by April 1934.2 Egypt’s financial position precluded a modern navy, whose function in any event would have been limited, given the Admiralty’s insistence that the Royal Navy alone could defend Suez. Political considerations weighed in the balance, making the Foreign Office more eager than the defence chiefs to find a middle way between blanket security and unshackled independence. Britain kept Egypt from joining the League of Nations to avoid potential embarrassment but the justification that the leading nation in the Middle East was too ‘backward’ to warrant membership became increasingly tenuous after Abyssinia, Afghanistan and Iran were admitted. Law officers also warned that, should Egypt question the legality of continued occupation at The Hague, the odds were stacked against a favourable verdict.3 The Foreign Office accordingly strove hard to achieve a treaty in 1927 and 1929, viewing the lack of final definition in Anglo-Egyptian relations as an irritant. The second attempt came closest to success because the Labour government was prepared to override service objections. In the event negotiations foundered over other issues. The Chiefs of Staff now sought to make their objections of fundamental importance and set out their position for any future attempt. The defence chiefs wished to maintain a garrison in Cairo, frowned on the prospect of cooperating with native troops in the Canal Zone, objected to restricted dispositions and found intolerable the prospect of early arbitration by Geneva. In 1932 a Committee of Imperial Defence subcommittee concluded that the Canal Zone must be enlarged but this did not satisfy the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, who insisted that Egypt could not be controlled from Suez.4 Political developments in Egypt ensured that treaty prospects remained stalled until the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis. The Wafd was kept from power through the substitution of the 1923 Constitution for a less favourable model. But the interim Palace government of Tewfik Nessim Pasha, which came into office in November 1934, while playing to British desiderata for moderation, was subjected to unrelenting Wafdist criticism. It seemed only a matter of time before it vacated office and Britain was faced once more with a radical Wafd regime.5

Commencing negotiations In autumn 1934, when King Fuad almost died, a treaty looked further away than ever. One year later the prospects suddenly improved, though the British proved initially reluctant to grasp the nettle. British reinforcements were at first welcomed in Egypt, where there was strong sympathy for the Abyssinian cause. ‘Egyptians were more British than the British’, an English journalist enthused, ‘and at Ismailia they pointed to the destroyer there as “One of

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our ships”.’6 Egyptian ministers readily went on naval exercises; one, the Minister of Finance, even expressed a desire to enlist as a private soldier! The mood led the normally recalcitrant Wafd to secretly pledge its support in the event of an Italo-British conflict. Egypt, confident of British protection, brushed aside Rome’s protests and became the only non-League power to adopt sanctions (2 December 1935). The attachment of a native battalion to the Mersa Matruh garrison and the march of Anglo-Egyptian forces through Alexandria on 11 October were symptomatic of the domestic enthusiasm for action against the fascist aggressor.7 All the same there was an undercurrent of unease, which increased markedly as Britain’s show of strength did not translate into military operations. Yet reinforcements continued to pour in, fuelling speculation over their intentions. The Admiralty’s pronouncement that Alexandria was now the Mediterranean Fleet’s base caused alarm while Lampson’s daily meetings with Nessim reinforced his image as a pliant British stooge. It appeared that Egyptian sovereignty was being disregarded to serve British interests. The Wafd forced Nessim to present a note to the Residency demanding the restoration of parliamentary rule, the recognition that Egypt ‘was responsible for the defence of its own territory’ and the suggestion that ‘the present moment was most opportune for the conclusion of a treaty’.8 The Baldwin government was consumed by Abyssinia and did not want this distraction. Its lukewarm reaction prompted Wafd-inspired student riots, a one-day general strike and led to the formation of a united front by Egyptian parties. At the turn of the year the Baldwin government reluctantly relented, restoring the 1923 Constitution and acceding to treaty negotiations. The ideal outcome, from the British perspective, was embodied in a secret draft of 1933, which assuaged the Chiefs of Staff’s previous objections. Although Lampson counselled that there was ‘not the slightest chance’ of its acceptance, it was to form the basis for a stage-by-stage approach to the all-important military clauses. Stage ‘A’ represented the utopian solution whereby Egypt would place no restriction on the size or dispositions of the garrison. Stage ‘B’ involved evacuating Kasr-el-Nil barracks and the Citadel in Cairo in favour of Abbassia and Helmieth in the suburbs. Stage ‘C’ meant withdrawal to Helouan, a Royal Air Force base 16 miles beyond Cairo, sufficiently close to ensure a rapid return if required. The Chiefs of Staff did not envisage concessions beyond Stage ‘C’ and were adamant that the military clauses must be resolved first, a position the Cabinet endorsed. Unless and until negotiations bore fruit, they were to be presented as ‘preliminary’, a euphemism which served to deny Parliament details, thereby averting potentially damaging criticism.9 Lampson headed the British delegation, aided by senior members of his staff and the fighting services. Eden wanted Dill’s leave of absence extended to allow him to oversee the framing of the precious military clauses, but he was wanted at home and so Weir stepped in. The all-party Egyptian delegation, under the Wafd leader, Nahas Pasha, lacked military experts, reflecting

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its view that the military clauses were satisfactorily resolved in 1930. The then Labour Foreign Secretary, Arthur Henderson, had indeed declared that the withdrawal of British forces to the West Bank of the Canal was no longer an issue. Eden intimated his government’s contrary position when he informed Parliament that ‘no government can be bound by the provisions of an inconclusive treaty’. Privately Nahas was informed by the Director General of the European Department that ‘he must realise that much water had passed under the bridge since 1930 and there were other threats to Egypt besides Italy . . ..’ The Wafd leader was more amenable in private than his intransigent reputation would suggest and he promised to give the matter some thought. At the same time, he pointed out that unless he found the right formula, his political opponents would take advantage.10

The military negotiations Zafaran Palace in Cairo was the splendid setting for negotiations that began in a friendly spirit on 2 March 1936. The atmosphere was punctured when Lampson unveiled Stage ‘A’, betraying his lack of confidence through his clumsy and half-embarrassed presentation. The High Commissioner became flustered when asked to define ‘pooling’. Weir came to the rescue, instancing the combined Anglo-Egyptian forces at Mersa Matruh. Their misgivings aroused, the Egyptians demanded a translation of the paper. Lampson’s secretary, unable to convert complex military terms into Arabic, resorted to French, heightening Egyptian suspicions. Moreover, because references to the Italian threat were deleted in case of leakage the document lost much of its impact.11 The nine-page Egyptian riposte contended that the 1930 clauses would have proved sufficient to deal with the present emergency. This resulted in the first of what became a series of informal clear-the-air meetings between Lampson and Nahas. The latter refused to entertain British forces outside the Canal Zone, only offering improved road and rail links from there and Royal Air Force bases in the Western Desert. Lampson then unveiled Stage ‘B’, only to find that this proposal did not enamour itself with Nahas either. A further meeting proved equally unproductive. When the High Commissioner’s accounts reached Whitehall, the general view was that he had discarded Stage ‘A’ all too easily, leading to instructions to explore pooling further. A two-hour session with Nahas followed but failed to convince him that embracing the concept did not involve a surrender of sovereignty and he continued to insist on a transfer of British forces to the Canal Zone. To avert a breakdown in negotiations, the Foreign Office authorised Lampson to move to Stage ‘C’ but this too made Egyptian hackles rise.12 Collapse was averted by developments in Abyssinia, especially Italy’s brutal employment of mustard gas. Italian propaganda suggested that only by removing British shackles could Egypt escape similar treatment while at the same time floating the prospect of a non-aggression pact. Rome offered to

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guarantee the Egyptian-Libyan border and, after the fall of Lake Tsana, proffered reassurances that Egyptian interests there would be respected. Against this background, British protection took on a new meaning to most Egyptians. A further stumbling block was removed with the departure of Montgomery-Massingberd whose dogged commitment to retaining Helouan was likened to not occupying London but insisting on retaining outlying Richmond. His successor, Field Marshal Sir Cyril Deverell, was more flexible, having recently visited Egypt and taken on board the commanders’ view that some concessions were required if progress was to be made.13 There remained the thorny issue of a time limit. The Admiralty preferred no treaty ‘rather than that . . . HMG’s right to protect the Canal might die at its eventual termination’. The Chiefs of Staff as a whole pressed for an article establishing Britain’s ‘antecedent and permanent right to protect the Suez Canal’. The Pacific Dominions, kept informed of the progress of negotiations, lent their support to this position with Australia considering ‘communications with Britain as perhaps the most vital factor of imperial defence’. The Foreign Office was a lone voice of moderation, maintaining that a treaty would strengthen rather than weaken the position, without which Italy might mischievously deploy the Optional Clause to question the legality of the occupation.14 The matter was referred to Cabinet where Lord Hailsham, the Lord Chancellor, suggested that the League could not be trusted to arbitrate upon the expiry of a treaty because in 20 years’ time it might well be dominated by small Powers favourable to Egypt. Simon felt Britain must secure permanent rights over Suez, suggesting that a break on this issue would elicit Dominion military support to quell any resulting unrest in Egypt. Eden remained unconvinced and departmental wrangles continued.15 Pownall recorded service unease over the position. The FO is in full sail handing over Egypt to the Egyptians. . . . For two pins they would agree to leaving Alexandria also and putting a time limit on our occupation of the Canal Zone – at the end of which . . . the League of Nations would decide ‘whether and in what force’ we should remain in the Zone. This fantastic suggestion is apparently well received in the FO. They are mad keen to get a treaty – any treaty – though it’s far from certain that the Egyptians would be any more contented with a treaty than without one.16 It was fortuitous that Nahas requested an adjournment until after the Egyptian general election. To review outstanding issues, the Cabinet appointed the Anglo-Egyptian Conversations Committee. Constituted of interested parties, including two practising lawyers, Hailsham and Simon, its inaugural meeting considered opposing papers from Eden and Simon. The Foreign Office case was weakened by concessions already made and by fears of Dominion and parliamentary

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hostility towards an open-ended treaty. So much so that it resorted to scare tactics, warning of dire consequences if negotiations collapsed. Britain could no longer field the six divisions, which restored order in 1919, and there were now fewer British civil servants in Egypt to administrate should natives refuse to form a government. Moreover, for London to assume direct control risked provoking unrest throughout the region. Such arguments failed to move the opposition. After consulting the War Office, Sir Thomas Inskip, Minister for Coordination of Defence, countered that, because of demobilisation, in fact only the equivalent of two mobilised divisions had suppressed the post-war rebellion. Deverell expressed confidence that the present garrison could contain another uprising while conceding that a further division was necessary to rule a hostile populace.17 On 20 May, in one of his rare interventions in foreign policy, Baldwin decreed that parliamentary opinion (which, in any case, showed signs of wanting a treaty) could be discounted given the government’s enormous working majority. Still a cache of ministers insisted that League arbitration was intolerable without built-in safeguards. Chamberlain even insisted that it be ‘placed on record that he had not changed his view as to the undesirability of handing over a vital part of imperial defence to the decision of a third party’. Reflecting the strength of feeling, the Cabinet determined that on the expiry of the treaty, Geneva could only influence ‘the position and number of troops to defend the Canal’. The League decision must also be unanimous, an unlikely outcome given the presence of at least one Dominion, as well as Britain, on the League Council.18 The problem was put succinctly by the Secretary of State for India in a letter to the Viceroy: For some time we have been trying to evolve a formula which Egypt will accept to secure our position indefinitely on the Suez Canal. The dialecticious have been in their element since here was one of those occasions on which it was sought to devise phrases which would create one impression on the minds of one set of people and an entirely different impression on the minds of another set of people.19 The legal jargon did not fool Lampson who now rated the chances of a treaty at a hundred to one. ‘In any case’, recorded Brooke-Popham, ‘whilst being tactful in wording, let’s don’t resort to phraseology purposely designed to be interpreted in two different ways. For one thing, when it comes to verbal subterfuge, we are chicken in the hands of the Egyptian past masters. The strength of England lies in telling the truth. Let’s stick to it’.20 Lampson endeavoured to soften the blow by briefing Nahas in advance of the resumption of negotiations. The newly elected Egyptian prime minister, swept to power on a tide of popularity based on his reputation as a supreme champion of national interests, was having none of it. British intentions were transparent despite the semantics. To make matters worse, as a quid pro quo for relenting over Helouan, the War Office substituted Alexandria as a British

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military base in perpetuity. Nahas insisted that it too must be subject to a time limit. The fundamental issue was the termination of the occupation within a specified period. Moreover, Canal defence ‘was the responsibility of Egypt alone’. At this, Lampson, fearing a complete breakdown, departed from his instructions and refrained from asserting that Britain had inherited both Egyptian and Turkish rights under the 1888 convention. Eden reported Lampson’s pessimistic evaluation in Cabinet which, given the escalating antiBritish violence in Palestine, elected for a short adjournment. This would allow Lampson and his senior advisers to return home for consultations. ‘Nahas is surprisingly accommodating’, minuted Vansittart. ‘The causes matter less than the fact; but I should say one of them was the Italians.’ Eden concurred, while adding the caveat that ‘a long and difficult road’ still lay ahead.21 Lampson left for London by air on 1 June, accompanied by Smart and Brooke-Popham, his favourite military adviser, who would represent the commanders’ view that their government was risking failure in its quest for legalistic perfection. They carried with them a memorandum from Nahas, elicited by Lampson, outlining his position. Landing four days later at Croydon aerodrome, the trio was whisked to Whitehall to brief Eden and his senior officials.21 A ray of hope emerged from Nahas’s proposal to allow Britain to take unlimited military measures in an emergency or conflict and extend this facility ad infinitum through a perpetual alliance. The defence chiefs were not convinced. Chatfield considered a treaty ‘a gamble’, could never conceive a time when ‘Egypt could be the sole defender of the Canal’ and refused to countenance eventual evacuation. Their visitors’ play on the prospect of further trouble in Egypt cut no ice. ‘Internal security’, Deverell countered, was not the point at issue. We were discussing a channel of communication vital to the British Empire. Once the Suez Canal was handed over the situation would become irretrievable and Egypt must be made to realise that if we left . . . there was always the strong possibility of another country taking our place. Nevertheless, Nahas’s solution was not rejected out of hand. Indeed, Chatfield outlined three prospective clauses dealing with reinforcements in an emergency (the Egyptians ultimately accepted one of them). Their aim was to ensure a permanent military presence, thereby averting a situation in which British forces returned against the wishes of the native government.22 The feared scenario portended 1956. In stark contrast to their willingness to let Italy ‘get away with it’ over Abyssinia, the chiefs were not prepared to budge over vital imperial interests. As with Palestine, they stood ready to administer a military solution rather than accept a flawed treaty. Two days later The Times ran a stinging editorial castigating the goal of complete military security as a ‘hopeless quest’, praising Egyptian flexibility

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and decrying the lack of trust in the other side, so essential to a successful alliance. It blamed the impasse on ‘the excessive demands of the British government for precision in providing for a distant future’. Lampson was the embarrassed source for the broadsheet’s insights. Following the inconclusive session with the Chiefs of Staff he dined with Geoffrey Dawson, the paper’s editor, and Phillip Graves, his Egypt correspondent, whom Lampson had previously fed with information to nourish articles favouring concessions. Lampson was naïve enough to believe his indiscretions would not find their way into print. He now feared being accused of waging a vendetta against the Chiefs of Staff. In the event they remained oblivious to the source of the leak and all that transpired was Eden’s warning to The Times over its future conduct.23

The finale In an effort to break the deadlock the Anglo-Egyptian Conversations Committee, now chaired by Baldwin, was enlarged to include the chiefs and service ministers. Three intense meetings followed in the Prime Minister’s Commons room with Lampson, Smart and Brooke-Popham in attendance. At the first meeting Lampson gave a 25-minute impromptu speech on the position which impressed Baldwin and Eden. Nahas was portrayed as more moderate and amenable than in 1930, as instanced by his suppression of inflammatory articles on Palestine. Already Lampson had apprised Eden of his view that ‘an allied friendly Egypt’ was preferable to ‘the risks of continuing on the present lines with an unfriendly Egypt and an encircling Italian empire’. Vansittart, perturbed by the German and Japanese threats, convinced Eden to bring the Egyptian problem ‘into focus with the world situation’ through a Cabinet paper to justify concessions. There was the need ‘to tidy up our position in the Mediterranean as soon as possible. We cannot do this quietly with Italy, but we can with Egypt’.24 Faced with such arguments, Deverell conceded that the Egypt garrison’s strategic reserve role for outlying areas would be compromised in the face of serious local disturbances. Under the impetus of the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis the garrison now stood at 20,500 troops, more than double its normal level. Rome’s recent victory foreshadowed potential future threats against British Somaliland, Kenya and the Sudan as well as Egypt. Continuing unrest in Palestine had already taken away 4,000 troops. The present uncertainty made it unwise to denude the garrison any further. Moreover, support from the India garrison, traditional reservoir for the Middle East, was debarred by nationalist agitation there. Although there were contingency plans to commit 1st Division from Britain, in the wake of the Rhineland Crisis the War Office was anxious not to commit it elsewhere.25 Summarising the mood of the discussions, Baldwin considered that politically ‘it was most important to conclude a treaty’. Chamberlain confessed to being ‘so much impressed by the dangers of the situation that he had come to the conclusion that it was

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indispensable to get a treaty provided we did not sacrifice any vital interests’. Simon was of like mind and now endorsed Eden’s proposals. In similar vein, Duff Cooper conceded that ‘the best security for the Canal would be a friendly Egypt’. After Eden squared the Dominions the Cabinet heard Lampson’s views at first hand and endorsed the Foreign Office proposals. ‘Failure to conclude a treaty’, Balwin opined, ‘would add a disorganised Near East to the existing disturbed situation in Europe’.26 Upon his return Lampson cajoled Nahas into placing the proposed military articles before a joint drafting committee. At its first meeting, Lampson felt compelled to accept the amendment ‘apprehended international emergency’ to avoid giving British forces carte blanche to interfere in domestic affairs. During an eight-hour session on 9 July, conducted in temperatures touching 100˚F, Wafd delegates were amenable but others proved obstructive with Mohammed Mahmoud, leader of the Liberal Constitutional Party, boycotting the afternoon session. The Egyptian delegation finally accepted an eight-year time limit for Alexandria’s occupation, for which concession they deferred the construction of two strategically less critical roads.27 A sticking point remained: who would construct the new barrack accommodation in the Geneifa area of the zone. Some 10,000 troops and 400 aircraft pilots, the stipulated limit to peacetime British forces, needed to be catered for. As well as living quarters, other amenities such as churches, hospitals and workshops, were scheduled. The Egyptians refused to countenance British construction firms, fearing deliberate delays to prolong the occupation of Cairo and Alexandria. There was further difficulty over the costing, the Treasury considering Egyptian estimates ridiculously low. Nahas refused to be swayed and his insistence on Egypt carrying full responsibility for building work and defraying its entire cost carried the day.28 After frenetic drafting, the military clauses were ready for signature by the evening of 22 July. The following day Mahmoud and another delegate absconded, their two-day absence delaying endorsement of the drafts. When they returned, some 20 weeks and 4 days had elapsed since negotiations commenced on military – strategic issues. London was now ready to make concessions on other issues to ensure final success. For the first time since 1924, Egyptian forces were to be allowed to return to the Sudan. Britain would also use its influence to end the detested capitulations and facilitate Egypt’s entry into the League of Nations. The civil clauses were quickly resolved and by August the Egyptians were ready to travel to London for the signing ceremony. It took place at 11.30 a.m. on 26 August with all available senior ministers on hand. The Egyptian delegation was brought to the Locarno Room of the Foreign Office by courtesy cars from the Dorchester Hotel, whence they had been lavishly entertained since their arrival to create a congenial atmosphere. At Nahas’s insistence, every member of his delegation signed the treaty, some more willingly than others. Eden spoke of ‘the beginning of a new stage’ in Anglo-Egyptian relations which would be ‘largely governed by the provisions . . . of this treaty’.29

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Nahas urged London not to overplay the modest nature of Egyptian gains to facilitate the treaty’s passage through the Chamber of Deputies. He successfully defended the terms by arguing that total independence was secured; that the newly created British military mission was dispensable and its role purely advisory; that Egypt would defend Suez when she was able; and equal status was now enjoyed in the Sudan. The Wafd’s Arabic translation of the English text omitted to mention the immunities extended to British forces to avert political embarrassment. In the event, except for minor demonstrations, the treaty aroused little interest among the general population with the majority of the press toeing the government line. The British Parliament was equally pliant and the few who turned out for the vote overwhelmingly endorsed the terms. The convivial atmosphere was epitomised by Eden’s appearance on an Egyptian postage stamp and by Lampson enjoying the novelty of being cheered whenever he ventured out in his official limousine.30 It was not to last.

An assessment Of the 157 days of often-tortuous negotiations, no less than 88 per cent were consumed in resolving the military clauses. With proximate Italian forces triumphing over an African power through utilising modern military technology and unscrupulous tactics, the Egyptians reluctantly came round to the British view that the strategic situation had indeed changed fundamentally since 1930. The intellectual weekly al-Risala made a distinction between the ‘neo-Roman fascist imperialism’ which meant ‘imperialist war’ against lesser Powers and the ‘traditional imperialism’ of Britain and France. Seeing the British as the lesser of two evils persuaded the Egyptians to endorse the enlargement of the Canal Zone and to accept an increase in the standing garrison from 8,000 to 10,000 troops. In peacetime, the Royal Air Force was accorded freedom of flight, extending to the use of Cairo’s landing facilities, while the Army gained extensive training facilities.31 Lampson is often accredited as the architect of the treaty – his delegation’s secretary considered that ‘it was he who made the running’.32 Certainly he created the atmosphere in which success became possible and the Egyptians appreciated his candour. Brooke-Popham observed that Lampson was friendly but frank and ‘did not pretend that our sole interest in Egypt was to benefit the Egyptians’.33 Insufficient praise however, has, been accorded to his military advisers. Yet Brooke-Popham and Weir ensured that civilian amendments were militarily palatable while Admiral Raikes, deputising for the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean, made frequent trips to Cairo from Alexandria to explain naval requirements. The Egyptians were so impressed by the military advisers’ fairness that, on occasion, their proposals were dropped forthwith – such as the suggestion that military uniforms not be worn outside the Canal Zone. ‘While never sacrificing one tittle of any British interest’, Lampson acknowledged, ‘they have displayed throughout a

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broadminded and most helpful attitude’. Their efforts were drawn to Eden’s attention, leading to a personal message of gratitude.34 For his part, Eden, backed by able advisers, did much to overcome the Chiefs of Staff’s hostility towards a treaty. As Malcolm Yapp remarks, Eden ‘seized on the Egyptian problem as an opportunity to make his name with a big success at the outset of his term of office . . . [and his] interventions were more frequent and often decisive’.35 This was in stark contrast to his wavering approach towards the Abyssinian issue, which so disappointed his supporters. Vansittart, who served in Cairo under Sir Eldon Gorst, and had been involved in earlier attempts to secure a treaty, softened his hard line because of the world situation. Chamberlain was persuaded of the case for limited concessions and helped swing recalcitrant ministers around. ‘Negotiations with Egypt’, he wrote to his youngest sister, ‘look like coming to a satisfactory conclusion and thereby removing a danger spot in the Mediterranean’.36 Finally, with his sharp lawyer’s mind, it was Walter Beckett who drew up the requisite military desiderata to accommodate Nahas’s timely offer of a permanent military alliance.37 Fundamentally, little had changed. There was the appearance of Egyptian independence but the reality was that British forces remained. In December 1936 Lampson became an ambassador residing in the same majestic building as before. Other nations still had to make do with legations. Nor could Egypt conclude any treaties or adopt an attitude inconsistent with the alliance. Whilst she regained control of her security forces for the first time since 1882, the British inspector generalship of the Egyptian Army now ceasing, their strength remained dependent on British willingness to supply weaponry. The treaty stipulated that in the event of an apprehended international emergency, menace of war or war itself, Egypt would permit unrestricted British reinforcements, tender the use of her ports, aerodromes and means of communication, and institute appropriate legislative measures, such as martial law and censorship.38 The British were virtually handed a blank cheque to do as they pleased. In fact of the four-reserved points, Britain conceded only one – the right to protect foreigners and their interests. Even here, the relevant article was deliberately worded to facilitate British military intervention should Egyptian policing prove inadequate. As the Foreign Office recognised: British forces, certainly for 20 years, will be within a few hours distance of the places where trouble involving risk to the lives of foreigners might take place and it may be taken for granted that one of His Majesty’s ships will be within short steaming distance of Egyptian ports. There should therefore be little risk of intervention by a third power before HMG could intervene for the protection of foreigners.39 A European element, though reduced, would remain in the Egyptian police, still directed by Sir Thomas Russell, as a further safeguard. Again, while

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the European Department of the Ministry of the Interior would disappear, during negotiations M15 covertly extracted pertinent files on persons of security risk so that its defence security office did not have to start from scratch.40 In bearing and manner Lampson remained quintessentially a high commissioner. He paid lip-service to independence while in essence ‘behaving in much the same way as before the Treaty, with his special train and all, flying his flag in the same conspicuous Residence, associated in every Egyptian mind with British rule since Cromer’.41 And, for the immediate future, the British garrison remained reassuringly near at hand in Cairo, affording the British Embassy all-important military backbone for its browbeating diplomacy.

6

Securing an exposed flank The defence of Egypt in British diplomacy, June 1936–April 1938

Following Abyssinia’s defeat, it was incorporated, together with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland, into what became ‘Italian East Africa’. The Fascist Grand Council bestowed on Mussolini the title ‘Founder of the Empire’. On 16 March 1937 Mussolini, piloting a Savoia Marchetti 81 bomber, visited Tripoli, now restored to its former Roman glory, to open the ‘Balbia’ highway, a strategic road which ominously hugged the north African coast for 1,822 kilometres from the Tunisian border all the way to Egypt. Mounted on a white stallion, to sanctify his promise to protect Muslims the pouting Mussolini received the ‘Sword of Islam’, whose straight rather than curved shape betrayed its Florencian origins. But if the occasion was absurd, more especially given the recent slaughter of Senussi Arabs, the intention to further undermine and compete with the British Empire was apparent. ‘England’, pronounced an admiring Hitler, ‘was now faced by the Roman Empire’. The Italian Empire was, however, very much the least of the imperial edifices in Africa and stood uneasily and jealously in the shadow of the British and French variants. The burning question was whether the Abyssinian morsel had quenched Mussolini’s thirst for glory. Publicly, he declared in May 1936 that he harboured no desire ‘to oppose British interests in Egypt or elsewhere’, a pledge which did not square with Italian support for nationalist activities in the Arab world. Privately, Mussolini’s seething resentment towards Britain, which was seen to have instigated League sanctions, had not diminished. As he informed Hitler’s personal envoy: ‘England is our jailer: it wants to hold us shackled in the Mediterranean.’1

The debate over the way forward The close of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency found the National government divided over the lessons to be drawn. Lampson and senior commanders in Egypt pressed for strengthened defences in the face of periodic Italian military posturing, subversion and anti-British propaganda, which combined to create an atmosphere of instability and uncertainty. The Foreign Office, under the highly principled Eden, was sceptical of Italian good faith and dug in its heels over according de jure recognition to the brutal Italian conquest of

Securing an exposed flank 99 Abyssinia. It was also anxious to reassure Egypt that Britain would fulfil its recently incurred treaty obligations. But Egyptian defence could not be viewed in isolation. As the international situation deteriorated elsewhere, so the opposition to a confrontational policy towards Italy appeared more cohesive than ever. Neville Chamberlain, the Premier from May 1937, the defence services, Hankey and the Treasury, all sought a vodus vivendi with Italy to avoid any repetition of the traumas of 1935–6. Added impetus was injected by Chamberlain’s firmly held belief that restoring Britain’s traditional friendship with Italy was not only possible but could well lead Mussolini to influence Hitler into pursuing a diplomatic settlement of German grievances. In that sense, closer Italo-German ties were viewed benignly, holding out the prospect of oiling the wheels of appeasement.2 There was the view, which Mussolini sought to encourage, that the absorption of Abyssinia was an end in itself. Ralph Wigram, gifted head of the Central Department of the Foreign Office, supported Chatfield’s analysis that Mussolini’s absorption of Abyssinia had ‘given an important hostage to fortune which ought to make him careful not to fall out with the power in control of the Canal and Red Sea’. Noting the previous inclination to underestimate Italian military capabilities, Wigram warned against ‘a tendency to rush to the other extreme and represent him [Mussolini] as a new Julius Caesar about to conquer a new Roman Empire’. The Senior British Director on the Suez Canal Company noted that Italian traffic had dropped dramatically in May 1936, following the cessation of the Italo-Abyssinian War, but ‘hoped that, when Italy has decided on her new colonial policy, her military and commercial shipping will become steadily more important’. In November 1936, the newly formed Industrial Intelligence Centre provided some comforting statistics for those who remained disinclined to take the growing Italian military challenge seriously. Italy’s greatest disability is an almost total lack of coal, coke, petroleum, timber and iron ore. The absence of these fundamentals and their derivatives, including raw materials for military explosives, and the dye industry, result in over 70 per cent of the annual imports by weight consisting of bulk cargoes difficult to transport overland. Other important deficiencies are copper, tin, nickel, cotton and natural wool. Efforts to provide substitutes for some of these commodities from domestic raw materials have begun but can be of little avail for a number of years. In war Italy’s import dependence rendered her vulnerable to naval pressure since only around half her import requirements could be received overland. A further critical weakness, noted the report, was Italy’s industrial capacity when compared with other first-class Powers, such as in crude steel production and heavy forging, not to mention a serious shortfall of skilled labour. The extent of Italy’s reserves of armaments, built up during the recent crisis, was unknown but once these had been expended ‘Italian industry would be

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unable to keep a force of this size [51 army divisions] in the field in war against a fully armed first class Power’. From Rome, Drummond advised Eden that to play a positive role in European affairs, Italy must not be made to feel she was still ‘ “in Coventry” . . . We need not kiss but we must be ready to shake hands’.3 Other Foreign Office departments – the Egyptian, Southern and Eastern – viewed the prospect of meaningful Italian friendship more sceptically. Their combined memorandum, drawn up at Vansittart’s instigation, highlighted the Italian role in inciting Arab rebellion in Palestine through clandestine bribes and to efforts to persuade Saudi Arabia and the Yemen to adopt anti-British postures. An intelligence source in the Italian Legation in Cairo reported that on 27 May ‘an Italian agency at Port Said despatched to Palestine a consignment of propaganda literature, the general purport of which was to urge the Arabs to intensify resistance against British and Jewish domination’. In June 1936 financial inducements persuaded three Egyptian journalists to begin a newspaper propagating Italian policies while British intelligence learnt that Italy was funding the paramilitary Green Shirts in Egypt. Although he still considered ‘that the German danger easily comes first’, Vansittart was disturbed by Italian activities in the Middle East, bemoaning that Italy was ‘making the most of our temporary eclipse’.4 The pro-Italian school regarded the Rome–Berlin ‘Axis’, proclaimed by Mussolini in November 1936, as the inevitable consequence of sanctions. Its optimism was undimmed, considering that the vagueness of the declaration still left the door open to rapprochement with Italy. Lord Cranborne, Eden’s Under-secretary, pressed the opposite view. He maintained that it was Italian success in the face of British weakness that attracted Berlin and advocated a military build-up in the Mediterranean, with which Rome could not easily compete, as a means of reducing its prestige and value in German eyes. If war was the outcome, all to the good for there could be no question as to the result. The Foreign Secretary steadfastly supported this line of argument.5 As it happened, Italy was coming round to a more friendly outward posture. The British Admiralty’s announcement that the Mediterranean Fleet would be maintained above the level preceding the recent emergency, King Edward VIII’s conspicuous failure to travel to Italy on his Mediterranean tour and the visit of the Turkish fleet to Malta caused unease in Rome. It was suspected that Turkey had extended base facilities to the Royal Navy in the Aegean to render practical operations against the Italian Dodecanese Islands while Yugoslavia had promised base facilities in the Adriatic. The Montreux Convention of 20 July 1936, orchestrated by Britain, which returned control of the Black Sea Straits to Turkey, was viewed as an anti-Italian device, leading Italy to decline to join it for two years. Italian anxiety was evidenced by visits by the London embassy’s staff to the British Foreign Office and by state-sponsored articles accusing Britain of seeking ‘revenge’ over Abyssinia and of building new military bases at Port Said, Haifa and Cyprus. The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was portrayed as part of the ‘military preparation’.

Securing an exposed flank 101 At a time of deepening military involvement in Spain, Mussolini sent out friendly signals, which resonated with the Chiefs of Staff, anxious to avoid the prospect of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan becoming aligned against British national interests. The resulting Anglo-Italian Declaration, or Gentleman’s Agreement, of 2 January 1937 sought to uphold the Mediterranean status quo. It was a step towards improved relations even if, in Eden’s eyes, it was immediately rendered worthless by Mussolini’s simultaneous dispatch of yet more reinforcements to Spain.6 Over the next few months the presumption of a friendly Italy dominated British defence planning. The projected new naval base at Cyprus was rejected in favour of the cheaper alternative of deepening Alexandria’s harbour and adding a new battleship dry dock. Even this modest scheme would not be sanctioned until 1938. Chamberlain was anxious lest Italy misread British intentions and on similar grounds delayed the installation of 15-inch guns on Malta. The Chiefs of Staff backed the Prime Minister with their view ‘that Italy is unlikely to wage war in 1937’. Indeed, in February the Chiefs of Staff placed the eastern Mediterranean only fourth in imperial defence priorities and continued to emphasise that only the avoidance of conflict with Italy could guarantee Mediterranean communications. At the same time, neither the Admiralty nor the Foreign Office was content with total inaction given the Mediterranean’s strategic significance. A compromise formula – that Italy was not ‘a reliable friend but in present circumstances need not be regarded as a probable enemy’ – was enacted to reflect the position.7

Defence planning priorities and Egypt A distinguished historian argued that during 1935–6 substantial ‘reserves of men and new equipment, were dispatched to Egypt and never recalled’.8 The opposite was in fact the case. From the end of the emergency only 6th Battalion Royal Tank Corps remained as part of the standing garrison. In November 1936 the War Office began planning to mechanise the cavalry brigade in Egypt; two of its regiments to receive light tanks, the other armoured cars. Reflecting the lessons of 1935–6, a tank wastage reserve was included. Substituting 6th Battalion with a medium tank company for desert experience was considered but in February 1937, concern at the uncertain Italian attitude led to its retention and augmentation by 1st Battalion, which had returned to England after the emergency. This decision also reflected concern at the absence of two cavalry regiments and a Royal Artillery company in Palestine where the troubles continued, leaving just 8,000 troops to defend Egypt.9 At this time there was an acrimonious debate over the British Army’s role. Upon taking office Chamberlain replaced the Continentalist Duff Cooper with Leslie Hore-Belisha who utilised Captain Liddell Hart to study the position ‘with a view primarily to the role of the Middle East’. Liddell Hart suggested that the best counter to an Italian attack across the Western Desert

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was an armoured mobile division which ‘would promise a much stronger insurance than the present form of force, of two infantry brigades and one mechanised cavalry brigade’.10 After Deverell resisted, Chamberlain replaced him as Chief of the Imperial General Staff with the seemingly more compliant General Lord Gort. The Inskip Report of December 1937 put a ceiling of £1.5 billion on defence spending over the next five years, prioritising funding accordingly. The defence of Britain, ‘the central keep and base of the whole system of imperial defence’, was naturally top priority, followed by that of essential trade routes, including Suez. Next came the local defence of overseas territories with the defence of allies relegated to last place. In practice, the Army retained a general-purpose role; the General Staff conceding the principle of a Middle East reserve while in actuality retaining the Field Force in England, whence it might still be sent to the Continent. The Treasury harboured suspicions that no practical change in the Army’s role had taken place.11 Gort certainly wanted to keep his options open. ‘He told me’, Hankey recorded, that the two divisions and one mechanised division which, if available, would be sent to France at the outbreak of war, were to be equipped with ammunition sufficient for offensive warfare in an imperial campaign (for example, against Italy in Libya) but these amounts would only suffice for defensive warfare in France. Similarly, the other two divisions were equipped with reserve ammunition to the extent of 50 per cent for offensive warfare for general purposes, but only for defensive warfare on the Continent.12 One of his colleagues recalled that ‘any suggestion that the Italians were a serious enemy was enough to enrage Gort’, a revelation which belies his insistence to Hankey that ‘for the maximum imperial campaign, namely, against an Italian invasion from Libya, we must have the highest quality of equipment . . .’. Again, following the Anschluss, a War Office insider sensed the revival of a Continental commitment and recorded that Gort was ‘strong on it’.13 A genuine change of emphasis would have seen the Field Force relocated to Egypt but until Munich no armoured division existed there. By virtue of its continued presence in England, the Field Force still trained for Continental warfare and tank development failed to take desert conditions into account.

Assessing the Italian threat The Italian problem needed to be addressed in the light of Britain’s global over-extension and finite financial and military resources. Accordingly, Chamberlain ruled out the possibility of a new naval standard to take account of the triple threat. Eden was prepared to contemplate the prospect of a single-handed war with Italy but found little sympathy for his views

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outside the Foreign Office with the all-consuming German and Japanese threats taking centre stage. ‘Defence preparations against Italy’, Chamberlain decreed, ‘should be considered of secondary importance’.14 The Foreign Secretary’s use of intelligence data to show that three Italian mechanised divisions were due for Libya in the autumn of 1937 helped convince Vansittart that there was now a southward thrust to Italian foreign policy. Hankey accused his old ally of having a ‘suspicious mind in this matter’ but Vansittart persisted, finding support from the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean and the ambassadors in Cairo and Rome. There could be no justification for the huge reinforcement of Libya, whose garrison would be over six times the size of the British in Egypt ‘if Italian intentions towards us are wholly peaceable’.15 Chamberlain, however, would not be deflected from establishing a line of influence with Mussolini through Grandi, who flattered to deceive.16 The dispatch of two new Italian corps (XXth and XXIst) to Libya in September 1937 reinforced Eden’s belief that Mussolini remained untrustworthy. ‘Mussolini’, he considered, ‘could not observe indefinitely any agreement that was satisfactory to both of us, unless he were to abandon his aims’.17 With the forging of the all-important Rome–Berlin Axis, Mussolini was determined on further territorial expansion and held private individual meetings with the three Chiefs of Staff to persuade them. In late 1936 Italian military planners began to consider ways and means of consolidating the empire through uniting Libya with Italian East Africa, which could only be linked through acquiring Egypt and the Sudan. Adding these pieces to New Rome’s imperial jigsaw puzzle was not a step to be taken lightly as it meant certain British opposition. Recently returned from his Abyssinian triumph, Marshal Badoglio, the Chief of the Supreme General Staff, recognised the British were a different kettle of fish and dragged his feet. The leisurely nature of the exercise meant that not until a year later did the Chiefs of Staff discuss the specific problem of invading Egypt. The impetus came from Pariani, now the Chief of Staff and Under-Secretary for War who regarded the invasion of Egypt as ultimately necessary and contemptuously dismissed the tiny British garrison as ‘a relatively easy prey’. At the start of 1937 Mussolini had ordered the Viceroy of Abyssinia to prepare an army of 500,000 by 1940–1 so that a thrust against the Sudan might coincide with a move on Egypt. In January 1938, at Mussolini’s urging, a new general directive, Piano di Radunata 12, was adopted which postulated a conflict involving Italy and Nazi Germany against Britain and France. At the same time Pariani informed Balbo that to defend Libya from east and west, he was considering doubling infantry divisions there. Curiously, although Pariani had in mind ‘a lightning, surprise war’, he was blind to the need for additional armoured and motorised equipment. The more cautious Badoglio agreed only to initiate an army–navy study, which took a year to materialise. Pariani himself, notwithstanding his initial enthusiasm, contemplated war with Britain no sooner than the late 1940s and even in 1939 was still anticipating peace until 1943. There had

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been, in September 1937, an impromptu investigation into the military position in Libya, lest conflict followed the Nyon Conference, but this merely confirmed there was no immediate possibility of launching a strike at Egypt.18 Any intention to invade Egypt at this point can therefore be discounted. The most cogent explanation for the reinforcements was to threaten Egypt and to embarrass her protector. In September Mussolini told his German hosts that the British were afraid of land warfare and ‘would always fight to the last Frenchman’. He had therefore decided ‘to create a threat to Egypt by land’ which also sought to convince Cairo of its mistake in rebuffing Italian overtures for a non-aggression pact. More opaquely, Mussolini confided to his son-in-law and foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano: ‘We must begin to say it is Egypt who is troubling the waters.’ This followed Grandi’s advice that the abnormally large garrison in Libya pressurised Britain to reach a settlement over Abyssinia through causing consternation among the General Staff over the security of Egypt.19 In fact, the Chiefs of Staff remained blithely unperturbed. They dismissed Mussolini’s calculated move as utilising Libya as a training ground for Spain as it had been for Abyssinia and as a clumsy attempt to revitalise Italian prestige after the concerted action of the naval Powers at Nyon.20 Mussolini was more successful in frightening the Egyptians, prompting a flurry of telegrams from the Cairo embassy seeking special remedial defence measures. Vansittart lent the campaign his support, accusing the Chiefs of Staff of being ‘unimaginative in treating these Italian reinforcements as a thing of no account’. Chatfield advised Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean: The Egyptian situation is . . . the source of an immense amount of papers and study. I find it very difficult to move my two colleagues on the subject of ‘the defence of Egypt’, and we have been hampered by the absolute priority the government has given to the anti-German problem especially as regards the Air Force and anti-aircraft guns for the Air Defence of Great Britain scheme. Eden pressed for some response to impress the Arab world, but the Cabinet endorsed the service line that no real crisis had arisen.21 During Lampson’s annual leave he took tea with the Prime Minister. The Ambassador was impressed by Chamberlain’s analytical mind, which divided the problem of defending Egypt into two aspects: external defence and British prestige.22 The latter had clearly suffered in the aftermath of Britain’s perceived defeat over Abyssinia, which was seized upon by Radio Bari to suggest that British hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean was on the wane. The ongoing troubles in Palestine added fuel to the fire, providing opportunities to distort and fabricate British military activities against the Palestinian Arab rebels. The Chamberlain Government hit back through a new British

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Broadcasting Corporation Arab news service but financial constraints restricted it to short wave, available to only a minority of affluent Arabs, whereas the Italians broadcast on both medium and short wavelengths. The Treasury refused to match Italy’s vast propaganda expenditure, a stance backed by the Foreign Office, which took the view that it was the course of events that would ultimately determine where loyalties lay in the Middle East.23 Chamberlain was fully alive to the need to protect Egypt and willing to endorse the dispatch of additional aircraft and a more demonstrative naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean. All the same, Chamberlain placed his best hopes in an understanding with Rome, buoyed up by a message received that very day from Mussolini complimenting him on a recent speech. It was agreed that, once he was back in his post, Lampson would consult regional commanders and report back.24 On the morning of his return, 2 November, Lampson was confronted by a worried Nahas conveying Balbo’s veiled threat to Egypt: ‘If the Red Sea were blocked Italy must of course live.’ Nahas placed no comfort in Mussolini’s assurances and was convinced an Italian invasion would come sooner or later. A commanders’ conference condemned the Chiefs of Staff for treating Egypt as a sideshow. Credible air defence seemed all the more essential since intelligence suggested two new Savoia Marchetti 81 bomber groups were to be stationed at Tobruk. Weir warned his superiors that, with air superiority, two motorised Italian divisions could launch a sustained attack. Lampson, while considering that the situation was tinged with unreality – he doubted whether ‘Italy will in fact be so utterly foolish and mad as to provoke a conflict’ – felt reinforcements must arrive as an insurance and to demonstrate good faith to Egypt.25 The Foreign Office took up the case anew but ran into a brick wall of opposition. Hankey suggested that the Chiefs of Staff were not at fault ‘and . . . instead of constantly girding at the services to do the impossible, the Foreign Office should make a real effort . . . to try to straighten out our relations with Italy’. In similar vein, Inskip warned Eden that the Chiefs of Staff could not pronounce instant judgements on Egypt’s defence deficiencies without due consideration of other liabilities. When the Committee of Imperial Defence convened, Chatfield insisted that unless priority against Nazi Germany was rescinded, the Chiefs of Staff ‘would be unable to propose any material measures for improving the position in Egypt’. Lord Swinton highlighted the Industrial Intelligence Centre report on depleted Italian oil stocks that ruled out any prolonged motorised invasion. The revelation from the Secretary of State for India that Britain’s loss of prestige in the Middle East was spreading to India struck a chord but home defence remained the firm priority. As Hankey put it, ‘It would not be much use to Egypt to be protected against Italy if the UK was so denuded as to suffer defeat from Germany.’ To him, ‘Lampson has rather lost his sense of perspective’. The arrears in rearmament programmes rendered it ‘unavoidable to take horrible risks in Egypt’, for which reason it was best to ‘make friends’ with

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Italy. From Mussolini’s perspective, he was convinced that conflict with the Western Powers was not a sane option. For Italy the danger would be appalling. The sources of her electrical power and the great manufacturing cities of northern Italy that utilise these sources would be at the mercy of bombers from French soil. If her fleet were destroyed, her communications with the outside world would be cut, she would probably lose her colonies as a final result of the war, and she might well be starved out. She would certainly suffer from economic exhaustion. There was then, Hankey suggested, mutual advantage in an accommodation. Some breakthrough was essential to the very existence of the empire. Otherwise, Egypt’s defence problems would recur elsewhere ‘and the position may one day become uncontrollable’.26 These views resonated with Chamberlain, Sir Horace Wilson, his closest adviser, and Sir Warren Fisher, head of the Treasury, who were increasingly frustrated by the principled stand of the Foreign Office under Eden, who was regarded as an impractical idealist.27 The increasingly isolated foreign secretary found some support from Lampson who was convinced that Italy was in the process of establishing ‘a pincer-like hold over Egypt, the Sudan and the Red Sea . . .’. Concessions would not stem her imperialism but merely provide a breathing space before further transgressions. ‘My own feeling remains’, concluded Lampson, ‘that with Mussolini in his present expansionist frame of mind, a clash with Italy is inevitable unless our own rearmament or the realisation that he cannot count on Germany convince him of the necessity of coming to terms’. Eden endorsed this analysis while recording that improving relations with Berlin was not easy – Lord Halifax’s recent visit to Berchtesgaden failing to elicit any concrete proposals for a peaceful resolution of German grievances.28 Lampson’s telegram served to exacerbate existing divisions over the treatment of Italy. Fisher lamented that he ‘has caught the hysteria infection prevalent in the Foreign Office’. The ambassador’s prognosis struck a chord with the latter’s Egyptian Department but the Southern Department sided with Lord Perth (the former Sir Eric Drummond) whose telegrams sounded the benefits of rapprochement and reflected his benign view of Mussolini. Having encountered Lampson’s telegram in the diplomatic bag, Perth set down his contrary position in a demi-official letter. True, Mussolini dreamed ‘of a revival of ancient Roman sway in the north of Africa and in Egypt’, but this derived from his perception of Italy as a young and rising power in contrast to the tottering British Empire. There was no intention of early ‘forcible action . . . unless our action drives him to the last throw of the despairing gambler’. Even if an agreement turned out to be a temporary truce, as Lampson feared, a two-to-three-year lull would benefit Britain more, affording greater time to complete rearmament.29

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From Eden’s resignation to the Easter Pact A consensus began to emerge that a modus vivendi with Rome was worth pursuing for short-term gains even if it proved transient. Chatfield conceded that the Italians were ‘untrustworthy and probably little better fighters than they used to be, insolent, bombastic, and the best thing would be to teach them a lesson and answer threat by threat’. But he was convinced that accommodation with Italy was possible, much more so than with Nazi Germany or Japan.30 This was despite Italy’s adhesion, on 6 November 1937, to the Anti-Comintern Pact, which, notwithstanding its title, was transparently as much anti-democratic as anti-communist. Mussolini officially took Italy out of the League of Nations a month later. Shortly afterwards Hitler announced that Nazi Germany would never return to Geneva and Rome and Berlin reached agreement on economic collaboration. Against this background of increasing symmetry by the Axis, the Chamberlain camp saw Rome’s renewed peace feelers of 23 December as a last chance. Sir Alexander Cadogan, who had replaced the increasingly problematic Vansittart as Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, opined that to ignore them could lead to a full-blown Italo-German alliance. A hostile Italy ‘astride our Mediterranean communications will inevitably react on our freedom of action in the Far East’. Conversely, agreement might convert Italy from a definite prospective enemy to a neutral which ‘is in itself quite a lot nowadays’.31 The chain of events leading to Eden’s resignation is well known and need not be reprised.32 Chamberlain’s willingness to conduct backstairs diplomacy behind his foreign secretary’s back and his rejection, in Eden’s absence abroad, of Washington’s well-intentioned but shallow peace initiative, formed the immediate backdrop. Hankey impressed upon Chamberlain that the window of opportunity was closing, with Hitler scheduled to visit Rome that spring. Failing a British initiative, the end result could be a full-blown Italo-German military alliance. The imminent threat of Anschluss between Nazi Germany and Austria proved the final catalyst. Eden was convinced that intelligence reports were accurate in suggesting that Italy had already accepted Anchluss in return for German recognition of Italian preponderance in the Mediterranean. Chamberlain preferred to believe Grandi’s denials and was more impressed by his warning that without an agreement Rome would feel compelled to pursue an anti-western policy. Faith in Mussolini was the key difference: Chamberlain had it, Eden did not. The climax came with a four-hour Cabinet meeting in which the overwhelming majority of ministers sided with the Prime Minister. Inskip underlined the point that a settlement with Italy was implicit in low defence expenditure for the Mediterranean: ‘The decision that had been taken . . . rendered it impossible to reinforce Egypt adequately except by exposing our home front to danger.’33 The meetings that Ivy Chamberlain, Austen’s widow, held in Rome with senior fascist leaders, including Mussolini and Ciano, convinced

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Chamberlain ‘of the strong dislike and distrust with which Eden was regarded and the general belief that he did not want better relations’. After the rigmarole attending the resignation was over, a relieved Chamberlain confided to his diary: ‘I am in no doubt that Anthony was right.’ The news of Eden’s demise was received with jubilation in Rome. Although shocked, Lampson quickly applied himself, with Smart, to preparing desiderata for the forthcoming talks, while making it clear that he felt defence efforts should not be relaxed. Their urgency was such that, after Anschluss became a reality, French requests for prior consultations were swept aside. Again emphasising his determination to eliminate potential obstacles, Chamberlain ruled that the Egyptians could not be directly represented at the talks; they could only be informed of developments.34 The negotiations, conducted by Perth and Ciano, were swiftly concluded between 8 March and 16 April 1938. The Spanish and Abyssinian spanners were disarmed by British insistence that the agreement could not come into effect until Italian volunteers were withdrawn from Spain and de jure recognition was accorded by Britain to Italian Abyssinia. As predicted, the Italians refused to countenance the withdrawal of a corps from Libya, contending this would involve reorganising the colony’s defence system. Instead, Rome acceded to reduce the troublesome garrison by not less than half in stages; Mussolini initially authorising reductions at the weekly rate of a thousand troops, a gesture that reflected Italy’s anxiety for détente and manoeuvrability with Berlin.35 Ciano received details of impending British reinforcements to Egypt, a concession intended to make Rome amenable to Chamberlain’s suggestion for regular exchanges of military information, not least new force dispositions and their rationale. The British Foreign Office had suggested a twice-yearly exchange, including data on new and existing fortifications, but the Chiefs of Staff insisted upon an annual arrangement and on excluding details of Western Desert outposts.36 Ciano proved amenable to the proposal provided it was restricted to overseas territories in the Mediterranean and Red Sea and avoided metropolitan areas, including Pantellaria, a strategic base ‘equivalent’ to Plymouth. The Italians later introduced the caveat of restricted areas, including parts of Libya, which the British War Office was happy to accept, despite the opinion of the Rome embassy services attachés that the idea defeated the object. Lampson added his protest. Describing the excluded zone as ‘the most important area for air bases’, he warned that securing agreement ‘is all very well but not to the point where considerations of imperial defence are at stake’. In the event, Halifax sided with Perth’s view that time was of the essence, telephoning him on 13 April to reiterate that there was to be no change. That evening Ciano accepted the British Chiefs of Staff’s amendment that there need be no notification of military dispositions to meet sudden emergencies.37 As Lampson anticipated, the propaganda issue was quickly resolved. Ciano claimed that anti-British radio broadcasts had already ceased and hinted at the prospect of a much-improved tone in future. Rome also

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obligingly accepted a proposal over British rights respecting Lake Tsana and allowed Egypt’s inclusion at the eleventh hour. Mussolini and Ciano regarded the matter as trivial and ‘practically meaningless’. The most difficult part of the negotiations proved to be the Red Sea. It was now recognised that the 1927 Rome Understanding was too loosely worded, with neither side’s sphere of influence being properly defined, resulting in mutual suspicion of intentions. Sir George Rendel, head of the Foreign Office’s Eastern Department, was fluent in Italian and enjoyed good relations with the Italian Embassy in London. He was flown out to tackle this thorny issue. The outcome of complex negotiations was a recognition of the importance of British and Italian communications through the Red Sea. Neither party was to challenge the independence of Saudi Arabia or the Yemen, nor could they establish sovereignty or erect fortifications in the Red Sea islands renounced by Turkey at Lausanne in 1923.38 To British consternation Ciano introduced the Suez Canal, a topic not on the agenda. Fearing a demand for the nomination of an Italian director to the Canal board, British officials were relieved when Rome sought only a reaffirmation of the 1888 convention ‘and particularly as regards liberty of access and transit, the neutralisation of the Canal and prohibition . . . [of] the right of blockade’. With minor modifications, the Admiralty and Foreign Office were amenable, unlike Lampson who feared that the Italians were being conferred virtually equal rights to defend Suez. Following Ciano’s reassurance that this was not the intention, Perth responded testily to Lampson’s characteristic barrage of telegrams reiterating his concerns: ‘To declare that the Canal is an essential means of communication between Italy and Italian territories is an undisputed fact.’ Perth even telephoned the Foreign Office to urge it not to drop the one issue that Rome had introduced. In the end, a simple reaffirmation of the convention was agreed plus a specific acknowledgement that the Canal lay within Egyptian territory.39 Following a Wafd resolution condemning the new Egyptian prime minister, Mohammed Mahmoud, for permitting London to negotiate on Egypt’s vital interests, his government insisted upon closer association with several articles. Indeed, Lampson was awoken at four in the morning on the signing day to receive a Foreign Office missive expressing alarm at Cairo’s intention to send a delegate to Rome. For once, the Ambassador remained calm, secure in the knowledge that the official could not arrive in time to influence events. The draft articles could hardly be altered at the last minute, leading Ciano to save the day by agreeing to address letters to Egypt assuring her special position over Suez and Lake Tsana. Alive to Cairo’s sensitivities, the British delegation took care to make welcome the Egyptian Minister in Rome for the signing ceremony.40 The Anglo-Italian Agreement was initialled in Rome on Easter Sunday, 16 April 1938, where crowds gathered to cheer Ciano and Lord Perth when they departed the signing ceremony. It reaffirmed the Gentleman’s Agreement and was to take effect once the Abyssinian and Spanish obstacles were

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overcome. As well as reassurances over propaganda, Lake Tsana, exchanging military information, Suez and the military duties of natives in Italian East Africa, Italy became a belated signatory of the 1936 London Naval Treaty. It was the birthday present that Lord Halifax, Eden’s successor, wanted but once the euphoria died down worrying aspects remained, blighting claims that the traditional friendship had been truly restored. Eden, reluctant to criticise the Government publicly, vented his disquiet in private: The Prime Minister by the method & content of the Italian agreement has, I fear, done grave injury to our moral position, & that, to put it at the lowest is no small part of Britain’s authority in the world. Many Englishmen must feel humiliated, but there is in all likelihood worse to come.41 The most generous assessment of the agreement would conclude that it brought a temporary easement of Anglo-Italian tensions. The Easter accords were dominated by renewed promises of undertakings previously broken and its continued success rested upon the unlikely eventuality that Italy had mended her ways and would in future abide by agreements. Had the rate of Libyan troop withdrawals been maintained, 50,000 men would have left in a year. As it was, less than 10,000 soldiers were withdrawn by the autumn when they returned as the Sudeten Crisis unfolded. Again, while there was a marked improvement in the tone of Bari–Rome propaganda radio broadcasts and the outpourings of the Italian news agency, Agence d’Egypte et d’Orient, they could change tact at a moment’s notice. Moreover, German propaganda in the Middle East disseminated by the Deutches Nachrichten-Buro, immediately increased, suggesting collusion with Rome. German reports of British activities became distorted under the theme that the self-appointed protectors of the Jews in Palestine were the natural enemies of the Arabs.42 Thus the agreement did not achieve a genuine appeasement. Mussolini’s fixation with empire-building continued – only the previous month he declared himself ‘First Marshal of the Empire’. To Mussolini, who deliberately excluded the French from negotiations, the agreement marked a further attempt to try to separate Britain from France, towards which end he thwarted French overtures for a similar modus vivendi. Italy could still not be counted a friendly power, a view shared by Lampson and Pownall, now the Director of Military Operations and Intelligence at the War Office. The latter was afraid that the politicians would write off Italy as a potential enemy whereas he remained convinced that ‘Musso when the time comes will join whichever side he thinks will win, and he may well think that Germany is the better one to back’. This concern was shared by Weir who, in October 1937, began to re-establish the Mersa Matruh defences. The ever-sceptical Duff Cooper worried, too, at the ‘danger now of the success in Rome leading some people to think that friendship with France is a little less important than it was’.43

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Amery was in Rome, at this time, where he met Mussolini. When Amery remarked that his prime minister intended to respect the Anglo-Italian Agreement, his host seized the moment: At this point Signor Mussolini became very emphatic. He thumped the table, opened his eyes wide and said: ‘I know the desires and the character of Mr. Chamberlain. Will you assure him that I will carry out the treaty in letter and in spirit and that never, never will I do anything that is contrary to the idea which underlies it.’44 The sincerity of these words was belied by the Swastikas that were being unfurled in Rome for Hitler’s impending visit. This followed the introduction, in February, of the ‘Roman step’ into the Italian Army, which could only manage a pale imitation of the fluent German goose-step. As the European situation worsened, it was not at all apparent in Whitehall which side the seemingly mercurial Italian dictator would choose.

7

‘Bloodless war’

Appeasement reached its apogee with the Munich Agreement when Neville Chamberlain, its leading exponent, was regaled at home and abroad for saving the peace. Within months the policy was discredited after a succession of crises showed that appeasement encouraged rather than satiated revisionist powers. With a general election on the horizon, the Chamberlain government recognised reluctantly that it must draw a line in the sand, but doubts remained over western resolve, especially in Berlin. Rome’s stance veered from peacemaker to warmonger, triggering precautionary measures to secure Egypt lest Mussolini did not stay on the sidelines should a war break out with Nazi Germany.

The Egyptian dimension of the Munich Crisis The Sudeten Crisis broke just as the Egyptian Minister of War was in London touting for tangible British armaments. Three days into the scheduled three-week visit Halifax was summoned to Buckingham Palace and Hassan recalled home. The Air Ministry had already rejected Foreign Office beseeching for it to release two Gladiator fighter squadrons as a gesture to Egypt, a decision dictated by the lamentable state of Britain’s own air defences.1 The Foreign Office was unable to clarify Italy’s probable wartime status for the Chiefs of Staff. Warmer Anglo-Italian relations, apparent in the spring, had turned to suspicion and mutual recrimination as each signatory of the Easter Pact interpreted fulfilment differently. Ciano fiercely admonished British dilatoriness in granting de jure recognition, claiming Rome had met its side of the bargain: Libyan troop withdrawals, ceasing anti-British propaganda, and accepting the formula for withdrawal from Spain. Halifax responded that Italy must demonstrably remove its forces, more especially as Italian bombers were implicated in recent air raids on Republican towns. The result was impasse. The uncertainty over which way Italy would jump was compounded when Mussolini denounced Czechoslovakia as a ‘paradoxical creature of Versailles diplomacy’ and backed the strident Sudeten German demands for separation.2 Halifax considered that ‘the stronger we can show

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ourselves in the Mediterranean the more likely this is to swing the opportunistic policy of Italy in our direction’. Egypt’s defences as they stood, however, could hardly be termed impressive. Making matters worse was the deteriorating situation in Palestine, which had taken away 11th Hussars, the only mobile reserve available. The men on the spot made their unease apparent, leading to the assurance that the detachment would return to Egypt in the event of an Anglo-Italian conflict.3 Intelligence sources suggested that Rome began reinforcing Libya, in contravention of the Anglo-Italian Agreement, on 9 September, three days before Hitler’s impassioned Nuremberg speech raised the stakes over the Sudetenland. While officially the protection of British interests in the Middle East now came second only to the defence of Britain itself, the Chiefs of Staff judged that the latter demanded a field force for the Continent. Army reinforcements for Egypt, therefore, must derive from ‘other sources’.4 The Australian High Commissioner in London, while emphasising that his countrymen were lukewarm about fighting for Czechoslovakia, was convinced that ‘there would be a really enthusiastic response to an appeal to fight against “the dirty Italians” ’. But no arrangements were in hand to draw on either Australian or New Zealand forces. Nor had South Africa made any commitment. It accordingly fell to non-Dominion sources to bolster existing forces in Egypt. On 28 September, India, ‘rod and shield’ of empire, was called upon to provide an infantry brigade and a mechanised field artillery regiment, though these additions hardly improved the situation. Moreover, since the reinforcements could not arrive by sea for 18 days, Egypt’s protection had to be improvised from existing resources. Fearing the Italians might win a race to Mersa Matruh, Lieutenant-General Sir Robert ‘Copper’ Gordon-Finlayson, recently appointed General Officer Commanding-inChief British Troops in Egypt, moved a mechanised cavalry regiment there, ostensibly for reconnaissance and training. Simultaneously, under the guise of Nile flood duties, Egyptian troops were deployed to guard vital bridges. At the same time, the Tombak internal security scheme, involving the internment of suspected Axis sympathisers, was readied for implementation.5 The official move forward to Mersa Matruh was ordered on 28 September when Italian troop movements in Libya caused concern. A mobile division, countenanced by Liddell Hart, was formed on the spot. Major-General Hobart, with valuable experience accumulated during the 1935–6 crisis, had been its designated commander since July. But, coveting leading the Field Force in France, the former director of military training at the War Office was decidedly unenthusiastic. He denigrated defence resources in Egypt, especially in tanks, as too slender to form a proper mobile division. GordonFinlayson, characterised by a contemporary as ‘a very stuffy gunner’, derided Hobart as ‘one of those “over the moon soldiers” ’ and worried that Hobart’s known infidelity – ‘skipping off with the wife of one of his students at the India Staff College’ – would lead to him being blackballed by fellow officers.6

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Such protestations delayed Hobart’s departure and but for the supervention of the Sudeten Crisis another officer would eventually have come out. As it was, Hobart was the only commander available when the emergency broke. Gordon-Finlayson’s objections were overcome by his mistaken belief that Hobart would bring a division with him. When he arrived alone at Alexandria, Hobart was met with the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief’s acrid greeting, ‘I don’t know what you’ve come for and I don’t want you anyway’.7 Indeed, the aloof Gordon-Finlayson would only visit Mersa Matruh once while Hobart was in charge, observed just one exercise and shunned Hobart and his partner whenever they were in Cairo. On leaving Egypt, GordonFinlayson wrote a scathing personal indictment of Hobart, accusing him of being obsessed with tanks and cantankerous by nature. So pronounced was Gordon-Finlayson’s hostility that he would eventually engineer Hobart’s removal a year after his coming out.8 Assuming command on 29 September, Hobart’s misgivings were confirmed by the Mobile Division’s miscellany of equipment. The 8th Hussars, awaiting conversion to light tanks, had to make do with Ford pickups, mounting machine guns. At least 7th Hussars fielded light tanks (Mark II and VIB), but was due to be re-equipped with modern Mark VIs. The 1st Battalion, Royal Tank Corps, was better off, having taken all the light tanks sent out in March 1938 but again eventual conversion (to cruiser tanks) was scheduled. The 11th Hussars’ vintage Rolls Royce armoured cars were supplemented by a sprinkling of Morris light armoured cars. The Royal Horse Artillery’s 3.7-inch howitzers were rendered mobile by dragons or towing tractors. 208 Army Cooperation (Lysanders), 80 Fighter (Gladiators) and 45 Bomber (Hawker Harts) provided air support squadrons.9 All in all, the position was far from ideal but, as in 1935–6, needs to be judged against the quality of the opposition (see below). Hobart quickly appreciated the distinctions between Salisbury Plain and the Western Desert. Enthused by the latter’s immense training area, his ardour was dampened by heavy wear and tear on armoured vehicles. Once the immediate threat of war receded, Hobart conducted intensive exercises, which convinced him that the division was ‘flexible, compact and manoeuvrable’. Hobart began bending the rules through great reconnaissance exercises, leading incensed senior officers to withdraw some vehicles. In May 1939 Hobart lamented that ‘the division has never been together’. Nonetheless, he managed to mould cavalry and Royal Tank Corps units into a cohesive fighting force and bred familiarity with the rudiments of desert warfare: wireless communications, on the spot repairs, rapid movement to exploit opportunities, a mobile system of logistical support and night fighting. Hobart’s flagrant violation of convention may ultimately have contributed to his demise but his recommendations placed the division in a strong position against the Italians, providing the bedrock for the victory at Sidi Barrani.10 The naval defence of Egypt preceded general fleet mobilisation due largely to the foresight of Vansittart and Duff Cooper, now First Lord of the

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Admiralty. Already, at the end of August, under the subterfuge of the Spanish situation, the battle cruiser Hood and the Third Destroyer Flotilla were moved to Gibraltar, with the aircraft carrier Glorious ordered to remain at Malta. On 21 September, with Chamberlain absent on his second flying visit to soothe Hitler, Vansittart engineered the removal of the Mediterranean Fleet from Malta. Cadogan subsequently endorsed its redeployment to Alexandria after consulting the new First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse.11 By the morning of the 28th, when the Royal Navy went on full alert, three battleships, four cruisers and twenty destroyers were concentrating at Alexandria, with preparations well in hand to defend the port against a pre-emptive attack. That day Duff Cooper dispatched 1,900 seamen to the Mediterranean to bring the fleet up to establishment and man Suez’s defences. A Cunard liner, Aquitania, was requisitioned for this purpose, reaching Alexandria on 5 October. Upon his return from Nazi Germany, Chamberlain determined to pursue a more optimistic line. To Duff Cooper’s astonishment, the Prime Minister strongly objected to authorising the ‘preparation for control’ stage of the Suez Canal defence scheme. As a result, it was not until two days later, following a further deterioration in the situation, that the Admiralty gave the go-ahead.12 The solitary fighter squadron allotted for Alexandria’s defence was deployed on 23 September with other air squadrons ordered to war stations two days later. Ground crews worked round-the-clock to produce serviceable aircraft and by 28 September, 27 Wellesley bombers were ready for action. Nine were bombed up and picketed on the aerodrome, ready to attack Libya at a moment’s notice. Number 55 Squadron (Blenheim bombers), coincidentally visiting Egypt from Iraq, was detained in accordance with the reinforcement plan. Two further squadrons would come from Iraq and another couple from India.13 The Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938 rendered all such preparations redundant. At the news, deployments not implemented were suspended and within three days the crisis was officially terminated. There was an inquest at the time, and there have been many since, on the wisdom of appeasement at this juncture. The capacity to defend Egypt and Italy’s ability to assail British interests in the Mediterranean were part of an array of contributory factors and, in the final analysis, were not critical. The appalling state of British air defences combined with the perceived German intention to deliver a ‘knockout blow’ against Britain from the air served to buttress Chamberlain’s inclination towards concessions to save the peace. The Chiefs of Staff warned that to restore Czech independence would involve a protracted struggle with Nazi Germany in which Italy and Japan might well intervene to further their territorial ambitions at British expense. With the Dominion position uncertain, it was judged that now was not the time to risk the empire.14 As the Sudeten Crisis reached its climax, there was brief optimism in the Italian camp that if war erupted it could provide the opportunity to take

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Egypt, Suez and Tunisia in a quick war. Some naval planning was undertaken towards this end but on 27 September the Italian Chiefs of Staff concluded, as they had done in August 1935, that Italy could not risk being dragged into a long conflict. Pariani emphasised to Mussolini that six divisions needed to be transferred from the Po army to Libya to act against Egypt. Admiral Cavagnari could only hope for Japanese intervention to weaken the formidable Anglo-French naval forces in the Mediterranean and feared the United States might be drawn in. After Badoglio impressed his extreme reluctance to contemplate war upon Mussolini, that evening the latter became amenable to a British suggestion to intercede with Hitler. Just over a month later, on 28 October, Rome announced the adoption of la guerre di rapido (the war of rapid course), a strategic doctrine which reflected Italy’s inability to survive a protracted struggle. Yet no substance lay behind the rhetoric. Only a limited number of tanks – predominantly the retrograde CV35 – were available due to wastage in Spain, production problems and financial impediments with new medium tanks unavailable until early 1939. The paucity of fuelling dumps in Libya make it doubly improbable that Italian land forces could have penetrated far into Egypt at this time. Moreover, such a move would have risked being struck in the rear by the 14 French divisions poised in Tunisia behind the Mareth Line – an enormous force compared with the British Army in Egypt. The other Italian forces were hardly better prepared. The Regia Aeronautica had passed its peak, drained by operations in Spain and blighted by too many production types (21 fuselage and 14 engine variations), reflecting Air Ministry indecision over where priorities should lie. Together with import problems and the need to export aircraft for revenue, this meant that few new aircraft were being produced. As to the potential naval confrontation, Italy could deploy just two modernised capital ships, Cesare and Cavore, accentuating the Naval Staff’s disinclination to risk potentially suicidal clashes with bigger gunned Anglo-French naval forces. Protecting lines of communication (primarily with Libya) and guerrilla warfare were the only realistic options. There were fanciful plans to blockade the British Mediterranean Fleet at Valetta and strike the French fleet at Toulon with explosive-laden torpedo boats. These were infused with wishful thinking (not least because most of the British fleet was at Alexandria!) and on a par with Pariani’s fantasy that the Suez Canal could be captured using poison gas. An authority judges that, had war materialised, the Regia Marina’s ‘prospects for success would have been slender indeed’.15 The British Chiefs of Staff’s earlier insistence that the Mediterranean be excluded from Anglo-French staff talks, for fear of upsetting Italy, meant that there was the hope, but not the certainty, that the French would oversee the western Mediterranean beyond Gibraltar. Nor was this lack of cooperation confined to naval matters. General Edmund ‘Tiny’ Ironside, who arrived in Egypt on 28 September as Commander-in-Chief Middle East Designate, bemoaned that Gordon-Finlayson ‘had no idea what our possible allies, the French, proposed to do in North Africa’. This blindness led

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Ironside to adopt a worst-case scenario: that all available Italian forces would attack Egypt. In line with this, his report highlighted glaring weaknesses: the problem of reinforcement in wartime, inadequate anti-aircraft cover, the constrained garrison, low reserves. Yet, despite such deficiencies, British forces remained hungry to fight. A Suez Canal Brigade officer recalled troops were ‘all quite prepared to take on the Eyties. . . . We all rather laughed at them. We thought we’d see them off alright’. Admiral Pound considered the opposition ‘just second rate’ and one of his staff officers recalled the anticlimax when news of Munich came through: ‘The whole fleet was perfectly ready to fight and was confident that we would win.’16 Anglo-French naval dominance over most of the Mediterranean was virtually assured, had war arisen that autumn. The Royal Air Force, in turn, would have limited the effectiveness of the Regia Aeronautica in north and east Africa through striking at landing and supply bases. A virtual stalemate seems probable on the Egyptian-Libyan frontier, at least until one side’s armoured strength was sufficiently augmented to facilitate an advance. Lampson fretted at the thinness of Sudan’s defences. In September 1938, the Duke of Aosta, the new Viceroy of Abyssinia, and his military commander, General Ugo Cavellero, agreed to deploy their forces in northern Abyssinia for an advance into the Sudan should Balbo invade Egypt. But this Achilles’ heel, the back door into Egypt, was more apparent than real. An invasion force faced tremendous logistical difficulties, not to mention the certainty of air harassment, the prospect of an Abyssinian rising in its rear, and the depressing knowledge that its supplies could not be substantially replenished, given the British stranglehold over Suez.17

The aftermath After Munich, the main impetus was towards improving defences at home and abroad. Following Ironside’s alarmist report, Gort re-examined the Mersa Matruh strategy, castigating the plan to hold the port before reinforcements were brought up for an eventual advance into Libya as a legacy from 1935–6 when an additional division was available and the potential scale of Italian attack much less. Having increased her water-carrying transport, it was estimated that Italy could now succour two motorised divisions and an armoured group for an invasion. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff considered the present strategy risked the loss or investment of the Mersa Matruh garrison which ‘would jeopardise the security of the Delta’. In fact, Gordon-Finlayson was already considering a fall back to Daba, 80 miles east of Mersa Matruh, which, because of the impassable Qattara Depression, could not be outflanked. Here was the genesis of the El Alamein strategy. Gort was persuaded, but proposed to retain current plans – which the Italians were known to be privy to – which would now incorporate a potential withdrawal to Daba. To confuse SIM, the construction of defences and barracks at Mersa Matruh would continue while Daba received

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minimum attention. By the end of the year a demolition plan existed to deprive the Italians of Mersa Matruh’s resources.18 The improbability of their even reaching Mersa Matruh, let alone threatening the Delta, became apparent during Gort’s tour of February 1939. An official noted that in the past the problems of defending Egypt had been magnified and too little attention had been given to the difficulties which would face the Italians in invading the country. Consequently, a strong force, adequately supplied with reserves, is at the least a very good insurance against serious fighting in Egypt, and at the most a good augury for dealing the Italians a severe blow if they do in fact attempt an invasion.19 Coincidentally, the Italians too reviewed their plans at this time. In autumn 1938 Balbo sent Pariani a wildly optimistic proposal that, while the defensive was maintained against Tunisia, seven motorised divisions invade Egypt along the coastal route. Pariani indulged in the fantasy by adding five divisions before the ultra-cautious Badoglio deemed the scheme unrealistic, a view confirmed when he inspected Libya in February 1939, which convinced him that the colony could only support defensive operations. Shortly before his visit, Badoglio seized on Mussolini’s prediction that a long period of peace, or, at most, a unilateral war with France, would follow Munich, as an excuse to shelve plans to invade Egypt.20 British commanders-in-chief on the spot generally considered that reinforcing Egypt after hostilities erupted was risky. Without the Munich Agreement, the Aquitania, carrying vital personnel, might have been sunk en route through the Mediterranean by Italian aircraft. The alternative Red Sea route into Egypt was the subject of a Royal Air Force Overseas Command conference in November 1938 which took the view that even if local air defences were strengthened, in the period immediately after war commenced convoy losses through air attack might still be punitive. Moreover, it could take four months to bring in reinforcements and supplies via the more circuitous Cape of Good Hope route. Admiral Pound naturally wanted his fleet to be at full strength, an ideal ruled out by conflicting demands elsewhere. Gordon-Finlayson sought the assurance of increased reserves and further reinforcements from Palestine and India. The Army Council now assumed that the Mediterranean would be unavailable in wartime and deemed it unwise to send the Heron (Indian) brigade in transports through the Red Sea. Prompted by Gordon-Finlayson, the Army Council recommended reserves be increased to 90 days and that the Middle East Reserve Brigade became a colonial division. The Heron force would now come overland via the Baghdad–Haifa road, which was being improved. The Committee of Imperial Defence endorsed these recommendations on 9 March 1939, shortly before Hitler pounced on rump Czechoslovakia.21 Lampson, regularly tackled by nervous Egyptian politicians over the

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perceived weaknesses of British defences, embarked upon yet another campaign to alert the authorities at home to the position before disaster struck. Profoundly irritated by what they regarded as undue interference, the Chiefs of Staff responded that the Middle East was by no means the neglected area portrayed by the jittery ambassador. By March 1939 total strength there would be 28,000 troops and 162 first-line aircraft compared with 13,500 troops and 84 first-line aircraft in 1935, a virtual doubling of capacity. Nor were these figures final and if some of Lampson’s hopes went unfulfilled it was because of competing calls from home and the Far East. ‘The simple answer’, the Chiefs of Staff sneered, ‘would be to maintain in the Middle East air forces sufficient to meet any Italian forces on equal terms’. But until air parity with Nazi Germany was achieved, a position of numerical inferiority was inevitable.22 The local commanders did not share Lampson’s apprehension. On a visit to Egypt early in 1939 Hankey found the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief ‘in very good heart about the Royal Air Force; had received a lot of modern material; and thought that by April he could put up a good show against the Italians’. Gordon-Finlayson complained to Gort that two of Lampson’s telegrams were remitted without his knowledge. ‘Lampson’, Pownall bemoaned, ‘merely makes more work and confuses the issues’. The matter reached the Prime Minister’s ears. ‘I have my doubts whether Miles Lampson is doing any good in Cairo’, he wrote. But any thought of replacing the malcontent ambassador (his tenure was due for review in December 1939) was superseded by Hankey’s glowing report which suggested that Lampson occupied ‘a position of unique authority which his successors can hardly aspire to . . .’.23

More harm than good: the Rome visit Oblivious to Mussolini’s role as German stooge at Munich, Chamberlain was deluded into believing that Il Duce had turned peacemaker and was anxious to accept his invitation to visit Rome. As a necessary prelude, the AngloItalian Agreement was ratified. The preconditions were soon fulfilled. Italy’s withdrawal of 10,000 volunteers from Spain was now deemed sufficient and Britain and Egypt followed France in belatedly recognising Italian sovereignty over Abyssinia. Halifax even spoke of ‘a new era’ in Anglo-Italian relations.24 When it came to practicalities, however, it soon emerged that there was nothing to give. Foreign Office suggestions to demilitarise Malta and promise not to develop Cyprus as a naval base were scotched by the Chiefs of Staff since they were the only Mediterranean ports in British territory.25 The sudden deterioration in Franco-Italian relations, following Rome’s extravagant claims to Tunis, Jubiti, Nice and Corsica did not help. Privately British decision-makers conceded that Italy had a good case in its demand for a directorship on the Suez Canal Board (Holland, with far less tonnage, was represented) but security considerations weighed in the balance. An Italian director might become privy to Canal defence plans while Nazi Germany

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(third largest user by 1939 after Britain and Italy) and Japan might seek directorships. Truly international representation in Canal management could well weaken Britain’s locus standi for remaining in Egypt.26 Even if Britain had been favourably disposed to the Italian case, it soon emerged that France and Egypt were not. Visiting Paris in November 1938, Chamberlain and Halifax heard at first hand the French view that an Italian director was ‘most inconvenient’. Again, while the British privately admitted Italy was right in considering that Canal dues were excessive, the Egyptian government, set to inherit the Canal and its lucrative revenues in 1968, was adamantly opposed to reductions.27 Against this background, it is no surprise that the Rome summit of January 1939 was reduced to a cosmetic exercise in public relations with no substance behind the smiles and handshakes for the cameras. If Britain brought little to the table, Italy did not even have a programme for the conversations. Brushing aside French objections to the visit, Chamberlain hoped he might persuade Mussolini to influence Hitler once more, but Il Duce would give no such undertaking. Indeed, the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary were reduced to skirting round thorny issues, such as Suez and Italian claims on French territories. Once they had left, with Chamberlain boarding his return train to the accompaniment of ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’, which mystified Mussolini, Rome resumed its anti-French propaganda campaign. Rab Butler later derided Chamberlain and Halifax’s futile diplomacy: ‘I fear that their visit to Rome armed with umbrellas was rather pathetic.’ Their hosts were of like mind, having become privy to British fears of Nazi Germany. ‘The British do not want to fight’, Ciano concluded. Mussolini likewise was unimpressed, predicting that the once revered British Empire was now near collapse.28 While Chamberlain remained an eternal optimistic, believing that his relationship with Mussolini was strengthened by their summit, his options were increasingly circumscribed by the emergence of rival camps. On one side stood Nazi Germany and Italy, with Japan a hesitant but likely partner. In October 1938 the Chiefs of Staff ordered the Joint Planning Committee to draw up an appreciation based upon the supposition of a simultaneous conflict against the Anti-Comintern trio, marking the first occasion when fascist Italy was considered a definite prospective enemy. On 12 December 1938 Chamberlain informed Parliament that Britain had no specific military obligations to France should Italy attack its territories, encouraging Ciano to denounce the Franco-Italian agreements five days later. But after Hitler publicly pledged German support for Italy should a third party attack her, Chamberlain was compelled to change tack. On 6 February 1939 he announced that Britain would stand by France if an attack came, marking the failure of Mussolini’s attempts since the Easter accords to split the Western Powers.29

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Bloodless war begins What Churchill characterised as a period of ‘bloodless war’ was now underway. A few weeks after the first annual exchange of military information, on 10 January 1939, Italy reinforced the Libya garrison by an estimated 30,000 troops, restoring its strength to that existing prior to the Anglo-Italian Agreement. Publicly the Chamberlain government made light of this, claiming that Italy had never signed up to reducing the garrison indefinitely.30 Privately it remained uncertain how to interpret this Italian gambit. The favoured explanation was that Rome was seeking to pressure Paris into making concessions. Posturing to invade Egypt, so often the cause of such accretions in the past, was soon ruled out by intelligence sources which reported that Libya’s eastern frontier was practically denuded of troops with the majority deployed on the western frontier facing Tunisia. By early March, French sources put the garrison at 86,000. Adding to the tension was Rome’s call-up of three classes of reservists (with another standing by) and reports of partial naval mobilisation.31 The British were far less concerned at the turn of events than were the French. London was reassured by ample evidence of Italian unpreparedness for war. The Commercial Counsellor in the British Embassy in Rome had recently toured the industrial north and, except for benzene, recorded Italian raw material stocks were at their lowest levels since 1935. In similar vein, the air attaché reported normal production after visiting key aircraft factories. Ciano’s diary confirms that while Mussolini wanted to smash the French (in his more fanciful moments talking of a fortnight’s war), the reality was that the war and aviation departments were far from ready. Sober judgements were notable by their absence in Paris. To the Daladier government recent events suggested a nightmare scenario, with the Japanese occupation of Haiwan off French Indo-China on 10 February providing further proof of a worldwide conspiracy by the Anti-Comintern powers. Fearing a sudden Italian raid against Jibuti, the French recalled reservists so that they might respond by attacking Tripolitania. London sought to calm the atmosphere through inspiring the appeasement-minded French foreign minister, Georges Bonnet, to assure Rome that France desired peace and military preparations in hand were purely precautionary.32 The triumphant German entry into Prague on the Ides of March fanned the flames once more, French nervousness being transmitted to Britain as future German intentions transparently went beyond the destruction of the Versailles dicktat. Lampson felt inspired when he tuned into Chamberlain’s ringing condemnatory speech from Birmingham two days later. Cairo followed London’s lead in refusing to accord de jure recognition of the German absorption of Czechoslovakia. On 1 April Mohammed Mahmoud, the Egyptian leader informed the New York Times that his government was ‘collaborating with Great Britain and is well prepared to defend the Valley of the Nile’. The same day his ambassador in London

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learnt of the Anglo-French guarantee of Polish sovereignty against external aggression.33 Yet if British policy outwardly hardened towards Berlin, a soft spot remained for Rome. Disregarding Halifax’s reservations, Chamberlain persuaded his Cabinet that he should ask Mussolini to restrain Hitler. For once, the Prime Minister’s instincts were well founded. Mussolini was offended by Hitler’s unannounced entry into Prague and momentarily agonised about changing direction, halting reinforcements to Libya and reaching an accommodation with the Western Powers. But the sticking point remained that where Berlin expressed no interest in the Mediterranean, London and Paris, notwithstanding their appeasing ways elsewhere, were not prepared to concede an inch of territory. Only the previous month Mussolini had denounced Britain and France before the Fascist Grand Council as Italy’s jailers. To break out of her Mediterranean incarceration Italy must ‘march to the ocean’ – either the Indian Ocean, linking Libya with Abyssinia via Egypt and the Sudan, or the Atlantic through French North Africa. To do so, Italy needed Nazi Germany to protect her ‘shoulders on the Continent’. The cloying tone of Chamberlain’s démarche produced the opposite effect to that intended – Mussolini touted the letter as yet ‘another proof of the inertia of the democracies’. He would only respond if Italy’s rights were recognised, defining them in an aggressive speech of 29 March, one version of which contained references to ‘British bastards’. What was required to assuage Italy was a pivotal position in the Mediterranean; specifically control over Jibuti, Tunisia and Suez.34 Within three weeks of Prague, 22,000 Italian troops invaded Albania, which caught the British unawares. On the invasion date, Good Friday 7 April, Chamberlain was fishing in Scotland, Halifax, the ‘Holy Fox’, was in church and other senior personnel were away from their posts. Only one officer, Major Ian Jacob, was manning the Committee of Imperial Defence offices in Whitehall Gardens. Two of the Mediterranean Fleet’s capital ships were paying courtesy visits to Italian ports with other units dispersed when the crisis blew up, giving Churchill a field day in Parliament, accusing the Mediterranean Fleet of ‘lolling’ about. Learning of the incursion, Jacob alerted all government offices, leading Major-General Pakenham-Walsh to ask: ‘Is this the match to set off the magazine?’35 Albanian opposition was virtually non-existent and by Easter Sunday Italian forces were in occupation of Tirana, the capital, and King Zog had fled to Greece, leaving King Victor Emmanuel to assume his crown. The immediate issue for the Chamberlain government was the appropriate response. True, the Anglo-Italian Agreement had been infringed through disrupting the Mediterranean status quo but Albania was not remotely a vital interest. Indeed, since 1918 British governments had regarded it as a virtual Italian protectorate. There was no question, therefore, of a declaration of war. Chamberlain informed by secret contacts that the move was primarily aimed at forestalling a Nazi gambit in the Balkans, was confident ‘that

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Mussolini has not decided to go against us’. Refusing to panic, the stoic Chamberlain ruled out the maverick Churchill’s call to surround Corfu – the rumoured next Italian target – with warships, as reckless. Again, Halifax rebuffed denouncing the Easter pact as ‘we derived more benefit from it than Italy, and we wished in particular to see the Italian troops leave Spain’.36 Prudent measures to protect Egypt were another matter. The Mediterranean Fleet was ordered to assemble at Malta at two days notice to proceed to Alexandria. On 10 April the War Office, overriding Colonial Office objections, ordered the immediate return to Egypt of troops on loan to Palestine with the Middle East Reserve there placed on stand-by. The victory of the Axis-backed Spanish Nationalists on 29 March, General Franco’s accession to the Anti-Comintern Pact on 8 April, Rome’s procrastination in removing volunteers until after the laudatory victory parade, and Hitler’s scheduled end-of-the-month Reichstag address, pointed to the prospect for a further Axis stunt. The Admiralty, determined not to be caught out again, granted Pound’s wish to move his fleet to Alexandria although, at Foreign Office insistence, the redeployment was phased so as not to repeat the alarm felt by Rome in the summer of 1935. The measured British approach contrasted with more extreme French precautions: their Mediterranean fleet was put on emergency footing, their ambassador recalled from Rome and their forces strengthened on the Franco-Italian frontier.37 Chamberlain could not entirely pass over the Albanian affair. As Pownall recorded: ‘It is all a bad knock for the P.M. who firmly believed that Musso was a reliable person & wouldn’t do the dirty.’ Halifax encapsulated the British dilemma: ‘to find a middle road between provoking Italy on the one hand, and on the other not doing enough to give Italy clear warning that we should join in resisting aggression’. Italy could now mount an invasion of Greece from Albania. The strategic importance of Greek ports led Chatfield, Inskip’s successor as the Minister for the Coordination of Defence, to press for an attack on Greece to form a casus belli. Even Chamberlain recognised that an Italian occupation of Corfu meant war. Joint Anglo-French guarantees to Greece and Romania followed on 13 April. Within a month the AngloTurkish Declaration would provide for mutual aid and assistance should hostilities erupt in the Mediterranean. All these arrangements were problematic if they were invoked, as the Chiefs of Staff candidly pointed out. But at this juncture the overriding concern was to indicate to Italy that it should venture no further.38 Should Italy not be deterred then Egypt was under threat. The British Consul at Benghazi reported suspicious Italian troop concentrations at Tripoli, which tied in with intelligence reaching the Foreign Office from Rome and Tunis prognosticating an invasion of Egypt. With War Office estimates putting the Libya garrison at 76,000 troops, Gordon-Finlayson placed his forces at a day’s notice for war. At the same time, he was forbidden to move forward to Mersa Matruh without specific authority. Air commands in the region were instructed unostentatiously to increase their readiness in case of

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untoward developments. Air Marshal Sir William Mitchell, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Middle East, exceeded instructions by moving two squadrons into the Western Desert, a decision that helped to undermine his position.39 The attitude of Gordon-Finlayson and Mitchell, as they informed Lampson the day after the Albanian coup, was to make the best use of existing forces whilst recognising the need for reinforcements. Lampson, however, took it upon himself to launch yet another campaign to redress Egypt’s defence deficiencies. Time and again it has fallen to me to urge the sending of more troops to Egypt and the Sudan. At the risk of over-persistency, I feel impelled to make a further and final appeal to HMG to remedy the weakness of Egypt and the Sudan while there is time. Admittedly there are many calls on our resources; and it is invidious to go on pressing for what may be difficult to provide. But I will not have on my conscience a disaster due to any neglect of mine to lay the bare truth before HMG. So far as Egypt is concerned . . . we have not enough troops, aircraft or anti-aircraft guns.40 Refusing to acknowledge that Britain’s defence was more important, Lampson requested immediate reinforcement by the Middle East Reserve Brigade and the Indian brigade (Force Heron) held for Egyptian defence.41 The War Office was incensed by Lampson’s interference and by the Foreign Office’s refusal to reprimand him. Pownall suspected that the ambassador was intent on covering himself for any future disaster. He only counts heads, too, paying no attention to circumstances. 76,000 Italians 13,000 British that’s his comparison. He takes no account of the French . . . nor of the 200 miles of waterless desert the Italians have to cross to get at us. Nor is there any occasion to panic at the present time, things are relatively quiet, though of course they may boil up . . . Lampson now wires his own strategic views without showing them to Gordon-Finlayson. He even includes Sudan and Aden which are no pidgin of his at all. He’s a great fat useless beggar who would be better employed in doing his own job of keeping up British prestige in Egypt.42 Gort, ever sceptical of the prospect of a large-scale Italian invasion, was unwilling to tie down forces in Egypt where, once ensconced, they would be difficult to remove. For the moment he preferred to retain reinforcements in Palestine, leaving open the options of sending them to Egypt, France or Singapore.43 In May, Balbo met Gordon-Finlayson on a visit to Egypt and inadvertently provided glimpses into the true state of affairs in Libya. His men’s loathing of the desert was such that most were kept in large towns, furnishing them with ‘as much gaiety as possible’. Balbo considered Mersa Matruh ‘a

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terrible place, frightful dust and sand, nothing to do, bad hotels and no women’. His British host retorted that his troops rather enjoyed the location and anyway needed to be based somewhere. At this Balbo laughed, regretting the circumstances: ‘You and I know what war means and we don’t want it.’ They parted ‘very affably’ the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief recorded, he to go to some women, which without doubt is his greatest interest, and I to wonder what the game really was. But he did not play it very well, being more of a soldier than a diplomat; but I am quite sure he does not want to go to war really in the summer with the soldiers he has now.44 Balbo’s invitation for lunch in Tripoli was never kept, for the same month Gordon-Finlayson was appointed the Adjutant General with LieutenantGeneral Henry ‘Jumbo’ Wilson earmarked to replace him. The War Office had become increasingly uneasy with Gordon-Finlayson. ‘Copper’ has such queer ways of doing business, [Pownall complained]. Reams of private letters, not always consistent with each other & with so many different points in each that no one thing can be tackled firmly at a time. He is so well meaning but so confusing to deal with. The final straw appears to have been Gordon-Finlayson’s failure to muzzle Lampson, who was judged to have ‘gone entirely jittery . . . and has sent in a stream of “strategic” telegrams’. Pownall had higher hopes of Wilson ‘though I would not call him ideal from my small knowledge of him. It is a very difficult job to fill and there are not many who would do it well’.45

Preparing for war On 22 February 1939 the Cabinet approved a field force for the Continent and a Middle East Reserve. Because of the priority accorded to the former, the reserve initially amounted to just a brigade rather than the two divisions envisaged and was stationed in Palestine to respect the garrison restrictions of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. On 21 April the Strategic Appreciation Committee endorsed a policy of ‘self-sufficiency’ for Egypt and the Middle East in land and air forces, although there was no immediate prospect of fulfilment. In May it was proposed, and subsequently approved, that the reserve be increased to one colonial division. It would come under the command of the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief British Troops in Egypt but could only be moved at the behest of the War Office.46 As the prospect of general war loomed, so the examination of Egypt’s defence deficiencies became more intense. In March 1939 home defence dictated that only two squadrons (fighter and bomber) could immediately be spared, leading the Chief of the Air Staff to concede that the accretion failed

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to provide a ‘reasonable standard of security’.47 The Deputy Director of Operations at the Air Ministry considered that current forces might deal with the Italian threat but if ever Nazi Germany moved into the theatre ‘we will, I feel, have to alter all our ideas of the forces it is necessary for us to keep in the Middle East’. Air Chief Marshal Sir John Slessor, the Director of Plans, anticipated that as home defences became more formidable, the Axis might well turn to north Africa as ‘the scene of the showdown’.48 Nevertheless, Slessor declined a French suggestion to dispatch bombers and fighters to Tunisia, whence southern Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Tripolitania could be attacked. The Air Ministry was only prepared to commit a third fighter squadron to Egypt and only then on the basis that it was comprised of Gladiator biplanes rather than Hurricane monoplanes to minimise the impact on home defences.49 Air Ministry suspicions of increasing Axis collaboration were enhanced when, on 25 April, Berlin initiated its own Arabic propaganda broadcasts. A deluge of anti-British broadcasts the same month followed Goebbels’ conspicuous visit to Cairo. The Deutches Nachrichten Buro’s allegations were generally regarded with humour by British authorities in Egypt.50 Of greater concern was the suggestion, echoed in Radio Bari transmissions, that since Britain was ‘incapable’ of defending Egypt, neutrality was her wisest option. As a counter-blast, demonstration flights were arranged over Cairo and Suez. The effect was not altogether as intended. ‘A Royal Air Force officer playing golf at Geriza pointed out a formation to his caddie, with the remark that they were British planes. Caddie replied: “I suppose they are flying away before the Italians come.” ’ Regular incursions by Italian military aircraft of Egyptian air space afforded further confirmation to natives of the image of British impotence.51 On 22 May the Pact of Steel was announced: an Italo-German military alliance, which bound the parties to aid each other should either become embroiled in conflict. Its immediate purpose for Mussolini was to browbeat the French. Ciano had ignored German signals of an imminent intention to attack Poland and failed to arouse Mussolini’s suspicions. The ensuing Cavellero memorandum – which went unanswered – emphasised that Italy required at least a three years’ breathing space before a major conflict. With British intelligence sources indicating that Mussolini was not anxious for war, Chamberlain refused to write off Il Duce and sought to engineer a FrancoItalian détente. By contrast, Daladier insisted there was nothing to be gained from concessions to a Power which ‘had placed herself firmly in the opposite camp’ and boasted 1.8 million men under arms. Moreover, African Muslims in the French Empire would deride any deal as a surrender.52 Refusing to be deflected, the obstinate Chamberlain recalled Sir Eric Phipps from Paris on 8 June under the subterfuge of the impending Russian talks. The ambassador reported reassuringly that Bonnet was inclined towards appeasement, leading to a proposal to support an Italian director on the Suez board, notwithstanding the recent misgivings on the subject. With Nazi Germany now threatening

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Poland, wider issues were at stake. Siding with Chamberlain, Halifax believed that ‘if we want him [Mussolini] to pull his weight over Danzig . . . it would be easier for him to do so if he could at least get out of the position of having his issues with France entirely side-tracked’. Despite Chamberlain’s pleading letter Daladier maintained his position, which mirrored the British Embassy in Rome’s view that concessions ‘would only make Italians open mouths wider’.53 By this time Mussolini was making himself scarce to foreign diplomats. Vansittart learned from ‘a quite certain source’ of Mussolini’s crowing to Berlin that he treated Sir Percy Loraine, Perth’s successor, ‘with the utmost contumely and discourtesy’. Their first meeting, on 27 May, when Il Duce railed against the alleged encirclement of the Axis, was brought to a sudden halt and ended in stony silence. The following week Grandi was recalled from London, never to return. It was not until 21 July that the second – and final – Mussolini – Loraine meeting transpired. On 4 July, Loraine had submitted a memorandum making it abundantly plain that should Nazi Germany attack Poland, then Britain would honour its obligations. ‘Mussolini’, reported the Ambassador, ‘made the unequivocal statement to me that if England fights to help Poland defend herself against a German threat to her independence, Italy will fight at Germany’s side’. Privately, Loraine reported gloomily to Halifax that there had been ‘no junction between our lines of thought; it was as if, yesterday, I was talking about cricket and Mussolini was talking about chess’. Chastised by his experience, Loraine was soon suggesting that the time had come for a firmer policy towards Mussolini.54 Although the prospect of war with the Axis formed a major theme of Anglo-French staff conversations, which commenced in March, the German threat was seen as confined largely to Europe. This overriding issue naturally consumed much of the conference with the Mediterranean theatre playing second fiddle. Nevertheless, there was considerable discussion over how to meet the Italian threat. Reassuringly, the French promised to mount an offensive against Tripolitania to draw off Italian forces if Egypt were seriously attacked. French unease at the state of Egypt’s defences soon became apparent when General Albert Lelong, head of the French delegation, accused the British of complacently relying on water and logistical problems to impede an Italian advance. Yet Rome was not oblivious to the difficulties – several watertank lorries having recently been spotted disembarking at Libyan ports. French divisions in Tunisia were secure behind the Mareth Line whereas the lack of fortified lines in Egypt invited attack, not least because of the numerical inferiority of the British garrison. Brigadier Kennedy’s riposte was a mixture of contempt for Italian military capabilities, consideration of the wider picture, and the peculiar difficulties presented by Egypt’s defence. It was no less than a thousand miles from Tripoli to Alexandria and the clear inference was that the Italians were incapable of reaching the latter. ‘We must remember too’, Kennedy enjoined, ‘that the enemy in this case were only Italians’. The Western Desert did not lend itself to fortifications – although

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lines of defence had been reconnoitred and prepared for occupation. The 1936 treaty limited the size of the peacetime garrison but reinforcements were earmarked from India and Palestine in emergency since home resources were reserved for the Continental expeditionary force.55 Loath to take on formidable German forces, Lelong was happy to countenance expelling Italy from Libya through joint operations. Indeed, the French began examining such schemes early in 1938 but only now could they be considered, given the earlier British insistence on excluding the possibility of war with Italy. The strategy was sold as an important distraction from the defensive posture in the West in the opening phase of the conflict. The defeat of Italy constituted the centrepiece of a second phase before the final phase in which an isolated Germany was brought to its knees.56 After their delegation ‘rather light-heartedly talked of staging an offensive against Libya from Tunisia’,57 the French considered the Italian dimension in the context of the recently concluded Franco-Polish military convention in which assistance was recklessly promised to Warsaw within 15 days of mobilisation. Through attacking Italy directly, the French extemporised that they would ‘aid’ Poland by exposing Germany’s weak flank (Austria and Czechoslovakia).58 Such convoluted reasoning received a further twist when, out of the blue, the French changed tack and began to envisage Italian neutrality as the best outcome. Thereby several divisions could be removed from the Alps and north Africa, oil might still be transported to metropolitan France via Suez and the Mediterranean, and virtually the entire French air force could be concentrated in the north eastern theatre against the more potent German threat. French cold feet were also apparent when Gamelin insisted that the validity of any military convention was contingent on a corresponding political accord.59 A subsequent regional conference in Rabat, Algiers raised further complications. Franco had recently reinforced Spanish Morocco and if Spain were hostile, then nine French divisions would be engaged in defending Algeria. Later Gamelin declared that while the Moroccan situation remained uncertain, only a faint offensive could be contemplated against Libya. At Rabat the French air commander in North Africa, General Marcel Têtu, promised hopefully that if Italy came in, then all bombers at his disposal would fall on strategic targets in Libya and the central Mediterranean. However, the modernisation of French air forces in Tunisia was not scheduled for completion until 1940–1 by which time the Farman 222 heavy bomber, whose range and payload were far superior to Wellingtons based in Egypt, would be available. In the interim, however, only 60 planes all told were to hand, leading to a futile request for 50 British fighter aircraft to plug the gap in air defences. An Air Ministry representative, after visiting Algiers and Tunis, brought back the message that the destruction of the Italian air threat in southern Italy, Pantellaria and Sicily was the ‘indispensable preliminary’ to the French mounting an invasion of Libya.60 Chatfield, in contrast to his meek approach in 1935–6, considered that the

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soundest strategy to adopt when confronted by three enemies was to attack the weakest. Italy seemed to fit the bill perfectly. This approach was also inherent in the Chiefs of Staff’s European Appreciation which proposed bringing ‘immediate pressure to bear on Italy, [taking] offensive action whenever possible against her naval forces and bases and defended ports, by interrupting her seaborne trade and isolating her overseas territory’. Ministers seized on this passage to add credence to the growing view that it would be possible to force a quick Italian exit from a general conflagration. Echoing this, the Joint Planning Committee was directed by the Committee of Imperial Defence to consider ways of ensuring that Rome did not remain neutral.61 The sinuous outcome saw military planners raise manifold objections to such a course of action. Britain would be tainted as an aggressor; Italian public opinion would rally behind Mussolini; there were ‘no decisive measures that we can take at the outset’; Italy would be afforded the opportunity to mount potentially devastating air raids against ill-defended Egyptian and Maltese population centres. The Admiralty lent its weight to the report’s appeasing tone, warning that unless Italy was somehow compelled to quickly exhaust its oil reserves (estimated at five months’ oil consumption) no knockout blow was practical. The same applied to Libya where Malta’s insecurity as a fleet base complicated the interdiction of Italian seaborne supplies. This conclusion was bolstered when the Admiralty lost its battle to deploy 112 anti-aircraft guns at Valetta after the other services could not guarantee the fleet’s immunity from air attack, leading to a compromise total of 48.62 The ever-cautious Chiefs of Staff were not slow in endorsing the Joint Planning Committee assessment, adding that the one disadvantage of Italian neutrality was that it would not force Nazi Germany to assist its partner. Their reasoning was strange – later events proved that German military backing made all the difference to the cogency of the Italian threat. As during 1935–6, the senior military advisers dissipated any notion of a strong line against Rome. Several ministers were in fact eager to embroil fascist Italy in a conflict, with Hore-Belisha most vociferous of all, in order to release forces tied up in the eastern Mediterranean. Even Chamberlain took the view that ‘it would be wise to assume that Italy would be in the war against us’. But the Chiefs of Staff remained adamant that Italian neutrality best suited the British cause. And even if Italy entered a conflict, they envisaged a defensive posture, diverting shipping around the Cape of Good Hope, looking predominantly to economic measures to weaken Italy through control of the entrances to the Mediterranean. As one historian judges: ‘All initiative had been abdicated to the Axis.’63

Improving the intelligence picture The succession of crises created uncertainty and prompted belated moves to improve intelligence organisations. After the Albanian surprise, the Chiefs of

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Staff successfully pressed for a London-based situation report centre. The need for enhanced on-the-spot assessment was met on 10 May when the Treasury approved the Middle East Intelligence Centre, to be located in Cairo, its main function the collation and coordination of intelligence, from existing sources. After the Foreign Office refused to furnish political intelligence, the Middle East Intelligence Centre formed its own foreign affairs section to combine diplomatic and military data in assessments for a fuller picture.64 Intelligence input derived from separate service organisations, with heavy reliance placed on Sigint (signal interception). Since 1924 the Army’s Sigint organisation in the Middle East had been based at Sarafand in Palestine. In August 1939, when the Middle East Intelligence Centre was formed, the section dealing with Italian army signals moved to Mersa Matruh. This followed the Royal Air Force’s relocation, two years earlier, of its regional intelligence infrastructure from Baghdad to Heliopolis. Similarly, an Admiralty operational intelligence centre, originally based at Malta in April 1939, relocated to Alexandria in mid-August to facilitate closer cooperation with the fleet. The Naval Intelligence Department remitted raw intelligence to the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean who filtered relevant data to his military colleagues in Cairo. In many ways Italian moves could be anticipated with some accuracy. Unlike Nazi Germany’s secret codes, Italy’s were not a hard nut to crack. Three out of six army book ciphers employed in Libya were easily broken. Diplomatic and colonial ciphers had been read for several years. The navy’s top secret as well as the general book ciphers were mostly readable from 1937 together with one of Rome’s two naval attaché codes. These sources enabled the Operational Intelligence Centre to establish, on 5 May 1939, that the new battleship Littoria was now operational. There was comparable success with the Regia Aeronautica. Its high-grade book cipher, employed in east Africa, was broken during 1938 with a second, used in the Mediterranean, decipherable by mid-1939. The resulting picture allowed air strength to be computed at 1,393 aircraft in April 1939, a figure just 193 shy of the actual mark.65 All the same, the intelligence picture was not as rosy as it appeared. Home defence priorities imposed limitations. The army, for instance, was woefully short of signal equipment and personnel. Even by August 1940, just six wireless stations served the entire Middle East command. On 4 July 1939 Lampson was informed that the Air Ministry would send out ‘certain special wireless equipment of an extremely secret nature which is used for the detection of enemy aircraft, and is an essential part of a modern defence organisation’. Egyptian blessing for 16 radar stations was engineered through presenting them as high-power directional-finding wireless telegraphy sites. The first two stations were destined for the Western Desert, in the vicinity of Ikingi and Wadi Natruh, with work to commence at an early date. For the immediate future, however, conventional detection methods – sea patrols and observation posts – would furnish the main warning on incoming air raids.66

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Nor were intelligence deductions, even when accurate, always revealing. Air strength figures were useful in broad-brush terms but defining detail, such as aircraft capabilities, was elusive. The closely monitored Italian naval exercises off Derna in July 1939 proved misleading, suggesting as they did an eagerness to engage the Royal Navy in a main fleet action. A year later, in an engagement off Calabria, the Italians only dared engage a weaker British force and then, after a brief skirmish, fled the scene. This false scenario was compounded by an Italian naval directive, regarded as genuine, which fell into British hands the month after the Derna exercises. The document defined the main objectives of Italian naval strategy as the systematic harassment of the enemy all over the Mediterranean, the isolation of Malta, and attacks on Egypt and Suez. Taken at face value, all this evidence suggested an all-out naval war effort was planned but actually no immediate offensive was contemplated save for air attacks on exposed Malta. Again, impressions of the Italian Army’s improved efficiency were wide of the mark. ‘The invasion of Albania was an example of the great progress made by the Italian Army in military organisation on a large scale’, reported the British Military Attaché in Rome. He had evidently swallowed Italian propaganda hook, line and sinker for the incursion was in fact an utter shambles, saved from disaster only by the absence of any effective opposition.67 Whether or not Italy would join her ally in a future conflict was a question to which intelligence sources could provide no definitive answer. Since Mussolini no longer saw Loraine, whom he detested, first-hand insights into the workings of Il Duce’s mind were lacking. What the Rome embassy could provide was some measure of the attitudes of government officials and public opinion, which might conceivably influence Mussolini. On the Anglo-FrancoSoviet negotiations, for example, beneath the surface of outward contempt towards the feeble western democracies, the embassy detected a secret desire for the talks to bear fruit to stop Hitler from making war on Poland.68 By summer 1939 there was a growing feeling that escalating international tensions would soon lead to general conflict. Appeasement was not yet dead but the psychological emphasis had switched towards preparing for the worst while still hoping for the best. Increasingly, the delicate ‘peace front’ did not look like it could withstand a severe test. Poland seemed set to fall into the Nazi orbit, failing firm Soviet military support. Should Poland be invaded, the Western Powers were bound to declare war on Nazi Germany, raising the question of whether fascist Italy would honour her alliance or stay out, as in 1914. The conundrum surrounding the issue would persist until June 1940 creating with it uncertainties surrounding the security of Egypt.

8

The approach of war in the Mediterranean

Between the summers of 1939 and 1940 Britain sought to keep its Mediterranean sea-lanes open by persuading fascist Italy to remain outside the conflict which erupted after Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939. But appeasement now came with strings attached and it was inevitable that Italy became subsumed into the economic warfare practised against Nazi Germany. The enforcement of the Allied blockade, despite concerted efforts not to unduly offend Italian amour propre, lent weight to Mussolini’s portrayal of his country as incarcerated in the Mediterranean by AngloFrench dominance. Against a background of continued uncertainty over Italy’s position, defensive preparations to secure Egypt went ahead. As before, they were constrained by the priorities accorded to home defence and a desire not to be provocative as the Chiefs of Staff clung to the hope that extending the conflict to the Mediterranean could be averted.

A summer of tension The feckless Ciano, notwithstanding numerous warnings since the spring of German designs on Poland, had kept these from Mussolini until it became obvious that a crisis was at hand. Ciano was then sent scurrying to Saltzburg to make it abundantly plain that now was not the time to provoke a general conflagration. Unequal naval strengths and British control over Suez were two of the key reasons that Ciano cited to Hitler early in August 1939 as requiring a postponement of a reckoning with Poland. Since Italian belligerence was unnecessary for what the Führer – deluded by his Anglophobic foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop – had convinced himself would be a localised conflict, Ciano’s protests were contemptuously brushed aside. All Italy was required to do by her ally was to threaten Britain with war in the Mediterranean. Combined with continued unrest in the Arab world over Palestine and the Japanese menace to British interests in the Pacific, the selfcentred British would be persuaded not to gamble with their empire over Poland. This was also the view of General Franz Halder, the German Chief of the General Staff who considered that Britain was contained in the

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Mediterranean and in any event was three to four years away from being ready for a major conflict.1 Initially, Rome played along with the Nazi game plan. Mussolini was assured by Pariani that the army was ready for general war and by Giuseppe Valle, the Air Chief of Staff, that 2,300 front-line aircraft were available (in fact just 640 were combat-worthy). On 16 August Italy began to reinforce Libya, producing the usual frightened Egyptian reaction, and on 27 August, Mussolini promised Hitler he would step up the pressure by shortly committing two more divisions. Rome also brought the Army of the Po up to full strength and, to Hitler’s gratification, was pinning down significant French forces in southern France. Unlike the Albanian Crisis, British intelligence was now well placed to monitor Italian moves with the Naval Operational Intelligence Centre Malta noting a significantly higher level of naval wireless traffic on 16 August. Over the following two days air and army intelligence reported Italian air force and army leave was cancelled, another telltale sign of untoward developments. By 24 August it was known that six classes of reserve officers had been called up in east Africa. And from 26 August, when Balbo returned to Tripoli from Rome, there was a great increase in cipher and plain-message traffic from Libya.2 On 22 August the War Office ordered General Sir Archibald Wavell – in Egypt since the start of the month to assume the awesome new post of Commander-in-Chief Middle East with its massive constituency – to move forces unostentatiously into the Western Desert. A renowned scholar and deep thinker, Wavell was notoriously taciturn, making only the briefest of comments to his commanders such as ‘I see’. His awkward manner in person, which was compounded by a false eye and a perpetually concerned expression, contrasted sharply with his fluidity and perception on paper.3 After visiting Mersa Matruh he reported to Gort in a confident tone. Personally, I should say that the danger of a big Italian offensive against Egypt by the Western Desert was most remote, now that we have taken measures of defence . . . The other side of the picture, i.e. how far it is feasible or worth the effort for us to prepare and stage an offensive against Libya, is not yet clear to me. I am inclined to think that if we can assume control of the Mediterranean, Libya can be left to itself, but minor offensives may be valuable or necessary, if the French invade Tripoli.4 In June, Pound was summoned home to become the Chief of Naval Staff, following Backhouse’s sudden death, with the ebullient Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham (known as ‘A.B.C.’) taking over the Mediterranean Fleet. On 23 August an inter-service conference aboard his flagship, Warspite, agreed that the primary military effort in the event of war would be against the Italians in Libya unless there was any danger of the Red Sea becoming closed to vital shipping supplies. The newly formed joint planning staff would

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draw up detailed plans on this basis, advised by the Joint Intelligence Centre.5 The rising tension triggered precautionary measures to enhance the defence of Egypt. From 20 August the Mediterranean Fleet was battle-ready. Six days later the Admiralty assumed control of merchant shipping and the Fleet Air Arm commenced round-the-clock patrols off Alexandria, whose channels were swept for mines. Authorisation was given to move two battalions from Palestine to Egypt, reflecting the latter’s greater strategic priority. By 28 August, air squadrons were at their war stations. In the Western Desert the armoured division, an infantry brigade and three artillery regiments, with Egyptian support, were concentrated at Mersa Matruh and beyond. The remaining British garrison (three infantry brigades, a field regiment and an anti-aircraft battery) was deployed in the Delta and Canal Zone alongside eight native battalions and an anti-aircraft regiment. In addition Suez’s fixed defences were fully manned.6 As it turned out, Rome was only willing to play Hitler’s game up to a point. British intelligence picked up on Italian reluctance to support German claims to Danzig, which chimed with Chamberlain’s inclination to give Mussolini the benefit of the doubt. By contrast, the French, and especially Admiral François Darlan, the French Chief of Naval Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, proposed a joint naval bombardment of Italy in order to commence the looming conflict with a military success. On 21 August, Daladier urged Hore-Belisha ‘that Italy should be compelled to come in against us if she was not prepared to come in with us’. On 26 August a worried Mussolini referred to a German naval report which predicted a full-scale Anglo-French attack upon Italy as soon as war erupted because the Siegfried Line precluded an invasion of Nazi Germany. Reassured by Ribbentrop that he could count on German protection, Mussolini waxed and waned over joining his ally. Ciano had no such qualms. He readily agreed to a British request to prevent any further impudent transgressions of Egyptian air space by Italian military aircraft, lest they provoke an incident, and surreptitiously reinforced Loraine’s growing impression that fascist Italy would stay out. This led the ambassador to advise his government that whilst a ‘vigorous Anglo-French offensive against Italy would be the best strategy in war . . . it would be a political error of the first magnitude to declare war on Italy unless Italy had first declared war on us’. Preoccupied with the Nazi threat, Chamberlain’s government showed no inclination to take the French gambit seriously. Indeed, the Chiefs of Staff were prepared to dangle a free zone at Djibouti and a seat on the Suez Canal Board if this was what it took to engineer Italian neutrality. In any event Gamelin still preferred a neutral Italy and, following the shock news of the Nazi–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, persuaded his government to fall into line with British preferences.7 With Ciano attempting, in vain, to arrange another Munich at the eleventh hour, Italian brinkmanship at the behest of Berlin evaporated on 31 August. After Britain severed telecommunications with Italy in response to its military build-up and hostile propaganda, an emotional Ciano assured Loraine that

The approach of war 135 Italy was not on the verge of attacking the Western Powers. This pre-empted the official announcement, the following day, as German forces ‘blitzkrieged’ Poland, that Italy would take ‘no initiative in the way of military operations’ and was a ‘non-belligerent’, a term invented by an embarrassed Mussolini in an effort to avoid the stigma of neutrality.8 Exactly what he meant presented a quandary to British decision-makers and strategists, which they found hard to resolve. Unbeknown to London, Mussolini, the day following the outbreak of the Second World War, had reassured Hitler that Italy under his leadership was not about to perform another about-turn as in 1915 but simply needed more time to prepare for intervention. On 5 September, Loraine suggested that the Italian government was split between interventionists (including Achille Starace, party secretary and Dino Alfieri, minister for popular culture) and non-interventionists (the King, Ciano, Grandi and Balbo) with Mussolini holding the balance between them. ‘Ciano takes the line’, a leading British intelligence figure noted in his diary, that as Hitler broke his word not to make war for three years Italy is free to break hers. Mussolini is reported to have sent a message to Daladier . . . saying, ‘I have the cards in my hands. Let me play them.’ Grandi, writing from Rome, flattered Chamberlain that the goal of his ambassadorship had been attained: ‘Italy and England are not enemies nor in opposite camps.’ ‘The one bright spot in this tragic denouement’, Chamberlain responded, ‘is the fact that our two countries are not fighting one another’.9 Chamberlain went as far as to inform the French that it was even conceivable that fascist Italy could eventually join the Allies. For the moment, Ciano nurtured such a view, mischievously disclosing the flak range of German antiaircraft guns to minimise air losses. Against this background, the new risktaking First Lord of the Admiralty’s proposal to move capital ships to Gibraltar to menace Italy and endeavour to force her to declare her hand met with a cool reception in the War Cabinet.10 Winston Churchill would have to wait before he had his way. Anglo-Italian relations soon returned to something like their normal state. By mid-September Italian troops at frontier posts near the Sudan and Kenya had been withdrawn and the Italian Ministry of Marine was notifying the British Admiralty of shipping movements. After being closed to British merchant shipping, the Mediterranean was reopened for convoys on 9 September. Lest Italian submarines were mistaken for German, London requested that they only submerge in pre-arranged areas and Rome obliged. In accordance with the Anglo-Italian Agreement, Italy gave notice that it would reinforce Libya by six regiments. Indeed, Ciano even admitted exceeding this figure, a move represented not as a threat to Egypt but in response to French military concentrations in Tunisia. Likewise, despite War Office protests that the information was liable to find its way to Berlin, the Foreign Office elected to

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continue exchanging military information on British dispositions. Finally, there were welcome personnel changes. On 15 September, Rome announced that Giuseppe Bastianini, a known moderate, would succeed Grandi. This was followed at the end of October by Mussolini’s first major Cabinet reshuffle since 1935 which removed the two most prominent pro-German members from front-rank positions.11

Anglo-French incongruity The potential for military action in the Mediterranean to influence the European war was limited. On board the warship, which carried him to Egypt, Wavell composed a memorandum, which claimed that the Mediterranean, rather than the Western Front, would be ‘the decisive theatre’. This proposition received short shrift from General Ironside, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff since 3 September, who responded: ‘We shall always have to be secure in the West, as this is the area closest to our vitals.’ In September the French floated the idea of basing an Allied force at Salonika, Greece’s main port, as a means to weaken German forces, which could be enticed there by the threat to Romanian oil supplies that were vital to lubricate the Nazi war economy. There was also the hope of inspiring Turkey, Greece and Yugoslavia to throw in over a hundred motley divisions to form an anti-Nazi Balkan front. Ironside feared a repeat of the First World War when British and French troops had been marooned at the same spot for much of the conflict, farcically reduced to digging trenches, growing vegetables and fighting mosquitoes. Pound considered that the French ‘have the wildest ideas in many respects and of imagining that they are in the last war and not in this’. The Joint Planning Committee asserted that, should Italy come in, then her defeat and the reopening of the Mediterranean should take precedence over aid to Greece and Turkey. The Chiefs of Staff supported this position, adding that military intervention in the Balkans risked provoking Italy as much as Nazi Germany. Nothing beyond the planning stage transpired, notwithstanding a series of Anglo-French conferences, innumerable military memoranda and much correspondence, which generated more heat than light. The fact that the diversion of precious British shipping, currently criss-crossing the vital Atlantic trade routes, was axiomatic to the transportation of a Salonika expeditionary force allowed London to obfuscate. Chamberlain and his senior military planners feared that a pre-emptive landing in Greece might tilt fascist Italy into joining Nazi Germany. Churchill’s enthusiasm for drawing the Germans into the Balkans was overridden by the Prime Minister’s wish not to extend the conflict there. Still an appeaser at heart, Chamberlain placed his hopes in a neutral Balkan bloc, which soon foundered because of resistance from prospective participants and Anglo-French disunity.12 The British considered Turkey a more important bastion than Greece for the protection of their interests in the Middle East. On 19 October, a treaty of

The approach of war 137 mutual assistance was concluded even though it remained doubtful whether the Turks, chastened by their experience in the previous world war, would come in if the present conflict engulfed the Mediterranean. Although, much to the annoyance of Egypt, Turkey received token British monoplanes, its leaders were acutely conscious of their military unpreparedness.13 By April 1940 no firm decisions had been taken, with Ironside insisting that military support for Turkey was Britain’s prime concern in the region, rather than the defence of Salonika. On 10 May it was finally decided to base a token force at Salonika and not the four French divisions originally envisaged, but this scheme was rendered null and void by military developments in the West. The lack of cohesion in Allied strategy was again illustrated by the air question. Aware that naval bombardment alone held no prospect of removing Italy from the conflict should she become involved, British military planners were keen for the French to launch massive air strikes against armament factories in northern Italy. Paris was more concerned over potential Axis reprisals; not least the bombing of exposed aircraft production plants. This attitude compelled the British to endorse an initially defensive posture vis-à-vis the Italian mainland. Again different perspectives were apparent over the Dodecanese Islands: French eagerness for a major bombing offensive was punctured by British refusal to distil their finite air resources for such an operation, insisting that Egypt and the Red Sea received priority. Accordingly, only the distant prospect of an eventual strangulation of the islands through naval blockade could be entertained.14 There was an air of unreality about Allied contingency planning. When it came down to practicalities neither the will nor the resources were available. Mitchell complained ‘that the air forces in [the] Middle East are totally inadequate to deal effectively with Italy alone, apart from the possibility of having to fight Germany’. When the Nazis’ erstwhile ally, the Soviet Union, was added to the equation, the available resources became quite pitiful. The Chiefs of Staff deemed that only three Royal Air Force squadrons could be spared for a prospective attack on the Baku oilfields – ‘not a document calculated to cheer anyone up’ as Mitchell remarked. At the end of the day, the Allies could do little beyond galvanising their limited forces to defend vital points. In this respect, Wavell toured the Mareth Line, then held by two French divisions, in December. Although he found French commanders ‘long in the tooth’, he came away convinced that the defences were ‘quite impenetrable to any attack the Italians could mount . . .’. Moreover, as long as France remained in the conflict, its forces in Tunisia exercised a powerful deterrent effect against any untoward Italian move against Egypt.15

Preparing for battle In August 1939 the Middle East Command was formed with operational control over troops in Egypt, Sudan, Palestine and Cyprus. By February

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1940, after British Somaliland was added, Wavell’s jurisdiction encompassed 3.5 million square miles and he was charged with responsibility for land operations in the Balkans as well as the Middle East. Much of his time was expended inspecting inadequate defences in various parts of the theatre, conveyed in transports of dubious airworthiness. He was also encumbered with political responsibilities, having to liaise with British diplomats in the region. With such a heavy burden of responsibility on his shoulders, it was no wonder that Wavell continually evinced a worried countenance. Within fourteen months his headquarters staff mushroomed to 1,061 personnel which at least allowed him to delegate some responsibilities to others.16 Although there was no official leader of the triumvirate of senior commanders, by default the taciturn Wavell emerged as their spokesman and conduit, more especially as Cunningham was often absent at sea. What became known as the ‘weekly waffle’ transpired every Wednesday at the embassy, where the services convened to deliberate on strategy and mattersto-hand. At this point, Lampson deliberately dropped into the background, no longer inclined to meddle constantly in defence questions ‘in the presence of all the “super” defence men here. I take it it’s their job – and their responsibility – to be satisfied that all requisite is being done and kept before the all-high authorities at home’.17 In close proximity to the embassy, with its magnificent gardens, was the Semiramis Hotel, a substantial Edwardian building on the banks of the Nile, which served as wartime headquarters for the Army and Air Force. The Navy stuck with tradition, with the Commander-in-Chief remaining aboard his flagship and, when at sea, delegating a naval captain to represent him ashore.18 The Chamberlain government’s softly-softly approach to Rome displeased the triumvirate, which felt its hands were unduly tied. Wavell led the protests, informing Gort: All three services here feel a little exercised over the attitude which it has apparently been decided to adopt towards Italy . . . I do hope you will impress upon the ‘frocks’ . . . the dangers from a military point of view of an undefined and unconditional neutrality for Italy. For instance, should she be allowed to reinforce Libya ad-lib, so to speak; or to build up her stocks of aeroplane fuel and munitions in east Africa . . . or her bombers to threaten Cairo and Alexandria indefinitely . . . from our point of view the sooner Italy is asked to define where she stands and to give pledges the better.19 ‘We are naturally all champing on the bit out here’, Cunningham confessed to Pound, ‘but trying to be patient . . .’. Like his predecessor of four years earlier, Cunningham found the latest Chiefs of Staff report ‘lugubrious reading’; especially their ruling that an offensive against Libya was indefinitely postponed until the Allies rendered themselves secure in the West. In line with this, early in November, 7th Armoured Division – the former Mobile

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Force – was withdrawn from Mersa Matruh to Abbassia, near Cairo, where it continued to train vigorously.20 By October, Wavell had reaffirmed the existing strategy of enticing the Italians on ‘till the length of his communications had weakened him, before making a counter stroke’. The mailed fist of the intended response, 7th Armoured Division, now commanded by Major-General M.O.M.O’Creagh, sat near Cairo, despite having its headquarters relocated to Mersa Matruh, because of official policy not to provoke Italy. This edict eventually led Wavell to complain ‘that during the seven months since the war began, comparatively little progress has been made, and . . . our preparations even for defence are very far from being complete’.21 Indeed, for nine long months, British forces remaining in Egypt could only speculate on their potential involvement in the European conflict. Units of the Mediterranean Fleet, including the flagship, were removed to home waters with modern eight-inch gun cruisers supplanted by outdated six-inch gun cruisers. Many fleet submarines were taken away for Atlantic duties. By the close of the year the Mediterranean Fleet was much weakened, reduced to four cruisers, an Australian flotilla leader, four Australian destroyers and two submarines. ‘We have not sufficient ships to go round’, Pound explained to Cunningham, ‘and the only thing to do is to concentrate on the danger spots’.22 The desire not to upset the Italians was another consideration. In autumn 1939 Halifax and Chatfield floated the idea of a joint withdrawal of forces from Africa. Instructions were actually remitted to the British Embassy in Rome only to be retracted after the Chiefs of Staff objected that such a scenario gave the advantage to Italy, whose forces could more quickly return to their positions. Furthermore, withdrawal would negate the build-up of a Middle East reserve ‘which had become fundamental to our strategy’ and might have serious internal repercussions in Egypt.23 In any event Mussolini was unlikely to entertain such a proposal which could have seen his forces in east Africa being prevented from returning through Allied control of Suez and risked provoking an uprising in Abyssinia. The possibilities of the latter were not lost on Wavell but for the moment he was forbidden from contacting rebel chiefs lest this soured Anglo-Italian relations.24 Ironside, to his credit, having apprised himself of Egypt’s defence deficiencies the previous autumn, recognised the importance of providing administrative capacity to accommodate around 12 divisions and 39 aircraft squadrons in the Middle East. Wavell, with a keen sense of military history, anticipated 15 divisions (300,000 troops). Such foresight could not compensate for the fact that there was no immediate prospect of achieving anything like these numbers. Pownall, now chief of staff of the British Expeditionary Force, referred sarcastically to Ironside’s ‘Middle East complex’ and requirements on the Continent naturally took precedence while Singapore’s defence also needed to be considered.25 Nevertheless, in anticipation of a protracted conflict and with the experience of the Great War in mind, Egypt’s role as a central reserve for eventual operations beyond its immediate defence

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was fundamental to forward planning. Its principal ports – Alexandria, Port Said and Suez – were earmarked for major development, with the deep-water port of Haifa in Palestine conveniently linked by railway to the Canal. Major depots were situated in the Tel-el-Kebir – Qassarin areas, supplemented by others around Cairo and along the Suez Canal. The large caves at Tura and Massara were adapted for ammunition, bomb and explosives storage and petrol-holding installations erected in the hills west of Suez.26 Wavell was concerned to develop a sound administrative base so that, if it came to war, he would be well prepared. In September 1939 a single-line railway served Mersa Matruh but in the 150 miles of desert lying beyond it to the frontier, communications were virtually non-existent. A metalled road hugged the coast from Alexandria to Sidi Barrani via Fuka and Mersa Matruh, stopping 50 miles short of the Libyan border. Nor was there a pipeline for water, which had to be brought in by rail. That autumn Wavell ordered the railway line’s capacity enhanced and pipelines installed largely to relieve rolling stock of their burdensome water-carrying role, thereby freeing 500 tons of freight daily for other purposes. Two pipelines were constructed, featuring pumping stations and reservoirs, connecting the mains supplies at Alexandria to El Daba, whence tanked water could come a short hop via rail to Mersa Matruh, with another to emanate thence to Gerawla. In addition, two Royal Armoured Supply Corps companies (231 and 323) were formed, augmented in April 1940 by another (234), having between them 250 three-ton lorries and 30 350-gallon tankers to provide third line transport for 7th Armoured Division. This logistical underpinning enabled sustained operations in the forward area beyond Mersa Matruh to be planned.27 At the outbreak of war with Nazi Germany, Middle East reserves stood at around three months’ supplies for the normal garrison and the reserve brigade. On 1 October the Chiefs of Staff recommended the gradual build-up of equipment, ammunition and stores for all forces to the full three months scale.28 Conflicting priorities did not render this easy to achieve in practice, notwithstanding continued access to the shorter Mediterranean route, and the position remained far from satisfactory as reinforcements and supplies did not always run in tandem. A further Indian infantry brigade (the 5th) arrived in Egypt on 4 October to join the 4th Indian Brigade. In January 1940 2nd Battalion, Light Infantry arrived from China. Only 1st Cavalry Division could be spared from England (and then it was ill-trained and ill-equipped), coming to Palestine on 24 March 1940. The augmentation of the Egypt garrison to around 20,000 in the early months of the Second World War began an accretion from all corners of the Empire, which the Pacific Dominions were set to increase significantly. On 25 September 1939 the War Office informed the Foreign Office that, provided Japan remained neutral, New Zealand would provide an infantry division for Egypt within seven months. In December, Wavell learned that he could anticipate an Australian division by the following April and a New Zealand equivalent by the summer.

The approach of war 141 They might have come sooner but because the troops lacked modern equipment it was decided to provide basic training at home before moving them to the Middle East. The first contingents began arriving on 12 February 1940 and were set to provide the backbone of fighting manpower resources in the theatre.29

War comes closer Over several months Britain, along with France, attempted to assuage fascist Italy with favourable economic agreements. Still, at the end of 1939 Britain could draw little comfort over Italy’s future intentions. True, the Fascist Grand Council reaffirmed non-belligerency on 7 December and the same month Ciano implicitly publicly criticised Berlin for lack of consultation, a speech that could be read as an excuse for remaining out. Again, Loraine held a clandestine meeting with Balbo in Rome where the latter scotched any notion of joining the Nazi side. Against this, intelligence suggested that Mussolini, the key decision-maker, was ‘reaching a dangerous pitch of exasperation’.30 The dictator’s agitated state of mind owed much to Allied contraband control in the Mediterranean, which was overseen by Britain’s Ministry of Economic Warfare. Any neutral vessels suspected of carrying cargo for Nazi Germany were diverted by the Royal Navy to contraband control centres for inspection, with suspicious items confiscated. Initially, Italy received lenient treatment: efforts were made to procure merchant ship manifests before sailing, with vessels only boarded for identification purposes or if they were transparently serving the Nazi cause. However, it soon became apparent that Italy was evading contraband control through diverting shipping to Trieste, Black Sea, Ionian and Aegean ports. Italian imports of cotton, iron and steel and oil increased significantly from September 1939, fuelling suspicions that excess requirements were being re-exported to Nazi Germany through the Balkans. With British efforts to conclude a trade agreement based on the quid pro quo of ending inspection of Italian vessels in return for Rome ceasing to trade with Berlin running into the sand, there was little option but to seek to make contraband control more effective.31 By the end of October, full contraband control was in operation in the Mediterranean. With it Italian complaints multiplied, especially over the diversion and examination of vessels trading between Italy and Massawa. The Royal Navy invited them to call at Port Said, leading Rome to protest that this was an infringement of the 1888 convention. The duplicate inspection of mail by British and French controls and the detention of ships in the Canal were further causes of complaint. On 13 November, Italy lodged a note verbale, alleging that ‘British control has been carried out in an arbitrary and frequently confused manner, thus causing serious inconvenience to Italian merchant shipping’. It ended with the implied threat that failure to reach a satisfactory solution would find Italian warships acting as escorts.32 The Ministry of Economic Warfare, under pressure from the Foreign Office,

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responded with some concessions in the wider interest of keeping Italy neutral. Accordingly the amount of tonnage seized dropped precipitously and more Italian ships than before were allowed to criss-cross the Mediterranean without being interdicted. At the same time, some vessels were still held up, despite their lack of contraband, for between 12 days and a month. On 22 December, Ciano conveyed Mussolini’s continued displeasure, warning that ‘it was no longer a matter of concrete cases but of the general and unfortunate impression created that Italy was being controlled by Great Britain’. A decision to release detained cargoes calmed the situation for a while but the issue of amour propre remained. Rome insisted that sea trade with its colonies was internal and should not be subject to inspection but the Ministry of Economic Warfare refused to waive Britain’s belligerent rights of search.33 A key test of Italian neutrality, which Mussolini palpably failed to meet, was over his willingness to supply weapons for export. For Rome to meet Britain’s requirement for £12 million-worth of aircraft and artillery plus £3 million of explosive would have seriously weakened Italy’s capacity for war (as was intended). On 8 February 1940 Mussolini vetoed the proposed trade agreement. He was willing to forsake British coal, which the deal would have given him the sterling to buy, in the expectation that Nazi Germany would fill the gap. Loraine reported – erroneously – that Mussolini’s decision was prompted by German threats when in fact he had recently written to Hitler, unprompted, to convey his intention to enter the conflict at the right moment. Aside from the Rome embassy’s benign interpretation of events, those in Whitehall still inclined to give Mussolini the benefit of the doubt received some encouraging intelligence at this time. To quote the Liddell diary: the Italian Consul at Malta has just returned from Rome. He says that Italy cannot make war owing to lack of essential materials. The air force needs equipping, the anti-tank guns have not been perfected, the army needs complete reorganisation and the ministers are at loggerheads. Efforts are being made towards trade expansion and everyone wants peace. No immediate rupture in Anglo-Italian relations followed Mussolini’s veto on arms sales to the Allies but the Royal Navy shortly commenced stopping German sea-borne coal, early in March seizing 13 Italian colliers ferrying German coal from Rotterdam. They were eventually released after Rome’s vigorous protests. In any event, the effectiveness of this economic pressure upon Italy soon evaporated after Ribbentrop visited Rome and announced that Nazi Germany would ship one million tons of coal a month to its ally by rail. The British believed that the Italo-German coal agreement of 13 March was propaganda since the schedule involved coal deliveries entering Italy every twenty minutes. In fact they miscalculated and for the immediate future Berlin was true to its word. Rome still hedged its bets by taking coal from

The approach of war 143 both sides and concluding a new trade agreement (albeit much less substantive) with Britain on 27 March.34 What the British did not know was that Mussolini had promised the Nazi Foreign Minister that Italy would fight in a parallel war, creating other war fronts in pursuit of its own aspirations. Retaining his sense of the theatrical, Il Duce compared fascist Italy’s position to that of the boxer taking punches before going on the attack. He did not, however, commit himself to a specific entry date beyond promising intervention at the decisive moment. The Chamberlain government remained in the dark over this development. The Secret Intelligence Service gleaned little beyond Mussolini’s continued adhesion to the Axis and his wish not to see National Socialism destroyed, as he feared this would mean the break-up of his own regime. Loraine could only convey to Halifax an assessment of Mussolini’s state of mind, drawn from a variety of sources. Physically, Mussolini is not the man he was. He is beginning to go down the hill. But he impresses on everyone that he runs, rides, swims, fences, drives cars, flies aeroplanes, plays lawn tennis etc., just as well as ever. This self-justification is a well-known sign of senescence. Also he overdoes himself with his mistress. Great events are happening and there is no heroic role for Mussolini . . . he finds it maddeningly unfair that those muddle-headed English . . . should have all . . . the places of which Mussolini could make such a really beautiful Italian Empire to the Greater Glory of Mussolini . . . Yet Mussolini, frustrated though he was at the lack of a leading role on the world stage, still needed to carry the rest of the Italian leadership with him in any decision for war. ‘More and more irritating’, Loraine reported encouragingly, ‘is the fact that his principal advisers, both political and military, not only expect the Allies to win, but actually wish them to win’.35 Mussolini’s meeting with Hitler at the Brenner Pass on 18 March provided another opportunity for the Allies to speculate over what transpired. At their reunion Hitler had insistently pressed for Italian intervention and Mussolini, despite his rudimentary command of German, was left in little doubt that the future of his empire was inextricably bound up with Nazi Germany’s fortunes. Again, Mussolini resisted naming a date but otherwise humoured Hitler’s expectation of Italian belligerency in the near future. Three days later Loraine learned that Ciano had told his French counterpart that Mussolini backed the Nazi horse ‘and had now doubled his bet’. An intelligence source in the Vatican reported to Halifax: I am told that . . . Mussolini returned from the Brenner Pass full of enthusiastic admiration for . . . Hitler and so certain of . . . Hitler’s military success that even his own suite were impressed . . . I am assured that if . . . Hitler should have an initial success it is most likely that . . .

144 The approach of war Mussolini will attack in the Mediterranean. He boasts that he will close the Mediterranean at Gibraltar and Suez and will conduct his own blitzkrieg. Even Chamberlain was forced to recognise that ‘Mussolini is an incalculable factor’ and the Foreign Office cautioned service ministers that fascist Italy might well come in on the back of German military successes.36 The distinct change in the tone of the Italian media towards the Allies offered another indicator that something significant had transpired on the Brenner. The French, expecting a German onslaught at any moment, were so unnerved that they began sounding out the Italians over territorial concessions. Chamberlain would not go this far but did reassure Mussolini through unofficial channels that his government wished to maintain friendly relations. As in the past, the overtures backfired, merely confirming to the Italian leadership, including Ciano, that the democracies were effete and would not stand up to German attack. Emboldened, Mussolini issued a memorandum to senior fascist leaders on 31 March which suggested that the solution of Italy’s ‘maritime problem’ was near at hand and assigning to the navy an offensive role, albeit a nebulous one without specific objectives. He ruled out any compromise and insisted that, once Nazi Germany launched a successful military campaign in the West, Italy must come in to achieve her imperial ambitions in the eastern Mediterranean.37 Three days later Nazi Germany ruptured the Phoney War by invading Denmark and Norway to secure its critical supplies of iron ore from Sweden. Whilst judging that the decisive moment had yet to come Italy applauded the incursions and, ominously, Nazi staff officers, who left Rome the previous autumn, now returned. On 21 April Mussolini railed before fascist party leaders against Allied interference with Italian shipping, in a speech whose contents became known to the British embassy. His Mediterranean prisoner phobia manifested itself again: Italy would only be free when it had windows (Gibraltar and Suez) on the great seas and not just inland seas. The same day Il Duce’s mouthpiece, Virginio Gayda, editor of Il Gionale D’Italia, warmed to the same theme in an editorial. Privately, the editor threw light on his leader’s thinking. Italy was not ‘going to remain a prisoner in the Mediterranean’; the sanctions period was a time when Britain ‘tried to strangle us by setting 52 nations against us . . . we must be put in a position in which that experience cannot be repeated’; and Italy desired further colonies. Even the Anglophile Count Grandi publicly aligned himself with Mussolini when he stated that ‘the fascist empire is not . . . outside the conflict of peoples’.38 On 25 April the Duke of Aosta visited Lampson in Cairo, remarking ominously that ‘at present’ his government did not intend to intervene in the conflict. Early the following month the Corriere Pedano, referring to Italy as ‘a great and free country whose sense of national prestige is keen to the point of exasperation’, warned that ‘if England claims for herself the role of arbiter and gaoler . . . Italy will show herself more

The approach of war 145 impatient to break the locks which shut her up in the Mediterranean and drive the intruders away’. Again, on 3 May, another fascist news organ wrote gleefully that the Allied defeat in Norway was ‘the first harsh blow at proud Albion’.39 It seems incredible now that, despite Rome’s transparent leaning towards the Nazi cause, London still shipped 400,000 tons of coal in April, providing succour to the Italian armaments industry. Indeed, the air of unreality persisted with economic discussions in Rome continuing until a fortnight before the Italian declaration of war, despite the prospect of any real benefits having long since disappeared, if they ever existed at all. When a firmer line was required, the conversations led instead to the relaxation of contraband control on 23 May. The easement was tantamount to allowing Italian merchant ships to roam the Mediterranean freely, only being stopped for identification purposes and not being obliged to change course. This amounted to a major propaganda coup for Rome and only encouraged the drift to war. The confused British policy owed something to the pusillanimous Chiefs of Staff. They were quoted, off the record, as insisting that ‘from the military point of view, it would be absolutely disastrous if Italy came into the war against us and that no risk whatever should be taken of that happening’. Even at this late stage, therefore, the defence chiefs stifled a French proposal for a preemptive occupation of Crete lest this provoked Italy into war, an eventuality they refused to regard as inevitable. Indeed, the Chiefs of Staff went so far as to delay the dispatch of 11,000 troops to the Middle East late in May, notwithstanding War Office protests that the army in Egypt and Palestine was still considerably below establishment.40

The onset of war As Italy’s attitude became more threatening, so this galvanised attention on addressing defence deficiencies as far as resources and priorities would permit. In January 1940, after Air Vice-Marshal Maund was sent from Egypt to the Air Ministry to impress on it the dangerous shortfalls in personnel and equipment, the War Cabinet authorised an increase in air strength in the Middle East. Commands were allowed to move to war establishment, the ban on sending airmen from Britain overseas (imposed in September 1939) was lifted and it was decided to send 24 heavy and 12 light anti-aircraft guns to augment Alexandria’s air defences.41 In April, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Longmore replaced Mitchell, who suspected his removal was occasioned by his outspoken criticisms of Air Ministry policy. Mitchell went into obscurity, satisfied that his battle for reinforcements had borne fruit and ‘they [the Air Ministry] are doing us well’.42 Seven additional fighter squadrons, a new heavy bomber squadron and at least one further army cooperation squadron would augment Middle East Command. To accommodate them, extra airfields were under construction in Egypt, Sudan, Palestine and Aden. A reinforcement group of 12 heavy bomber squadrons was also planned, but its

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location (Egypt, Palestine, Tunisia or Turkey) remained indeterminate and depended on the course of events.43 With his headquarters relocated to Malta – where he felt remote from his counterparts in the army and air force – and much of his fleet dispersed elsewhere, Cunningham was not a happy bunny as 1940 dawned. Indeed, his command had been reduced to virtually three ‘C’ class cruisers and some veteran destroyers from the Royal Australian Navy. His suggestion then that war preparation demanded the stocking of stores, ammunition and other war material to service a considerable fleet was largely ignored until the spring, when the increased threat of hostilities with Italy persuaded the Admiralty to reconstitute the Mediterranean Fleet as best it could. The build-up began on 27 March with ten submarines from the China and East Indies stations, along with depot and repair ships, ordered to move to Alexandria. ‘We are doing our best’, Pound reassured Cunningham, ‘to scratch up a fleet for you in the eastern Mediterranean’, while admitting that it would be short of destroyers. On 12 April the Regia Aeronautica was mobilised, another clear indication that the countdown to war in the Mediterranean had begun. Heretofore, the French were responsible for the western Mediterranean, the Royal Navy for the eastern Mediterranean with joint responsibility for the central sector. The new situation prompted the British Admiralty to request, on 16 April, that the French Navy assume operational responsibility for the entire Mediterranean with limited support from the Royal Navy. There was immediate agreement from the Amirauté in Paris but this was quickly overruled by the Allied Supreme Council (23 April) which wanted to continue with existing arrangements while conceding that each fleet could now operate more freely in each other’s zones in keeping with the prevailing strategic situation.44 Compared with the start of the war, the Mediterranean Fleet was already minus a capital ship – Royal Oak having been sunk by a U-boat while at Scapa Flow – and a battlecruiser – Glorious, sunk off Norway. Some 22 destroyers had also been lost. Pound had hoped that the poorly defended aircraft carrier Glorious might, if it came to war, be used for the longcontemplated naval air strike against Taranto. It did not, however, survive the action off Narvik. Warspite did and was sent to Gibraltar whence, on 3 May, she made for Alexandria at Cunningham’s instigation as the situation deteriorated. By 20 May, Pound was confident that Mussolini would stay his hand sufficiently to drum up some destroyers, sloops and two anti-aircraft cruisers from the Home Fleet. Successes against the German Navy allowed the capital ships Royal Sovereign, Malaya and Ramilles to be released from escort duties in the Atlantic. The veteran aircraft carrier Eagle was hurrying back from the Indian Ocean. Cruisers were assembled from stations far and wide – Australia, China, the East Indies, the South Atlantic and the United States. Some 24 high-angle anti-aircraft guns were also sent out to augment Alexandria’s shore defences but, as during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency, heavy reliance would be placed on warship barrages when the fleet was in

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harbour.45 Unlike the 1935–6 crisis, however, Pound conceded to Cunningham that there remained a key weakness. I am afraid that you are terribly short of ‘air’ but there again I do not see what can be done because . . . every available aircraft is wanted in home waters. The one lesson we have learnt here is that it is essential to have fighter protection over the Fleet whenever they are within reach of the enemy bombers. You will be without such protection, which is a very serious matter, but I do not see any possibility of rectifying it.46 At the end of May, with his fleet reconvened at Alexandria, Cunningham hoped that the Allies ‘will make up their minds quickly and give the word “go” at once as while we are waiting we can’t do much else’. Contrary to his orders, Cunningham did not intend to pursue a defensive strategy. Rather he favoured an assertive posture in the central and eastern Mediterranean ‘to make the Italians think a bit, and perhaps catch them on the wrong foot . . .’47 In fact the Italians picked up on Cunningham’s offensive intentions through intercepted British naval signals. Admiral Cavagnari, still awaiting the new capital ships Roma and Impero and the reconditioned Duilio and Doria was so unnerved that he pressed Mussolini and Ciano to put off intervention to the autumn at the earliest. The presence of much of the heavyweight battleships of the French fleet in the Mediterranean also gave ample reason for pause for thought. So too did the prospect of a two-front war in Libya with Balbo reporting that his forces were not only outnumbered three to one by the French in Tunisia and the British in Egypt but were also woefully equipped. As long as the Maginot Line held and France remained in the conflict Badoglio could still hope to hold his leader in check. On 9 May, Loraine pressed Ciano for clarification of Italy’s position but he remained evasive. As a Secret Intelligence Service officer recorded: ‘He virtually said, “Today, tomorrow, sometime, never.” ’ The reason for the ambiguity is now apparent. The General Staff, Ciano recorded in his diary two days later, ‘has thrown timely cold water on our current military prospects’.48 On 1 May, Wavell and Wilson requested an urgent meeting with Lampson to convey the War Office’s instruction to prepare for war with Italy. Anti-aircraft defences would be manned around the clock. Dispositions were to be represented as training exercises. ‘We had some discussion’, Lampson recorded, ‘and Wavell said that he still could not believe that the Italians meant business. Accordingly General Wilson was moving out only a sort of preliminary portion of his motorised division.’ Longmore was also of the view that the Italians were bluffing. The situation in Egypt today is that we are continuing to receive alarmist reports from all sources as to the intentions of Italy, that they are about to attack the following day, if not that particular evening, but indications

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The approach of war which we have received from other sources show that their air force in Libya does not seem to be in a state of preparedness and that actually they have recalled 20 Bredas to Italy quite recently. It is true that certain re-equipment machines have found their way to Italian East Africa but the general impression which is held also by a good many others is that Italy is carrying her bluff up to the maximum limit and producing thereby her maximum nuisance value.49

At the same time, Longmore was no less forthright than his predecessor over what he saw as the ‘pathetic situation due to lack of modern fighters and long range bombers’. He was especially peeved that the Turks had received Hurricanes and the Greeks Blenheims. ‘Neither’, he remarked caustically, ‘can be expected to make full use of them’.50 Soon after his arrival Wavell identified ‘the need of a really strong air force’ as a strategic imperative but having apprised his superiors of this view, held back. With war looming, he returned to the theme on 28 April while adding the polite caveat: ‘I have no doubt that it is realised; and that it will be remedied as soon as possible.’ Lampson was not so phlegmatic and pressed on Halifax the need to send out Hurricanes to act as a deterrent to Italy. The Air Ministry responded enigmatically that 50 were ‘now being converted for tropical service but owing to intensive air fighting now taking place and likely to continue in the Western theatre cannot hold out hope of these aircraft being available for your command in near future’.51 Throughout the Phoney War intelligence sources monitored Italian military activity for any signs of an end to non-belligerence. There was little beyond routine to report until 11 May, the day following the German invasion of the Low Countries, when the Admiralty noted ‘exceptionally high’ cipher traffic to north Africa and the Aegean. ‘We learn from a good source’, Lampson was informed by the Foreign Office, ‘that Mussolini on 16 May showed party leaders a map indicating Italian claims. These included protectorates over Egypt, Syria and Iraq, with Sudan an Italian-Egyptian protectorate’. Two days later Mussolini bitterly rejected an overture from the new British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, to avert war, responding that sanctions had not been forgotten and alluding to Italy’s ‘state of servitude’ in the Mediterranean. Then, on 19 May, as the German blitzkrieg swept into France, it was reported that the Italian air force and army in east Africa had been ordered to mobilise. By the end of the month Corsica, Malta and Tunis were said to be on the Italians’ immediate shopping-list. Loraine considered that Italy could no longer be assuaged with the concessions under contemplation in 1939. The best hope of deterrence, he suggested, was to dispatch a bomber force to southern France to threaten the industrial heartland in northern Italy. Churchill lent his backing but the Chief of Air Staff swayed the War Cabinet to resist because of the effect diverting aircraft could have on the critical air battle over France. At a further conclave, on 2 June, ministers compromised by authorising news to

The approach of war 149 be leaked that bombers were being prepared to operate against Italian factories. But any deterrence value was lost by the increasing improbability that France would remain in the conflict as German armoured forces outflanked the Maginot Line through the Ardennes and pressed forward at breathtaking speed. In any event, the French proved unwilling to authorise such action, by themselves or the Royal Air Force, except in retaliation against Italy for bombing French towns and cities.52 On 25 May, reflecting the desperateness of the situation, both the British and French governments indicated to Italy their willingness to discuss its territorial claims. Chamberlain, now Lord President of the Council, attributed to Churchill the remark that ‘if we could get out of this jam by giving up Malta and Gibraltar he would jump at it’. But in the War Cabinet, Churchill’s bulldog spirit was evinced when he successfully deferred any decision until the outcome of the ongoing evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk became apparent. The new French premier, Paul Reynaud, flew to London to press for an accommodation with Mussolini provided that he mediated with Hitler on the basis that any negotiated peace guaranteed the security and independence of the Western Powers. For once Chamberlain stood firm and backed Churchill’s resistance to any specific concessions, overcoming Halifax’s desire to back the French démarche. ‘Therefore’, Churchill informed Reynaud, ‘without excluding the possibility of an approach to Signor Mussolini at some time, we cannot feel that this would be the right moment’.53 Wavell now compared Mussolini to ‘a man who has climbed up to the top diving board at a swimming-pool, taken off his dressing-gown and thrown a chest to the people looking on’. He had gone so far that he could not back off and would jump in somehow even though Wavell did not anticipate an immediate invasion of Egypt to follow. ‘Mussolini’, the Joint Intelligence Committee counselled on 24 May after reviewing the available evidence, ‘has reached the conclusion that it is possible and/or necessary for him to override the difficulties which stand in the way of Italy going to war with the Allies’.54 In the final week of May, Mussolini addressed the fascists of the Trentino and, as Loraine reflected, virtually took the plunge and ‘hoisted his colours’. He telegraphed a summary of Il Duce’s prognosis to London: . . . the map of Europe is being redrawn and Italy cannot remain aloof . . . if she does, peace will be made without her, and she will fall from the rank of a Great Power to that of a second-rate nation. . . . As long as the war was confined to Poland and Norway, Italy could remain nonbelligerent; now that it has reached Lyon and Toulon we cannot remain so . . . Italy must now finally break her Mediterranean prison and she must honour her signature . . . the fight of the ‘have-nots’ against the ‘haves’ is fated . . . it is inevitable that Italy should intervene. And she will. This is not the moment to fix the date, but when the hour comes we will march.

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‘The hour to be chosen’, Loraine ruefully reflected, ‘was of course that of the maximum embarrassment of the Anglo-French allies’.55 That moment edged nearer when, on 28 May, Ciano pronounced to Loraine that intervention was now certain. Lampson was bamboozled when the Foreign Office conveyed news of the encounter. ‘Truly a comic way of doing things’, he recorded in astonishment. ‘Is it a declaration of war or what?’ Wavell too was puzzled by the telegram and was vexed that the Foreign Office refrained from interpretation. A leading member of the Secret Intelligence Service was equally perplexed. His diary for 29 May records: The Italian Consul in Malta is burning his documents and has orders to be ready to leave. In the meantime there are diplomatic discussions going on between ourselves and the Italians in Rome regarding the exchange of internees in the event of war. The cart seems to have got slightly before the horse. I cannot think why we do not ask the Italians whether they are supposed to be making war against us and whether we are supposed to be making war against them. Having got that thrashed out we might make a date next Monday. The following day’s entry was just as replete with frustration over the situation, opening with Secret Intelligence Service reports that Italy was intent on attacking Egypt and Greece when she did move. The Italians are behaving in the most extraordinary way. Ciano plays golf with Loraine, and tells him he is sorry but he feels that now war between England and Italy is inevitable. He will do his best to let us have as much notice as possible. Musso has apparently torn up the contraband control agreement which had been signed a few days ago by Wilfred Greene.56 Ciano was in fact fulfilling a promise to Loraine to provide fair warning of Italian entry. At Loraine’s news the Chiefs of Staff convened, concluding that the best response, once hostilities commenced, was a tactical offensive while remaining strategically on the defensive due to Italian air supremacy. During 29 May, following Belgium’s capitulation, a jubilant Mussolini formed the Italian High Command with himself at its head. ‘He has realised his dream’, recorded his son-in-law, ‘that of becoming the military leader of the country at war’. On 30 May, Headquarters British Troops in Egypt reported that the Italian XXI Corps (Motorised) was ‘still on [a] war footing, ostensibly for manoeuvres’ in the Tobruk – Derna area. Although there was no suggestion of an imminent offensive, 7th Armoured Division was to remain as far forward as possible, ready to harass Italian patrols and launch guerrilla operations across the frontier. After representations from Cunningham, who feared a pre-emptive air attack on Alexandria, it was agreed that any unidentified bomber formations could be immediately engaged.57

The approach of war 151 On 5 June, the day the Germans began their offensive against Paris, Italy declared a 12-mile prohibited zone around her coast and two days later 122 Savoia Marchetti 79s arrived in Sicily, poised to attack Malta. The following day a British agent at Suez suggested that all Italian ships had been ordered to move to the safe haven of Italian ports within 48 hours. Two days later, the War Cabinet authorised the stopping of SS Umbria, bound for Italian East Africa with a cargo of bombs, detonators and cement, at Port Sudan and ordered the detention of all Italian ships in control ports on a pretext.58 Longmore, following Wavell’s analogy, summed up the position: Mussolini is presumably now waiting to see the effect of the new German offensive on the French before taking his final dive off the high springboard for which he has collected his crown and removed his dressing gown. We have paid him the complement of taking him quite seriously out here. He has moved quite a lot of aircraft between Benghazi and the Egyptian frontier, personally I think more for defensive purposes against the possibility of attack by our armoured division, but anyway sufficient to give the four Blenheim squadrons which will be out in the Western Desert by Monday a number of legitimate targets.59 By 8 June all the available data convinced the Joint Intelligence Committee that war was only days away. The next day the Secret Intelligence Service reported that Italy had put out terms which included Corsica, Tunis and Jibouti from France, Malta from Britain, the demilitarisation of Cyprus and Gibraltar and the internationalisation of the Suez Canal. A short pause was expected to allow Italian merchant ships to make homeports. His emotions ruling his head, Mussolini did not even wait for this process to be completed before stepping onto the central balcony of the Palazzo Venezia at 6 p.m. on 10 June to address the excited crowd below. The problem of maritime frontiers would finally be resolved by making war on Britain and the fatally wounded France. Half-an-hour later, after hearing Mussolini’s speech on the radio, General Headquarters informed Lampson that the balloon had finally gone up.60 Italian forces in Libya (Benghazi, Derna and Tobruk) and Italian East Africa (Asmara), left ignorant by their government of developments, were surprised by air attacks. On 10 May, the day Hitler launched his offensive in the West Wavell had ordered an investigation into the possibilities for a raid against Italian posts across the Libyan border. A few days before war came, the Western Desert Force was authorised, in the event of hostilities, to use its initiative without seeking further orders.61 The 11th Hussars acted with alacrity, capturing the frontier post of Sidi Omar before its defenders were even aware that conflict had commenced. The forts of Capuzzo and Maddalena soon followed. On 16 June an Italian force was caught by surprise. Indeed, by the end of the first week of conflict, some 200 prisoners-ofwar had been taken. Notwithstanding the virtual loss of its French ally, the

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Royal Navy evinced a similar offensive spirit when, at 4 a.m. on 10 June, Cunningham sent 2nd Destroyer Flotilla and two flying boats out hunting for submarines. The next day, marking the official start of war in the Mediterranean, a substantial body of ships headed by Warspite, Malaya and Eagle left Alexandria for a sweep towards Crete and thence the Libyan coast. All these operations were conducted with a sense of relief that the waiting was finally over and the Italians, who had for so long taunted British regional forces and mocked their capabilities, could at last be brought to account.62

9

Implementing the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance Anglo-Egyptian relations, 1937–1940

Britain’s overriding imperative in its relations with Egypt was to manipulate its leadership, through a mixture of persuasion, cajolery and bullying, to serve the interests of the military base. Though the treaty formalised the nature of the Anglo-Egyptian relationship, it did not make it any easier for British diplomats and senior military personnel to achieve their ends. By the same token, while Egypt was now free to pursue an independent foreign policy, in practice the old constraints continued. Once the euphoria of finally achieving a legitimising treaty died down, a feeling of mutual mistrust remained, compounded by the Egyptians’ growing conviction that Britain could not adequately protect them from the perceived might of the Axis. The immediate pre-war years represented an especially difficult time with the Wafd, the party most associated with the treaty, replaced by unstable and undemocratic Palace-backed regimes reluctant to deliver on British desiderata. Ultimately, once war came, the Ali Maher regime needed to be removed. Even this did not prevent Egypt from remaining a neutral, albeit a benevolent one, a stance that Britain’s omnipresent and increasing military presence ensured.

Implementing the Treaty: immediate achievements and complications If it was axiomatic for British grand strategy to appease Italy, by the same token an acquiescent Egypt was necessary to avoid the under-strength garrison being consumed by internal defence complications. To avert this, the Foreign Office was clear that Britain needed to be seen to be honouring its side of the treaty bargain, in so far as resources and priorities allowed. Politically this was achieved in May 1937 when the Montreux Convention abolished the Capitulations, at last conferring a higher status to Egyptians over foreigners in their homeland, and Britain facilitated Egypt’s entry into the League of Nations, albeit after reducing it to ineffectuality. En route to the signing ceremony the Egyptian delegation visited London where Eden found Nahas Pasha convinced that everything was ‘going splendidly in every way’ and ‘spoke in warm terms of Sir Miles Lampson’. The

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latter’s standing and Vansittart’s preference ensured that Sir Nevile Henderson filled the vacant Berlin ambassadorship while Lampson remained in Cairo to continue to fire off missives on defence questions amid regal surroundings.1 Nahas had spoken of making ‘a real fighting machine of the Egyptian Army, cost what it might’. Its modernisation commenced in January 1937 when a British military mission under Major-General James MarshallCornwall arrived in Cairo. His tact in humouring Egyptian military ambitions, his drive and the willingness of his 25 officers and the standing garrison to loan weaponry and provide mechanical training in desert conditions appeased Egyptian sensibilities. A secret British appreciation saw no prospect of native forces becoming capable of defending Egypt over the treaty’s duration. The War Office was sensitive to this aspect and Marshall-Cornwall was under orders not to openly disparage Egyptian ambitions.2 Native officers also appreciated being advised rather than ordered about as before and the facility to observe exercises. The goodwill engendered was, however, quickly undermined by Britain’s inability to address the gaping voids in armaments left by the pre-treaty policy of denying Egyptian forces even a modicum of basic equipment. The army was lacking in tanks, wireless, mobile guns and anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons. Anxious to make up the deficit, the Egyptian Cabinet even forwent a month’s salary amid public demands for a three-division force.3 In July, seeking to placate growing criticism at the meagre armaments so far forthcoming, it insisted that all available equipment were employed for the royal review. Marshall-Cornwall reluctantly complied, knowing full well that he was staging a ‘façade of military buffoonery’ with, for example, not a single round available for guns and howitzers.4 The situation was no better with the Egyptian Air Force. Nahas sought the Hurricane fighter aircraft; a request that the British authorities were in no position to meet. This leading-edge technology single-seater monoplane, powered by a Rolls Royce Merlin engine, had yet to enter service. The Air Ministry was determined to re-equip Fighter Command first and MarshallCornwall was charged with persuading Nahas to accept Gloster Gladiator biplanes. He did so with the canny argument that they were only a stopgap while pilots received rudimentary training. The War Office, relegated to last place in rearmament priorities, was even more loath to part with up-to-date weaponry. Its decision to supplant the Lewis gun with the Bren light machine gun and to restock artillery with 25-pounders caused Marshall-Cornwall severe headaches, with the former not promised for Egypt until 1938 and the latter before 1939 at the earliest. Aware of British difficulties, Berlin offered to step in. Although the treaty stipulated that weapons must conform to British types, they did not have to be of British manufacture. With Hitler anxious at this time to court British friendship, the offer was quietly withdrawn once London pressed its objections.5 In April 1937 the Foreign Office Arms Orders Committee determined an

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order of 27 countries in line to receive British armaments. Egypt topped the list, followed by Iraq; Turkey, Yugoslavia and Greece occupied positions six through eight; Poland, Romania and the Soviet Union were ranked 15, 16 and last respectively. It was, however, one thing to establish priorities, quite another to meet them. For instance, already delivered armaments must be serviced, taking a toll on available spare parts. A War Office official advised the Foreign Office that ‘we are doing our best with indifferent or no material from all quarters of the globe and despite the urgency of the Egyptian treaty I feel those in Egypt must realise that there are other things on the carpet beside themselves’. Marshall-Cornwall’s continued remonstrations at his invidious position produced some impact. He underscored ‘the psychological effect of even one searchlight and two anti-aircraft guns arriving’; their recipients ‘would know little and care less if the guns were not accompanied by their regulation 6-inch spanners’.6 The War Office responded by persuading the Treasury to lend obsolescent equipment on a generous hire purchase basis pending the delivery of modern armaments. This did little to ameliorate Egyptian complaints at having to make do with weaponry of Great War vintage. Marshall-Cornwall dared not disclose the War Office’s riposte that the British garrison was reliant on the same stock lest this led the Egyptians to denounce the treaty ‘and seek Italian protection’.7 Exasperated, he visited the War Office in September 1937 only to learn of Enfield’s problems in manufacturing Brens, following modifications to the Czech design. The War Office thereupon agreed to place the entire machine gun order with the Czech Skoda works and permitted Cairo to procure artillery tractors from American sources. Anxious to retain Egyptian fidelity after Marshall-Cornwall’s remonstrations, the Foreign Office engineered the release of 120 Lewis machine guns from reserve stocks.8 This provoked a vigorous protest from Weir to the effect that, since his troops bore the main responsibility for defence, their needs should take precedence. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff then ordered Marshall-Cornwall’s dismissal, which was only retracted upon the intervention of the Secretary of State for War.9 During November the Egyptian Chamber of Deputies passed a supplementary defence credit of £E1.014 million to add to the summer credit of £E1.1 million. Political opponents constantly berated Nahas for failing to procure the military hardware to justify the expenditure. The situation prompted Eden to write in despair to Chamberlain: You will have seen the telegrams that are raining in on us from Egypt . . . No doubt Germany and Italy will take every opportunity to disseminate reports that we are decadent and that our rearmament is not serious. . . . In the Near East at present there are a number of nations who are for all practical purposes our allies, but if they be at once convinced that we shall not prove in the long run to be the winning horse they will leave us.

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Eden contended that financial considerations must be swept aside and proposed tapping American and French sources – ‘the efficacy for peace of a hundred anti-aircraft guns in Egypt today would be infinitely greater than the prospect of two hundred three years later’. Coming soon after the appointment of the Inskip Committee to rationalise defence expenditure, this overture was most unwelcome to the cost-conscious Chamberlain, who remained convinced that careful diplomacy could stabilise the international situation and prevent a drift to war. The only immediate result was the dispatch of an anti-aircraft brigade to Egypt early in 1938, comprised of 24 three-inch guns and accompanying searchlights. Because of the need to provide personnel for the Air Defence of Great Britain scheme, the deployment was made by the War Office on the proviso that, once trained, Egyptian army personnel would replace the British and henceforth be responsible for manning the anti-aircraft defences of the two main cities, Cairo and Alexandria.10

A changed leadership From the British perspective Nahas was in many ways an ideal Egyptian leader, more especially as his political standing rested upon making a success of the treaty. He had commendably resisted Mussolini’s invitation to visit Rome and was a firm favourite with Lampson, who towered over him.11 Domestically, however, Nahas’s dictatorial approach, administrative inefficiency, nepotism and bitter rivalry with the Palace increasingly undermined the Wafd’s position. Having come of age the previous July, Farouk soon began meddling in politics. An American correspondent rhapsodised that he was ‘the first independent ruler of Egypt since the days of the Pharaohs’. The British tried to mould him before he ascended the throne but his father’s sudden death in April 1936 halted the process in midstream and prevented him from attending the Woolwich Military Academy.12 As it was, Farouk had already demonstrated his independent streak by dismissing his British tutor, Edward Ford (later Private Secretary to George VI), whom Lampson brought over from Eton. The ambassador hardly endeared the heir to the throne to the British cause by prescribing him with such dull reading as The Uniforms of the British Army and The Castles of Britain. It was little wonder that Farouk preferred careering in his sports car around the palace grounds to serious study. Lampson damned Farouk with faint praise, considering him ‘a nice lad, and quite intelligent even if completely uneducated’. Very quickly Lampson grew frustrated at Farouk’s antics and harboured a secret desire ‘to be authorised to hit our young friend over the head and put him firmly in his place’. The ambassador was soon constantly disparaging Farouk as ‘the boy’. The loathing was mutual. Farouk sensed that Sir Miles would have him dethroned if he could and by turns dubbed him ‘Professor Lampson’, ‘the schoolmaster’ or ‘Gamoose (water buffalo) Pasha’. To quote Artemis Cooper: ‘the British Ambassador represented everything he hated most: a ponderous authoritarian father figure, and the foreign occupation his country yearned to

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be rid of’.13 As war approached, their testy relationship became increasingly acrimonious. Corpulent and corrupt in his later playboy years on the throne, Farouk cut an attractive lithe figure when he became King at 18. Where his father had been remote from the people, Farouk toured the provinces to popular acclaim in 1937 and projected the calculated image of a devout Muslim. Impending marriage to a pretty bride-to-be further enhanced his public standing. As his popularity mushroomed and the Wafd’s fortunes declined, Farouk sought to engineer a government of his liking. In October, Farouk overrode Nahas to appoint Ali Maher Chief of the Royal Cabinet. Soon thereafter Farouk began seeking Nahas’s resignation. Lampson warned that without the latter the treaty’s implementation would suffer and dreaded the prospect of a palace regime ‘committed to humouring the caprices of an irresponsible and already overwhelmingly self-satisfied young king . . . [who] by all indications is shaping up for the role of traditional Oriental despot’. At the same time, Lampson was forced to concede that the corrupt Wafd was ‘a bad horse to back indefinitely’ and regarded intervention in post-treaty Egypt as ‘judicially indefensible’.14 Equally, the Foreign Office was reluctant to countenance deposing Farouk, especially in view of his standing in the country. Eden informed his Cabinet colleagues of his department’s middle line: Lampson, ‘in whom we have great confidence’, was to urge Nahas to broaden the basis of his government and to intimate to Farouk that he could not act unconstitutionally.15 But, short of overt military intervention, there was little the British could do to influence the situation. The Wafd was no longer the venerated party of the masses as of old. Students who regarded the treaty as a sell-out were attracted to the more radical Muslim Brotherhood and a split in Wafdist ranks saw two leading members, Nokrashy Pasha and Ahmed Ali Maher, forming a breakaway party, the Saadists, representing emerging industrial interests and weakening the Wafd. In November, Nahas narrowly survived an assassination attempt by the Green Shirts. But he was unable to survive politically after Farouk merely humoured Lampson’s warnings and defiantly removed Nahas from office on 30 December. Campbell lamented: ‘It is sad to note that governments in Egypt which go out of their way to collaborate enthusiastically with HMG happen to have short lives . . ..’ The Foreign Office’s annual review regretted Nahas’s departure, suspected Rome would be pleased and, echoing Lampson’s terminology, concluded that ‘The boy King could hardly have begun more rashly’.16 Nahas’s successor, Mohammed Mahmoud, leader of the Liberal Constitutional Party, a persistent critic of the treaty’s financial provisions, was hardly ideal from the British perspective. Although his acceptance speech pledged to faithfully execute the treaty, the Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office wondered whether promise would be matched by performance. The early signs were good. Already experienced in the trappings of power, Mahmoud brought into his coalition experienced politicians and administrators. He also

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stamped on political extremism by disbanding coloured-shirt organisations. On 19 January 1938 Lampson and senior commanders met the new premier. They were pleasantly surprised at Mahmoud’s endorsement of the Alexandria improvement scheme, which included dredging one million cubic yards of the Great Pass harbour entrance and constructing a 1,000 feet graving dock. During the 1935–6 emergency, there had been a clearance of just two feet for capital ships. Mahmoud was enticed by the commercial advantages accruing but was as yet strangely oblivious to the financial scale of the project, which British estimates put at £2 million, and stubbornly refused financial aid. Like Nahas, Mahmoud was concerned at Italian strength in Libya and especially by the disparity in air forces. In the circumstances, he was more than happy to endorse any reinforcement over and above the treaty limits. But the British were careful not to take him completely into their confidence. Pound privately dismissed Mahmoud’s copy of the Egypt defence scheme as ‘so abridged that a secret supplement would in the end have to be a complete plan’.17 Finding it increasingly difficult to fulfil their treaty obligations, the Egyptians greeted the Anglo-Italian Agreement with relief. Indeed, as the threat of invasion from Libya subsided and the Wafd reverted to its traditional role of heckling the incumbent regime for subservience to the British, inertia developed. The government refused to establish joint committees to examine wartime resources or to effect any regular system of coordination in defence matters. Only in the development of coastal and anti-aircraft defences at Alexandria and Mersa Matruh was any progress achieved. Continued inaction over Alexandria harbour led to Lampson raising the matter. Mahmoud still would not hear of financial assistance, only promising to discuss the project during his forthcoming London visit. Similar prevarication over the cantonments for the Canal Zone did not concern the fighting services as much. Cairo remained a better location for the Army given its proximity to the Western Desert whilst the Air Staff evinced equal disdain over delays, at least until long-range bombers capable of deep forays into Libya from the zone were developed. Only when the treaty was near to expiring (1956) was it seen as expedient to have moved lock, stock and barrel to the Canal Zone in the hope that the Egyptians might then be more willing to countenance a continued British military presence removed from major population centres.18 During his summer visit to London, Mahmoud proposed that Egypt continued the building work with Britain sharing the costs and linked his offer with a promise to develop Alexandria harbour at Egyptian expense. Privately, the Foreign Office was sceptical whether Egypt could afford the estimated £20 million required, a strain that would leave little for its armed forces and, Halifax warned, ‘might lead to the treaty becoming very unpopular’.19 Although service ministers remained doubtful whether Egypt was capable of the building work, with nothing else on the table Halifax pushed for acceptance of Mahmoud’s offer and carried most ministers with him. Annoyed that

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Mahmoud concocted his solution whist journeying to England rather than consulting him before setting out, Lampson wanted the issue reopened once he learned the terms. Chamberlain, who had dealt personally with Mahmoud and authorised the circumvention of the usual protracted decision-making process of referral to the Chiefs of Staff and Committee of Imperial Defence before Cabinet approval, would have none of it. Lampson, Chamberlain complained, ‘too often makes heavy weather of other people’s proposals’. On 4 August, Halifax and Mahmoud initialled a draft protocol and an agreed minute: Egypt would still provide the land and construct the cantonments; Britain was to contribute half the costs upon the evacuation of her forces from Alexandria. To safeguard Mahmoud’s political position, there was no reference to port development and he only made a verbal commitment to seek the assistance of British technical experts. A separate protocol on Alexandria was signed in Cairo on 22 September 1938. The British pressed for financial compensation if and when their forces left Egypt altogether, but met stiff opposition and prudently dropped the matter when the Sudetenland crisis erupted.20

Munich and after The Sudetenland crisis provided a stern test of Egyptian loyalty to the alliance. Axis propaganda mischievously suggested Egypt need not fulfil her treaty obligations over such an extraneous issue, with Italy promising not to attack if Egypt remained neutral in a European war. After returning from Berlin, the Egyptian Ambassador to London, probably primed by the Germans, raised the delicate issue of whether Article VII of the treaty – the apprehended international emergency clause – had yet arisen. Cairo pressed for greater candour, but Cadogan would only authorise the gist of situation summaries communicated to the Dominions. On 20 September, Mahmoud was informed that British policy was to transfer the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany to ensure Czechoslovakia’s vital interests, a disingenuous line of argument which failed to convince. As news of the terms of the Munich Agreement leaked out, Charles Bateman, deputising for the absent Lampson, reported Egyptian feeling that Britain had suffered an even worse humiliation than over Abyssinia; her ‘ability and willingness to protect small states (including Egypt) against aggression is being seriously questioned’. Nonetheless, Mahmoud remained loyal; publicly describing the treaty’s benefits as ‘incontestable’ and even declaring his willingness to form a coalition with the Wafd under Nahas in the event of war. At the same time, the emergency revealed to Egypt the full implications of standing at Britain’s side in a major conflict. It underlined the backwardness of Egyptian armed forces, which led Mahmoud to insist on Gordon-Finlayson drawing up a shopping-list of urgent requirements. Again, the crisis highlighted Egypt’s vulnerability to air attacks by high explosive and gas bombs. Her nervousness was such that in September, she ordered two million gas masks and other anti-gas supplies

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from Britain as well as seeking the services of an air raid precautions expert. The crisis also lent credence to those Egyptians who maintained that the alliance was weighted heavily in Britain’s favour, making Egypt her vassal as of old.21 In the immediate euphoria following Munich, Chamberlain was deluged with congratulatory telegrams. ‘Your name will go down in history’, began Mahmoud’s, ‘as the statesman who has by his own courage and personality saved civilisation from destruction’. On 2 October, Lampson officially thanked Farouk for his cooperation. The following day Halifax’s message to Mahmoud expressed confidence in Egyptian loyalty and pledged in return ‘the unshakeable determination of the whole British people to defend Egypt with all the forces at their command’. In Cabinet, Halifax singled out Egypt for praise which, he felt, justified the summer concessions. The aftershock of the recent crisis had some benefits for defence relations. The Anglo-Egyptian Coordination Committee, last seen during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency, was revived with Amin Osman playing his familiar role of intermediary. The committee’s remit was the implementation of defence arrangements, such as developing the caves at Helwan for bomb storage, air raid precautions and making Dekhelia aerodrome (used by the Fleet Air Arm in the recent emergency) available for training. Satisfactory arrangements were also concluded in respect of état de siege and wartime censorship.22 These advances notwithstanding, the embassy and Foreign Office increasingly felt that continued Egyptian loyalty depended upon Britain palpably fulfilling its treaty obligations, not least armament deliveries. In this respect, the Army Council’s response to Gordon-Finlayson’s list was disconcerting. Accelerating deliveries would entail ‘the diversion of war material at present allocated for more urgent purposes’; Munich rendered Egyptian orders less important; only if the international situation changed would Egypt’s needs receive ‘the highest possible priority’. David Kelly, now head of the Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office, sighed that this had been the standard army response of the past three years and bemoaned that the War Office’s inability to meet Egypt’s ‘trifling’ requirements reflected a ‘lamentable failure in the building of production’. Rectifying home defence deficiencies remained top priority and Cadogan predicted that the recent ratification of the Anglo-Italian Agreement would make Egypt’s case ‘still harder to drive home’.23 Lord Halifax took up the issue with Hore-Belisha, pointing out that Egyptian goodwill was assumed in defence planning. Drawing on his experiences as Viceroy in India, the Foreign Secretary warned: we are apt to overlook the fact that in the last resort we could not, in an emergency, compel the Egyptians to honour their treaty obligations and that the situation of our armed forces, if faced by a hostile Egyptian government and populace, would be almost desperate. . . . From the point of view of imperial politics and strategy it is therefore of the

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highest importance to put a stop to the constant complaint that we are unable or unwilling to equip the Egyptian Army. Hore-Belisha responded that the Air Defence of Great Britain, strategically vital overseas garrisons, including Egypt and British Expeditionary Force requirements, remained paramount considerations. Nevertheless, in bulk deliveries Egypt came before the Dominions and India and within the next few months some of its outstanding requirements should be met. At the same time, the fighting value of the Egyptian Army was low, a situation that would pertain for some time and it should be recognised that ‘the main return we get from the diversion of armaments . . . is on the political and not on the military side’. Halifax was satisfied with this response although disquiet continued within the Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office.24 Bulk deliveries of foreign orders for military aircraft remained only a distant prospect. Again, gun-manufacturing capacity, much less than in 1914–18, was overwhelmingly consumed with the Air Defence of Great Britain and extra guns for ports abroad. Reporting to the Cabinet in December, Inskip conceded that there was ‘no specific provision to deal with foreign orders’. In such circumstances, the Committee of Imperial Defence’s approval of the Chiefs of Staff’s strategic priority list of countries requiring armaments could only have academic value in the short term. Egypt came second after Belgium and Holland due to ‘its very high strategic importance’.25 Under the new Export Credits Act the Treasury, Board of Trade and Foreign Office agreed to allocate £10 million for particular countries. The fact that the amount (£1 million) reserved for Egypt was not commensurate with her strategic value reflected the fact that, despite mounting economic difficulties associated with the falling price of raw cotton, Mahmoud’s government remained loath to seek financial aid. The reserve was earmarked for Alexandria given the strategic importance of its development. By February 1939 the Export Credit Guarantee Department was also ready to loan Egypt £200,000 to purchase 1.5 million gas respirators.26 On 1 December 1938 the Committee of Imperial Defence reviewed Egypt and Iraq’s treaty obligations, should Britain become a belligerent. It emerged that neither was obliged to declare war but the expectation was that, as allies, they would loyally follow Britain into conflict. This was not borne out by developments in Egypt whence Lampson reported a neutrality movement was gaining ground. Baron Ow-Wachendorf, the German Minister in Cairo, rather than his Italian counterpart who, in view of the Easter accords, wished to remain in the background, was encouraging it. Some Egyptian newspapers suggested that Article VII of the treaty required amendment and, on the hopeful assumption that British forces would leave automatically once the treaty expired, suggested that constructing the Canal Zone barracks was a waste of time and money. Sidky Pasha also propounded this view in the Chamber of Deputies. Mahmoud’s open-ended response perturbed Lampson but fortunately the Wafdist press weighed in, insisting that Egypt must stand

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by her ally. Moreover, Sidky’s moment was particularly ill chosen, coinciding with Italy’s resented demand for a place on the Suez Canal Company board. Furthermore, an estimated 10,000 Italian troops then menaced Egypt’s western border and Italian aircraft were landing regularly on Egyptian territory, claiming to be short of fuel and to have lost their way. The pilots declined Egyptian offers of aviation fuel, insisting on importing it from Benghazi to Mersa Matruh (garrisoned by Egyptian troops), a blatant ploy to gain knowledge of its defences. At Mahmoud’s suggestion, the Foreign Office persuaded The Times, widely read by the intelligentsia, to publish a trenchant leader: geography dictates a closer association between Egypt and Great Britain. . . . And like many British friends of Egypt they [Egyptians] have been disagreeably surprised to see an older statesman, after doing yeoman’s service to make the treaty, turn to attack it so soon, so inconsistently and so churlishly. A British Broadcasting Company Arabic broadcast, extensively reported in the Egyptian press, repeated the character assassination.27

The power struggle in Egypt In April 1938 a general election returned Mahmoud to power. Although the outcome was blatantly rigged to exclude the possibility of the Wafd’s return, the British were disinclined to intervene, more especially as the Oxfordeducated Mahmoud remained broadly sympathetic to their requirements. Indeed, the journalist, Gerald Delany, recalled that Mahmoud was ‘universally respected as an upright and honest man, and there was no Egyptian statesman who had a better understanding of the English mind and character’. But British efforts to ensure Egyptian backing were soon subsumed in the growing power struggle between Farouk, aided and abetted by Ali Maher – who aspired to the Premiership – and Mahmoud, whose declining health hampered efficient government. Ali Maher was well placed to further his ambitions, having access to the monarch, his ministers and foreign representatives. He attempted, in vain, to ingratiate himself with an embassy official; the latter felt he had encountered ‘a small ravenous wolf driven by furnace-heats of ambition’.28 The Palace was suspected of anti-British intrigue, fomented by Axis agents. In particular, Farouk’s appointment of an Italian, Verucci Bey, to his entourage disturbed the Foreign Office. British intelligence learned that Bey was urging an Italo-Egyptian agreement, which would effectively annul Article VII of the treaty. Gordon-Finlayson worried that this could result in Italy insisting that no defence measures could be taken in the Western Desert, leading Lampson to warn Farouk officially on 5 January 1939 that Britain would not tolerate an amendment.29 With Farouk being showered with gifts

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from Hitler after making apparent his anti-British leanings via the Italian Ambassador in Berlin, the problem of dealing with the recalcitrant monarch, who was also the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Armed Forces, became more irksome. Lampson counselled that the solution did not lie with more audiences since Farouk resented advice: ‘In his own estimation he is very much a jimmy-know-it-all (you would have rocked with laughter had you heard him lecturing . . . Gordon-Finlayson . . . on “higher strategy”, and picking holes with the general’s plans to defend Egypt!), very omniscient!’ To try to turn Farouk around, Lampson introduced him to duck-shooting. The strategy backfired. On one occasion the monarch downed several ducks. Patting the stock of his weapon, he shouted mischievously across to Lampson in the next butt, ‘You see – German gun.’30 On 20 February, Farouk insisted in a broadcast that he was old enough to form his own ideas and competent to carry them out. Lampson suggested that a state visit to Britain might do the trick but King George VI was fully occupied with overseas tours in the immediate future. In fact, Buckingham Palace had been initially receptive to an autumn visit but became steadfastly opposed as it might ‘give the impression of condoning the recent extraordinary behaviour of King Farouk’. This perhaps hinted at his notorious midnight car jaunts and kleptomania, but most probably alluded to his open flouting of the British connection, such as ignoring British commanders at a military tattoo. At least Mahmoud’s influence produced some effect. On 19 March he revealed to Lampson that that day he had compelled Farouk to make a declaration in favour of Egyptian support for Britain. Chamberlain was impressed, informing a relative that should the rascally young monarch terminate his bad behaviour, he favoured bestowing a decoration upon him.31 A further worrying aspect was the growing anti-British tendency of the Egyptian Defence Ministry and especially the Minister of War, Hussein Sirry Pasha, who was suspected of palace connections. Officers were warned not to fraternise with the British and many became loath to act on the military mission’s advice lest their promotion prospects were clouded. Without clearance, Hussein ordered 100 Bren guns from Czechoslovakia, using the excuse of slow British deliveries, a futile gesture, as the Czech model was not interchangeable with the British version, a treaty stipulation. Gordon-Finlayson impressed all this upon Hussein, who was forced to concede that his action was politically motivated.32 These developments notwithstanding, the Mahmoud government and the country at large remained well disposed towards the British if only because of the Italian menace. To quote the December 1938 report of the British Defence Security Officer: Whatever may be the views of the Palace, there is practically no proItalian feeling in the rest of the country, which still manifests towards Italy a healthy contempt and dislike, not unmingled with fear. In spite of the events in Palestine, the good feeling towards ourselves which has

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British intelligence became aware of Italian attempts to secure a nonaggression pact with Egypt, with Nazi Germany set to follow suit. However, while the intriguing Farouk was amenable, Mahmoud was not, insisting that Egypt could make no agreement inconsistent with the treaty or concerning Suez. Such loyalty was appreciated and rewarded. Responding to Mahmoud’s request for greater elucidation on international developments after Prague, Cadogan reluctantly agreed, provided that Lampson used his discretion as to what was conveyed. ‘We might be quite frank where the Mediterranean position is directly affected’, minuted Cadogan, ‘. . . but . . . be a bit reserved for the moment about Hitler’s present vagaries’.33 Another area where British mediation might ease Mahmoud’s difficulties was the Palestine issue. Mahmoud encouraged the promotion of Islam, supported the exiled Mufti of Jerusalem, who started the Arab revolt in April 1936, and, disregarding British protests, allowed the World Parliamentary Congress of Arab and Muslim Countries for the Defence of Palestine to convene in Cairo during October 1938. After receiving the delegates, Mahmoud wrote to Chamberlain, insisting that all Arabs rejected partition and wanted Jewish immigration to Palestine restricted. After some hesitation Chamberlain responded that a spectacular intervention on his part, as over the Sudetenland, such as Mahmoud proposed, would be unwise.34 Aside from its negative political impact on the Arab world, the British recognised that continued failure to subsume the revolt carried worrying strategic implications. In September 1938 the rebellion, by then consuming more troops than were available to send to the Continent, had rendered unsafe the overland route to Egypt. Much to Pound’s annoyance, this necessitated naval protection in the Red Sea for the three sea-borne battalions returning to Egypt from Palestine. They then returned to join the Middle East Reserve Brigade, formed during the Sudetenland crisis and earmarked for Egypt in the eventuality of conflict. As long as the rebellion continued, the brigade’s availability was thrown into doubt. Lampson was not one to stand idly by. Blanche Dugdale, niece of Arthur Balfour and a prominent Gentile Zionist, noted in her diary: ‘Miles makes no secret that he wants a standstill in Palestine for five years . . . No doubt about Smart being our enemy’. Lampson, influenced by Smart, called for Jewish immigration to be halted: ‘I cannot help feeling that the attempt to force Jews on the Arab world is bound to end in disaster for ourselves and the Jews.’ Although Malcolm MacDonald, secretary of state for the colonies, agreed that Lampson’s letter could be circulated to cabinet ministers, he seethed that the ambassador was ‘out Arabing the Arabs’. MacDonald reluctantly conceded that some concessions were required, a line strongly endorsed by defence ministers. The Air Staff

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even warned that if the Arab world were hostile in another World War, then the Middle East would become untenable.35 Had war erupted in autumn 1938, partition would have been abandoned to bring the Arabs into line. Two successive commissions, under Peel and Woodhead, endorsed such a policy and a special cabinet committee was charged with working out proposals. At the same time the War Office stepped up counter-insurgency operations in Palestine, fearing it could not provide extra troops after spring 1939. This policy began to pay off. In December 1938, ministers learned that heavy casualties had been inflicted on the rebels and the strategically important Jerusalem – Jaffa railway regained. The St James Conference (7 February–17 March 1939) failed to resolve the political deadlock, but Whitehall drew comfort from Mahmoud’s moderate stance.36

The lead up to war in Europe Egypt was engulfed in the frenetic atmosphere of rumour and counterrumour set off by the Nazi moves on rump Czechoslovakia and Memel and the Italian invasion of Albania. The dethronement of King Zog, Albania’s Muslim monarch, prompted a leading Egyptian Muslim to remark scathingly: ‘This is what the self-designated “Protector of Islam” [Mussolini] does to a Muslim king.’ The concurrent visit of Field Marshal Goering to Libya sparked rumours of an imminent German invasion and prompted the panicstricken Minister of War to order the army to its war stations. The government also cancelled leave, elected to install forthwith coastal defence guns at Port Said and Suez and declared an enlarged prohibited area in the Western Desert. To ameliorate Egyptian anxiety, Gordon-Finlayson reluctantly agreed that anti-aircraft defences at Alexandria, Cairo and Suez could be manned. On 18 April, at Mahmoud’s request, the British Mobile Division marched through Cairo. The parade was extended to 16 miles long through the canny separation of each column by a three-minute gap, which made the procession last almost three hours. The exercise was repeated a month later, with Egyptian units leading on this occasion. ‘I don’t think any of us mind who leads’, Gordon-Finlayson informed Gort, ‘so long as the show is a good one’.37 When Air Marshal Balbo visited Egypt during May, he entertained hopes of returning to Libya with a non-aggression pact that included guaranteeing Italian ships right of passage through Suez. The frosty reception he received soon dispelled this hope. Even Farouk began their audience with a caustic reference to his family’s Albanian roots. Balbo suggested that his troops on the frontier were merely routinely training but, as his host impishly remarked, this was hardly a recipe for friendship. A similar response from Mahmoud led Balbo to stage an ill-considered press conference at which he blamed Egypt for the troop concentrations.38 As with Italy’s brutal conquest of Abyssinia three years before, Italy’s absorption of Albania led Egyptians to see the British military presence in a

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more positive light. It also made the Arabs question their negativity towards Britain’s Palestine policy. During April resolutions condemning Italy’s invasion of Albania were passed in several Arab capitals including Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. After consulting Arab delegates, Mahmoud promised to support the forthcoming White Paper on Palestine if several amendments were incorporated. Although these were rejected, there was not an adverse reaction, convincing MacDonald that ‘Mahmoud was fairly well reconciled to the position’. Mahmoud’s softer line was also influenced by his desire to see the return of the British reinforcements committed to Palestine. The Cabinet then elected to publish on 17 May. Jewish immigration to Palestine would be restricted over the next five years, thereafter being subject to Arab consent; Jewish land sales were to be curbed; Palestinian ministers in selected positions could be appointed; and, within a decade, an independent Palestine, albeit on treaty terms with Britain, was promised.39 A less welcome ramification of Albania was increased Egyptian nervousness. Lampson detected a changed atmosphere: there was now a feeling that war was inevitable. During 24 April, Mahmoud told the Chamber of Deputies that the British government had ‘given . . . repeated assurances that she will supply us by land, sea and air, with all the reinforcements capable of rendering the cooperation of our two armies as powerful as all the needs for the defence of our country demand’. Chamberlain was wrong-footed in the House of Commons when asked whether Egypt regarded security arrangements as adequate and could only return an ambiguous reply. A positive Egyptian statement was sought but Mahmoud refused to oblige, informing Lampson that ‘he had repeatedly said . . . he does not regard the numbers of our troops at present in Egypt as adequate’. On 27 April, Mahmoud demanded to know exactly how many British troops were in Egypt. After consultations Lampson responded that there were presently 13,000 with 20,000 (two divisions) of reinforcements stationed in Palestine. Such was Mahmoud’s anxiety and strategic ignorance that he feared that if war came Balbo could quickly reach Suez, leading to him wanting the garrison raised to 30,000 troops forthwith. Lampson failed to placate the Premier by alluding to the precarious Italian position in Libya, where the garrison faced Allied forces on two flanks. The meeting coincided with an unfortunate War Office communiqué, which stressed that even with the return of the troops from Palestine, the garrison would still fall below the peacetime treaty limit of 10,000. Apart from being an underestimate, the statement proved a major embarrassment to British authorities in Egypt, but the Foreign Office ruled out an explanatory statement, fearing it would do more harm than good.40 It was only with the further deterioration in the international situation in summer 1939 that the Joint Planning Committee recommended that Force Heron proceed to Egypt from India. The War Office bemoaned the cost and preferred to draw on Palestine. On 6 July, at a Committee of Imperial Defence meeting, Gort conceded that, with the rebellion petering out, the

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garrison there was now an ‘over-insurance’. A further Committee of Imperial Defence meeting on 21 July, since when a frantic Lampson had conveyed Farouk’s concern at the lack of reinforcements, finally activated the Heron scheme with the Palestine authorities to prepare a second brigade if required. The same day, a relieved Halifax informed ministers that Mahmoud ‘had expressed great pleasure at the proposed reinforcements from India and was greatly reassured as to the position’.41 By May 1939 Egypt’s treaty-related financial difficulties were of such magnitude that Mahmoud suggested the transfer of the British Army to the Canal Zone be abandoned. By July, Egyptian barrack-building work was at a standstill and the Air Minister, Kingsley Wood, complained that ‘no effective progress’ had been made towards providing new accommodation. Again, the treaty road construction scheme was far from complete. There was a 20-mile gap on the Alexandria – Mersa Matruh road in the vicinity of El Alamein; roads linking Suez with Alexandria and Cairo were even further behindhand. Work on Alexandria harbour was proceeding at a snail’s pace, with no dredging undertaken to deepen the Great Pass.42 That month Mahmoud sent Amin Osman to London in search of arms credits. The latter confided that his government was now drawing on its reserves and dare not cut social spending or raise taxes for fear of sparking serious unrest. Osmin ran into a brick wall, however, when he sought interest-free credits and still found no joy when, at Mahmoud’s behest, he proposed paying only a nominal rate of interest. Osmin felt bitter at the lack of progress, warning Kelly that ‘there are many people in Egypt who even feel that our country is endangered by the alliance’. After all, Egypt had spent £250,000 on a road linking Sinai to Palestine to facilitate the movement of reinforcements and was also undertaking the Alexandria harbour improvement scheme. Amin felt the British government was making a great mistake and that Egypt should receive greater sympathy than that shown to Poland, Turkey and New Zealand. Following Osman’s return empty-handed, his government, in desperation, proposed a barter arrangement whereby arms purchases could be offset against the establishment of a war reserve of Egyptian raw cotton. On 11 August the newly formed Allied Demands Committee, finding the Treasury did not object, approved the scheme.43 The Chamberlain Government now secretly concluded that, unless it provided the funding, the Canal Zone barracks would not be built. The Air Ministry, increasingly anxious to accelerate the building programme to accommodate extra squadrons, pressed for the treaty to be revised. The Foreign Office refused, pointing out it would take at least a year to arrange negotiations. Finding the War Office remained content to see its barrackbuilding programme fall into arrears, Halifax suggested that Britain bore the initial cost to speed construction to meet air requirements and met the full bill where treaty requirements were exceeded. On 27 July the Committee of Imperial Defence approved the Foreign Office line. Similarly, it was apparent that the construction of the graving dock at Alexandria would not soon be

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completed. With war imminent, one was towed out from Britain, reaching Egypt’s second city in August 1939.44

Egypt stays out The British had complacently assumed that in the eventuality of themselves becoming engaged in conflict against one or both Axis partners, Egyptian belligerency would follow instantaneously. The theory was almost put to the test in September 1938. Virtually a year on, the Egyptians remained far from certain that the British horse was the one to back. As Bill Aster, formerly Hoare’s private secretary and now serving in Egypt, informed Rab Butler: The Egyptians . . . are not sure we can protect them against Italian invasion, so they do nothing to offend the Italians. There is no law against espionage, they refuse to enforce the law making a licence to carry a gun necessary and many of them take out an insurance policy with Italy on the sly. The embassy nonetheless continued to judge the majority of the population to be pro-Ally and anti-fascist. Mahmoud was certainly so inclined, but continued bouts of ill-health finally compelled him to resign on 12 August. The final straw was an argument with the Palace over his right to select ministers. Six days later Ali Maher formed a new coalition composed of five Saadists and nine Independents. There were ominous shades of the dictator in Ali Maher who, as well as being premier, reserved for himself the interior and foreign affairs portfolios.45 Since the Wafd was excluded and the Liberals refused to participate, it was a minority government reliant on palace support. Admiral Cunningham regarded Farouk as ‘a proper young rascal’ while Ali Maher was ‘a very shifty looking man’. An intelligence report described Ali Maher as well educated, shrewd, capable and most intelligent but a born intriguer. There is no evidence that he is either in German or Italian pay, but it is obvious that he is not unsympathetic to the totalitarian states. He is known to have been referred to last spring by the Germans as ‘our friend in London’ [during the St James Conference]. He is not particularly well off, but is reported to have an insatiable appetite for women, which may render him susceptible to corruption.46 On 29 August, in view of international developments, Lampson was preparing to cut short his annual leave in Britain and return to Egypt by air. He persuaded Halifax and Cadogan that he should take back a reassuring message for the new Egyptian leader. In it Halifax conveyed his ‘solemn assurance’ that ‘Egypt can rely absolutely on the unshakeable determination of the whole British people to assist in the defence of Egypt with all the forces at

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their command’. Provided Farouk maintained his recent good behaviour, it was decided that he might be offered the colonelcy of a British regiment. And, while the date of a future state visit remained indeterminate, King George VI was persuaded to write to his Egyptian counterpart extending an invitation, a gesture which, Lampson reported, made Farouk ‘immensely pleased’.47 Ali Maher’s bona fides were quickly put to the test by the worsening international situation. His initial response was encouraging. Rather than a declaration of British martial law, which he saw as a breach of sovereignty, he suggested an Egyptian decree tantamount to a state of siege, to which the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief readily agreed. Governors of Cairo and Alexandria were appointed to control their respective areas, a special military governor administered the Canal Zone, and Ali Maher himself became military governor of all Egypt. Again, on 27 August, Ali Maher accepted that an apprehended international emergency, as defined by the treaty, had arisen. The Egyptian Army moved smoothly to war stations, the Egyptian State Railways cooperated with British Troops in Egypt and on 1 September, when Poland was invaded, état de siège was imposed and censorship instituted. With Britain and France at war with Nazi Germany, on the evening of 3 September the Tombak Scheme was applied to suspect Germans, many with Nazi leanings, who were interned as German businesses were seized. Egypt also imposed an embargo on trade with Nazi Germany and allowed neutral ships to be searched in its waters. At the same time, there were some disquieting developments. When the German Legation left, it took over 200 nationals with it, including known agents, under cover of diplomatic immunity.48 It soon became apparent that fighting side-by-side with Britain was another matter. On 1 September, Lampson saw Ali Maher to synchronise the declarations of war, only to encounter obstinate refusal. Ali Maher stressed that Egypt faced ‘powerful and well equipped enemies’; it was for Britain to defend her and presumptuous to expect the blind adoption of belligerency. He much preferred the phrase ‘state of war’ as in 1914. All the same, Egypt would naturally extend all facilities to British forces. The following day Ali Maher seemingly reversed his position but on 3 September, as Britain and France went to war, Lampson searched Cairo in vain for Ali Maher who only emerged at 10.30 p.m. Prevarication remained the order of the day. His cabinet was not unanimous and saw no point in risking provoking Berlin through a declaration of war. Some members wanted a British commitment to renegotiate the treaty at the end of the conflict, a notion that Lampson quickly stamped on. For the moment, the severance of diplomatic relations, which came on 6 September, was as far as Egypt would go.49 Ali Maher promised that ‘sooner or later’ Egyptian belligerency was inevitable but throughout the autumn unfurled a series of preconditions. These had two interlocking themes: strengthening defences and a desire not to become a British vassal, as in the Great War. The vastly greater number of

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Italian troops in Libya led Cairo to propose that, provided Britain supplied free rifles, it would create a 20,000-strong volunteer auxiliary force for internal security, thereby freeing more British troops for frontline duties. The notion was pooh-poohed: Lampson feared it would amount to an ‘armed rabble’; Kelly objected to its leader, Assam Bey, a minister with Pan-Arab inclinations; Wilson and the military mission condemned it as a political stunt considering the Egyptian Army already had three reserve battalions. Nonetheless it was decided to play along.50 Concurrently, the Mobile Division and Royal Air Force, to try to convince Farouk, Ali Maher and his ministers that Britain could defend Egypt, staged military demonstrations in the Western Desert. Wavell wrote: ‘I wish it would hearten them into a declaration of war.’ When they failed to have the desired effect, Lampson conferred with Wavell by telephone over moving the Palestine brigade. Since he was under orders not to provoke Italy and, in the absence of hostilities, considered the existing garrison perfectly adequate, Wavell demurred. Already Lampson had annoyed Wavell by reporting that Ali Maher was anxious for the brigade’s retrieval only to find the latter denying this over dinner. Indeed, Wavell suspected that Lampson had invented the request, given his belief that the lack of troops lay behind Egyptian cantankerousness. For his part, Lampson complained to Halifax that Wavell ‘obviously regards Egyptian independence as a joke, that can be disregarded with no ill effects. Tonight [15 September] he bitterly criticised me for not having forced PM to declare war’.51 In an effort to move the Egyptians, Ironside authorised the dispatch of a further brigade from India while, on 17 September, Hore-Belisha informed the War Cabinet of the decision to add three British battalions to the garrison.52 Ali Maher continued to wriggle, however, finding further excuses whenever his terms were met. His obstreperousness finally convinced the Foreign Office that further efforts at persuasion were pointless, a stance endorsed by the Chiefs of Staff and War Cabinet. Lampson was irked at the news and vented his frustration to Kelly in a letter. ‘What can you do with a man like that? His word has been proved to be worth just nothing . . .’ Following the discovery that Ali Maher was in contact with the Italian Legation, Lampson was withholding the substance of important ‘Intels’ communications from him, fearing the Italians would remit their contents to Berlin. The Foreign Office approved and decided that until it was determined to what extent he was backing Ali Maher, Farouk would be denied a colonelcy.53 Egyptian intrigues notwithstanding, it was unreasonable for Britain to anticipate a declaration of war against Nazi Germany. Remoteness from the European theatre was combined with an acute awareness of the devastating blitzkrieg inflicted on Poland. Ali Maher’s regime was simply the most extreme of a succession of governments, which were not satisfied with British defences to meet an Italian, let alone a German, threat. Lacking parliamentary legitimacy, Ali Maher’s fear that he might not secure a majority was a perfectly reasonable one. The Egyptian attitude was vexing from a British perspective but also made sense and corresponded with the stance of other

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friendly regional powers. In similar vein Iraq elected for neutrality while also meeting her treaty obligations; Transjordan placed its resources at British disposal; Saudi Arabia declared neutrality, though this was expected to favour Britain.54

The lead up to war in the Mediterranean At the start of 1940 Halifax informed Lampson that he remained hopeful that Rome might yet be detached from Berlin. But he felt it best ‘to leave the Egyptians to believe that the Italian danger is very real, in order not to diminish their readiness to cooperate with us . . .’55 Fed by rumours, incidents and double-dealing, mutual suspicion between the embassy and Ali Maher government deepened. Ali Maher’s removal of pro-British officials, including Osman, and lethargy in procuring parliamentary approval for état de siége rankled, as did Farouk’s continued intrigues. The embassy was especially disturbed by intelligence reports that Ali Maher was ‘representing himself as standing up to unjustifiable British demands and efforts to re-establish semi-protectorate conditions’. At this time, Lampson used the occasion of an after-dinner speech at Old Victoria College ‘to dissipate certain unfounded stories of British demands which had been deliberately put into circulation, and at the same time conveyed a warning that Great Britain’s patience with those trying to twist the lion’s tail was not inexhaustible’. For the moment, Lampson recognised that to remove Ali Maher meant a confrontation with Farouk and he counselled ‘it would be advisable for us to hold our hand and not to interfere’. Meanwhile, a battle of wills ensued over the pro-German Aziz el-Masri Pasha, Farouk’s former tutor and now chief of the Egyptian general staff, whom Lieutenant-General Norman Macready, MarshallCornwall’s successor, wanted removed for insubordination and suspected Axis collaboration. True to form, Ali Maher stoutly resisted until driven into a corner. He then procrastinated, taking a month to carry out the sacking, which was dressed up as ‘indefinite leave’, in the interim stirring up an anti-British press campaign centred on undue interference.56 Britain remained easily Egypt’s leading trading partner. Efforts to keep the Egyptians sweet included the wholesale purchase of the 1939 cotton crop, a decision taken, after protracted negotiations, in November 1939. This gesture did not ameliorate Egyptian concern at the low price of cotton and the loss of markets occasioned by the European conflict. Cairo was also only too well aware of substantial financial aid to Turkey and expected similar treatment.57 While the British Treasury was happy to consider aid to facilitate the completion of projects that would enhance the defence of British interests, it dug in its heels over providing munitions without payment. In this respect, Lampson had falsely raised Egyptian hopes, leading Ali Maher to alert the Chamber to his expectations. The Treasury, projecting at least a three-year conflict, the estimated period for a crippling economic blockade to take hold in Nazi Germany, was determined to conserve finite financial resources for the

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prosecution of the war effort. By the early months of 1940 the Treasury doubted whether gold and foreign exchange reserves would be sufficient to finance this long-haul strategy. The production of armaments for Egypt would require imports into Britain of raw materials, which must be paid for in gold or dollars. There was, too, the consideration that Britain would spend around £6 million extra in Egypt on military and naval goods, thereby improving her flow of sterling.58 Eden’s visit to Egypt in February 1940 was the occasion to sound out Farouk and Ali Maher. Lampson’s intensifying dislike for Farouk is evident from a passage that purportedly conveyed Eden’s impressions: ‘King lacks neither confidence nor brains, but is opinionated and conceited. A sycophantic entourage abets and encourages this natural tendency . . . The tendency is that the King is the great problem of Egypt.’ Elsewhere, Lampson reported Farouk’s conviction that Italy would succeed in an offensive from Libya designed to link up with Italian East Africa via Egypt and the Sudan. Ali Maher forced Eden to concede that ‘Germany was the greatest military power in the world’. Notwithstanding the arrival of Dominion troops, the Secretary of State for the Dominions failed to dispel Ali Maher’s professed unease at the fact ‘that Italy was still strengthening her defences in Libya’.59 On 1 April 1940 Lampson must have felt that Nahas was playing an April Fool’s joke on him. Over a cup of tea, the Wafd leader nervously handed over a document. It demanded the withdrawal of British forces once the war ended, Egyptian participation in peace negotiations and an end to martial law, which the Government was abusing to suppress opposition. ‘It was quite clear’, Lampson recorded, ‘that the Wafd was endeavouring to use what they regarded as our present embarrassments in order to extract concessions from us. This was rather a shrewd blow between the eyes, and the old boy didn’t like it a bit’. The Foreign Office was equally displeased and rejected the proposals out of hand. Nahas’s impudence led Lampson to write personally to Eden. Quite a bit has happened since you were here, including an incredible bit of folly on the part of Nahas. So far I’m glad to say his phantastic outburst, though potentially dangerous, has made little apparent impression. But it’s a bore nonetheless, as one doesn’t particularly want to quarrel with the man or his party. But he could not have been more disloyal or more clumsy. Of course, although nominally addressed to us, it is really an internal political intrigue. Only, as usual, ‘when in doubt, hit the English’ has been the motto. The poor man clearly felt uncomfortable when he came to deliver the letter – as well he might. The Wafd’s démarche was symptomatic of its growing pressure on the government to assert the national interest. Lampson, as was his wont, bombarded the Foreign Office with telegrams exhorting that Egypt be treated more generously. Irritated, the latter warned its ambassador ‘that the Egyptian

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government should not get exaggerated ideas about HMG’s willingness to don the fairy godmother’s spangled dress and wave the magic wand’. It was also emphasised that armament for the Egyptian Army was a political rather than a military issue for ‘a good deal of these items could be of more direct use in winning the war elsewhere’. Lampson, however, was not easily persuaded.60 The Treasury entered the fray, disputing Lampson’s portrayal of Egyptian finances as on the brink of disaster. Lampson persisted, considering it his duty even though he could ‘foresee that one’s name is very soon going to be mud at home – just as it was over the vexed issue of increased troops during the last few years’. The altercation rumbled on until, at the end of May, with Italian intervention imminent, C. J. Norton, the new head of the Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office, proposed that Egypt received an immediate credit of £1 million to draw on to pay for weapons. He recognised that the equipment could not be spared, let alone shipped, but conceived his idea as a dramatic political gesture. Both Halifax and Eden backed him, with the latter emphasising that Egyptian goodwill was ‘an important military asset, the loss of which would cause serious difficulties and indeed would endanger our whole position in the Middle East’.61 But with the British Expeditionary Force being evacuated from Dunkirk, in the process losing all its heavy equipment, and financial reserves dwindling rapidly, the Treasury maintained its uncompromising position.

The removal of Ali Maher The launch of the devastating German blitzkrieg in western Europe caused considerable unease in Egypt, coming on top of Britain’s ignominious withdrawal from Norway. Halifax’s assurance to the Egyptian Ambassador in London that ‘the Gladiators now in Egypt had given an extremely good account of themselves against German bombers in Norway’ cut little ice.62 A degree of confidence was restored by the arrival of western fleets at Alexandria, but it remained far from certain whether Egypt would throw itself wholeheartedly behind the Allied cause. Ali Maher’s constant attendance at the Italian Legation aroused embassy suspicions that there was ‘some tacit understanding . . . with a view to limiting Egyptian cooperation with Great Britain in return for Italian assurances regarding at least partial immunity during the war and her eventual position in the event of an Italian victory’.63 Substance was lent to this view when Ali Maher began arguing semantically that his country might become involved in a defensive conflict but could have no truck with an offensive war beyond Egyptian frontiers involving, for example, military operations in the Balkans. The increased frequency of press articles suggesting that neutrality was the answer to Egypt’s dilemma, a line also peddled by Egypt’s minister in Rome, Murâd Said Ahmad Pasha, only heightened British suspicions. The clique of Italians within the Palace also concerned the embassy, notwithstanding the fact that their provenance dated

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back to Faud’s day. In response to Lampson’s demand for their dismissal, Farouk bestowed Egyptian nationality upon them, even having them circumcised! The monarch’s impudence extended to suggesting that if he were to be shut of his Italians then Sir Miles should get rid of his – a barbed reference to Lady Lampson. When the ambassador learnt of this cutting remark, his contempt for Farouk plunged new depths.64 Lampson’s diary for May serves as a barometer on Ali Maher’s fluctuating standing in British eyes. On 15 May, following the fall of Holland, Ali Maher visited the embassy and Lampson ‘found him eminently satisfactory on every point we discussed’. Their meeting seemingly confirmed the wisdom of Lampson’s decision the previous day to rebuff an overture from the Wafd and the Liberals to oust Ali Maher. Three days later, accompanied by Wilson, Lampson again saw Ali Maher, finding him ‘in very receptive mood’, amenable to suggestions, calm and collected. After one further amicable meeting on 22 May, the mood suddenly changed during 25 May. That morning, amidst rumours of an imminent Italian invasion, the Italian minister asked Ali Maher menacingly and absurdly whether Egypt intended to attack Italy. That night Cairo was subject to a blackout following a day when Ali Maher began to stall over the possibility of belligerency, once more raising constitutional issues as an insuperable obstacle.65 After speaking with Farouk and several Egyptian ministers, Longmore advised the Air Ministry on the delicate situation. They read and hear on radio wonderful exploits of Hurricanes and Spitfires and regard them as only British machines which count for defence. They realise Yugoslavs and Turks have Hurricanes and regard Egypt as inadequately defended with Gladiators only, and this is the main factor influencing their latest proposal to declare Cairo an open town . . . Further slithering may be expected. . . .66 Declaring the capital an open city would protect it under international law from being bombed. This would however have entailed the removal of British forces from the Citadel and Kasr-el-Nil barracks, situated within the city limits. Combined pressure upon Ali Maher from the military, embassy and the Foreign Office thwarted the proposal, but the problem of dealing with a recalcitrant, if not treacherous, regime remained. As early as October 1939 Lampson had privately alerted Lancelot Oliphant, Assistant Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, to his conviction that ‘sooner rather than later he [Ali Maher] will have to go’.67 In May 1940 an Anglophile member of the government clandestinely informed Lampson that his leader was indeed conspiring against the British.68 On 30 May, following a meeting of senior military and civilian authorities at the embassy, Lampson established a ‘hush hush committee’ after Wavell raised the issue of ‘what happened supposing Egypt ratted upon us and refused to play?’ Lampson was convinced ‘that . . . we should be forced to take charge and run

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things ourselves. This might or might not mean a reversion to the Protectorate’. It might also mean dethroning Farouk, in which event his pro-British uncle, Prince Mohammed Ali, was earmarked to replace him. His patience finally exhausted, on 4 June, Lampson dropped diplomatic protocol and asked Ali Maher ‘point-blank whether he was double-crossing us’. Ali Maher’s denial prompted Lampson to draw his attention to a leading article in the Balagh newspaper ‘which seemed clearly intended to prepare the public mind for non-entry into the war’. Lampson also disclosed that he possessed evidence that the Egyptian Minister in Rome ‘had been deliberately working for Egyptian neutrality thereby showing disloyalty to the alliance’.69 Italian entry into the war and the Egyptian government’s continued obstreperousness brought matters to a head. After Ali Maher refused to provide Lampson with an advance copy of his statement to the Chamber of Deputies, the ambassador hauled the Premier in for a dressing down. I said that in that case I might refresh his memory regarding the substance of our many conversations. If there were any attack upon Egypt of any sort or kind, His Excellency had said that we could rely upon it that Egypt would be at war with Italy; if it was a question of hostilities outside Egyptian territory, then the government must get assent of parliament. . . . But in actual fact we confidently expected from his earlier assurances that Egypt would do the right thing by the alliance and come right in, regardless of legal niceties. Ali Maher elected to believe Mussolini’s assurance, in his declaration of war on Britain and France, that he harboured no aggressive designs against Egypt. This was despite the fact that a captured document, given wide publicity on 12 June, showed Egypt as an Italian possession and earmarked leading Italian residents in Alexandria to form the post-war government. Lampson demanded that Ali Maher ‘lead his country and public opinion’ and that, by the following day, the staff of the Italian Legation were given notice to leave. ‘He made a written note’, Lampson informed Halifax, ‘. . . but his general attitude struck me as shifty and uncomfortable’.70 What the British were not aware of was a secret visit by Count Mazzolini to Ali Maher some time before war was declared to assure him that if Egypt did not become a belligerent she would not be attacked. Such an assurance, which was tantamount to the non-aggression pact long sought by Rome, goes some way towards explaining Ali Maher’s duplicity.71 The intelligence report on the secret Chamber session made grim reading for the British. Although ostensibly severing diplomatic relations with Italy, Ali Maher balked at declaring war unless Italy invaded Egypt or launched air attacks upon her army, institutions or population centres. Moreover, he made it clear that Italian attacks against British bases did not constitute an attack upon Egypt. His anger rising, Ali Maher disclosed that he had told Lampson that

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Implementing the treaty if Egypt had sufficient troops to affect the course of the war, he would not have hesitated to declare war against Italy and Germany, but unfortunately Egypt had on her frontier only 5,000 men inadequately provided with transport. A declaration of war would, therefore, only be a spectacular gesture, causing ruin to 16 million inhabitants.72

All this was too much for senior British commanders, who, after reading Lampson’s report of his meeting with Ali Maher, ‘were all on fire to kick the fellow out’. Even the normally placid Wavell wanted to surround the Italian Legation with troops to force its diplomats to pack their bags. Sir Miles persuaded General Headquarters that he ‘should go down and see the PM and insist that he must do what we wanted’.73 A further inconclusive meeting followed with Ali Maher’s sole concession to agree to transfer the Italian Vice-Consul at Sollum to Alexandria under escort. By 14 June, with Wafd and Liberal leaders clamouring for Ali Maher’s removal, Lampson was of the same mind. ‘There is no shadow of doubt’, he informed Halifax, ‘that Ali Maher is non-cooperative, unreliable and indeed doubled-faced. . . . Neither we nor Egypt can afford to keep him longer’. Next day, after consulting his senior staff, Lampson advised the Foreign Office that, though his personal preference was for a Wafd regime, a coalition was a safer option, a view endorsed by Wavell.74 It remained to persuade King Farouk. Lampson flew from Heliopolis to Alexandria for an audience at Montazah, insisting on a one-to-one without aides. Their meeting began with ‘chicken food’ as Lampson described it: the story of the capture of an Italian general in the Western Desert ‘with four ladies in a smart car’ which intrigued the monarch. Lampson then adopted a more serious tone, disclosing the Royal Navy’s observation of flashing lights on shore at Alexandria emanating from the palace, which could be signals for Italian submarines. Lampson then moved to the crux: Ali Maher must go and ‘hinted gently that General Wavell would be anxiously awaiting my return this evening to learn how far His Majesty was prepared to act along the lines we wanted’. The monarch suggested that it was ‘his duty to keep his people out of war on the losing side’; to which Lampson retorted insistently ‘that with us Egypt swam or sank: so better swim and make the best of it’. Short of an ultimatum, Lampson could not have pressed any further. Despite advising Farouk thrice, ‘with repeated emphasis’, that he send for Nahas and Mahmoud, the monarch remained defiantly non-committal. Afterwards he sent a personal protest to King George VI, while Ali Maher objected to the Foreign Office over Lampson’s ‘inconceivable demands’. At the same time, pro-government demonstrations were organised in a desperate attempt to remain in power.75 As a last resort, the embassy and General Headquarters prepared to apply martial law British-style. In some respects, British authorities acted as if it was already in force, searching the Italian Legation in general and the pockets and luggage of the Italian Minister in particular; interning the staff of Italian

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consulates; preventing the Egyptian government from communicating with its suspect minister in Rome. Farouk and Ali Maher protested to the Foreign Office over what they saw as undue interference in domestic affairs.76 Halifax was persuaded that too hard a line could backfire and ordered Lampson to refrain from threatening to impose martial law, since it seems to me that we must try to avoid a position in which the King and Prime Minister can pretend that they are defending the independence of Egypt against us . . . I do not under-estimate the mischief of Ali Maher, in contact with King Farouk, but I regard this as a lesser evil than a prolonged crisis with no government, or an openly hostile one, and the possibility of us having to declare martial law. I am confident that by firmness, combined with tact, you will be able to secure a friendly government.77 The telegram was not deciphered in the embassy until almost 1.30 a.m., having arrived just after midnight. Lampson read it there and then, dismissing it as typical diluted Foreign Office fare: ‘In as many words they say to me it is up to me to get a satisfactory government without a blow-up which we here know to be a physical impossibility.’ After drafting a rough reply, Lampson finally retired around 3.30 a.m., only to rise again at 6. ‘I haven’t had much sleep’, he bemoaned. ‘This is not a wise way of living.’78 Early on 21 June, Lampson convened his senior advisers for further refinement of two draft telegrams. Their insistent message was that events could not be allowed to drift and if no peaceful outcome was possible ‘the only thing now open to us was to plumb solidly for the Wafd’. At noon Lampson called in Wavell and Longmore for their approval.79 The Foreign Office soon learned of the embassy’s proposed three-stage approach. Farouk would be asked to dismiss Ali Maher in favour of a government prepared to fulfil the treaty. Failing this, Nahas was to be called upon to form a government, either a purely Wafdist administration or a coalition. The errant monarch would be threatened with martial law and the use of military force to ensure his compliance. Should Nahas refuse to oblige then martial law would be imposed, British authorities ruling in conjunction with any collaborators they could find.80 The positive Foreign Office reaction pleased Lampson immensely: ‘I take my hat off to them with apologies for any earlier reserves made, for having come through quickly with the real goods.’81 Halifax made it abundantly plain that his Government regarded Ali Maher’s continued intrigues with the still-functioning Italian Legation as in breach of Article V of the treaty. He authorised the staged approach and even instructed Lampson to accept Farouk’s abdication if it was tendered.82 On the morning of 23 June the generals gathered at the embassy where it was agreed that Lampson would confront Farouk that same day. Wavell stood ready to apply martial law from 6 p.m., with Australian troops set to move from Palestine to Helwan to help

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keep order. After unsuccessfully trying to wriggle out of a meeting, Farouk landed the first punch when he disclosed that he had convened senior politicians the previous evening and they agreed to form a new government. Lampson countered that it must meet with Nahas’s approval, enjoy popular support and be willing to implement the treaty to British satisfaction. Lampson proceeded to harry Farouk to send for Nahas, but could only persuade him to promise an answer by sunset. The subsequent presence of Wavell made no difference: ‘the King at once became pompous and offensive making some slighting and uncalled-for remarks about the British Army’.83 That evening Farouk appeared to cave in and the following day Ali Maher’s resignation was announced. But while Nahas wanted fresh elections, other party leaders pressed for a coalition. Lampson was also perturbed to find that Wavell had gone wobbly over martial law. As Sir Miles saw it, he now wanted ‘to make the best of a bad job . . . I think the truth of the matter is that Wavell, clever man though he is, doesn’t really understand the local political situation’. Lampson continued to favour the Wafd and was irked when, on 27 June, Farouk, ‘that stupid boy, did not after all summon Nahas to come and see him. . .’.84 Lampson’s preferred hard line came further unstuck when senior commanders, faced with the prospect of the defection of the French naval squadron in Alexandria, made it plain they did not welcome further troubles being piled onto their plate. It was agreed that the embassy should not insist upon the Wafd unless Nahas moderated his demands, which even Lampson conceded were extreme. Hassan Sabry, an Independent who had been Minister of War in 1938 and was known by the Palace to be on friendly terms with Lampson, now emerged as favoured replacement for Ali Maher. On 28 June, while the embassy was drawing up terms of acceptance, the King pre-empted it by appointing Sabry to head the new government and the pro-British Ahmed Hassenei Pasha became Chief of the Royal Cabinet. That evening Farouk informed Lampson that Nahas, with his ‘Bolshevik’ schemes, was not appointable while emphasising Sabry’s Anglophile credentials, a characterisation confirmed by Lampson’s first meeting with the new Premier. ‘He certainly could not have been more profuse in his assurance of complete solidarity with Great Britain’, Lampson reported.85 Although the new ministry of Saadists, Liberals and Independents did not enjoy popular support, for the moment the crisis in Anglo-Egyptian relations was over. The announcement at the end of July that Britain would again purchase the entire cotton crop helped smooth the transition while local businesses were compensated by the expenditure of British and Commonwealth forces on goods and services.86 Whilst remaining steadfastly neutral, the new regime fell generally into line with British wishes to fulfil the treaty. It properly severed diplomatic and trading relations with Italy. After imposing a cordon on the Italian Legation, the government finally persuaded Mazzolini and his staff to leave on 22 June. As he did so, he brazenly informed servants that he would soon return as Military Governor of Cairo. The Tombak scheme was applied to Italian suspects who were interned, including many

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electricians and mechanics, which caused some inconvenience. The Egyptian Army would play a useful rear defensive role in manning anti-aircraft batteries in the Delta and guarding vital communication and strategic points. In truth, this was all that could be expected since neither army nor air force was remotely capable of playing an offensive role. In July, Wavell withdrew Egyptian army units from Mersa Matruh, fearing they would not fight, since Egypt was not at war with Italy. The Commander-in-Chief prudently drew a distinction between utilising Egyptian forces in a combat role and for static defence.87 The subsequent Italian invasion failed to move the new government to come in, not least because it feared retaliatory air strikes. In early June 6,000 children were evacuated from Alexandria, a symptom of the trepidation which Egypt held for mass-bombing. Again, although there was some rejoicing in Egypt at Balbo’s death, his replacement by Marshal Graziani, the infamous ‘butcher of Libya’, only served to intensify the disinclination to become directly involved.88 The failure of Italy to mount apocalyptic air raids and the Royal Air Force’s success in the Battle of Britain bolstered pro-British elements in Egyptian ruling circles. Ahmed Maher, leader of the Saadists, even proposed that Egypt should become a belligerent when Italy finally invaded. But Hassan Sabry dared not go this far and dismissed the Saadists from the coalition. He himself only survived until 15 November when he fell victim to a heart attack while reading the King’s speech in Parliament. His successor, the similarly named Husayn Sirry, made no difference.89 By the end of 1940 the Foreign Office, the embassy and senior commanders came to recognise that there was no real advantage in continuing to press Egypt to adopt belligerent status. As Norton remarked, ‘The Treaty of Alliance does not require Egypt to declare war, but to render all aid to her Ally. The form of that aid is laid down in Article VII, and Egypt has fully complied with it.’90 Indeed, Egypt would not officially enter the conflict until 26 February 1945, long after the Axis threat had passed, solely in order to become a founder member of the United Nations.

10 The Suez Canal and the defence of the Far East, 1919–1940

The fall of Singapore to Japanese forces in February 1942 continues to exercise the minds of historians. But the primary focus remains the immediate events surrounding its fall, including the disastrous dispatch of Prince of Wales and Repulse without critical air support. Yet throughout the interwar period the Admiralty had constantly perfected plans to send out a formidable naval task force, comprising the cream of the Home and Mediterranean fleets, should Japan turn hostile. Although the ill-fated Prince of Wales proceeded to Singapore via the longer Cape of Good Hope, in fact pre-war planners favoured the faster Mediterranean route via Suez, the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. ‘The keeping open of the Suez Canal’, as Hankey recognised in December 1938, for the passage of the British Fleet to the Far East is a strategical interest of vast importance to the whole of the British Empire east of Suez. It is no exaggeration to say that the security of our position in India, of Australia and New Zealand, of the rich colonies and protectorates of Malay and Ceylon and elsewhere in the Indian and southern Pacific oceans, to say nothing of a vast trade turn on the ability of our fleet to reach the pivotal naval base of Singapore with reasonable speed, and this in turn depends on the secure passage of the Suez Canal.1 The development and demise of what was ultimately to prove a fanciful contingency plan deserves greater consideration than it has previously been accorded, more especially as it goes a good way towards accounting for the Admiralty’s reluctance to confront fascist Italy in the Mediterranean and Red Sea.2

The origins of the Suez Canal Defence Plan The Suez Canal was the most significant man-made waterway in the eastern hemisphere. When Disraeli made his famous purchase of Canal shares in 1875 it was announced ‘with absolute certainty that the Suez Canal will remain open for the free passage of British ships [which] is the foundation on

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which the entire offensive strategy of the British Empire rests’. In December 1929 Eden, then a Conservative backbencher, characterised Suez as ‘the swing-door of the British Empire, which has got to keep continually revolving if our communications are to be what they should’.3 The 1936 treaty reaffirmed that ‘the Suez Canal is one of the world communications and at the same time an essential link between the various parts of the British Empire’. Some five-sevenths of it lay east of Suez, providing lucrative export markets for British manufactured goods. In the other direction came food and raw materials from India, the Malay States (which supplied 70 per cent of rubber and 57 per cent of tin requirements), Burma, Australia and New Zealand. The Canal halved shipping time between Liverpool and Bombay and, although the advantage was less pronounced, also slashed journey times to and from the Far East.4 Trade round the Cape of Good Hope revived in the later 1930s as successive wars in Abyssinia and Spain, combined with prohibitive Canal dues, rendered the Suez route commercially less attractive. But strategically it remained the Admiralty’s favoured route to send out a major fleet to check Japan right up until the Second World War engulfed the Mediterranean. An extremely sensitive and vulnerable ‘choke point’, the Suez Canal quickly became known as the ‘jugular vein’ of the British Empire. Originally conceived as a two-way channel, the financial crisis of 1859 put paid to that notion. Aside from the Bitter Lakes, the artery was so restricted that major vessels could not pass each other but might only proceed in single file after queuing to enter at either northern or southern entrances.5 An added complication for the British Admiralty was the need to pay lip-service, in peacetime, to the October 1888 Suez Canal Convention, which guaranteed access to the ships of all nations in peace or war provided they complied with regulations. This had precluded the Royal Navy from stopping elements of the ill-fated Russian Baltic Fleet from proceeding through Suez during the RussoJapanese War.6 Britain’s failure, in 1922, under American and Canadian pressure, to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, dating from 1902, required a rethink of naval strategy. In conjunction with the 1912 Mediterranean agreement with France, the alliance had allowed the Admiralty to concentrate its capital ships in Home waters to face the German threat. With Japan exhibiting its powerful navy, now third largest in the world, off Malaya and India at the close of the Great War, the prospect of having to thwart an imperial rival increasingly exercised Admiralty minds.7 In 1921 the Cabinet approved the construction of a new naval base at Singapore, the natural gateway to the Pacific, which also dominated the southerly approaches to the Indian Ocean. Once it was completed it could accommodate a main fleet should the need to send it ever arise. Several factors militated against relocating British naval strength there: the prohibitive cost, the tropical climate, the loss of jobs for domestic dockyards and the possibility of a threat closer to home. An Admiralty paper of 1921 considered that

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The Suez Canal and the Far East the worst situation with which the British Empire could be faced, from a naval point of view, would occur if Japan seized the opportunity of aggressive action in the Pacific at a time when the situation at home threatened from another quarter, and reinforcements capable of dealing with the whole of Japan’s main force could not be spared. Happily, this extreme case is improbable.8

As will be seen, this worst-case scenario, improbable in the 1920s, began to confront the Admiralty from the mid-1930s but it proved reluctant to concede that its carefully laid plans required a fundamental rethink. A related facet of the ‘Main Fleet to Singapore’ strategy was the Admiralty’s belief that if it could demonstrate a capacity to act, Japanese aggression would be deterred. In this respect, it was imperative that a fleet arrived expeditiously. The Cape of Good Hope route was less liable to naval attack since courses might be varied and bases of first-class hostile Powers bypassed. Against these assets, however, stood the potentially critical disadvantage of speed. From Plymouth to Singapore via Suez was 8,100 nautical miles against 11,400 via the Cape, adding around a fortnight to the journey. At the same time, the problems of ensuring an open Canal required that the Cape remained a feasible alternative. Prior to 1931, before which the Suez route was favoured in the accumulation of oil fuel stocks, the accompanying tankers would slow down a fleet sent round the Cape of Good Hope considerably. After the fright of the Manchurian Crisis and the increasing possibility of a hostile Italy, oil reserves were gradually built up on this route as insurance.9 Bases en route to Singapore, via either Suez or the Cape, which could accommodate 20 capital ships for refuelling, were selected by an Admiralty-led committee in 1921. On the Suez route these were Mohamed Gul, Kamaran (in the Red Sea), Addul Atoll (off Ceylon) and Nancowry Harbour, which were referred to by the code letters H, M, T and W respectively. Sealed orders were deposited at Port Sudan and Aden with sailing orders for tankers. As little attention as possible would surround the tankers taking on oil for the fleet, with captains not to learn their destination until they had put to sea escorted by cruisers from the East Indies Squadron. In early plans 38 days was defined as the ‘period before relief’ of Singapore, meaning the requisite oil stocks needed to be in situ before the fleet set off. A reserve of 108,000 tons of naval fuel oil was established at Aden in preference to Abadan, where international law precluded loading oil from a neutral port in wartime. By 1936 Aden was capable of loading 600 tons of oil per hour.10 In August 1924 the identities of the secret anchorages were sent in sealed envelopes to the Mediterranean, East Indies, North America and West Indies, Atlantic and Cape of Good Hope stations, which were all assigned prospective roles. In line with the early assumption that the Mediterranean was the logical starting point whence a fleet commenced its voyage to Singapore, the Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean was responsible for the fleet’s safe

Map 10.1 The Suez Canal Route to Singapore after S. Roskill, British Naval Policy between the Wars, Volume II (London: HMSO, 1976)

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passage. The fastest battlecruisers, Hood and Renown, remained with the Atlantic Fleet (renamed Home Fleet in 1932), since their superior speed could bring them quickly to Suez. Furthermore, Malta, notwithstanding the addition of an ex-German floating dock in 1925 for bulged capital ships, could not accommodate all units of the proposed main fleet so some vessels were siphoned off to Gibraltar and home ports. The raison d’être was to have sufficient battleships in the Mediterranean to proceed to Singapore immediately without awaiting reinforcements. Two light cruiser squadrons stationed in the Mediterranean would escort capital ships – together with at least four flotillas of destroyers, as they could not maintain the speed of the battlecruisers. With Malta as the starting point for initial fleet units, the Main Fleet would be 2,000 miles nearer Singapore, saving one week’s passage. This calculation persuaded the Admiralty to augment the Mediterranean Fleet by four Queen Elizabeths, four Iron Dukes and two light cruiser squadrons in August 1924. The Mediterranean was also excellent for training purposes and with no imminent threat in home waters it made sense to keep the cream of the Royal Navy poised to move against what was, for the moment, the only credible potential enemy.11 The ever-present danger of a blocked Canal haunted the Admiralty, not least because counter-measures in peacetime were fraught with problems. The French-dominated Suez Canal Company, with offices in Paris and Ismailia, administered the waterway. Britain was also a signatory of the 1888 convention. Admittedly Britain and France, with the collusion of the Suez Canal Company, had flouted this during the Great War, denying entry to enemy vessels, but it was difficult to envisage a repeat in peacetime. Indeed, the Admiralty, conscious that a truly exceptional situation was required to mollify international opinion, was anxious not to betray its intentions prematurely. Legally, Egyptian consent was required to instigate defensive measures. The February Declaration led the Admiralty to drop plans to instigate a naval control service at Port Said. Surprisingly no comprehensive Canal defence plan existed. This led Hankey, as chairman of the Defence of Ports Committee, to direct the Naval Staff, on 23 February 1923, to report on the possibilities of blocking. Their report encapsulated the difficulties of preventive measures. Japan was identified as the Power most likely to benefit from a crippled Canal: The restrictions on British seapower of being denied the use of the Canal during the earliest stages of a war would be disastrous. . . . One of the first results would be the wholesale destruction of seaborne trade in the Indian Ocean and Australian waters. . . . The time factor would be all-important, and the delay imposed on our fleet by the blocking of the Canal might admit of the Japanese scoring such striking initial triumphs as the seizure of Singapore and Hong Kong, as to render it difficult, if not impossible, for us to wage war with any prospect of success.

The Suez Canal and the Far East 185 As a non-signatory of the 1888 convention and as a power whose Trans-Suez trade was insignificant, Japan had little reason to maintain an open Canal. Her mentality, as evidenced in the Russo-Japanese War, was ‘to strike first and declare war afterwards’ to achieve a ‘striking initial success’. Blocking was far from impossible. In 1905 a small merchant ship sank and obstructed passage for ten days. On 30 June 1915 an even more serious blockage was only narrowly averted when a steamer struck a mine at the southern end of Great Bitter Lake in a rocky section where dredging was practically impossible. Fortuitously, the current had righted her. The Canal’s bottom comprised of diverse geological elements: salt, limestone, clay, mud, running and compact sand, gypsum, rock and alabaster. Where banks were low and sandy, a bypass channel could be dredged within a week but where they were high and rocky dredging was impractical. In the latter instance, sunken vessels could only be removed by blasting operations, salvage or demolition, which might take months, as wartime experience at Ostend and Zeebrugge demonstrated. Only cruisers, destroyers and fleet auxiliaries could bypass the obstacle in the interim, leaving capital ships – the main striking element of the fleet – stranded.12 Under the 1888 convention’s free navigation clauses, ships could not be prevented from entering the Canal provided they complied with regulations and harboured no apparent criminal intent. The Naval Staff envisaged a nightmare scenario whereby a Japanese merchantman, carrying an ostensibly innocent heavy cargo, such as cement or iron ore, to ensure rapid sinking, would scuttle itself after manoeuvring into position in a rocky section. On average, two Japanese merchantmen plied the Canal weekly but, until Britain saw fit to assume direct control, as during 1914–18, no preventative measures could be taken. The Admiralty intended initiating these just prior to the fleet’s movement through Suez.13 Between the World Wars it is no exaggeration to state that the implementation of the ‘Main Fleet to Singapore’ strategy became a fixation of the Naval Plans Division. It first produced War Memorandum (Eastern) in 1924, revising it periodically thereafter. In June 1925 conditions for the safe passage of a fleet through the Canal were incorporated. A warning telegram would instigate special examination services at the control ports, Port Said and Port Suez. Defensive measures envisaged included armed guards and special pilots for selected vessels; the Suez Canal Brigade policing the banks; patrolling motor launches and regular minesweeping operations. Prior to the fleet’s arrival, Suez was to be cleared of all other shipping until passage was effected. Capital ships would steam through at one-mile intervals in daylight; less critical cruisers and destroyers could pass through around the clock. The whole process was anticipated to take around a fortnight given the difficulty large battleships encountered negotiating the Canal with little water under their keels. Its limited dimensions dictated that capital ships needed to divest fuel before making passage. In 1925, for example, a draught of just 32 feet was permitted which meant that Queen Elizabeth-class battleships would

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arrive at Port Suez 1,800 tons short of fuel, which they would need to replenish at Aden. The Canal was constantly dredged for maintenance purposes and sometimes to widen certain parts. The Admiralty kept conversant with changing dimensions and amended fuel plans accordingly.14

The Suez Canal Defence Plan In the 1920s the Singapore Naval Base fell victim to expenditure cuts and when the Manchurian Crisis erupted suddenly it was far from operational, thereby excluding any possibility of sending out the Main Fleet. In the spirit of the Ten-Year Rule, War Memorandum (Eastern) had assumed that a crisis would take so long to gestate that there would be ample time to complete Singapore. In the wake of the crisis the Cabinet, on 12 April 1933, elected to finish the first stages by 1940; this was later brought forward to 1937. In March 1938 Chamberlain assured his Australian counterpart that ‘Singapore, as the pivotal point of the whole system of naval defence of the Empire east of Suez, is being provided not only with docks, but also with the most powerful gun and air defences of any port in the Empire.’15 The official British naval historian, Stephen Roskill, erroneously claimed that in 1934 ‘the intention was changed from sending out the Mediterranean Fleet via Suez to sending it out in three groups via the Cape’.16 On the contrary, the attention devoted to the safety of the Suez route during 1934 and afterwards demonstrates that, far from the Cape alternative being embraced exclusively, the Admiralty still wanted to keep its options open and remained inclined towards Suez. The attention devoted to the development of a Canal defence plan in 1934–5 – curiously neglected by Roskill – provides telling evidence of this. Early in 1934 the First Sea Lord and Chief of the Imperial General Staff exchanged views over the feasibility of a comprehensive Canal defence plan, following which the Chiefs of Staff reviewed the position. Enhanced bombing ranges now placed French and Italian air forces within easy reach of Suez, leading the Chief of Air Staff to consider that ‘no anti-aircraft defence, either by gun or aircraft, will ensure that an enemy bomber will not get through . . . and succeed in one of the simplest of bombing tasks . . . the sinking of a merchant ship in a straight and narrow waterway’. The Admiralty responded that this was no reason not to proceed since ‘we are thinking of Japan and her aircraft are not within bombing range’. The upshot was a Chiefs of Staff directive to the Joint Planning Committee to provide the basis for a concerted plan for consideration by local commanders.17 In April 1934 Chatfield submitted a memorandum to his fellow Chiefs of Staff which echoed the 1923 naval paper’s fears of Japanese sabotage and castigated the Suez Canal Company as a ‘leisurely body’ unlikely to discriminate effectively between customers. To circumvent its control he proposed the declaration of martial law in an emergency so that navigation could be resolutely controlled. Chatfield also introduced the concept of

The Suez Canal and the Far East 187 counter-blocking: by mooring ships with strong buoys athwart Port Said and Port Tewfik, client ships could be regulated by moving the bow or stern of a boomship to allow them through in batches. He considered this ‘the only reliable deterrent’, though the delicate matter of when to instigate such high-handed controls remained. Britain might be embarrassed if steps were instigated for a crisis, such as Shanghai in 1927, which ultimately did not warrant them.18 Eight months later Chatfield delineated three aspects of Suez’s defence: security before the first Mediterranean Fleet unit arrived; security between the time when that fleet’s last vessel had entered the Canal and the first Home Fleet unit reached Port Said; and security after the Home Fleet negotiated Suez. Ordering both fleets to base was liable to cause ‘some sensation’ tempting Japan to attempt blocking before the Mediterranean Fleet reached Port Said. The Canal must accordingly be under control no less than 24 hours before it set out from Malta necessitating sending ahead from Malta the requisite ships. A far more serious situation would arise if Suez were blocked after the Mediterranean Fleet had passed through, leaving the Home Fleet stranded. This raised the question of whether the fleets should combine before entry. The third possibility, a blocked waterway after both fleets passed through, was considered a ‘minor disaster’ given the need to keep naval and commercial lines of communication open. It was these fears rather than a disavowal of the Suez route that led Chatfield to issue instructions to ensure that the Cape route was available.19 An Admiralty dilemma was that it dare not disclose its plans to the Suez Canal Company and yet an amicable relationship was desirable. When Captain Godfrey returned to the Naval Plans Division in 1933 as its Deputy Director of Plans, he established an unofficial liaison with its French chairman and managing director through the principal British Suez Canal Company director, Sir Ian Malcolm. So secret was Godfrey’s mission, authorised by Vice Admiral Sir Charles Little, Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, that neither the Foreign Office nor the naval attaché in Paris were alerted. Even Chatfield was kept in the dark until arrangements were finalised. ‘The danger’, Godfrey recalled, ‘was that someone might say “no” so the fewer that knew the better’. Following several clandestine visits to Paris with Malcolm, Godfrey returned with ‘confidence in the complete reliability and discretion of the right sort of Frenchman’. Chatfield later took the trouble to invite leading lights of the French company to witness the 1935 Coronation fleet review from the luxury of a yacht. From November 1934, after the Suez Canal Company conveniently expressed concern over the potential danger from mines, the Admiralty pursued security talks and by May 1935 the Suez Canal Company stood ready to store sentry booms.20 The secret agreement of 1935 was updated in 1938 through an aide-mémoire to avoid the Egyptians becoming aware of the formal arrangement. The same month it was decided that Lieutenant-Commander Simpson, the Naval Liaison Officer at Port Said, should return to Britain to collect draft

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copies of the Suez Canal Defence Plan for scrutiny by local commanders; their amendments to be incorporated and brought home by another officer. After a Joint Planning Committee review it was anticipated that the Chiefs of Staff would endorse a final version in August 1935. As it happened, although Fisher approved the plan on 28 June, the process was delayed by the escalating Italo-Abyssinian Crisis. Nonetheless, the provisional plan proved adequate as a working model and that September a senior British naval officer and his staff were sent out to the Canal Zone should its implementation prove necessary. Coincidentally, the Chiefs of Staff reviewed the Suez Canal Defence Plan the day following Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia. The steps envisaged were phased into four periods: peace, the threat of emergency, control and war. With each stage, the Admiralty would send a coded signal to the Naval Liaison Officer Port Said. During the second stage, the General Officer Commanding Egypt would declare martial law in the Canal Zone with only ‘sulky acquiescence’ anticipated from the Egyptian authorities. During the control period other ships would be restricted from entering the Canal.21

The Suez Canal Defence Plan and interwar crises, 1937–1939 In July 1937 the Sino-Japanese War broke out and soon endangered the British dominated International Settlement at Shanghai. The new British Ambassador to China narrowly escaped assassination after his car came under air attack. That December, British and American shipping was attacked in China by Japanese forces, raising the prospect of AngloAmerican retaliation, especially if there were further incidents.22 The same month President Roosevelt sent Captain Ingersoll, head of US naval war plans, to London for secret talks. On 3 January 1938 Chatfield informed Ingersoll that a British fleet could be ready to move to Singapore by 15 January. In that event, Egypt would need to be reinforced with troops from India to safeguard the eastern entrance to the Mediterranean. Earlier an impromptu meeting involving Chamberlain, Eden, Chatfield and Duff Cooper, following the sinking of USS Panay, a naval gunboat, resolved to inform Washington of Britain’s willingness to commit eight to nine capital ships plus auxiliaries, provided an equivalent American fleet was forthcoming. Later Cadogan saw Chatfield and recorded a terse but illuminating entry in his diary: I said I supposed he’d have an awful time if any of this came off. He said: ‘No: if any of this comes off, I shall go on leave. I shall have pushed the button and the rest will work automatically.’23 Chatfield’s supreme confidence in existing plans hit a snag once it was recognised that the Suez Canal Defence Plan presupposed a fleet would not proceed until either hostilities ensued with Japan or were imminent. The

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present scenario, however, envisaged dispatching naval forces only as a precaution. The fighting services and the Foreign Office convened a meeting to ensure that Suez was not blocked before, during or after a fleet’s passage. Captain Phillips, the Naval Director of Plans, explained that the steps to be taken would involve a close examination, over a possibly prolonged period, of all ships entering the Canal. This would mean a considerable interference with traffic which might arouse criticism all over the world. Such action would therefore have to be portrayed as being necessary to ensure that the Canal was kept open. Some awkward questions were thrown up. Could Egypt – theoretically the only Power authorised to instigate security measures – be asked to take action without invoking the 1936 treaty’s international emergency clause? If not, did the Far Eastern situation warrant such a description? After careful discussion, it was decided to consult Lampson and senior commanders. The repercussions of declaring an international emergency required careful reflection yet without such a step the Suez Canal Defence Plan, whose measures the Admiralty regarded as the minimum consistent with fleet security, could not be invoked. Another potential difficulty was the attitude of the Suez Canal Company. For the time being, it was decided not to consult it in case of leakage by the Quai d’Orsay.24 On 17 January 1938 Lampson was informed that the Suez Canal Defence Plan might be implemented and maintained so long as a fleet, constituted predominantly of Mediterranean Fleet units, remained east of Suez. Such action was in Egypt’s interest, the Foreign Office argued, to ensure its rapid return if Italy sought to take advantage. Lampson’s senior advisers cautioned that the imposition of martial law was asking a great deal of Egypt for a crisis of no direct concern. The local commanders were equally dubious and endorsed Lampson’s prognosis that the Axis might have persuaded Japan to tempt the Mediterranean Fleet away from its station.25 Whilst contemptuous of the Italian fleet, Pound respected German naval capabilities and regarded the French as politically unreliable and their fleet as inefficient. ‘Our German and Italian friends’, he cautioned Chatfield, ‘would be delighted to see the fleet the other side of the Canal’.26 At 8.00 p.m. on 21 January, Lampson’s sceptical response was received in the Foreign Office and deciphered nine minutes later. The telegram warned that Egypt was unlikely to sanction the precautionary measures entailed, more especially as interference with Canal traffic might cause complications with Italy. As an alternative, Pound proposed securing canal company agreement to suspend all traffic for four to seven days to allow the fleet to pass through. To prevent subsequent blocking however, which would favour the Axis, nothing less than the full Suez Canal Defence Plan, involving denying passage to suspect vessels, including Italian, would

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suffice, a view that Pound also conveyed privately to Chatfield to reinforce the message.27 The Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office foresaw immediate complications, predicting a political fallout if measures were imposed without Egyptian blessing. The Foreign Office’s Legal Adviser emphasised that to invoke the emergency clause, the situation must be explained to Egypt and thereby the world since she would have to justify publicly the exercise of defence powers under the convention. To explain the Japanese danger to Egypt – the hazards of blocking and apprehensions over the safety of Britain’s Far Eastern interests – was therefore to be deprecated. All in all, the Legal Adviser considered the present situation the worst possible moment to attempt to implement the Suez Canal Defence Plan. I think few people in Egypt could ever be persuaded that we had done anything except break the treaty flagrantly ourselves; for, after all, it must be remembered that our whole case would depend upon the assumption that there would be a serious danger of the sabotaging of the Suez Canal rendering it impossible for navigation for a considerable time and that the Egyptian government in breach of all its obligations had wilfully refused to recognise this danger, whereas I fear that the greater part of the world would not agree that there was this patent danger to the Suez Canal at all. Charles Orde, head of the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office, concurred. ‘The problem might be solved’, he minuted, ‘if the Japanese made an . . . ineffective attempt to block the Canal, but that is hardly possible for us to contrive’.28 Before an inter-departmental meeting gathered to consider Lampson’s telegram, another arrived in which he raised officially his suspicion of a plot by the totalitarian powers to weaken British naval forces prior to coups in western Europe and the Mediterranean. The ‘temptation to Italy to attack Egypt (and at least make the Canal useless) would be very strong and our consequential interference with neutral shipping and Italian communications could provide ample pretexts’. The Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office, knowing the Ambassador’s alarmist inclinations, had anticipated this communication and responded that a fleet would proceed only with American cooperation, which, it argued, reduced the danger of Axis intervention.29 The meeting found Captain Edelsten, Phillips’ deputy, backing the Cairo Embassy’s view that the Suez Canal Defence Plan was far too drastic for the situation envisaged. Instead, the Suez Canal Company should be persuaded to instigate certain measures, such as improving salvage arrangements, in its own interests. Given the paramount need for absolute secrecy, neither Egypt nor the Suez Canal Company must be approached failing a definite decision to dispatch a fleet. A fortnight would elapse between then and the fleet assembling and proceeding. In such an eventuality Japanese, Italian and other suspect vessels entering Suez required British Canal pilots, each with

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their own helmsman, and there must be rigid verification of declared cargoes. Such steps should not alarm Egypt. The same day Britain’s Panama representative was asked what special arrangements the Americans took before their Pacific fleet negotiated the Panama Canal. This approach was quickly abandoned, however, because it would involve revealing the reasons for Britain’s interest.30 In any event, Whitehall’s enthusiasm for sending a fleet was rapidly diminishing. Roosevelt put London on the spot by offering to announce that the US Pacific Fleet was being readied for sea provided Britain reciprocated. As Pratt remarked: ‘for once the British had to assess their own, rather than American willingness to act’.31 By now, with Anglo-Italian relations at a delicate stage, neither Chamberlain nor Chatfield were willing to lose the Mediterranean Fleet, seeing it as the most important pressure on Rome to drop its sabre rattling and come round the table. The First Sea Lord was forced to concede: Imperially we are very weak. If at the present time, and for many years to come, we had to send a fleet to the Far East, even in conjunction with the US, we should be left so weak in Europe that we should be liable to blackmail or worse. At the same time, Hankey impressed upon Chamberlain the disastrous implications of the Axis taking advantage of British preoccupations in the Far East. This hit home. The Prime Minister was confident ‘we could look after ourselves in the Far East. But could we rely on American help in [the] Mediterranean?’ Thereafter, as Japan refrained from further incidents and offered profuse apologies to Washington, the prospect of immediate naval reinforcements for the Far East lapsed and Anglo-American efforts focused on peace initiatives.32 The crisis served to emphasise the reality of the triple threat to global British interests and the state of paralysis it engendered: the prospect of decisive action against one hostile Power was precluded by potential intervention by others seeking to take advantage. With rearmament still behindhand, the French and Americans unreliable and deficient in key respects and the Russians an ideological pariah in Conservative circles, the only immediate means of alleviating the situation was appeasement, as the Chiefs of Staff ceaselessly emphasised. The episode also exposed defects in the Suez Canal Defence Plan which efforts in ensuing months sought to rectify. By early summer the Admiralty had revised certain aspects. The original plan envisaged automatic Canal closure once war was imminent, upon the arrival of Japanese warships or merchantmen and during the establishment of the examination service. Subsequently, a European war needed to be taken into account and resulted in some adjustments during 1937. The closure conditions had remained virtually as in 1935. Now the Admiralty recognised that ‘the closure of the

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Canal to a potentially hostile warship or even merchant ship might lead to the most serious results, and might in fact precipitate war at a time when the tension had otherwise been eased’. The government decided that the closure decision must remain firmly in its hands – although local authorities retained discretion to act in urgent cases. In the ‘Canal control’ telegram ships to be prevented from entering Suez would now be specified.33 Should a blockage occur Admiralty policy was to remove it as soon as possible. For some years secret conferences had transpired in Britain, France and Egypt between Admiralty and company officials to try to ensure free passage in times of crisis. In February 1938 George Edgar Bonnet, Directeur Général of the Suez Canal Company, posited three solutions to a sunken ship: refloating, destroying or going round it. The first would take too long, especially after a deliberate sinking. The second could involve impractical delays; experience showing that even if explosives destroyed wreckage it took time to remove the debris. The third, by contrast, might be effected quickly. Company dredging equipment, with a daily capacity of 10,000 cubic metres, could secure re-passage in 10–20 days except in the rocky sections between Bitter and Suez lakes, where clearing operations would take considerably longer. To reduce the prospect of serious blockage in the latter, Bonnet proposed excavations in the rocky section with the Suez Canal Company bearing the costs.34 The implications led to a meeting in Paris between Captain Edelsten and senior company officials. The excavation plan involved reducing the heights of the Canal banks where they stood well above water level. In rocky sections only the required lateral passage would be excavated, then filled with light soil for fast removal. The need for secrecy and minimal disruption of normal operations meant it would take an estimated five years to carry out. While, therefore, the Admiralty embraced excavation as the ultimate solution, in the interim it placed the emphasis on the refloating and explosive aspects. Experts consulted were of one voice: refloating would prove difficult, if not impossible, if a large sunken ship were filled with cement. The Suez Canal Company nevertheless agreed to seek further advice and crucially accepted prime responsibility for ensuring free passage. Following the meeting, dredging operations commenced in August. For its part, the Admiralty loaned salvage equipment and diving sets and arranged for Imperial Chemical Industries’ Egyptian branch to stock gelignite. After a refloating expert demonstrated that two pontoons with water ballast compartments, placed on each side of a wreck and connected by steel cables, could exert a lifting power of 4,000 tons, the Suez Canal Company agreed to acquire this raising gear. It also obligingly endorsed the Admiralty’s suggestion to commence spying on Canal pilots to ensure their reliability.35 In mid-April 1939, following the Albanian coup, the Suez Canal Company originated a rumour that Italian troopships due to arrive at Port Said would attempt a coup de main. Although British intelligence could offer no corroborative evidence, as a precaution the Suez Canal Brigade began

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moving to the terminal ports on 20 April while a cruiser and destroyer were dispatched to Port Said and Port Suez respectively. The following day Lampson requested the Egyptians to order that troopships of all nationalities could not berth at either entry port but should moor in the outer harbour at Port Said and in the roadstead at Port Suez. In the event these instructions had not been issued when two Italian troopships passed through the Canal – without incident – on 25 April. Despite Rome’s protests, they were put into effect thereafter, closing another window of vulnerability. Britain took advantage of Egyptian nervousness following Albania to persuade Egypt to authorise the mounting of guns at the terminal ports. Although in breach of the 1888 Convention, over recent months the Chiefs of Staff had been worried at tying down four destroyers in lieu of the deployment while Italy’s aggression mitigated the need to consider any protests from that quarter.36

The advent of war in the Mediterranean From the start of 1939 the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office and diplomats in Tokyo and Shanghai, seeking to bolster flagging British prestige and impress Japan, propounded stationing a battle squadron permanently at Singapore. The Admiralty responded that it was in no position to field three fleets capable of engaging the tripartite powers’ navies. The most it could offer was the prospect of a solitary capital ship by 1942. The Admiralty insisted on maintaining its two main fleet’s strategy, the Home and Mediterranean fleets, with a fleet only to be sent east in the event of Japan attacking Malaya or the Dutch East Indies. In this eventuality the intention now was for naval forces in home waters and the western Mediterranean to proceed via the Cape while ships in the eastern Mediterranean would go via Suez and the Red Sea.37 The Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office entered the fray and made apparent its concern at the prospect of losing the cream of the Mediterranean Fleet. The implications for the defence of Egypt were enormous. Italian forces could land on Egypt, Palestine or Syria’s unprotected coasts; Egypt might renounce the treaty; Libya could be reinforced with impunity; and the considerable Italian forces in east Africa would not be stymied in attacking the Sudan, the back door to Egypt, through want of supplies. All this was in the realm of speculation and the Admiralty was not prepared to engage in debate. Its director of plans, a proponent of the main fleet strategy, minuted that should Singapore fall, then the raison d’être for retaining Egypt went also. Moreover, a fleet in the Far East could cover reinforcements to Egypt coming via the Cape through the Indian Ocean. While accepting that the loss of Egypt and Suez would be a major disaster, Admiral Roger Backhouse, First Sea Lord since August 1938 was convinced that Japan would not menace British interests unless a war in Europe went badly and could hardly ignore the Americans.38 In February 1939 the Japanese threat to western interests became more palpable when they established air and naval bases on Hainan Island, a

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Chinese possession off French Indo-China, some 250 miles south of Hong Kong. At the end of March, Japan seized the Spratley Islands in the South China Seas, sovereignty of which was disputed with France, bringing Japanese forces to within 650 miles of Singapore. Halifax mooted the idea of economic sanctions but found the Admiralty firmly against given the delicate state of affairs in Europe.39 Chamberlain reinforced growing Australian doubts over whether Britain would commit a fleet to Singapore when he informed the Menzies government that British calculations were now based upon the assumption of conflict with Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, ‘a combination never envisaged in our earlier plans’. While, therefore, a fleet was still promised in the event of war in the Far East its strength would now depend upon the moment Japan entered the fray and losses already sustained against the Axis. The Australian High Commissioner in London reported his scepticism ‘as to whether a UK government when it comes to the point would leave Egypt and its neighbours defenceless in the eastern Mediterranean’. At this time, the British naval attaché in Athens submitted a paper, lauded by the Director of Naval Intelligence, which emphasised that to abandon the region Britain risked losing the support of Greece and Turkey and with it the possible use of their bases. Such considerations gained added weight after their inclusion in the ‘peace front’.40 In April, the same month Greek independence was guaranteed by Britain and France against external aggression, the longstanding Chiefs of Staff presumption that the French would obligingly hold the Mediterranean if Britain committed a fleet to Singapore was brought into doubt. Phipps informed Halifax that the French were strongly of the view that it would be a grave error to send even part of the British Fleet to the Far East. The vital point to Great Britain and France is now the Mediterranean. If that is lost, all is lost, whereas if we are victorious in Europe we can make good later any temporary defeat we may suffer in the Far East.41 At the Anglo-French staff talks of spring 1939 the French delegates insisted that until Italy was defeated, it was unwise to commit a fleet to Singapore. In May the Chiefs of Staff moved towards the French position when they conceded that with defeat in the West ‘the collapse of our position in the Far East would automatically follow’. At this, the Committee of Imperial Defence determined that the Government must decide whether a fleet should proceed rather than be sent automatically, as assumed in planning, should hostilities break out with Japan.42 The triple threat presented the dilemma of just where conflict might begin. Until early summer 1939 the course of events suggested Europe. Then, on 14 June, attention switched dramatically to Tientsin in northern China where Japan began blockading the British trading concession in reprisal for the

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retention by British authorities of four Chinese implicated in murdering a Japanese collaborator. It soon emerged that the overworked Cadogan, much to Chamberlain’s annoyance, had taken insufficient interest in the issue. The Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office, guided by the British Ambassador in China, refused to relinquish the suspects lest this encouraged further pressure against British interests. In any event, on 19 June, Japan demanded that Britain renounced its support for the Chinese nationalist regime. A first-class crisis was in the making. Cadogan recorded in his diary that he had ‘to spend half the day holding H[alifax]’s hand’.43 Chamberlain, Halifax and Chatfield discussed sending out capital ships in support of possible retaliatory economic sanctions. Convening over the weekend, the Chiefs of Staff cautioned that Britain could not take on Japan and the Axis, fearing that the removal of more than two capital ships could tempt the latter to intervene. Such a token reinforcement, they warned, was pointless. Indeed, were Japan’s formidable fleet of nine capital ships and five aircraft carriers to move south, the China squadron must abandon Hong Kong and seek shelter in Singapore harbour. Should Japan then move on the latter, only a flotilla of destroyers and submarines could safely remain with other ships forced to retire to the relative safety of Trincomalee in Ceylon. Of 11 available capital ships, the Chiefs of Staff wanted at least six in home waters to counter the German navy and three in the eastern Mediterranean to give an advantage of one capital ship over Italy in view of her superiority in light forces.44 Chatfield, now the Minister for the Coordination of Defence, pronounced that his former colleagues were unduly pessimistic. In his view, only one capital ship needed to be retained in the eastern Mediterranean since, in conjunction with three French capital ships in the western Mediterranean, the two Italian capital ships were contained. Again, Revenge was near completion and could augment the Home Fleet. Taking these factors into account, at least four capital ships were available and as many as seven if the Mediterranean were left to the French. Pound, now the First Sea Lord after Backhouse fell terminally ill, was persuaded, adding that two aircraft carriers and the requisite cruisers, destroyers and submarines could accompany them. Pound nonetheless leant towards the view of his fellow Chiefs of Staff that American assistance must be assured if a military response was to pay off in the Far East.45 At Chatfield’s instigation the Chiefs of Staff reconsidered their position and remitted a slightly less pessimistic report on 24 June. With two further capital ships – Revenge and Renown – available by September and through denuding the Mediterranean, they conceded that seven capital ships could be released for Singapore. There was, however, a caveat. Although light forces and submarines, based at Malta, would remain and control over Suez and the Red Sea retained, Italy would be able to reinforce Libya with impunity, permitting ‘an increase in the scale of attack by land, air, and, possibly, by sea which Italy could bring against Egypt’. Again, sea communications with

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Greece, Romania and Turkey could not be maintained while Spain might be encouraged to join any ensuing conflict. Given the implications, the Chiefs of Staff sought the reassurance of French support and cautioned against any precipitant moves. Notwithstanding Chatfield’s best efforts at persuasion, the Committee of Imperial Defence echoed the Chiefs of Staff’s caution in pronouncing that whilst the dispatch of seven capital ships was practical, such a deployment was ‘very undesirable’. The Chiefs of Staff reinforced their prudence by emphasising that a fleet of this size could achieve very little, by itself, to protect British interests. Pownall’s diary caught the mood. So the picture . . . [is] of a Fleet tied like a dog to a kennel at S[ingapore] and the Japanese knocking merry hell out of Tientsin, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Meanwhile, we shall have lost control in the E[astern] Mediterranean – very bad for our position in Egypt and most disappointing, to say the least of it, for our new found allies, Greece and Turkey.46 Chamberlain’s inclination towards seeking a diplomatic solution was bolstered once more by his senior military advisers. ‘Abyssinia’, he wrote the week before, ‘has shown us that sanctions are no good unless you are prepared to use force’. Since the chastening experience of Munich, Halifax was less appeasement-minded. But on this occasion he sided with the Prime Minister and warned Labour spokesmen privately that to evacuate the Mediterranean ‘would create a situation in which Hitler would say to Mussolini, “Come on now and drop all those hesitations” ’.47 Once more Washington’s position was ambiguous; stopping short at urging London to take a firm line before it would review the position. Chamberlain rested his hopes upon negotiations between Sir Robert Craigie, his ambassador in Tokyo, and the Japanese Foreign Minister, Arita. On 24 July Britain and Japan issued a joint statement acknowledging the latter’s ‘special interest’ in northern China. But this soon gave rise to differing interpretations and at the beginning of August, Halifax informed ministers that the situation was causing ‘more anxiety than the position in any other part of the world’. In an attempt to defuse the crisis, Britain belatedly agreed to hand over the suspects on 9 August but stopped short of meeting Japan’s additional demands to surrender silver bullion held in Tientsin to underpin the Chinese currency and its substitution by a new Japanese currency.48 With the crisis refusing to go away, to ‘keep our enemies guessing’ Chatfield proposed concentrating a fleet in the eastern Mediterranean ready to steam to Singapore. Pound conceded the feasibility of deployments at Alexandria, Port Said and Haifa. But unless Italian neutrality was guaranteed, these ports’ inadequate anti-aircraft defences meant that ‘it would be unsound to carry out this concentration’. Pound subsequently sounded out his replacement, Admiral Cunningham, on berthing part of a Singapore-bound fleet in Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal where it would be less conspicuous from

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the air. The Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean reminded Pound that the 1888 convention restricted warships berthed in the waterway to two, adding that ships would be unable to exercise if their stay were protracted. On 28 July a Chiefs of Staff paper incorporated Pound’s objections to redistributing naval forces, which entailed bringing home three Warspites and placing the two Nelsons and five Royal Sovereigns in the eastern Mediterranean. This meant that if war ensued with the Axis, over half the available capital ships would be inadequately protected against air attack. Against this background, the Chiefs of Staff could only endorse the proposed redeployment if hostilities in the Far East were more certain than in Europe, leading to a definite decision to send a fleet to Singapore.49 At this moment the unexpectedness of the Nazi–Soviet Non Aggression Pact had one redeeming point. Only the day before the news broke Halifax was unable to offer ministers any clear advice on the line to be taken.50 The bombshell brought down the pro-Axis Hiranuma government, whose forces were then involved in bitter clashes with Soviet troops on the disputed Manchurian border. Its successor, under General Nobuyuki, which survived until January 1940, was less anti-western though the blockade of Tientsin would continue until June 1940. It was also fortunate for London that Washington, alarmed at the situation in China, on 16 July 1939 began pressurising Tokyo by giving six months’ notice that it would abrogate the 1911 American–Japanese trade agreement.51 Admiralty plans assumed a neutral Italy if a fleet were committed to Singapore. By August 1939 the prospect of battleships facing hostile Italian forces in the Red Sea after exiting Suez tilted planners towards the Cape route. Even though this meant adding 17 days to passage, the time factor was no longer as critical. On 6 July the Committee of Imperial Defence endorsed the Chiefs of Staff’s recommendation that Singapore’s period before relief be extended from 70 to 90 days and, come September, it became six months. In reality it was unlikely that a substantial fleet could be spared either until fascist Italy was assuredly neutral (a doubtful prospect) or, in the event of hostilities, her naval threat was neutered.52 The German invasion of Poland triggered the Canal control telegram. Anxious to placate Rome, the Chamberlain government made reassuring noises that the resulting measures were intended to ensure free navigation.53 Italian troop and supply ships to and from east Africa continued to transit Suez unmolested throughout the ‘Phoney War’ period, notwithstanding the fact that they were priming armed forces which might well attack proximate British interests. From spring 1940, as tension mounted with Italy, guards were placed aboard her vessels lest they scuttled themselves or dropped mines. A boom was positioned at Port Said at dusk to prevent ships entering the Canal surreptitiously at night. During daylight hours traffic was monitored by air and ground reconnaissance. To enter, Suez vessels were required to produce three copies of a certificate demonstrating that their cargoes had been approved by the Contraband Control. Its judgement was facilitated by a

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list of commodities liable to be carried legitimately in Italian vessels such as petroleum, manganese, nickel and rubber. The 1888 convention prevented belligerent rights being exercised inside the Canal Zone, leading the British authorities to offer voluntary examination to northbound vessels at Port Said. They could also be stopped beyond the three-mile limit outside the Mediterranean entry port, a task that fell to destroyers and subsequently armed boarding-vessels. The same precautions were not required for southbound vessels, which could be searched by Royal Navy vessels patrolling the Red Sea.54 Rome was acutely aware that access to Suez was down to the fragile tolerance of Britain and France. Italian propaganda sought to emphasise Egypt’s servitude to the British and the travesty of the image of the Canal as a free and open international sea-lane. To quote from a virulent article, drawn to the attention of the British Foreign Policy Directorate, part of the Ministry of Information: A few hours or a few days spent at Suez or Port Said will suffice to see the Canal as it really is: patrols warning one against taking photographs of the Canal, even where there is nothing to be seen. . . . Guns mounted at the Canal entrances; English troops at Ismailia with Indians camped in the desert close at hand; various notices and warnings; and customs houses which are also military posts. . . . The Canal . . . is in fact a kind of ransom for certain nations who are obliged to use it, in contrast to some who make use of it for their own convenience . . .55 On 5 June, Lampson reported that SS Umbria, a Massawa-bound Italian merchant ship, had arrived at Port Said with a suspicious cargo of 1,750 tons of cement, 15 tons of detonators and 5,000 tons of bombs. Here was a prospective blockship if ever there was one. With war imminent, Lampson and senior commanders wanted Umbria stopped, for which purpose an ‘accident’ could be arranged to close Suez for 48 hours. The War Cabinet elected, on balance, to let the vessel pass because ‘it was important that Italy’s entry into the war should be clearly shown in its true light with no redeeming circumstance’. Otherwise, Mussolini might utilise Umbria’s detention as a pretext for war, angering the French and adversely influencing all-important American public opinion. As a result and much to the frustration of the men-on-the-spot, Umbria made its way safely down the Canal and into the Red Sea – albeit trailed by a British warship. Similarly, the War Cabinet intervened to soothe Rome’s sensitivities upon learning that the Suez Canal Company was charging selected neutral ships, including Italian, for the cost of extraordinary security measures, such as on-board armed guards and a following tug. British naval funds in Egypt were now to meet these charges and Italian shipping companies reimbursed for past expenditure. Since this policy was only resolved on the morning of 10 June, a matter of hours before Mussolini bombastically declared war, it was not carried out.56

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The Canal at war Following Italy’s coming off the fence her vessels joined German ones in being denied access to Suez. Japanese merchantmen continued to cause headaches for the Canal authorities, being allowed to ply the waterway right up until the outbreak of war in the Far East. They received close attention. Armed guards were placed on board them which, even if they could not prevent a deliberate scuttling, might succeed in preventing a ship being manoeuvred into a blocking position. To guard against a covert approach from the south, aircraft reconnoitred the area between Port Said and Shadwan Island in the Red Sea, a distance of 160 miles. Ships approaching Port Said were boarded by an examination service. Those allowed to pass received a special signal, which was constantly changed and known only to a select few. Vessels proceeding without authority were first to be warned by a shot across their bows and ‘if this is not instantly obeyed, ship is to be sunk by gunfire’. The same procedure was followed at Port Tewfik with the additional safeguard of a boomship across its harbour from sunset to sunrise in view of the southern end’s vulnerability to serious blockage. Examination officers were under instructions to look out for specially fitted ships able to lay mines by tube or drop them overboard from an aperture across the water. These measures worked extremely well, with not one instance of an attempt to sabotage the Canal being reported.57 Where Canal defences were most vulnerable, as the Air Staff forecast, was to aerial attack. All the more so because, at this early stage of the conflict, anti-aircraft resources were scarce, the majority of what was available being deployed at Alexandria, Cairo and in the Western Desert. Even six months after Italy entered the fray there were still no anti-aircraft defences between the terminal ports. The Regia Aeronautica mounted air raids against Port Said (which lacked searchlights) and Port Suez in September. Its bombing proved wildly inaccurate, not least because bombs were released from great heights. Vice-Admiral Pipon, the Senior British Naval Officer Port Said, was nevertheless alarmed that enemy aircraft were able to fly over the Canal with impunity at night. To deny them targets he ordered that no ships were to be present throughout hours of darkness. Pipon’s concern was heightened by his realisation of the enhanced importance of Suez: The Canal itself appears to me absolutely vital to the military war effort in that, should it be blocked, neither Port Said, Alexandria, Malta, Haifa, Crete or Greece could receive the necessary reinforcements and supplies without their being sent from Suez to another port by inland transport, which I understand is already much overworked. The disembarkation at Suez and re-embarkation at a Mediterranean port would also be a cause of grave delay.

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Royal Air Force Middle East responded complacently that the Italians were unlikely to mount heavy air raids against Suez. Thus far, solitary aircraft or small formations had been involved; a policy that looked set to continue given that ‘the Italians are reluctant to use flares, probably for fear of giving away their positions’. Only at the end of its missive, and parenthetically, was there any recognition that German aircraft might soon participate. At the start of the Mediterranean war, minesweepers were in short supply. This had led, late in May 1940, to the dispatch from Britain of three ‘DWI’ Wellington bombers, converted to act as minesweeping aircraft through adding a ‘hoop’ and magnetic field generator. After flying across France, they arrived for the outbreak of war and could cover the whole length of the Canal.58 As it happened, the Italians lacked air-laid magnetic mines and their threat would not materialise until Nazi Germany turned its attention to attacking Suez. On the night of 18–19 January 1941 Luftwaffe bombers duly arrived, beginning the most dangerous period for the defence of Suez.

Italo-German-Japanese motives for closing Suez In February 1935 the Thai Ministry of Defence alerted British intelligence to the fact that they were in ‘possession of a Japanese plan for attacking the naval base at Singapore in the event of war’.59 By extension, Japanese naval planners would have been extremely interested in how quickly a relieving fleet could reach Singapore. The destruction of the mass of Japanese diplomatic and military records renders it nigh impossible to reconstruct with precision their interest in Britain’s strategic jugular vein. At the same time, it was palpably obvious that the Suez route was the fastest means for a British fleet to reach Singapore and tantalising clues have been left which suggest that Tokyo took more than a passing interest in the Canal. Indeed, it seems likely that a Japanese fixation with Suez predated the official designation of Britain as a prospective enemy (1937). Evidence for such an interpretation emerges from the fragmentary Malcolm papers.60 For security reasons, the majority of Canal pilots were of British and French extraction. In October 1924 the Director of British Naval Intelligence complained at the Suez Canal Company’s appointment of a Japanese ship pilot following pressure from the Japanese Consul General in Egypt. The decision was taken without consulting the Suez Canal Company’s management committee, on which Malcolm, as the senior British director, was a leading member. Subsequently he elicited the company’s assurance that no further Japanese pilots would be countenanced. At the instigation of the Committee of Imperial Defence, the Foreign Office approached the Suez Canal Company to ensure that the proportion of British pilots more truly reflected the preponderance of British Canal traffic, a request that was acceded to.61 There remained the problem of the solitary Japanese pilot. Malcolm persuaded the Suez Canal Company that under no circumstances would he

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be permitted to accompany a British warship through the Canal; otherwise he might report on the vessel’s armaments and speed of passage. At the same time Lord Inchape, primed by the Admiralty, made representations to the Suez Canal Company on behalf of British shipowners requesting that the repugnant pilot’s duties be confined to non-British vessels. Even this was not sufficient for the Admiralty, with Inchape conveying its fear that the ‘resident spy’ would allow his government ‘to get to know the ropes’ with operational details remitted home and ‘put into the archives and . . . made use of should and when [the] occasion arise’. Fortuitously the much-maligned pilot failed his exams and was removed.62 He would have no successors. The year before the Japanese pilot took up his short-lived position the British Naval Staff suggested there was a need for intelligence officers to report from Japan on the loading of merchantmen destined to transit Suez. As a result there was liaison between the Naval Staff and the Mercantile Marine Department of the Board of Trade. The movements officer of the Naval Intelligence Department also kept in touch with Lloyds to help monitor the voyages of foreign ships. By 1934 arrangements were in hand ‘for watching Japanese merchant shipping with a view to detecting any extraordinary movements which might be made in anticipation of early hostilities’. In January 1939 Captain Godfrey went to Paris to coordinate the exchange of information with French intelligence centres abroad ‘chiefly about the movements of German, Italian and Japanese men of war and merchant ships’. Just how they might deduce that their cargoes were intended to block Suez is unclear. By January 1941 extensive surveillance was in place but the Japanese were aware of this. More successful was the government Code and Cipher School, which was reading Japanese naval traffic signals by the early 1930s. In 1935 the Far East Combined Bureau was established in Hong Kong to intercept and decipher Japanese naval signals. By the end of 1939 an even more important advance was achieved when Bletchley Park (‘Station X’) broke the higher grade JN–25 code book involving messages passed between naval headquarters in Tokyo and all their ships and shore stations. Where appropriate, information procured was relayed to the more important empire ports, including Suez.63 Further evidence that the Japanese had indeed singled out Suez for close scrutiny is provided by the unpublished memoirs of Brigadier R. J. Maunsell, appointed head of Security Intelligence Middle East in September 1939. It derived much amusement from the activities of its ‘favourite spy’, Ohno, the Japanese Vice Consul at Port Said. He first came to prominence when he approached two British inspectors with Irish surnames in the Egyptian police in the mistaken belief that they would be willing to act as secret agents. In 1938 Ohno was arrested by an Egyptian police officer while in the process of photographing the Canal. Before Security Intelligence Middle East could intervene, Lampson had bullied the Egyptians into agreeing to transfer Ohno to Alexandria, thereby placing him in prime position to report on the movements of the Mediterranean Fleet!64

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The Italians, by contrast, transparently lacked a motive to block Suez provided it remained open to their vessels trawling to and from east Africa. Mussolini had threatened war during the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis if the Canal were denied to Italian vessels. And in the negotiations leading to the Easter Pact the Italians insisted that London reaffirm its adherence to the 1888 convention. As Mussolini emphasised to the Fascist Grand Council in February 1939, he wanted to wrest control of Suez from the perfidious British precisely because it could be blocked so easily. The dictator’s fear was not without justification for, from at least 1939, the British Admiralty laid plans to sabotage the waterway good and proper in the event of Italy (and subsequently Nazi Germany) overwhelming Egypt. ‘Should it appear at any time’, Pound advised Cunningham on 16 June 1940, ‘that the Army was likely to lose control of Suez Canal we should be prepared to block it’. By June 1942, with Rommel seemingly near total victory, the Americans estimated that Britain’s planned sabotage would incapacitate Suez for at least six months.65 The British then, ironically, were always in the best position to inflict the paralysing blockage they so feared. Italian war planners did contemplate, in November 1938, landing a force from east Africa at Port Suez but no detailed scheme was drawn up. On 20 May 1940 the British Naval Liaison Officer at Marceau alerted the Admiralty to an anonymous letter received by the French Consul at Trieste. It warned that Rome planned to block the Canal with old warships before declaring war. More specifically, the seaplane carrier Miraglia, due to enter Suez around 25 May and ostensibly bound for Italian East Africa, intended to scuttle itself to block the waterway. The First Sea Lord alerted Admiral Cunningham but in the event nothing transpired. Upon entering the conflict, Mussolini remarked that the seizure of the Canal would be ‘more deadly to the British Empire than the capture of London’. But while this might have formed a major Italian war aim, the means and resolve were lacking to achieve the coveted prize. At his most optimistic, Mussolini envisioned Cunningham’s fleet being compelled by saturation air attacks to vacate the Mediterranean via Gibraltar. At the same time, Mussolini recognised that there would be stiff British resistance based upon the realisation that to lose Egypt ‘would possibly result in the collapse of the entire [British] empire’.66 For the Germans there were divided voices over the significance of Suez. As early as July 1940 Hitler offered aircraft to his Italian allies to attack the Canal but found them unreceptive. Unwilling to impinge upon Mussolini’s designated sphere of influence and already planning to invade the Soviet Union, Hitler was content to leave matters alone. The German Navy took a different view. Its chief, Admiral Raeder, considered the Mediterranean theatre crucial in defeating Britain and instigated a plan to deprive it of the two choke points, Gibraltar and Suez. This would free the Italian navy for operations in the Atlantic and expose Britain’s vulnerability in the Indian Ocean. At two meetings in September 1940 Raeder tried in vain to convince Hitler to adopt his scheme and abandon his inclination to march east.

The Suez Canal and the Far East

203

General Jodl, the Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces, offered Rome two armoured divisions to assist in the drive on Suez but Italian pride passed up the best opportunity of success when the British were at their weakest. While the Italians hesitated in the Western Desert, the German Naval Staff recognised that the British were taking full advantage of the lull in the fighting to bring in reinforcements via Port Suez. ‘In this decisive phase of the war’, they cautioned, ‘the Axis powers must not act too late’.67 Regarding German-Japanese collaboration, the Wennecker diaries make it apparent that the Japanese intelligence network in Egypt was providing Berlin with important military data. The entry for 19 October 1939 records that two British battleships had been spotted moving south from Suez, apparently as part of a group hunting the Admiral Scheer. Just after the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, the Japanese let it be known they wished to establish another consulate at Port Suez which would have further improved intelligence gathering. Alive to this, Security Intelligence Middle East headed off the move by persuading the Egyptians to turn down the proposal as ‘inopportune’.68 On British grand strategy Japan was better informed, especially through its closer contacts with the Axis. The Japanese gained a detailed insight into Allied intentions when they penetrated the Anglo-French regional strategical conference at Singapore in June 1940, from which they learned that Britain did not intend to hold Hong Kong if war came to the Far East. On 11 November the German raider Atlantis sank the Blue Funnel liner Automeden just west of Singapore after it was initially tracked by Italian signals intelligence based in East Africa. Among the documentation recovered was a Chiefs of Staff memorandum, dated 5 August, which was passed onto Tokyo on Hitler’s orders. Couched in deeply pessimistic terms the document promoted Vice-Admiral Kondu, the Vice-Chief of the Japanese Naval Staff, to remark that ‘such a significant weakening of the British Empire could not have been identified [from outside appearances]’. Singapore and Malaya’s defence shortcomings were alluded to and the fact that they could not be remedied because of the prior calls of Europe and the Middle East. Spurred on by this startling revelation, at the end of 1940 Admiral Yamamoto drew up his infamous plan to launch simultaneous strikes against Hawaii and Singapore.69 The document did however contain one disturbing sentence from the Japanese viewpoint: the hope that successful operations in the Mediterranean would yet make it practical to dispatch a fleet to Singapore. On the very day that Automeden was captured, the Fleet Air Arm struck at Taranto. Moreover, the same month British forces finally overcame Italian air and naval forces operating in the Red Sea. It thus remained within the realms of possibility that a fleet could go out to the Far East. This was certainly Churchill’s view: The naval and military successes in the Mediterranean and our growing advantage there by land, sea and air will not be lost upon Japan. It is

204

The Suez Canal and the Far East quite impossible for our fleet to leave the Mediterranean at the present juncture . . . [but] with every weakening of the Italian naval power, the mobility of our Mediterranean Fleet becomes potentially greater, and should the Italian fleet be knocked out as a factor, and Italy herself broken as a combatant as she may well be, we could send strong naval forces to Singapore without suffering any serious disadvantages.70

As this was being written, Graziani’s Tenth Army was receiving a stunning blow from the Western Desert Force. The turn of events was not lost on the Japanese and it appears that at some time late in 1940 Tokyo urged Berlin to mount air raids against Suez in an effort to deny it to the Royal Navy. Several British Foreign Office files, unfortunately destroyed but obviously based upon intelligence gathering, made reference to such collusion.71 Also in December 1940 the Japanese Navy sought closer ties with German air and naval forces, leading, the following July, to the deployment of Luftwaffe torpedo bombers against the Canal.72 As 1941 unfolded, it would become foolhardy for the British to risk sending more than the odd warship through Suez. The irony was that the Suez Canal Defence Plan was operational but its purpose now was to keep the Canal open to receive reinforcements for the defence of Egypt rather than to secure a fleet’s passage en route to Singapore. Remote as the latter prospect was by the close of 1940, one year later events in the Mediterranean and Middle East conspired to rule it out altogether. As A. J. P. Taylor wryly remarked, the much-vaunted Main Fleet had become ‘the fleet that never was’.73

11 Conclusion

The British defence of Egypt from 1935 to June 1940 was a consideration that figured prominently in the calculations of British decision-makers, be they senior military personnel, political leaders or diplomats. It represented a significant component of appeasement which, until now, has been largely neglected in the vast literature on appeasement. Yet the National government’s archives are replete with references to the issue and undoubtedly the unsatisfactory defensive position in Egypt was one of an array of factors propelling appeasement initiatives. At the same time, as this study has demonstrated, the parochial on-the-spot view was often at variance with the government’s and needs to be taken into account when policy choices are analysed. It is striking, for instance, how Admiral Pound’s attitude towards the prospect of conflict with Italy would transmute from zeal to caution once he relinquished the Mediterranean station to become Chief of Naval Staff imbued with wider strategic considerations. The first and only Anglo-Italian conflict, which erupted in June 1940, was the consequence of Mussolini’s ambitions and his perception that Britain and France were fatally weakened. Whether Mussolini should have been confronted sooner can be argued from different perspectives. During the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency the procrastinators were in Whitehall rather than the Mediterranean and had the Baldwin government grasped the nettle of military sanctions, Admiral Fisher was supremely confident he could make them effective. To quote his right-hand man, Admiral Cunningham: To us in the Mediterranean Fleet it seemed a very simple task to stop [Mussolini]. The mere closing of the Suez Canal to his transports which were then steaming through with troops and stores would effectively have cut off his armies concentrating in Eritrea and elsewhere. It is true that such a drastic measure might have led to war with Italy; but the Mediterranean Fleet was in a state of high morale and efficiency, and had no fear whatever of the result of an encounter with the Italian Navy. . . . Had we stopped the passage of fuel into Italy, the whole subsequent history of the world might have been altered.1

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Conclusion

Italy’s lack of an armour-piercing bomb and the lamentable performance of the much vaunted Savoia Marchetti 81 in Spain hardly suggest that the Royal Navy would have been troubled by major losses, as Chatfield so feared.2 Chatfield’s obsession with sending a fleet to Singapore blinded him to the nature and magnitude of the Italian threat. Yet, ultimately, its persistence, and the arrival of a potent German military presence in the Mediterranean as Rome’s rescuing ally, rendered utterly impractical the intended naval defence of the Far East. Britain’s overall strategic situation became worse, not better, after the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis. Judged by its own criteria, British grand strategy palpably crumbled with the dramatic sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse providing final confirmation. The Italian ‘mosquito’ irritatingly refused to go away. In turn British inertia in 1935–6 convinced Mussolini he had only to reinforce Libya, creating a land threat to Egypt, to twist the tail of the British lion. He succeeded again and again in provoking Egyptian hysteria, which Lampson projected, though the Chiefs of Staff were astute enough to recognise that an invasion was a formidable proposition which could not be conjured up overnight. Britain’s failure to act seriously damaged her reputation abroad, particularly in the Middle East, and blunted her diplomacy. The Germans, having expected resolute measures to crush Italian designs on Abyssinia, were incredulous at the Hoare–Laval Pact. Hitler considered Mussolini a ‘genius’. Egged on by Ribbentrop, in the summer of 1939 the Führer believed he need only to threaten vulnerable points of the British Empire to ensure that, as in 1935–6, British pledges amounted to empty words. ‘Mussolini, the sole champion of the empire idea today’, he informed his generals on the eve of war, ‘has demonstrated his strength in [the] Abyssinian conflict’.3 The concentration of forces in the eastern Mediterranean was never to be as strong again before June 1940, placing a heavy burden on diplomacy to ensure that Britain’s position in Egypt remained secure. In the summer of 1937, for instance, Britain was unable to mount a display of strength in the theatre given the Mediterranean Fleet’s loss of three destroyer flotillas and the unwillingness of the Air Ministry and War Office once again to divert scarce defence resources from Britain. Military weakness was acutely felt in Egypt where Sir Miles Lampson took it upon himself to cry foul before it was too late. ‘Indeed’, he reflected, ‘was it not largely due to embassy arguments over the heads of the local service chiefs in years gone by that we were as prepared as we were in Egypt (Lord knows it was little enough!) when war finally came?’4 Although Lampson’s periodic campaigns to redress Egypt’s defence deficiencies produced some tangible results they were, in many ways, counterproductive. Sir Miles’ insistent telegrams proved an irritant to the Chiefs of Staff and ran into their wall of insistence that Britain’s protection remained the overriding priority. Nor should the ambassador’s self-praise obscure the fact that Egypt’s strategic importance alone would have seen the majority, if not all, the military resources allocated to its defence came its way regardless of who occupied the Cairo embassy.

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The British defence chiefs bear a heavy responsibility for appeasement by depriving politicians of military options. Their primary concern, as they made apparent during the Rhineland Crisis, was to preserve the armed forces to confront the German threat. This was sound strategy later on when that threat became latent but failed to recognise that a resolute military response earlier might at least have bought significantly more time for rearmament. The concerted resistance to the Foreign Office’s desire, prompted by the men on the spot and Egyptian nervousness over Italian intentions, to reinforce Egypt to reasonable levels, was, on balance, the correct attitude. To have made Egypt’s defences good at the expense of mainland Britain would have been foolhardy and risked losing the war. Nazi Germany represented by far the greater menace and Mussolini could only hope to achieve his greater ambitions on the coat-tails of German military success. This study has shown beyond doubt that the assertions of several leading historians that Britain’s defensive capabilities were fatally weakened by the demands of empire protection, thereby precipitating the fall of France and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk, are wide of the mark. What emerges from this study is just how desperate Britain’s imperial security position became. After the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency, Egypt’s defences were neglected, a trend that continued until Italian entry into the Second World War. Only in Palestine where, during the Munich crisis, there were more troops (but not armoured units) than were available to send to France, was there any serious knock-on effect. Again, the original intention had been that the 6th Australian Division, which proved so crucial to the defence of Egypt, would train and equip in the Middle East before proceeding to France. On 6 June 1940 Churchill bemoaned the fact that eight battalions, due to come to Britain, not Egypt, from Palestine and be replaced by Indian units, were still there because of local objections. Eden responded that the removal of the British Expeditionary Force from France reduced the urgency of the transfer and that General Wavell’s telegrams made ‘it clear that there is no margin in the Middle East to cover the wide possibilities which he has to face’.5 It should be borne in mind too that it was Indian and New Zealand troops which provided the core infantry components for Operation Compass. Whatever the nature of retrospective interpretations, British foreign policy at the time was framed in the belief that Mussolini was an opportunist who could be turned around. This view owed much to the unspoken assumption that in 1935–6 Britain had done Italy a big favour (and France an even bigger one) by pulling its punches and Mussolini would recognise this. Had Italy been satisfied with the status of a respectable middle-ranking Mediterranean Power, wishing to consolidate its existing position and live in peace and harmony with the Western Powers, this would have been perfectly possible. Mussolini had risked all and got away with it over Abyssinia but his persistent empire-building fixation rendered him impervious to Chamberlain’s soothing words. Chamberlain, egged on by the Chiefs of Staff, bent over backwards to achieve an accommodation but there was no prospect of lasting peace as long

208 Conclusion as Mussolini, with his grandiose ambitions, remained at the helm in Rome. This was in fact the view of Eden but, as this study has shown, ministers, senior officials and the Chiefs of Staff consistently outmanoeuvred him. Yet Mussolini’s government perceived Eden as ‘public enemy number one’ precisely because his appraisal of its foreign policy objectives was the correct interpretation.6 It needs to be emphasised that appeasement represented a means to uphold the British Empire, not relinquish it. No matter which personality directed British foreign policy, the fact was that there were only limited concessions that Britain, as the world’s pre-eminent imperial power, was willing to make in the imperial arena. Its hegemony of the eastern Mediterranean was not negotiable. It truly wanted peaceful coexistence in the region with Italy, but only on British terms, a fact that Mussolini recognised only too well. Even at the time of the Hoare–Laval Pact, Britain was only offering Italy a tiny inconsequential slice of its own territory in British Somaliland as part of the démarche. Nodal points of empire, such as Egypt and Malta, were not on the appeasement agenda, nor could they be as long as Britain coveted world power status. As Cadogan advised Chamberlain before his Rome visit: It is of course galling for them [the Italian fascists] that we retain control of the approaches to the Mediterranean. But I don’t see that they have any better claim to Gibraltar than we have. And as regards the eastern approach, which involves the tutelage of Egypt, I am quite convinced that we are more fitted to exercise that than they are.7 It was this realisation which nourished the bile and vitriol of Italian anti-British propaganda which looked forward to the time when a virile Italy supplanted the doddering British Empire. In this respect, Mussolini, although he represented the lesser threat, differed from Hitler in coveting British imperial interests. Indeed, had it not been for these ambitions, Italy’s record as the only Great Power with which Britain had not been at war would probably have been maintained. As Loraine implored Ciano in May 1940: ‘We had recognised the Italian Empire in Ethiopia, we had concluded the Anglo-Italian agreement, we had recognised the absorption of Albania. We had hoped that these friendly gestures would bury past hatchets and open up the road to real friendliness.’8 Mussolini thought otherwise. The Axis was predicated upon German disinterest in the Mediterranean, a stance that even the genial Chamberlain could not replicate in the British case. Nor could the French show indifference towards Mussolini’s ambitions in the region. The controversy over whether it was wise in September 1939 not to force the issue with Italy rumbles on.9 Loraine was an early proponent of the stay-out school. The decision [by Mussolini] of June 1940 . . . was pure ‘smash and grab’. . . . The blunt question is whether it would have been militarily

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preferable from our point of view that the Italians should have entered the war in 1939 rather than in 1940. My own view is that it was a military advantage for us that Italy did not come into the war in 1939. I freely admit that the whole question is one that you can argue all the way round the compass and back again.10 At the time, Wavell worried over ‘the military dangers of a nominally neutral but potentially hostile Italy’ while conceding that it was a political decision whether to confront her. After the war one of his general staff was more forthright in his criticism: ‘the fear of frightening the Italians . . . [the] alarming quickness to see the dangers and difficulties of every plan of action, and therefore do nothing . . . this was one of the bugbears of Wavell who patiently bore it’.11 Certainly, in view of later events, facing down Mussolini at this juncture held distinct advantages, especially if the French acted vigorously. Whether they would have done so, however, remains doubtful, given their overriding concern with the German threat. As Martin Thomas remarks: ‘It was only Italy’s absence from the war before June 1940 that enabled the War Ministry to make repeated increases to the total number of colonial troops to be shipped to France during the Phoney War period in 1939–40.’12 There was an alignment of interest with the French but the fact was that Anglo-French relations were never sufficiently harmonious to sing from the same hymn sheet. Again the fact that the Mediterranean remained open to merchant shipping until war loomed allowed Britain to trade normally with the richly endowed eastern part of her empire. In September 1939 Ironside felt that the ‘practical effect [of Italian entry] is to divide the Empire into two: the East and the West. If she does not come in we can maintain our link through the Mediterranean’.13 In many ways, the interlude between the outbreak of war in Europe and its spreading to the Mediterranean was put to good use. As far as home priorities would allow, reserve stocks were built up. To quote from the official history: There is no doubt that more use might have been made of the quiet period before Italy entered the war to develop local resources and build up a stronger repair organisation. . . . But it was not generally realised at the time what an immense amount of maintenance was going to be required, nor how elaborate would the local organisation have to be in order to keep a high proportion of aircraft serviceable in a theatre where the conditions were so difficult and which was so distant from the United Kingdom and all its resources. And, as with the Army, it was to prove easier to obtain recognition of weaknesses in the Teeth than in the Tail.14 A more vigorous policy towards Rome was, however, called for in the winter of 1939–40 rather than the limp softly-softly approach adopted, which produced no tangible results. The confused policy of attempting to restrict

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Italian war capacity and yet promote trade fell between two stools. As in the past, the Allies managed to aggravate Mussolini, but failed to deflate his bluster or dent his thesis that the democracies were decadent and in terminal decline. In particular, the stoppage of German coal shipments via Rotterdam ought to have been adopted sooner. The Germans were experiencing difficulties in supplying Italy, with considerable coal shortfalls in November and December 1939. Berlin in fact threatened that if the Allies closed the Rotterdam outlet, it would retaliate by sinking Italian ships carrying coal from Britain.15 Such a scenario would have benefited the Allied cause by depriving the Italian defence industry of much-needed coal and potentially souring Italo-German relations. London was perhaps wise to humour Italian ‘non-belligerence’ until February 1940 when Mussolini exercised his veto on arms sales to Britain. That decision, which betrayed his intention to be ready to strike at the right moment, should have been the signal for a much tougher Allied policy towards Italy.16 As it was, Mussolini was allowed to choose his moment to enter the conflict. His inclination had always been to join his German allies, as he revealed to Loraine, in their last interview, when he stated emphatically ‘that if war came and Great Britain fought on the side of Poland, Italy would fight on that of Germany’.17 Just after the conclusion of the Pact of Steel, Mussolini wrote to Admiral Cavagnari to convey his resolve to join a major war. What stopped him, in September 1939, was Italy’s undeniable unpreparedness to contemplate a long-haul involvement and the intact state of the Anglo-French coalition. ‘He speaks of a Mediterranean empire’, Ciano recorded in his diary on 2 April 1940 of a conversation with Mussolini, ‘and of access to the oceans. He believes blindly in German victory and in Hitler’s word regarding our share of the booty’.18 The astonishing blitzkrieg campaign of early summer 1940 changed everything. Once France was near collapse and Britain seemed headed the same way, Mussolini could finally persuade the King and his government to enter the contest. The hope of a short war bereft of serious fighting and the expectation of a glorious feast of territory carved from the tottering western empires at the soonanticipated peace conference were too tempting a morsel to resist. Here was a fleeting opportunity that might never come again and allowed Mussolini to sweep aside the objections of his service chiefs and take command of the fascist armed forces as he bombastically declared war on the effete democracies.19 Only on the eve of conflict did the British Chiefs of Staff consider a more vigorous policy towards Italy such as shooting at the Italian aircraft that frequently transgressed prohibited military areas in the Middle East and delaying Italian shipping using Suez by any means.20 By then it was too late and events and French objections that such action might precipitate Italian entry overtook the proposals. At least what British indecision towards Italy did achieve, which was not without result in the end, was to foist on Mussolini the sole responsibility for taking his country into war. Britain’s

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crucial potential ally across the Atlantic took due note, with Roosevelt condemning Mussolini for stabbing prostrate France in the back. Finally, it was supremely ironic that the Anglo-Egyptian relationship, always a one-sided affair, was largely sustained over the period by the emergence of the Italian threat, which made British dominance appear the lesser evil. The imposing figure of Lampson presided over the imposition of British policy. His record was mixed. He did much to facilitate the Anglo-Egyptian treaty and enjoyed reasonably good relations with Nahas and Mahmoud. His was, however, a headmaster’s approach and, notwithstanding the charade of Egyptian independence, he treated recalcitrant Egyptians much in the manner of errant schoolboys. This was especially true of his relationship with the young monarch and it might have been prudent to remove Lampson before the showdown with King Farouk, which was clearly on the cards by the summer of 1940. Indeed, Wavell was moved to comment privately that, though Sir Miles was a ‘personal friend’, he ‘never agreed with his policy of the Big Stick and the High Hand, certainly not as instruments of daily use’.21 Lampson was well informed whenever moves to unseat him were afoot in the Foreign Office and in Eden, whom he cultivated through flattery, found a worthy champion to fight his corner. For all the euphoria on both sides surrounding the 1936 settlement, Britain emerged as the clear winner and was intent on treating the Egyptians as friends and allies only when it suited its purpose. Defence plans were closely guarded and their details were only shared when it was absolutely necessary. The treaty stipulated that the training of native forces could only be undertaken by British instructors and that their weaponry must be of British type, meaning that, as in the past, Britain could control the pace at which they developed. Privately Lampson alluded to the hidden agenda underlying British military assistance: that Egypt’s armed forces must not become so formidable that they could threaten the role and presence of the British garrison.22 Modernisation of the native army and air force assumed a low priority not only because of the retarded state of rearmament and the demands of other allies, but also through the recognition (later vindicated) that they could become a seedbed for extreme anti-British nationalists. As the Foreign Office recognised: ‘We should lose no sleep over inefficiency in Egyptian higher places or the deterioration of army material through bad officership. So long as we can fairly place the blame on the shoulders of the Egyptians, the deficiencies are, on a long view, no loss to us.’23 British forces’ tenure of the two major cities was dependent on the rate at which the Egyptians constructed new barracks and facilities in the Canal Zone. Here Egyptian amour propre scored an own goal with British garrisons remaining in Cairo and Alexandria until 1949 when hostile crowds spat at them as they marched out. In the period under review, Egyptian governments, for the most part, welcomed a British military presence. Indeed, unnerved by Mussolini’s periodic reinforcement of Libya, their leaders felt compelled to demand that more British forces were deployed, regardless of

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the treaty limits. In effect, therefore, the Anglo-Egyptian struggle, of imperial security concerns versus demands for unfettered sovereignty, was placed in a state of suspended animation. ‘I am prepared to believe’, predicted Eden in October 1941, ‘that we shall not be faced with serious trouble in Egypt during war unless things go very badly against us; but this will not necessarily be true in [the] period immediately following hostilities’.24 And so it proved.

Notes and references

Introduction: defending Egypt in the era of appeasement 1 Duff Cooper, Egypt, British Broadcasting Corporation speech, no date, Churchill Archives Centre (hereafter CAC) DUFC 8/2/8. 2 Ironside, Note on the Strategic Situation, The National Archives (hereafter TNA) WO 193/134; R. G. Menzies to S. M. Bruce (for Winston Churchill), 29 May 1941, document 475 in W. J. Hudson and H. J. W. Stokes, eds, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy 1937–49 Volume IV: July 1940-June 1941. (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1980) (hereafter DAFP). 3 Ciano to Jacomoni, 22 August 1940, in M. Muggeridge, ed., Ciano’s Diplomatic Papers (London: Odhams, 1948). 4 G. Younge, ‘Red Letter had the Ring of Truth’, The Guardian, 12 August 1997. 5 Exceptions include the first two volumes of the official history of the Second World War in the Mediterranean and Middle East and M. Kolinsky, Britain’s War in the Middle East: Strategy and Diplomacy, 1936–42 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). 6 J. Ruggiero, Neville Chamberlain and British Rearmament: Pride, Prejudice, and Politics. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. 144. 7 P. Kennedy, ‘Appeasement and British Defence Policy in the Inter-war Years’, British Journal of Strategic Studies, 4, 175 (1978). The gap is apparent after John Darwin’s excellent post-1918 survey, Britain, Egypt and the Middle East: Imperial Policy and the Middle East in the Aftermath of War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1981). 8 J. R. Ferris, The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919–26 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 40. 9 Imperial War Cabinet: Set of Minutes of Conference, 1 July 1921, House of Lords Record Office, Lloyd George Papers, LG F1/118/1. 10 Hansard Parliamentary Debates (hereafter Hansard), House of Lords, 49, 28 February 1922, c.238. 11 Foreign Office circular to British diplomatic missions, 15 March 1922, in J. Hurewitz, ed., Diplomacy in the Near and Middle East: A Documentary Record Volume 2: British–French Supremacy, 1914–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979); Baldwin statement, Hansard, House of Commons (hereafter HC), 312, 21 May 1936, c.1357. 12 Foreign Office, Memorandum on the Foreign Policy of His Majesty’s Government, 10 April 1926, in Documents on British Foreign Policy (hereafter DBFP), Series IA, II, appendix. 13 Viscount Cranborne, replying to Arthur Henderson, Hansard, HC, 329, 15 November 1937, c.4.

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Notes and References

14 The Times, 27 July 1936, 14 December 1938; Vansittart brief, 23 July 1937, quoting recent Eden speech, Avon Papers (hereafter AP) 13/1/48S; Neville to Ida Chamberlain, 5 September 1920 in R. Self, ed., The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters. Volume I. The Making of a Politician, 1915–1920 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), p. 386; Chamberlain memorandum, July 1924, cited in R. Self, ed., The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters. Volume 2. The Reform Years, 1921–1927 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p. 19; Hansard, HC, 332, 28 February 1938, cc. 722–3. 15 L. R. Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez: Britain’s Mediterranean Crisis 1936–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). 16 For erudite surveys of the literature, see P. Finney, ‘The Romance of Decline: The Historiography of Appeasement and British National Identity’, Electronic Journal of International History, I, 1 (2000), and D. Dutton, Reputations: Neville Chamberlain (London: Arnold, 2001). 17 Cited in M. Knox, Mussolini Unleashed 1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 39. 18 For the debate over Mussolini’s foreign policy, see R. J. B. Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London: Arnold, 1998), chs. 2–4. For the most informed assessment of Il Duce’s intentions, see R. Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War, 1933–1940 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), ch. 1. 19 The quote is attributed to Sir Alexander Cadogan. 20 N. West and O. Tsarev, The Crown Jewels: The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives (London: Harper Collins, 1998), ch. 5; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 98, 151; Count Ciano, Diary 1937–1943. The Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano (London: Phoenix Press, 2002), entry for 16 April 1938. The copied documents reside in the national archives in Rome but have still to be released. 21 See C. D. Smith, ‘4 February 1942: Its Causes and its Influence on Egyptian Politics and on the Future of Anglo-Egyptian Relations, 1937–1945’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 10 (1979). 22 R. J. Bowker to Foreign Office, enclosing Lord Killearn’s résumé of his time in Egypt, 6 March 1946, TNA FO 371/53288. 23 Lampson to Eden, 15 January 1942, AP Eg/42/2. 24 Lyttelton to Eden, 5 February 1942, AP Eg/42/8; Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives (hereafter LHCMA) Pownall diary, 22 May 1939; Group Captain M. L. ‘Larry’ Gaine, obituary, The Times, 21 May 2003. 25 Middle East Centre (hereafter MEC) Lampson diary, 17 May 1940. 26 Chiefs of Staff Committee. Functions. Procedure, no date, TNA CAB 21/651. See F. A. Johnson, Defence by Committee: The British Committee of Imperial Defence 1885–1959 (London: Oxford University Press, 1984), J. F. Naylor, A Man and an Institution: Sir Maurice Hankey, the Cabinet Secretariat and the Custody of Cabinet Secrecy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) and G. C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury, 1932–1939 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979). 27 E. Shuckburgh, Descent to Suez: Diaries 1951–56 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1986), p. 6. 1 The British defence of Egypt in the interwar period: strategic imperatives and rationale 1 Hansard, HC, 233, 23 December 1929, c.1957. 2 See D. M. Reid, ‘The Urabi Revolution and the British Conquest, 1879–1882’, in M. W. Daly, ed., The Cambridge History of Egypt Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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3 Ismail Sidky Pasha, My Memoirs (1950), translation in MEC Barbour IV/2; Lord Derby (Paris) to Lord Curzon, Confidential and Personal, 28 April, Liverpool Record Office, 920 DER (17) 28/3; Allenby to Wilson, 21 April 1919, in K. Jeffrey, ed., The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson 1918–1922 (London: Army Records Society, 1985), no. 66. 4 For fuller details of the British military response, see General Staff Diary, TNA WO 95/4455, K. Jeffrey, The British Army and the Crisis of Empire, 1918–22 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), ch. 7 and Darwin, Britain, Egypt and the Middle East, Part III. 5 Milner memorandum to the Egyptian Administration Committee, 31 October 1917, TNA CAB 27/12. 6 Report of the Special Mission to Egypt, 9 December 1920, Bodleian Library (hereafter BODL) Milner Papers, 462. 7 Churchill, The Egyptian Proposals, 24 August, Wilson and Trenchard memoranda, 25 August 1920, TNA CAB 24/111. 8 Air Staff note, no date, TNA CAB 24/111. 9 Beatty, Naval Strategy as affected by the Proposed Future Status of Egypt, 27 October 1920, LHCMA Montagu Papers. 10 Admiralty memorandum, February 1921, quoted in G. H. Bennett, British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919–24 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), p. 143. 11 Smuts, German Colonies at the Peace Conference, July 1918, National Archives Pretoria, Smuts Papers, Box R; Meeting of Representatives of the UK, Dominions and India, 6 July 1921, TNA FO 371/6301. 12 Allenby to Wilson, 21 January, in Jeffrey, ed., The Military Correspondence, number 223; Allenby to Curzon, 12 January, TNA FO 800/153, Cabinet, 23, 26 January 1922, TNA CAB 23/29. 13 ‘Egypt. A Sovereign Country’, Current History, XVI (1922), pp. 163–4; Neville to Hilda Chamberlain, 9 July 1927 in Self, ed., Chamberlain Diary Letters 2, p. 415; D. Gillies, Radical Diplomat. The Life of Archibald Clark Kerr, Lord Inverchapel, 1882–1951 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999), pp. 40–41. 14 Bowker to Foreign Office, 6 March 1946, TNA FO 371/53288. 15 Quoted in J. M. Landau, Parliaments and Parties in Egypt (Westport: Hyperion Press, 1954), p. 166. 16 Yapp, ed., Politics and Diplomacy, p. 11. 17 Gillies, Radical Diplomat, pp. 56–67. 18 Memorandum on Egypt, June 1929, TNA CAB 24/204; S. Halassie, Democracy on the Nile. How Britain has ‘Protected’ Egypt (New Jersey: Flanders Hall, 1940), pp. 42–9. 19 Sir Christopher Bullock, ‘Odd Notes on Substitution’, unsigned, 21 June 1932, CAC WEIR 13/1; I. Knight, ‘Hunting the Mad Mullah’, Military Illustrated, Number 149 (2000). 20 Air Officer Commanding Middle East, Royal Air Force, Appreciation of Royal Air Force Operations, 16 February 1922, TNA AIR 2/1097. 21 Trenchard, Memorandum on the Use of Aircraft, 22 April 1920, Air Officer Commanding to Ministry of Interior, 16 February 1922, TNA AIR 2/1832. 22 Air Staff, The Strength of Forces in Iraq and the Middle East, February 1927; Notes on the Work of the Royal Air Force Abroad, no date, both TNA AIR 9/8. 23 Hansard, HC, 123, 16 December 1919, c.311. 24 Air Staff, Memorandum on Status of RAF in Egypt, October 1923, TNA AIR 9/13; The Progress of Imperial Air Communications, 1930, TNA AIR 5/908; Sir John Slessor, The Central Blue: Recollections and Reflections (London: Cassell, 1956), p. 73. 25 General Adam, The Role of the British Army, February 1936, LHCMA ADAM 2/2/1–2.

216

Notes and References

26 See D. H. Cole, Imperial Military Geography (London: Sifton Praed, 1936); Brigadier R. J. Maunsell, Security Intelligence in Middle East 1914–1934 and 1934–1944, Imperial War Museum (hereafter IWM) 23/80/30/1. 27 Memorandum, 9 December 1919 in Sir Frederick Sykes, From Many Angles: An Autobiography (London: Harrap, 1942), appendix VII. 28 D. J. Payton-Smith, Aviation Spirit. Pre-War Planning, no date, TNA CAB 102/549. 29 Ghigi (Cairo) to Ciano, 20 August 1936, i documenti diplomatici Italiani Ottova Series 1935–1939, Volume IV, no.776. I am grateful to Dr. Robert Mallett for drawing my attention to this and translating the document. 2 The defence of Egypt and the onset of the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency 1 See Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 16–19. 2 Quoted in I. S. Munro, Through Fascism to World Power. A History of the Revolution in Italy (London: Alexander Maclehose, 1933), p. 111. 3 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, p. 16. 4 Air Staff, Notes on Sollum, January 1924, correspondence, March 1925, TNA AIR 5/346. 5 H. Erlich, ‘Mussolini and the Middle East in the 1920s: The Restrained Imperialist’, in U. Dann, ed., The Great Powers in the Middle East 1919–1939 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), p. 217. 6 C. G. Segré, ‘Liberal and Fascist Italy in the Middle East, 1919–1939: The Elusive White Stallion’, ibid., p. 203. 7 B. Sullivan, ‘A Thirst for Glory: Mussolini, the Italian Military and the Fascist Regime, 1922–1936’ (Columbia University D.Phil., 1984), p. 7. 8 See Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 17–18. 9 G. T. Garrett and R. Fletcher, The Air Defence of Britain (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938,), pp. 92–3. 10 Sullivan, ‘Thirst for Glory’, pp. 182–8; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 18–21. 11 Mussolini quoted in Knox, Common Destiny, p. 119. 12 G. Ward-Price, I Know these Dictators (London: Harrap, 1937), p. 242. 13 S. Morewood, ‘The British Defence of Egypt, 1935–September 1939’ (Bristol University Ph.D., 1985), pp. 89–90. 14 See C. A. MacDonald, ‘Radio Bari: Italian Wireless Propaganda in the Middle East and British Countermeasures, 1934–38’, Middle Eastern Studies, 13, 1 (1977). 15 Simon, The Frontier between Italian Libya and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 16 January 1934, TNA CAB 24/247. 16 Peterson minute, 23 June 1933, TNA FO 371/17035. 17 Report by Mr. Peterson and Wing-Commander Penderel on Conversations with the Italians in Rome, November 1933, TNA FO 407/213; M. Peterson, Both Sides of the Curtain (London: Constable, 1950), p. 98. 18 Cited in Knox, Common Destiny, p. 140. 19 Sullivan, ‘Thirst for Glory’, p. 337. See D. C. Watt, ‘Document: The Secret LavalMussolini Agreement of 1935 on Ethiopia,’ in E. M. Robertson, ed., The Origins of the Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1971) and G. Bruce Strang, ‘Imperial Dreams: The Mussolini – Laval Accords of January 1935’, Historical Journal, 44, 3 (2001). 20 Milne, The Military Tendencies of Italy, 6 February 1931, TNA WO 32/1253; Committee of Imperial Defence, 261st meeting, 9 November 1933, TNA CAB 2/6 (accepted by Cabinet 16 November); Sullivan, ‘Thirst for Glory’, pp. 182–6. 21 Fisher to Admiralty, 10 April, 2 May 1933, TNA ADM 116/3473; Fisher to Chatfield, 21 July 1933, National Maritime Museum (hereafter NMM) CHT/3/1.

Notes and References

217

22 Chatfield to Fisher, 9 August; Record of conversation between Chatfield and Admiral G. E. J. Durand-Viel, 1 April 1933, NMM CHT/3/1. 23 Chiefs of Staff Annual Review, 29 April, TNA CAB 53/23; Fisher to Chatfield, 29 August 1935, NMM CHT/4/5; Sir David Kelly, The Ruling Few or the Human Background to Diplomacy (London: Hollis & Carter, 1952), p. 228. 24 Admiralty Monthly Intelligence Report No.190, 13 March 1935, TNA ADM 223/823. 25 R. Lamb, The Drift to War 1922–1939 (London: W. H. Allen, 1989), pp. 135–7; Thompson’s record of conversation with Signor Guarnaschelli and Signor Vittetti on the Italo-Ethiopian dispute, 12 April, Record by Vansittart of a conversation with Grandi, 30 April 1935, DBFP, 2nd Series, XIV, numbers 232, 241; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 33–7. 26 MEC Lampson diary, 21 May 1935. 27 Hassell memorandum, 17 October, Documents on German Foreign Policy (hereafter DGFP), IV, number 360. 28 Admiralty Monthly Report, No. 193, 15 June, TNA ADM 223/ 823; Kennedy journal, 1 April 1935, CAC LKEN 1/18. 29 MEC Lampson diary, 2 May, 3 June; Hansard, HC, 303, 3 July 1935, cc. 156–7. For background, see R. Cheeseman, Lake Tsana and the Blue Nile (London: Cassell, 1936). 30 Maffey Report, 18 June 1935, TNA FO 371/19184; D. N. Dilks, ‘Flashes of Intelligence: The Foreign Office, the SIS and Security before the Second World War,’ in C. M. Andrew and D. N. Dilks, eds, The Missing Dimension: Governments and Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984). 31 British Consul (Tripoli) to Drummond, 24 January 1934, PRO ADM 116/3290; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, p. 17. 32 MEC Lampson diary, 28 February, 14 August 1934. 33 Notes by Lampson, 11 June 1934, TNA FO 371/17978. For the archaeological side, see T. G. H. James, ed., Excavating in Egypt. The Egyptian Exploration Society, 1882–1982 (London: British Museum, 1982). For Bagnold’s explorations, see his Libyan Sands: Travel in a Dead World (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935). The most recent strategic study is S. Kelly, The Hunt for Zerzura. The Lost Oasis and the Desert War (London: John Murray, 2002). 34 Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, pp. 102–3. 35 Pile to Liddell Hart, 15 May 1935, LHCMA LH 1/575. 36 Italian Foreign Ministry to Italian Legation (Alexandria), 20 August 1935, TNA HW 12/194. 37 Drummond to Hoare, 18 June, TNA FO 371/19112; MEC Lampson diary, 3, 20 June, 3 July 1935. 38 Report by Hoyer Millar, 26 June 1935, TNA FO 371/19074. 39 Minutes, 5, 10 July 1935, TNA FO 371/19073. 40 Weir to Lampson, 6 July; Maclean to same and Group Captain Harris, 12 July 1935, TNA AIR 2/2699. 41 Air Staff, Measures Necessary to Safeguard British Territory and Interests, 12 August 1935, TNA AIR 9/68. 42 Eden – Mussolini conversation, 25 June 1935, TNA FO 371/73206; Lamb, Drift to War, p. 138. 43 Cabinet, 3 July, CAB 23/81; Chiefs of Staff, 147th meeting, 30 July 1935, TNA CAB 53/5. 44 Royal Air Force Intelligence Summaries, 1935, TNA AIR 8/138; Drummond (Rome) to Hoare, 6 August 1935, TNA FO 371/19123. The crisis forced Drummond to remain in Rome and miss summer leave. 45 Conclusions of conversation at 10 Downing Street, 6 August, TNA CAB 23/82; Admiralty to Fisher, 7 August 1935, PRO ADM 116/3038.

218

Notes and References

46 Kennedy journal, 14 July, CAC LKEN 1/18; Chamberlain diary, 7 July 1935, NC 2/23. 47 Vansittart to Hoare, 19 August, DBFP 2nd Series, XV, appendix I; LHCMA Pownall diary, 19 August 1935. 48 Admiralty to Fisher, 22 August 1935, TNA ADM 116/3476. 49 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 44–5; Cabinet, 22 August, TNA CAB 23/82; Hoare to Clerk (Paris), 24 August 1935, Cambridge University Library (hereafter CUL) Templewood Papers, VII: I. 50 Grandi to Italian Foreign Ministry, 22 August 1935, TNA HW 12/194. 51 Grandi to Italian Foreign Ministry, 23, 26, 29 August, ibid.; LHCMA Pownall diary (original emphasis), 22 August; Cabinet, same day, TNA CAB 23/82; Defence Policy Requirements, 5th meeting, 23 August, TNA CAB 16/136; Chiefs of Staff, 149th meeting, 6 September 1935, TNA CAB 53/5. 52 Narrative of Events in the Mediterranean from August 1935 to July 1936, no date, TNA ADM 116/3476; Campbell note, 19 August 1935, TNA FO 371/19051; K. Edwards, The Grey Diplomatists (London: Rich & Cowan, 1938), ch. XI. 53 Ward-Price, I Know, p. 232. 54 Ellington to Brooke-Popham, 26 September 1935, TNA AIR 20/5489. 55 Chatfield to Admiral Dreyer, 16 September 1935, NMM CHT/4/4. 56 Lampson to Hoare, 2 August, TNA FO 371/19123; Drummond to Hoare, 5 November, TNA FO 371/19159; The Times, 14, 17 September 1935; Edmond (Geneva) to Hoare, 18 and 19 September 1935, DBFP, 2nd Series, XIV, numbers 579, 588. 57 Dill to Weir, 26 September, Dill to Bartholemew, 10 October 1935, TNA WO 106/ 283. 58 F. Minniti, Quaderni di Clio. Fino alla guerra. Strategi e conflitto nella politica di potenza di Mussolini 1923–1940 (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000), p. 115; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 44–7, 50. 59 Hoare to Drummond, 23 September 1935, DBFP, 2nd Series, XV, number 620. 60 Drummond to Hoare, 23 September, Hoare to Drummond, 30 September 1935, DBFP, 2nd Series, XV, numbers 630, 663. 61 The Italian Army was disposed between Eritrea (107,246 troops) and Italian Somaliland (23,694 troops) with additional colonial troops (51,532 and 29,026 respectively). 62 Drummond to Hoare, reporting Mussolini’s speech, 3 October 1935, DBFP, 2nd Series, XV, number 667. 63 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, p. 40. 3 Defending Egypt during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency: first phase, August–December 1935 1 Chamberlain diary, 5 July 1935, NC 2/23. See also G. Post Junior, ‘The Machinery of British Policy in the Ethiopian Crisis’, International History Review, 1, 4 (1979). 2 Drummond to Hoare, 27 August 1935, CUL Templewood Papers, VIII: 3. 3 Ironside to Liddell Hart, 17 November 1935, LHCMA LH 1/401. 4 This paragraph derives from an unpublished chapter from Esmonde Robertson’s Mussolini as Empire Builder, kindly provided by the late author. 5 Chatfield to Fisher, 28 August 1935, NMM CHT 4/4/1. 6 Chiefs of Staff, Future situation in the Mediterranean, 22 November 1935, TNA CAB 16/139. 7 Cited in Kelly, Ruling Few, p. 228. 8 Squadron-Leader Ivelaw-Chapman, Royal Air Force Intelligence to Group Captain Dacre, air attaché Rome, 31 December 1935, TNA AIR 2/1681. 9 Hoare to Eden, 17 September 1935, TNA FO 800/295.

Notes and References

219

10 Third Defence Policy Requirements Report, 21 November 1935, TNA CAB 16/139. 11 Chiefs of Staff, Means of exerting pressure on Italy, 28 August, TNA CAB 53/25; Foreign Office, Anti-British activities in the Mediterranean, 2 October 1936, TNA FO 371/20411. 12 Phipps to Hoare, 13 November 1935, DBFP, XV, no. 213. 13 Campbell memorandum, 9 August, DBFP, XIV, no. 420; Ormsby-Gore to Baldwin, 8 September, CUL Baldwin Papers, 123; Lampson to Hoare, 13 November 1935, TNA FO 371/19054. 14 Air Council to Campbell, 2 September 1935, TNA AIR 2/2699. 15 See minutes within TNA FO 371/19051; Captain Godfrey note, 8 October, TNA ADM 116/3050; LHCMA Pownall diary, 7 October 1935. 16 Defence Policy Requirements Committee, 9th meeting, 23 September, TNA CAB 16/136; Vansittart minute, 27 September 1935, TNA FO 371/19052. 17 Halifax to Hoare, 27 September, CUL Templewood Papers, VIII: 3; Defence Policy Requirements Committee, 10th meeting, 2 October 1935, TNA CAB 16/ 136. 18 LHCMA Pownall diary (original emphasis), 4 September 1935; Sir Hugh Elles paper, 1944, LHCMA LH 15/12/3. 19 War Office to Hoare, 2 October 1935, TNA WO 106/282. 20 Fisher to Cuncliffe-Lister, 12 September 1935; Pownall diary, September, cited in Gaines Post Junior, Dilemmas of Appeasement. British Deterrence and Defence, 1934–1937 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 111. See also Peden, British Rearmament, pp. 36–7. 21 Hansard, HC, 309, 17 February 1936, c.3004. 22 Treasury Emergency Expenditure Committee, 20 September, 3, 4 October, 20 December 1935, TNA T161/716/S40250/1. 23 Chiefs of Staff, 151st meeting, 4 October 1935, TNA CAB 53/5; Kelly, Hunt for Zerzura, pp. 123–4. 24 See Kelly, Hunt for Zerzura, pp. 123–4. 25 Major-General Howard, 5th Division, Western Desert emergency, no date, TNA WO 191/160; Harris to Adam, 7 September, TNA AIR 2/2699; Harris, Notes on the Importance of an Advanced Landing Ground at Sollum or in the Immediate Vicinity, 19 September 1935, TNA ADM 116/3476. 26 Edwards, Grey Diplomatists, ch. XII. 27 Rear-Admiral Raikes, Alexandria Defence Plan, 1 August 1936, TNA ADM 116/3476. 28 Interim report of the Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation, 18 May 1936, TNA ADM 116/4186; Admiral Grantham to author, 29 December 1981; Fisher memorandum, c 1936, TNA ADM 116/4325. 29 Joint Planning Committee, Covering note on defence of Egypt, 31 October 1935, TNA CAB 55/7. 30 R. Quartararo, ‘Imperial Defence in the Mediterranean on the eve of the Ethiopian Crisis (July – October 1935)’, Historical Journal, 20, 1 (1977): 198. 31 Major-General I. S. O. Playfair et al., History of the Second World War. The Mediterranean and Middle East, Volume I: The Early Successes against Italy (to May 1941) (London: HMSO, 1943), pp. 248–9. 32 Backhouse to Chatfield, 3 February 1936, NMM CHT 4/4/1. 33 See W. James, Admiral Sir William Fisher (London: Macmillan, 1943). 34 For the Admiralty’s attitude see A. J. Marder, ‘The Royal Navy and the Ethiopian Crisis of 1935–1936’, American Historical Review, 75, 5 (1969). 35 Liddell Hart talk with Fisher, 27 April 1936, LHCMA LH 11/1936/53. 36 Summary of the Senior Admirals, c.1936, CAC Viscount Norwich Papers, DUFC 2/12; Viscount Cunningham, A Sailor’s Odyssey, (London: Hutchinson & Co.,

220

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Notes and References

1951), pp. 173–4; Fisher comment, quoted in Philip Noel-Baker to Hugh [Dalton], 16 December 1935, CAC Noel-Baker Papers. Fisher to Admiralty, 20 August, 6 September 1935, TNA ADM 116/3038, quoted in G. Baer, The Coming of the Italo-Ethiopian War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 360. Admiral Phillips minute, 21 August 1935, TNA ADM 116/3038; Narrative of Events in the Mediterranean, no date, TNA ADM 116/3476. Montgomery-Masingberd to Weir, 22 October, reply 24 October, MontgomeryMassingberd to Hankey, 26 October 1935, TNA CAB 53/26; Chiefs of Staff instructions, no date, TNA CAB 53/5. Conference notes, 20 November 1935, LHCMA, BP II/3/25. Chiefs of Staff, 159th meeting, 13 December 1935, TNA CAB 53/5. Hoare to Eden, 16 October, TNA FO 800/295; The Times, 4, 11 November 1935. For the campaign, see T. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition: The British General Election of 1935 (London: Croom Helm, 1980). Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 55–6; B. Millman, ‘Canada, Sanctions and the Abyssinian Crisis of 1935’, Historical Journal, 40, 1 (1997). Sullivan, ‘Thirst for Glory’, pp. 461–2. Dill to Bartholomew, 26 November 1935, TNA WO 106/283. The Times, 21 December 1935. Quoted in R. Lamb, Mussolini and the British (London: John Murray, 1997), p. 140. Admiralty Monthly Intelligence Report, No.199, 15 December 1935, TNA ADM 223/824. Chiefs of Staff, Combined Appreciation, 6 December, TNA CAB 53/24; War Office Intelligence Summaries, 27 November, 10 December 1935, TNA WO 106/283. Vansittart to Hoare and Eden, 23 November 1935, quoted in Lamb, Mussolini and the British, p. 137. P. W. Chetwode to Barty, 19 December 1935, LHCMA Bartholomew Papers, 2/13/4. Duff Cooper, Anti-Aircraft Organisation, 6 December, Defence Policy Requirements Committee, 14th meeting, 26 November, TNA CAB 16/139; Vice-Admiral Henderson to Churchill, December 1935, in M. Gilbert, ed., Winston Spencer Churchill Documents: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (London: Hutchinson, 1980). Liddell Hart, Notes on the Defence Situation, c.November, LHCMA LH 11/1935/ 126; LHCMA Pownall diary, 25 November 1935. Hankey diary, 25 November 1935, TNA CAB 63/50. See also S. Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, Volume III (London: Collins, 1974), pp. 186–90. LHCMA Pownall diary (original emphasis), 25 November 1935. Hankey to Baldwin, 25 November, TNA CAB 63/50; Clive (Tokyo) to Hoare, 25 September, TNA FO 371/19151; Phipps to Hoare, 13 November 1935, DBFP, XV, number 213; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, p. 137. Cited in Lamb, Mussolini and the British, p. 137. Correspondence within TNA CAB 63/50; Chiefs of Staff, Combined Appreciation, 6 December 1935, TNA CAB 53/5. Chamberlain diary, 29 November 1935, NC 2/23. Cabinet 2 December 1935, TNA CAB 23/82; LHCMA Pownall diary, same day. Liddell Hart, Note, 25 November, LHCMA LH 11/1935/102; Hankey to Baldwin, 25 November 1935, TNA CAB 63/60; Lamb, Mussolini and the British, p. 144. Defence Policy Requirements Committee, 6 December 1935, DBFP, XV, no. 325; Clerk (Paris) to Eden, 7 December 1935, DBFP, 2nd Series, XV, no. 330; War

Notes and References

63

64 65 66 67

68 69

221

Office 1935–1936, no date, LHCMA ADAM 3/10; General Sir Ronald Adam to author, 15 May 1982. Air Staff Note, 5 December, TNA AIR 9/71; Anglo-French Staff Conversations, DBFP, 2nd Series, XV, appendix II; Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert, The Fated Sky (London: Hutchinson, 1952), p. 122; Vansittart memorandum, 11 December 1935, DBFP, II, XV, no. 361. Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 63–4. Notes on League of Nations Union Deputation, 13 December 1935, TNA PREM 1/1778. See D. Whaley, British Public Opinion and the Abyssinian War 1935–1936 (London: Temple Smith, 1976), ch. 2. M. Potter, ‘What Sealed Baldwin’s Lips?’ The Historian, XXVII, 1 (1964); Simon diary, 19 December, BODL MS Simon 7, Folio 54; Chamberlain diary, 29 November, NC 2/23A; Hoare to Baldwin, 22 December 1935, CUL Baldwin Papers, 123. Hoare returned as First Lord of the Admiralty in June 1936. The Hoare–Laval Pact. Eden’s Account, February 1953, AP 19/4/12. Liddell Hart, Notes on Discussion at Duff Cooper’s Dinner – Buck’s Club, 14 February 1936, LHCMA LH 11/1936/40.

4 Defending Egypt during the Italo-Abyssinian Emergency: second phase, January–July 1936 1 Hope-Gill to Barbic, 31 December 1935, MEC Hope-Gill Papers. 2 See M. J. Rooke, ‘The British Government’s Relations with the States of South Eastern Europe, 1934–1936’ (London University, Ph. D., 1980). 3 Truforce General Report, March 1936, TNA AIR 23/777; Brooke-Popham, Notes on Emergency, no date, TNA AIR 20/5489. 4 Report on Truforce Exercises, no date, TNA AIR 23/777; Brooke-Popham to Ellington, 4 April 1936, LHCMA BP 11/6/28/1. 5 Major-General Howard, 5th Division, Western Desert Emergency, no date, TNA WO 191/160. 6 See TNA AIR 23/714 and AIR 27/365. 7 See TNA WO 191/159. 8 Hobart to Pope, 19 November 1935, Pope Papers. See also R. Lewin, Man of Armour (London: Leo Coooper, 1976), ch. 7. 9 V. Pope, General Report on Emergency in regard to Royal Tank Corps Units, 5 May 1936, Pope Papers. 10 Hobart to Pope, 27 November 1935, Pope Papers; Recollections of Major-General Liardet, IWM, Department of Sound Archives. 11 Chiefs of Staff, 162nd meeting, 24 January, TNA CAB 53/26; MontgomeryMassingberd, Memorandum on the Importance of Anglo-Japanese Friendship, 17 January 1936, DBFP, 2nd Series, XX, number 450. 12 Weir, Appreciation of the Possibility of Offensive Action, 8 February, TNA CAB 53/26; War Office Intelligence Summary, 18 February 1936, TNA WO 106/284. 13 Quoted in C. G. Segré, Italo Balbo: A Fascist Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 340; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, p. 73. 14 Chiefs of Staff, 162nd meeting, 24 January, Dill, Defence of Egypt: The Situation in the Western Desert, 26 February, Chiefs of Staff, 170th meeting, 31 March 1936, TNA CAB 53/26. 15 Vulnerability of Capital Ships Committee, 1st meeting, 31 March 1936, TNA CAB 16/47. 16 B. Liddell Hart, Paris or the Future of War (London: Kegan Paul, 1925), pp. 66–7; Hansard, HC, 308, 17 February 1936, c.1762.

222

Notes and References

17 See, for example, Captain Macmillan, ‘Is the Aeroplane Supreme?’ Daily Mail, 9 November 1935 and J. F. C. Fuller, ‘Withdraw our Ships from the Mediterranean’, ibid., 3 February 1936. 18 Fisher to Chatfield, 6 March, NMM CHT/4/5; Brooke-Popham to Ellington, 9 January, LHCMA BP 36/20/1; Vulnerability of Capital Ships Committee, 1st meeting, 31 March 1936, TNA CAB 16/147. The unidentified officer was almost certainly Dill. 19 Fisher to Chatfield, 29 August, NMM CHT/4/5; Ivelaw-Chapman to Dacre, 31 December 1935, TNA AIR 2/1681; Brooke-Popham, Notes on Emergency, TNA AIR 20/5489. 20 Report on Air Intelligence, no date, TNA AIR 23/777. 21 G. Salvamini, Prelude to World War Two (London: Gollancz, 1953), p. 311; Air Intelligence Summaries, 1936, TNA AIR 8/210. 22 Denniston MSS, no date, CAC DENN; W. F. Clarke, Wars and Rumours of Wars 1934–1937, no date, CAC CLKE 3; W. F. Clarke, GC and CS. Its Foundation and Development with Special Reference to the Naval Side, no date, TNA HW 3/16. 23 Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, pp. 138–41. 24 Cabinet, 17 February 1936, TNA CAB 23/83. 25 League of Nations Union Executive Committee minutes, 16 January, 6 February 1936, London School of Economics (hereafter LSE) LNU 21/4. 26 Grandi to Foreign Ministry, 22 February 1936, TNA HW 12/201. 27 Grandi to Foreign Ministry, 22, 24, 25, 28 February 1936, ibid. 28 Hansard, HC, 309, 24 February 1936, cc.78–9. 29 Cabinet, 26 February 1936, TNA CAB 23/83. 30 W. I. Shorrocks, From Ally to Enemy: The Enigma of fascist Italy in French Diplomacy 1920–1940 (Kent: Kent State University, 1988), pp. 172–4. 31 See E. M. Robertson, ‘Hitler and Sanctions: Mussolini and the Rhineland’, European Studies Review, 7, 1 (1977). 32 Chiefs of Staff, The Condition of our Forces to Meet the Possibility of War with Germany, 18 March, DBFP, 2nd Series, XVI, no.134; Cabinet, 11 March, TNA CAB 23/83; N. A. Rose, ed., Baffy. The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale 1936–1947 (London: Valentine, Mitchell, 1973), entry 12 March 1936. 33 Ellington to Brooke-Popham, 20 March 1936, LHCMA BP 11/5/32. 34 See A. Mockler, Haille Selassie’s War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), ch. 9. 35 W. Beckett, The Legalities of Closing the Suez Canal, 11 June, Vansittart minute, same day, TNA FO 371/19117. 36 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, p. 56. 37 Murray to Lord Cecil, 16 September 1935, BODL MS. Gilbert Murray Papers, 223 (f.32). 38 League of Nations Union Executive Committee statement, 10 October 1935, quoted in G. Mander, We Were Not All Wrong (London: Gollancz, 1941), p. 108; Sullivan, ‘Thirst for Glory’, pp. 453–4. 39 Admiralty to Fisher, 8 October 1935, TNA ADM 116/3489. 40 Vansittart minute, 1 October, TNA FO 371/19054; Hoare to Lampson, 14 October, TNA FO 407/213; Godfrey to Adam, 6 December 1935, TNA ADM 116/3833. 41 Naval Plans Division, Defence of the Suez Canal, 11 December 1935, TNA ADM 116/3833. 42 Admiralty, History of the Emergency – Suez Canal Area, no date, TNA ADM 116/3476; Admiralty to Fisher, 8 October 1935, TNA ADM 116/3489. 43 A. Del Boca, ed., I gas di Mussolini. Il fascismo e la guerra d’Ethiopia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1996), pp. 56–73. See also R. M. Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), ch. 5.

Notes and References

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44 Report by British Military Attaché, Addis Ababa, 7 January, A. I. Widdow to Foreign Office, 18 March 1936, TNA FO 371/20166. 45 Barton to Eden, 20 March, House of Lords, Cecil speech, 30 March 1936, ibid. 46 Chiefs of Staff, The Use of Gas by Italy in the War in Abyssinia, 1 April, Mussolini to Eden, 27 February 1936, TNA FO 371/20194. 47 Meeting of Ministers, 30 March, TNA FO 371/20165; Cabinet, 6 April 1936, TNA FO 371/20166. 48 G. Margry, secretary to Sir Ian Malcolm, to Eden, 1 May, Communication from the Ethiopian Delegation, 2 May 1936, TNA FO 371/20194. 49 Committee of Thirteen meeting, 9 April, Barton to Eden, 7 April 1936, TNA FO 371/20166. 50 Cabinet, 6 April 1936, TNA CAB 23/83; Vansittart minute, 25 April, TNA FO 371/20472. 51 Eden reply, 12 February, Hansard, 308, HC, 308, c.920; Cocks and Brass questions and Eden’s reply, Hansard, HC, 311, 27 April, c.535, Mander questions and Eden response, 29 April, cc.885–6; Maxwell Garnett to Lord Cranborne, 23 April, reply 20 May 1936, TNA FO 371/20194. 52 League of Nations Union Executive Committee minutes, 7 May, LSE LNU 2/14; Hansard, HC, 311, 6 May 1936, c.1736. 53 Chatfield to Hankey, 8 May, Hankey to Eden, 11 May 1936 and Eden comment thereon, AP 13/1/46 & 46p. 54 D. R. Thorpe, Eden. The Life and Times of Anthony Eden First Earl of Avon, 1897– 1977 ((London: Chatto & Windus, 2003), p. 169; Ellington to Brooke-Popham, 6 May, LHCMA BP 11/5/32; Cabinet, 29 April 1936, TNA CAB 23/83. 55 Admiral Little minute, 22 April 1936, TNA ADM 116/3042. 56 Cabinet Committee on the Mediterranean Fleet, 19 May 1936, TNA CAB 27/606; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, p. 79. 57 Ward-Price interview, Daily Mail, 6 May; Hansard, HC, 313, 23 June, c.1629; Record by Sir Robert Vansittart of a Conversation with M. Corbin, 16 April 1936, DBFP, 2nd Series, XVI, no. 243. 58 Chiefs of Staff, East Mediterranean: Understanding with Turkey and Greece, 21 June, Chiefs of Staff, 179th meeting, 25 June 1936, TNA CAB 53/6. 59 Balliol College (hereafter BC) Nicolson diary, 11 June; Chamberlain diary, 17 June 1936, NC 2/23A. 60 CAC AMEL 289 Amery diary, 7 April 1936. 61 BODL Dawson diary, 25 June; CAC AMEL 289 Amery diary, 23 February 1936. 62 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 79–82. 63 Ward-Price, Memorandum – One, 25 May, sent to Inskip by Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail, 4 June 1936, TNA CAB 64/32. 64 Lampson to Eden, 7 May 1936 and attendant minutes, TNA FO 371/201007. 65 MEC Lampson diary, 11 August 1936. 5 The making of the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of Friendship and Alliance: the military aspects 1 Colyton, Occasion, p. 116. 2 MacDonald – Zaghlul Conversations, 1924, CAC GLLD 14/16; Foreign Office, The Egyptian Army and Air Force. A Historical Survey, April 1934, TNA FO 371/ 17975. See also D. Carlton, MacDonald versus Henderson: The Foreign Policy of the Second Labour Government (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1970). 3 Cabinet, 16 February 1922, TNA CAB 23/29. 4 Chiefs of Staff, Recent Negotiations for an Anglo-Egyptian Settlement, 30 July 1930, Cabinet Subcommittee Minutes, November 1932, TNA CAB 16/107. 5 See Yapp, Politics and Diplomacy, pp. 35–44; Lampson to Vansittart, 14 May,

224

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Notes and References

TNA FO 371/19072; Admiralty Monthly Intelligence Report, No.190, 13 March, TNA ADM 223/823; Lampson to Simon, 11 June 1935, TNA FO 371/19112. G. Stanley, ‘Through the Mediterranean’, Daily Telegraph, 5 November 1935. O. Eran, ‘British Policy in Egypt, 1924–36. The Treaty of 1936’ (London University, Ph.D., 1981), p. 298; MEC Lampson diary, 29 October, 5 November 1935. H. A. R. Gibbs, ‘The Situation in Egypt,’ International Affairs, XV, 3 (1936). Lampson telegrams to Foreign Office, 20 October – 5 November, TNA FO 371/ 19053; The Times, 5 November, Lampson to Foreign Office, 13, 25 December 1935; Cabinet, 15 January, TNA CAB 23/83, MEC Lampson diary, 20 January 1936. H. A. Ibrahim, ‘The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 with Special Reference to the Contemporary Situation in Egypt and the Sudan’ (London University, D.Phil., 1970), p. 105; Yapp, ed., Politics and Diplomacy, p. 22; Hansard, HC, 308, 10 February 1936, c.555; Note by Director General, European Department, 21 December 1935, TNA FO 371/20096. Anglo-Egyptian Conversations, opening meeting, 9 March 1936, LHCMA BP 4/ 9/14, Brooke-Popham to Ellington, 3 March 1936, LHCMA BP 11/6/23. Lampson to Eden, 16, 17, 19 March 1936, TNA FO 371/20102; MEC Lampson diary, 30 March, 1 April 1936. L. Keown-Boyd, Italian Activities in Egypt, 11 August, TNA FO 371/20133; Lampson to Eden, 21 April 1936 and attendant minutes, TNA FO 371/20105; Graves to Liddell Hart, 5 April, LHCMA LH 15/3/16; Eden to Hankey, 15 April 1936, TNA ADM 116/3589. Admiralty minute, 8 April, TNA ADM 116/3589; Chiefs of Staff, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty – Inclusion of a Time Limit, 9 April (their emphasis), TNA CAB 24/261; Committee of Imperial Defence, 277th meeting, 27 April 1936, TNA CAB 2/6. Cabinet, 29 April, TNA CAB 23/83; Simon to Eden, 27 April and attached comments, TNA FO 371/20106. LHCMA Pownall diary, 24 April 1936. Cabinet, 6 May, TNA CAB 23/83; Anglo Egyptian Conversations Committee, 1st meeting, 7 May 1936, TNA CAB 24/262. Cabinet, 10 May, TNA CAB 23/83; MacDonald, Discussion with Dominion Representatives, 21 May 1936, TNA CAB 24/262. Zetland to Linlithgow, 23 May, Zetland Papers, India Office Records (hereafter IOR) MSS Eur.D 609/6. Brooke-Popham, The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, no date, LHCMA BP 4/9/10. Vansittart and Eden minutes, 30 May, 7 June, TNA FO 371/20109. MEC Lampson diary, 5 June 1936. N. Pasha, Defence of the Suez Canal, 1 June, TNA FO 371/20110; Chiefs of Staff, 176th meeting, 8 June 1936; TNA CAB 53/5, MEC Lampson diary, same day. MEC Lampson diary, 8 June; The Times, leader 10 June; BODL MS Dawson 40, folio 97; BODL Dawson diary, 8 June; Cabinet, 10 June 1936, TNA CAB 23/83. Lampson to Eden, 13 May, TNA FO 371/20109; Vansittart minutes, 3, 7 June, TNA FO 371/20110; CP 156 (36), 9 June 1936, TNA CAB 63/132. Anglo Egyptian Conversations Committee, 12 June 1936, TNA FO 371/20110. Anglo Egyptian Conversations Committee, 15 June 1936, ibid. Lampson, Notes of Meeting with Nahas, 1 July and Campbell minute, 2 July, TNA FO 371/20112; Brooke-Popham, Lecture Jottings, 10 October 1936, LHCMA BP 4/9/3. Anglo-Egyptian Conversations Committee, 21 July 1936, TNA FO 371/20113; Treasury minute, 23 July 1936, TNA T 161/S324915/1. See Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Negotiations: The Sudan, 11 June 1936, TNA CAB 24/ 263; Colyton, Occasion, p. 117; Eden’s speech, 26 August 1936, TNA FO 371/ 20118.

Notes and References

225

31 H. G. A. Nasser, Britain and the Egyptian Nationalist Movement 1936–1952 (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1994), pp. 23–4, 73; BC Nicolson diary, 24 November 1936. For the debate, see Hansard, HC, 308, 24 November 1936, cc.251–339. 32 Memorandum by Mr. Somers-Cock on the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of August 26, 1936, no date, TNA CAB 21/1975. 33 Colyton, Occasion, p. 117. 34 Brooke-Popham, Recent Events, LHCMA BP 11/9/10. 35 Lampson to Eden, 24 July, Eden to Military Advisers, 24 August 1936, TNA FO 371/20115. 36 Yapp, ed., Diplomacy and Politics, p. 9. 37 Neville to Ida Chamberlain, 2 August 1936, NC 18/1/972. 38 Yapp, Diplomacy and Politics, pp. 26–7. 39 ‘Egypt No.1 (1936) Treaty of Alliance’, CMD 5270. 40 R. Campbell, The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Signed on 26 August 1936, no date, TNA CAB 21/1975. 41 Maunsell, Security Intelligence, IWM 23/80/30/1. See also H. O. Dovey, ‘Maunsell and Mure’, Intelligence and National Security, 8, 1 (1993): 60–77. 42 Shuckleburgh, Descent to Suez, p. 6. Lampson remained High Commissioner for the Sudan. 6 Securing an exposed flank: the defence of Egypt in British diplomacy, June 1936–April 1938 1 Hitler comment in Phipps (Berlin) to Eden, 14 May 1936, CAC PHPP. 1/15; cited in Knox, Common Destiny, p. 143. 2 For the context, see Pratt, East of Malta. 3 Chatfield to Dreyer, 16 September 1935, NMM CHT/4/4; Wigram, The European Situation, c.June 1936, TNA FO 800/292; Malcolm to Sargent, 6 July, TNA FO 371/20141; Industrial Intelligence Centre, Italy. General Survey of Material Resources and Industry in their Bearing upon War Potential (original emphasis), 9 November, TNA T 160/860/F14922/1; Drummond to Eden, 17 July 1936, AP 13/ 1/48. 4 Foreign Office, Italian Anti-British Activities in the Middle East, 21 August, TNA FO 371/19983; Foreign Office, Italian Anti-British Activities in the Mediterranean Region, 2 October, TNA FO 371/20411; Vansittart minute, 15 October 1936, TNA FO 395/536. 5 Cranborne, Memorandum on Relations with Italy’ 12 November, Eden minute, 15 November 1936, TNA FO 800/296. See also Lord Avon, The Eden Memoirs Volume I: Facing the Dictators (London: Cassell, 1962), pp. 419–41. 6 CAC ACAD 1/4 Cadogan diary, 24 August, 5 September 1936; Pratt, East of Malta, pp. 44–64; R. Mallett, The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935– 1940 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), pp. 57–8, L. Zhivkova, Anglo-Turkish Relations 1933–1939 (London: Secker & Warburg, 1976), p. 42. 7 Admiralty to Foreign Office, 21 November, TNA ADM 116/3302; Cabinet, 11 November 1936, TNA CAB 23/86; C. Seton-Watson, ‘The Anglo-Italian Gentleman’s Agreement of January 1937 and its Aftermath’, in W. J. Mommsen and L. Kettenacker, eds, The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement (London: Allen & Unwin, 1983). 8 B. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 182. 9 See various correspondence in TNA WO 32/4441. 10 Liddell Hart, The Role of the British Army, 6 November, Reorientation of the Regular Army for Imperial Defence, 16 November 1937, LHCMA LH 11/HB/ 1937/85b & 104b.

226

Notes and References

11 Inskip Committee, 5th meeting, 16 November 1937, TNA T 161/S4831/04. For the Treasury perspective, see G. C. Peden, ‘The Burden of Imperial Defence and the Continental Commitment Reconsidered’, Historical Journal, 27, 2 (1984). 12 Hankey to Inskip, 7 March 1938, TNA CAB 21/510. 13 J. Kennedy, The Business of War: The War Narrative of Major-General Sir John Kennedy (London: Hutchinson, 1957), p. 9; LHCMA Pownall diary, 14 March 1938. 14 Eden, The Probability of War with Italy, 15 June, TNA CAB 21/558; Cabinet, 14 July 1937, TNA CAB 23/89. 15 Vansittart Brief, 23 July, Vansittart to Eden, 26 July 1937, AP 13/1/48 S & U. 16 For details, see W. C. Mills, ‘The Chamberlain-Grandi Conversations of July– August 1937 and the Appeasement of Italy’, International History Review, XIX, 3 (1997). 17 Eden to Campbell, August 1937, AP XIII. 18 Mallett, Italian Navy, pp. 108–11; A. Biagini and A. Gionfrida, eds, Lo Stato Maggiore Generale tra le due Guerre (Rome: Ufico Storico Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, 1997), meetings of 5 November, 17 December 1936; Minniti, Quaderni di Clio, pp. 158–61; A. Major, ed., Ciano’s Diary, 1937–1938 (London: Methuen, 1952), 14 February 1938; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, p. 148. 19 Von Bulow-Schwante, Memorandum of Conversations with Mussolini, 2 October 1937, DGFP, Series D, I, no. 2; Ciano’s Diary, 2 September 1937. 20 Chiefs of Staff, Anglo-Italian Relations, 29 September 1937, TNA FO 371/21161. 21 Chatfield to Pound, 23 November, NMM CHT/4/10; Cabinet, 20 October 1937, TNA CAB 23/89. 22 MEC Lampson diary, 20 October 1937. 23 Southern Department, The Possibility of Retaliation in Kind against Italian AntiBritish Propaganda in the Middle East, 22 November 1937, TNA FO 371/21162; J. Hepworth-Dunne, A Report on Arabic Broadcasting in Egypt and Palestine with Special Reference to the Arabic Broadcasts from London, 20 January, Supplementary Report, 21 May 1938, TNA INF 1/716. 24 MEC Lampson diary, 20 October 1937. 25 MEC Lampson diary, 8, 12 November; Lampson to Eden, 12 November 1937, TNA FO 371/20912. 26 Committee of Imperial Defence, 301st meeting, 18 November, TNA CAB 2/7; Cabinet, 24 November, TNA CAB 23/90A; Hankey to Vansittart, 3 November 1937, TNA FO 371/20886. 27 Hankey to Wilson, 4 November, Fisher to Wilson, 10 November 1937, TNA T 273/410. 28 Lampson to Eden. 27 November, Eden minute, 18 August 1937, TNA FO 371/ 22403. 29 Fisher minute, 22 November, TNA T 161/987/S41007/1; Perth to Ingram, 15 February 1938, TNA FO 371/22403. 30 Chatfield to Pound, 23 November 1937, NMM CHT/4/10. 31 Cadogan to Eden, copy to Chamberlain, 12 January 1938, TNA FO 371/22395. 32 See, for example, D. Carlton, Anthony Eden (London: Allen Lane, 1981), ch. 4, Avon, Facing the Dictators, chs. XII–XIV, Thorpe, Eden; ch. 7. For insights into the Italian position, see R. Mallett, ‘Fascist Foreign Policy and Official Italian Views of Anthony Eden in the 1930s’, Historical Journal, 43, 1 (2000). 33 Hankey to Inskip (to show to Chamberlain), 14 January, TNA CAB 63/53; Cabinets 19, 20 February 1938, TNA CAB 23/90A. 34 Chamberlain diary, 19 February, NC 2/24; Ciano’s Diary, 22 February; Lampson to Halifax, 7 March, Foreign Policy Committee, 24th meeting, 1 March 1938, TNA CAB 27/623.

Notes and References

227

35 Halifax to Perth, 24 March, TNA FO 800/310; Perth, Annual Report, 1938, IOR/ L/P&S/12/197. 36 Halifax to Perth, 4 March 1938, TNA WO 106/2031. 37 Lampson to Halifax, 12 April, Halifax to Perth (by telephone), 13 April 1938, TNA WO 106/2021; Perth, Annual Report, IOR/L/P&S/12/197. 38 Perth, Annual Report, IOR/L/P&S/12/197; Ciano’s Diary, 15 April 1938; G. Rendel, The Sword and the Olive. Recollection of Diplomacy and the Foreign Service (London: John Murray, 1957), ch. 13. 39 Perth to Halifax, Lampson to same, 5 April, Perth to Foreign Office (by telephone), 7 April 1938, TNA FO 371/21980. 40 MEC Lampson diary, 15 April; Lampson to Halifax, same day, TNA FO 371/ 21981; Ciano’s Diary, 16 April 1938. 41 Ciano’s Diary, 16 April 1938; Eden to Mann, 7 June 1938, BODL Ms.Eng c 3278. 42 Noel-Baker, The Rome Agreement. An Analysis, no date, CAC NBKR 4/406; G. B. Strang, ‘War and Peace: Mussolini’s Road to Munich’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 10, 2&3 (1999): 180. 43 LHCMA Pownall diary, 19 April 1938; interview with Brigadier J. S. Nichols, 11 August 1945, TNA CAB 106/832; Duff Cooper to Phipps, 20 April 1938, CAC PHPP 3. 44 Amery’s account in Perth to Halifax, 20 April 1938, TNA FO 800/310. 7 ‘Bloodless war’ 1 Morewood, ‘British Defence of Egypt’, pp. 341–50. 2 Ciano’s Diary, 20, 30 June 1938; Strang, ‘War and Peace’, p. 166. 3 Halifax to Chamberlain, 2 June 1938, TNA FO 800/318; Gort to GordonFinlayson, 12 September 1938, TNA WO 106/2032. 4 Chiefs of Staff, Appreciation of the Situation in the Event of War against Germany, 4 October 1938, TNA CAB 53/41. 5 MacDonald, Australian Cooperation in the Defence of Egypt, 24 September 1938, TNA CAB 24/278; Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, pp. 352–3. 6 Lampson to Halifax, 3 August 1938, TNA FO 371/21942; Liddell Hart, Some Outstanding Officers, May 1940, LHCMA LH 11/1940/41. 7 Gort to Gordon-Finlayson, 24 September, TNA WO 106/2032; MEC Lampson diary, 24 October 1938; K. Macksey, Armoured Crusader: Major-General Sir Percy Hobart (London: Hutchinson, 1967), p. 164. 8 Liddell Hart, Talk with Hobart, 17 January 1940, LHCMA LH 11/1940/5. 9 Gordon-Finlayson to War Office, 11 November 1938, TNA WO 106/21018A. 10 Hobart, The Mobile Division, Egypt: Training Report, May 1939, Lindsay Papers; G. L. Verney, The Desert Rats: The History of 7th Armoured Division, 1938–1945 (London: Hutchinson, 1954), prologue. 11 Admiralty telegrams, 31 August – 1 September 1938, TNA ADM 1/9542; CAC ACAD 1/7 Cadogan diary, 21 September 1938. 12 Admiralty minute, 24 September 1938, TNA ADM 116/3835; Viscount Norwich, Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954), p. 234. 13 45 Squadron History, TNA AIR 27/455; Air Ministry, Approximate Timings of Overseas Reinforcements, September 1938, TNA AIR 8/248. 14 See W. Murray, The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–9: The Path to Ruin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). 15 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 191–3; idem, Italian Navy, pp. 117–20. 16 Ironside to Ismay, 22 October 1938, TNA CAB 104/136; Jacob interview, IWM Department of Sound Archives; Pound to Chatfield, 24 August 1938, NMM CHT/4/10; Captain Roskill to author, 19 June 1981.

228

Notes and References

17 MEC Lampson diary, 29 September 1938; Dr Brian Sullivan to author, 14 August 1984. 18 Gort, Defence of Egypt, 2 November 1938, TNA CAB 51/41; HQ Cairo, Demolition Plan for Mersa Matruh, 6 January 1939, TNA WO 106/2046. 19 Major Mallaby, General Staff, minute, 21 February 1939, TNA WO 106/2018A. 20 L. Ceva, La Force Armate (Turin: Unione Tipografico Editrice Torinese, 1981), p. 250; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 39. 21 Pound, Situation in the Mediterranean, 1 October, TNA ADM 116/3900; Gordon-Finlayson to War Office, 24 December 1938, Army Council to GordonFinlayson, 19 January 1939, TNA CAB 53/45; Committee of Imperial Defence, 350th meeting, 9 March 1939, CAB 2/8. 22 Chiefs of Staff, Egyptian Defence Questions, 15 March 1939, TNA CAB 53/43. 23 LHCMA Pownall diary, 9 March; Neville to Ida Chamberlain, 2 April, NC 18/1/ 1092; Hankey to Chamberlain, 21 February, TNA CAB 21/584; CAC Hankey diary, 26 January 1939, HNKY 1/9. 24 Halifax to Perth, 26 October 1938, TNA FO 434/5. 25 Cabinet, 30 November, TNA CAB 23/95; Chiefs of Staff, Visit of British Ministers to Rome. Possible Discussion of Strategic Points, 23 December 1938, TNA FO 371/22418. 26 Foreign Office, Brief for Chamberlain and Halifax, 18 November 1938, TNA FO 371/21944. 27 Phipps (Paris) to Halifax, 21 December, TNA CAB 21/583; Cadogan minute on visit of Egyptian ambassador, 28 December 1938, Halifax to Lampson, 9 January 1939, TNA FO 371/21944. 28 LHCMA Pownall diary, 16 January 1939; Lord Butler letter, 23 May 1980; M. Muggeridge, ed., Ciano’s Diary, 1939–1943 (London: Heinemann, 1947), 12 January 1939. See also P. Stafford, ‘The Chamberlain–Halifax Visit to Rome: A Reappraisal’, English Historical Review, 98, 386 (1983). 29 E. M. Robertson, ‘Hitler’s Planning for War and the Response of the Great Powers (1938–Early 1939)’, in H. W. Koch, ed., Aspects of the Third Reich (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 214–15. 30 Hansard, HC, 333, 8 February, c.923, 334, 27 February 1939, cc.1043–50. 31 Ingram minute, 7 February 1939, TNA FO 371/23816. 32 Robertson, ‘Hitler’s Planning’, p. 232; telegrams to Dominions, 22 February, 8 March, TNA CAB 21/581; Ciano’s Diary, 19 February 1939. 33 MEC Lampson diary, 17 March, 1 April; New York Times, 1 April 1939. 34 Ciano’s Diary, 23 March; Chamberlain to Mussolini, 20 March, reply 31 March, DBFP, 3rd Series, III, nos.448, 596; Perth to Halifax, 27 March 1939, TNA FO 434/6. 35 Author interview with Jacob, 1 May 1984; Pound to Admiralty, 2 April, TNA ADM 1/9929; Hansard, HC, 346, 13 April 1939, c.31; LHCMA Pakenham-Walsh diary, 7 April 1939. 36 Neville to Hilda Chamberlain, 9 April, NC 18/1/1092; Cabinet, 10 April 1939, TNA CAB 23/98. 37 Admiralty to Pound, 14, 21 April 1939, TNA ADM 1/9929; D. C. Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1989), p. 212. 38 LHCMA Pownall diary, 10 April; Foreign Policy Committee, 36th meeting, 10 April 1939, TNA CAB 27/624. 39 Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, p. 405. 40 Mitchell to Newall, 14 April 1939, TNA AIR 23/755. 41 Lampson to Halifax 8, 18, 27 April, TNA FO 371/23328; 3 May 1939, TNA FO 371/23330. 42 LHCMA Pownall diary, 22 May 1939.

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43 Kelly minutes, 9, 11 May, Wilson-Young minute, 15 May 1939, TNA FO 371/ 23329. 44 Gordon-Finlayson to Gort, 17 May 1939, TNA WO 216/44. 45 LHCMA Pownall diary (original emphasis), 9 March, 22 May 1939. 46 Joint Planning Committee, Combined Plan for the Defence of Egypt, 1939, 13 March, TNA CAB 55/15; Strategic Appreciation Committee meeting, 21 April, TNA CAB 16/22, Committee of Imperial Defence, 2 May 1939, TNA CAB 2/8. 47 Newall, Proposals for the Increase in the Strength of the RAF Overseas, 3 March 1939, TNA FO 371/23908. 48 Plans 5, Note on the Possibility of an Italian Advance on Egypt assisted by Germany, 17 February, Slessor minutes, 20, 28 February 1939, TNA AIR 2/3581. 49 Anglo-French Conversations, 3rd meeting, 30 March, TNA CAB 29/160; Halifax to Lampson, 11 May 1939, TNA AIR 23/747. 50 See S. Raafat, ‘When Doctor Goebbels came to Town’, Egyptian Mail, 30 September 1995. 51 Mitchell to Newall, 29 April 1939, TNA FO 371/23342. 52 Watt, How War Came, p. 240; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 200–1; DBFP, 3rd Series, V, no. 570. 53 Phipps to Chamberlain, 14 July, TNA PREM 1/329. For the Phipps visit, see J. Herman, The Paris Embassy of Sir Eric Phipps. Anglo-French Relations and the Foreign Office, 1937–1939 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998), pp. 157–66. 54 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 203–4; Loraine to Halifax, 21 July, TNA FO 371/23786; 8 July 1939, TNA FO 800/319, 1 August 1939; MEC Waterfield II. 55 Anglo-French Conversations, 3rd meeting, 30 March 1939, TNA CAB 29/160. 56 French Delegation, General Appreciation of the Problem of an Offensive against Italy, 31 March 1939, TNA CAB 29/160; M. Thomas, ‘Plans and Problems of the Armee de l’air in the Defence of French North Africa before the Fall of France’, French History, 7, 4 (1993): 482–4. 57 Hollis to Newall, 20 July 1939, TNA CAB 21/1426. 58 Chiefs of Staff, Joint Franco-British Action in the Event of Germany adopting a Strictly Defensive Attitude in the West, 5 May 1939, TNA CAB 53/48. 59 French Delegation, The Consequences of the Possible Neutrality of Italy, 30 May 1939, TNA CAB 53/50. 60 Chiefs of Staff, Franco-British Staff Meetings at Rabat, 15 May, TNA CAB 29/ 160; Lelong to Cornwall-Jones, 2 August 1939; M. Thomas, ‘At the Heart of Things? French Imperial Defence Planning in the Late 1930s’, French Historical Studies, 21, 2 (1993): 348; Wigglesworth, Anglo-French Conversations at Algiers and Tunis, 24–28 May 1939, TNA AIR 9/116. 61 Foreign Policy Committee, 52nd meeting, 19 June 1939, TNA CAB 27/625; Committee of Imperial Defence, 360th meeting, 22 June 1939, TNA CAB 2/8. 62 Plans against Italy: Comments by First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, 19 July, TNA CAB 53/52; LHCMA Pownall diary, 24 July; Committee of Imperial Defence, 388th meeting, 24 July 1939, TNA CAB 2/9. 63 R. M. Salerno, Vital Crossroads. Mediterranean Origins of the Second World War, 1935–1940 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 138. 64 Meeting of Treasury officials, 10 May, TNA T 161/944/S44655; Committee of Imperial Defence, 356th meeting, 11 May 1939. F. H. Hinsley et al., British Intelligence in the Second World War: Volume I (London: HMSO, 1979), pp. 40–3; Admiral J. H. Godfrey, The Navy and Naval Intelligence 1939–1942: Afterthoughts, 18 July 1948, TNA ADM 223/619. 65 Naval Intelligence Division, Section 3, no date, TNA ADM 223/488; Hinsley, British Intelligence, I, ch. 6. 66 Mitchell to Lampson, 4 July, TNA FO 371/23334; Lampson to Ali Maher Pasha, 11 September 1939, Air Ministry to Admiralty, 8 September 1939, TNA WO 106/2140.

230

Notes and References

67 Report of Mediterranean Operational Intelligence Centre April 1939–February 1943, no date, TNA ADM 223/89. 68 Loraine, Final Report on Mission to Italy, 12 August 1940, TNA FO 1011/69. 8 The approach of war in the Mediterranean 1 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 204–6; memorandum by an official of the Foreign Ministry’s Secretariat, 12 August 1939, DGFP, VII, no. 43; Loraine, Report, TNA FO 1011/69. 2 Mallett, Italian Navy, pp. 158, 166; S. Morewood, ‘Anglo-Italian Rivalry in the Mediterranean and Middle East, 1935–1940’, in E. M. Robertson and R. Boyce, eds, Paths to War: New Essays on the Origins of the Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 190–1; Naval Operational Intelligence Centre Malta reports, 16–18 August, TNA ADM 223/89; War Office intelligence summary, 24 August 1939, TNA WO 106/2139. 3 The best studies are J. Connell, Wavell: Scholar and Soldier, volume I: To June 1941 (London: Collins, 1964) and H. E. Raugh, J. Wavell in the Middle East, 1939–1941: A Study in Generalship (London: Brassey’s, 1993). 4 Wavell to Gort, 14 August 1939, TNA WO 201/332. 5 Conference minutes, 23 August 1939, TNA WO 201/332; Lord Wilson, Eight Years Overseas 1939–1947 (London: Hutchinson, 1950), p. 23. 6 RAF dispositions, 28 August, TNA AIR 23/743; War Office, Note for Statement by CIGS on Army Preparations and Action at Outbreak of War, 1 September 1939, LHCMA Pownall Papers. 7 Stafford, P. ‘Italy in Anglo-French Strategy and Diplomacy, October 1938– September 1939’, University of Oxford D.Phil. 1984, p. 215, Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, p. 454; Salerno, Vital Crossroads, pp. 139–42. 8 Lamb, Mussolini and the British, pp. 260–1. Mussolini also used the term ‘armed peace’. 9 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 207–8; Liddell diary, 10 October, TNA KV 4/185; Grandi to Chamberlain (original emphasis), 1 September 1939, reply same day, NC 7/11/32/84–5. 10 Loraine to Halifax, 13 September 1939, TNA FO 371/23819; Stafford, ‘Italy in Anglo-French Strategy’, p. 277. 11 Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, p. 455. 12 Wavell to Gort, enclosing memorandum, 3 August, reply, 23 August, TNA WO 201/2119; Alexander, Republic in Danger, pp. 350–1; Ironside, British Strategy in the War, 7 September, TNA WO 193/134; Pound to Cunningham, 20 May 1940 in M. Simpson, ed., Cunningham Papers Volume I: The Mediterranean Fleet, 1939–1942 (Ashgate: Naval Records Society, 1999); Chiefs of Staff, Balkan Neutrality, 10 September 1939, TNA CAB 66/1. 13 For the background, see L. H. Curtright, ‘Great Britain, the Balkans and Turkey in the Autumn of 1939’, International History Review, X, 3 (1988). 14 Kolinsky, Britain’s War, pp. 109–17. 15 Mitchell to Portal, 2 April 1940, TNA AIR 23/760. 16 Raugh, Wavell, pp. 50–54. 17 Lampson to C. J. Norton, 21 March 1940, TNA FO 371/24610. 18 A. Longmore, From Sea to Sky: 1910–1945 (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946), p. 225. 19 Wavell to Gort, 2 September 1939, TNA WO 106/2119. 20 Cunningham to Pound, 28 September 1939, Cunningham Papers, ADD 52560; Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, p. 54. 21 Wavell to Wilson, 2 October 1939, TNA WO 169/1; Wavell to Ironside, 2 April 1940, TNA WO 169/8. 22 Pound to Cunningham, 7 January 1940, Cunningham Papers, ADD 52560.

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231

23 War Cabinets, 6, 13 October 1939, TNA WO 201/2096. 24 Wavell to Massey, 28 December 1939, TNA WO 201/2096. 25 LHCMA Pownall diary, 25 April, 5 May 1940. In June 1941 the base’s capacity was increased to 14 divisions and in March 1942 to 23. 26 Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, pp. 64–5. 27 P. H. Collier, ‘The Logistics of the North African Campaign 1940–1943’ (Trinity College, Oxford, D.Phil., 2001), pp. 15–16. 28 Middle East, no date, TNA WO 106/108. 29 Lampson to Foreign Office, 12 February 1940, TNA FO 371/24609. 30 Loraine to Halifax, 20 January 1940, MEC Waterfield II. For the economic negotiations and wider context, see R. Mallett, ‘The Anglo-Italian War Trade Negotiations, Contraband Control and the Failure to Appease Mussolini, 1939–1940’, Diplomacy & Statecraft, 8, 1 (1997). For the blockade, see W. N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade, Volume I (London: HMSO, 1952). 31 Mallett, Italian Navy, pp. 176–8. 32 Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 211–12; Loraine, Report, TNA FO 1011/69. 33 Anonymous Foreign Office historian, Relations with Italy (September 1939 – June 1940), TNA FO 1011/214. 34 Liddell diary, 3 February 1940, TNA KV 4/185; A. Raspin, The Italian War Economy 1940–1943 with particular Reference to Italian Relations with Germany (New York: Garland, 1986), pp. 164–5. 35 Liddell diary, 12 February, TNA KV 4/185; Loraine to Halifax, 14 March 1940, TNA FO 800/320. 36 Osborne (Vatican) to Halifax, 22 March, Halifax to Chatfield, 22 March 1940, TNA CAB 21/978. 37 Neville to Ida Chamberlain, 16 March 1940, NC 18/1/1147; Salermo, Vital Crossroads, pp. 184–5. 38 Charles minute, 23 April 1940, TNA CAB 21/978. 39 MEC Lampson diary, 25 April 1940; Relations with Italy, TNA FO 1011/214; Loraine, Report, TNA FO 1011/69. 40 Morton to Ismay, 11 April, reply 12 April 1940, TNA CAB 21/978; Salermo, Vital Crossroads, pp. 202–3. 41 Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, pp. 71–2; Norton to Lampson, 5 April 1940, TNA FO 371/24610. 42 Mitchell to Longmore, 18 April 1940, TNA AIR 23/760. 43 Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, p. 72. 44 Cunningham to Pound, 31 October 1939, Pound to Cunningham, 20 April 1940 in Simpson, ed., Cunningham Papers, I; D. Brown, introduction in C. Page, ed., The Royal Navy and the Mediterranean, Volume I: September 1939–October 1940 (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. xiii. 45 Cunningham to Admiral Darlan, 7 May, Vice Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake to Cunningham, 21 May 1940 in Simpson, ed., Cunningham Papers I; Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, p. 84. 46 Pound to Cunningham, 20 May 1940 in Simpson, ed., Cunningham Papers I. 47 Cunningham to Pound, 29 May, 9 June 1940, ibid. 48 Salerno, Vital Crossroads, p. 200; Liddell diary, 9 May, TNA KV 4/186; Ciano, Diary, 11 May 1940. 49 MEC Lampson diary, 1 May 1940. 50 Longmore to Air Ministry, 13 May 1940, TNA AIR 23/1336. 51 Wavell to Adam, 7 October 1939, Wavell to Dill, 28 April 1940, TNA WO 201/2119. 52 Halifax to Lampson, 6 June 1940, TNA FO 371/24601; War Cabinet, 1, 2 June 1940, TNA CAB 65/7. 53 M. J. Budden, ‘British Policy towards fascist Italy in the Early Stages of the Second World War’ (London University, Ph.D., 1999), pp. 272–6.

232

Notes and References

54 Wavell to Dill, 22 May, TNA WO 201/2119; Joint Intelligence Committee, Italian Situation, 24 May 1940, TNA CAB 81/97. 55 Loraine, Report, TNA FO 1011/69. 56 MEC Lampson diary, 30 May; Wavell to Major General D. P. Dickinson, General Officer Commanding East African Forces, 1 June, TNA WO 169/10; Liddell diary, entries 29, 30 May 1940, TNA KV 4/186. 57 Ciano, Diary, 29 May; Headquarters British Troops in Egypt, Operation Instructions No.6, 30 May 1940, TNA WO 201/152; Salermo, Vital Crossroads, p. 201, pp. 206–9. 58 Lampson to Cunningham, 1 June 1940, TNA FO 371/24630; various intelligence summaries, TNA ADM 223/89; War Cabinet, 8, 10 June 1940, TNA CAB 65/7. 59 Longmore to Corryton, 6 June 1940, TNA AIR 23/1336. 60 Joint Intelligence Committee, Imminence of Italy’s Entry into the War, 8 June, TNA WO 193/955; Liddell diary, 9 June, TNA KV 4/186; MEC Lampson diary, 10 June 1940. 61 MEC Lampson diary, 10 June 1940; Diary of RAF Operations in Western Desert from June 1940 to December 1942, TNA AIR 23/935. 62 Raugh, Wavell, p. 69; J. Winton, Cunningham (London: John Murray, 1998), pp. 79–80.

9 Implementing the Treaty of Friendship and Alliance: Anglo-Egyptian relations, 1937–1940 1 R. I. Campbell minute, 15 May 1937, AP Eg/37/2; P. Neville, Appeasing Hitler. The Diplomacy of Sir Nevile Henderson, 1937–39 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 20–26. 2 Nahas comments to Director General, European Department, 21 December 1935, TNA FO 371/20096; War Office to Marshall-Cornwall, 6 January 1937, TNA FO 371/20869. 3 Marshall-Cornwall, Quarterly Report on the Egyptian Army, 31 July 1937, TNA FO 371/20912. 4 Marshall-Cornwall to author, 26 March 1981. 5 Marshall-Cornwall, Quarterly Report, 26 April 1937, TNA FO 371/20909. 6 Lampson to Eden, 9 April 1937 and attendant minutes, ibid. 7 Haining to Oliphant, 1 May, Lampson to Eden, 18 May, War Office to Foreign Office, 12 June 1937, TNA FO 371/20909. See also J. Marshall-Cornwall, Wars and Rumours of Wars: A Memoir (London: Leo Cooper, 1984), ch. 10. 8 Kelly to Eden, 29 September, TNA WO 32/4436; Vansittart minute, 30 October 1937, TNA FO 371/20911. 9 Marshall-Cornwall to author, 10 November 1983. 10 Eden to Chamberlain, 3 November, TNA PREM 1/210; Avon, Facing the Dictators, pp. 493–4; Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, pp. 35–6. 11 Eden minute on talk with Nahas, 22 May 1937, AP Eg/37/3. 12 New York Times, 30 July 1937. Farouk failed the entrance exam, having expected to be primed with answers to questions, as in Cairo. 13 Author interview with Sir Edward Ford, 11 March 2000; Lampson to Vansittart, 5 March 1937, TNA FO 371/20883; A. Cooper, Cairo in the War 1939–1945 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1989), p. 25. 14 Lampson (his emphasis) to Eden, 29 November, TNA FO 371/20887. 15 Cabinet, 1 December 1937, TNA CAB 23/90A. 16 Lampson to Eden, 20 December, Campbell minute, 30 December 1937, TNA FO 371/20887; Eden to King George VI, 31 December 1937, AP 13/1/40 M.

Notes and References

233

17 MEC Lampson diary, 19 January; Pound to Chatfield, 22 January 1938, TNA FO 371/21936. 18 Egypt, Annual Report, 1938, IOR/L/P&S/12/171; MEC Lampson diary, 26 May 1938. 19 Kelly to service departments, 25 June, Joint Planning Committee, Egypt: Responsibility for Building Accommodation in the Canal Zone for British Troops, 7 July, TNA CAB 53/39; Cabinet, 27 July 1938, TNA CAB 23/94. 20 Chamberlain minute, 29 July, TNA PREM 1/275; Egypt, Annual Report, 1938, IOR/L/P&S/12/171; Halifax, Egypt, Cabinet Paper 89 (38), 11 August 1938, TNA CAB 24/278. 21 Halifax to Bateman, 20 September, replies, 25, 27 September, Lampson to same, 29 September 1938, TNA FO 371/22008. 22 Mahmoud to Chamberlain, 1 October, Halifax to Lampson, 3 October, ibid; MEC Lampson diary, 2 October; Cabinet, 19 October 1938, TNA CAB 23/96; Egypt, Annual Report, 1938, IOR/L/P&S/12/171. 23 War Office to Gordon-Finlayson, 13 October, Kelly, Cadogan minutes, 15, 17 October 1938, TNA FO 371/21943. 24 Halifax to Hore-Belisha, 20 October, reply 14 December 1938, Halifax minute, same day, TNA FO 371/21943. 25 Inskip, The Increase of Manufacturing Capacity, 19 December, Chiefs of Staff, Relative Strategic Importance of Countries Requiring Arms from the UK, 28 November 1938, TNA CAB 24/181. 26 Committee of Imperial Defence, 340th meeting, 1 December, TNA CAB 2/8; Halifax, Export Credits Legislation, 28 December 1938, TNA CAB 24/282; approved Cabinet, 18 January, TNA CAB 23/97; Export Credits Department to Foreign Office, 10 February 1939, TNA FO 371/23304. 27 Committee of Imperial Defence, 340th meeting, 1 December, CAB 2/8; Lampson to Halifax, 13 December 1938, TNA FO 371/21988; same to same, 16 January 1939, FO 371/23304; ‘The Treaty with Egypt’, The Times, 31 December 1938; Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office minutes, December 1938, TNA FO 371/21949. 28 Kolinsky, Britain’s War, p. 39; Delany, Lord Killearn, MEC Waterfield V; Grafftey-Smith, Bright Levant, pp. 230–31. 29 Lampson to Halifax, 23 December 1938, 5 January 1939, TNA FO 371/23304; MEC Lampson diary, 5 January 1939. 30 Lampson to Oliphant (original emphasis), 6 January 1939, TNA FO 371/23304; H. McLeave, The Last Pharaoh: The Ten Faces of Farouk (London: Michael Joseph, 1969), p. 114. 31 Lampson to Halifax, 22 February, 19 March, Sir Alexander Hardinge to Oliphant, 31 March, TNA FO 371/23304; Neville to Hilda Chamberlain, 2 April 1939, NC 18/1/1092. 32 War Office situation summary, 23 March, IOR/L/P&S/1/72; MEC Lampson diary, 8 March 1939. 33 War Office situation summaries, 11 January, 9 February, IOR/L/P&S/1/72; Lampson to Halifax, 17 March, Cadogan minute, 8 April 1939, TNA FO 371/ 23305. 34 Mahmoud to Chamberlain, 19 October, reply 26 October, TNA FO 371/21882; MEC Lampson diary, 1 November 1938. For the general background, see J. Jankowski, ‘Egyptian Responses to the Palestine Question in the Interwar Period’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 12, 1 (1980). 35 Diary entry, 7 February, in Rose, Blanche; Cabinet, 21 December, TNA CAB 23/ 95; MacDonald to Halifax, 14 December, reply 16 December 1938, TNA FO 800/ 321. Smart’s father-in-law owned the Muqattam, Egypt’s most pro-Palestine Arab newspaper.

234

Notes and References

36 Lampson to Halifax, 16 January, TNA FO 371/23320; Cabinet, 22 March 1939, TNA CAB 23/95. For the conference minutes see TNA FO 371/23223–30. See also Kolinsky, Britain’s War, chs. 4–5. 37 ‘Egyptians Fearful of Italian Power’, New York Times, 11 April; Intelligence Diary, Libya, TNA WO 106/2036; MEC Lampson diary, 18 April 1939. 38 Gordon-Finlayson to Gort, 17 May, TNA WO 216/44; Lampson to Halifax, 13 April 1939, TNA FO 371/23328; Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, p. 407. 39 MEC Lampson diary, 25 May 1939; Morewood, ‘Defence of Egypt’, p. 411. See also M. J. Cohen, ‘Appeasement in the Middle East: The British White Paper on Palestine, May 1939’, Historical Journal, 16, 3 (1973), and B. Morris, Righteous Victims. A History of the Zionist – Arab Conflict, 1881–1999 (London: John Murray, 1999), pp. 155–60. 40 MEC Lampson diary, 27 April; Lampson to Halifax, same day, TNA FO 371/ 23329, Lampson to Halifax, 19 April, Wilson-Young minute, 22 April 1939, TNA FO 371/23328. 41 Committee of Imperial Defence, 364th, 367th meetings, 6, 21 July, TNA CAB 2/9; Cabinet, 21 July 1939, TNA CAB 23/100. 42 Kingsley Wood, Egypt: Provision of Accommodation for RAF Units in the Canal Zone, 7 July 1939, TNA CAB 4/30; Wilson, Eight Years, p. 23; Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, p. 35. 43 Amin Osman Pasha to Kelly, 28 July, Sterndale-Bennett to Halifax, 4 August, TNA FO 371/23334; Allied Demands Committee, 4th meeting, 11 August 1939, TNA WO 106/2027. 44 Halifax, Provision of Accommodation, 26 July, CAB 4/30; Committee of Imperial Defence, 370th meeting, 27 July 1939, TNA CAB 2/9; Brown, introduction in Page, ed., The Royal Navy and the Mediterranean, I, pp. xiii–xiv. 45 Aster to Butler, 4 August 1939, Trinity College Butler Papers; Egypt, Annual Report, 1939, TNA FO 371/34632. 46 Cunningham to Doodles (wife), 21, 30 August, Cunningham Papers, BL ADD 52558; War Office Intelligence Summary, 17 August 1939, IOR/L/WS/1/69. 47 Kelly minute, 28 August, Halifax message, King George VI to King Farouk, 29 August, Lampson to Halifax, 1 September 1939, TNA FO 371/23306; Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, pp. 53–4. 48 Wilson, Eight Years, p. 23; Bateman to Halifax, 27 August, TNA FO 371/23335; Lampson to Halifax, 4 September 1939, TNA FO 371/23334. 49 Bateman to Halifax, 27 August, TNA FO 371/23335; MEC Lampson diary, 1–6 September 1939; M. Kolinsky, ‘Lampson and the Wartime Control of Egypt’, in M. J. Cohen and M. Kolinsky, eds, Demise of the British Empire in the Middle East. Britain’s Responses to Nationalist Movements 1943–55 (London: Frank Cass, 1998), pp. 98–9. 50 Halifax to Lampson, 2 September, TNA FO 371/23355; MEC Lampson diary, 4 September; Wavell to Ironside, 8 September 1939, TNA WO 201/2096. 51 Kelly minute, 23 September, Lampson to Halifax, 28 September, TNA FO 371/ 23336; Wavell to Ironside, 14 September 1939, TNA WO 206/2119; Lampson (original emphasis) to Halifax, 16 September, TNA FO 371/23335. 52 War Cabinet, 19 September 1939, TNA CAB 65/1. 53 Lampson to Halifax, 8, 9 September, replies same day, TNA FO 371/23368. 54 War Office Intelligence, 6–14 September 1939, TNA WO 208/2256. For the Saudi attitude, see D. Silverfarb, ‘Britain and Saudi Arabia on the Eve of the Second World War’, Middle Eastern Studies, 19, 4 (1973). 55 Halifax to Lampson, 3 January 1940, TNA FO 371/23822; MEC Lampson diary, 9 January 1940. État de siége was finally approved in early October against stern Wafdist opposition.

Notes and References

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56 Lampson to Halifax, 2 October 1939, TNA FO 407/223; Egypt, Annual Report, 1940, TNA FO 407/225; Kolinsky, Britain’s War, p. 125. 57 Thompson minute, 23 February 1940, TNA FO 371/24609. 58 T. H. Bewley (Treasury) to G. H. Thompson, 7 March 1940, TNA FO 371/24610. For the Treasury’s general attitude, see G. C. Peden, The Treasury and British Public Policy 1906–1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), ch. 6. 59 Lampson to Halifax, 15 February, Record of Conversation, 13 February 1940, TNA FO 371/24609. 60 MEC Lampson diary, 1, 5 April; Lampson to Eden, 30 April, AP 20/8/308. 61 C. J. Nichols to Lampson, 23 April 1940, TNA FO 371/24611; MEC Lampson diary, 4 May; Norton minute, 29 May, Halifax to Kingsley Wood, 30 May, Eden to Kingsley Wood, 3 June 1940, TNA FO 371/24611. 62 Halifax to Lampson, 6 June 1940, TNA CAB 21/1045. 63 Egypt, Annual Report 1940, TNA FO 407/255. 64 P. Mansfield, The British in Egypt (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971), p. 272; Delany, Lord Killearn, MEC Waterfield V. 65 MEC Lampson diary, 15, 18, 22, 25, 30 May 1940. 66 Longmore to Air Ministry, 2 June 1940, TNA AIR 23/1336. 67 Lampson to Oliphant, 4 October 1939, quoted in L. A. Morsy, ‘Britain’s Wartime Policy in Egypt, 1940–42’, Middle Eastern Studies, 25, 1 (1989): 88. 68 Lampson, Review of the Last Six Months, 8 October 1940, TNA FO 371/24627. 69 Lampson to Seymour, 31 May, Lampson to Halifax, 5 June, TNA FO 407/255; MEC, Lampson diary, 30 May 1940. 70 Cooper, Cairo, pp. 47–8. 71 Lampson to Halifax, 11 June 1940, TNA FO 407/225. 72 C. Tripp, ‘Ali Mahir Pasha and the Palace in Egyptian Politics 1936–1942: Seeking Mass Enthusiasm for Autocracy’ (London University, Ph.D., 1984), pp. 335–6. 73 Delany, Lord Killearn, MEC Waterfield V. 74 MEC Lampson diary, 12 June 1940. 75 Ibid., 13 June 1940. 76 Lampson to Halifax, 14 June 1940 within Lampson diary, same day. 77 MEC Lampson diary, 16, 17 June 1940. 78 Lampson to Halifax, 17 June 1940, TNA FO 407/225; Tripp, ‘Ali Mahir’, pp. 340–42. 79 Halifax to Lampson, 19, 20 June 1940, TNA FO 407/225. 80 Halifax to Lampson, 20 June 1930, TNA FO 407/225. 81 MEC Lampson diary, 20 June 1940. 82 Ibid., 21 June 1940. 83 Lampson to Halifax, 21 June 1940, TNA FO 407/225. 84 MEC Lampson diary, 22 June 1940. 85 Halifax to Lampson, 22 June 1940, TNA FO 407/225. 86 MEC Lampson diary, 23 June 1940. In 1941 and 1942 the cotton purchase was reduced to half because of the burden on the British taxpayer. 87 MEC Lampson diary, 24, 27 June 1940. 88 Ibid., 28 June 1940. 89 Kolinsky, ‘Lampson and the wartime’, pp. 100–101. 90 Wavell, Notes on Situation in Middle East for C-in-C, India, 10 July 1940, MEC WO 201/2118; Kolinsky, Britain’s War, pp. 130–1. The Egyptians at Mersa Matruh in fact resented being withdrawn. 10 The Suez Canal and the defence of the Far East, 1919–1940 1 Hankey, The Suez Canal, December 1938, TNA FO 800/318. 2 For example, Paul Haggie’s otherwise excellent Britannia at Bay: The Defence of

236

3

4 5

6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20

21

Notes and References

the British Empire against Japan, 1931–1941 (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1981) contains just two terse references to Suez; Pratt (East of Malta) devotes one line to the Suez Canal Defence Plan; Correlli Barnett’s highly regarded Engage the Enemy More Closely (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991) does not even mention it; Captain Stephen Roskill in Naval Policy Between the Wars: Volume II The Period of Reluctant Rearmament (London: Collins, 1981) did allude briefly to the plan, but only by way of an introduction to the Italo-Abyssinian Crisis and encouraged the author to explore the topic further. Similarly, Christopher Bell’s overview of interwar naval policy (The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy between the Wars) makes no mention of the Suez dimension. Quoted in Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Leonard Woolley, Mediterranean Strategy 1939–1943, TNA CAB 106/381; Hansard, HC, 233, 23 December 1929, c.2047. Britain did not own a majority shareholding but possessed the biggest tranche of equities, which gave her a significant interest in Suez. Admiralty, Empire Naval Policy and Co-operation, April 1923, TNA ADM 116/840. When Suez reopened in 1975 it was still only wide enough for single ships, meaning that convoys from north and south were synchronised to meet at a bypass. The Canal remains a one way channel to this day, notwithstanding the introduction of three bypasses in 1980. See R. Hough, The Fleet that had to Die (London: Severn House, 1958), pp. 71, 100, 105. See E. Goldstein and J. Maurer, eds, The Washington Conference, 1921–22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor (London: Frank Cass, 1994). Admiralty, British Naval Policy, February 1921, TNA ADM 1/8605/81. Deputy Chief of Naval Staff, Oil Fuel Reserves, 24 May 1921, TNA ADM 116/ 3102; War Memorandum (Eastern), 1932, TNA ADM 116/3118; Admiralty, Passage of the Fleet via the Cape, no date, TNA ADM 116/9530; 14. Admiralty, Fuelling Arrangements for Passage of Fleet to Far East 1934–1941, no date, TNA ADM 116/4444. Naval Staff memorandum, 2 July 1923, TNA ADM 116/3833. Admiralty, Strategical Review of the Naval Situation, 24 February 1922, Admiral Pound’s Comments on Redistribution, approved Admiralty Board, 22 March 1923, TNA ADM 116/3195. Naval Staff, Liability of the Suez Canal to Blocking Attack, 2 July 1923, TNA ADM 116/3833. Admiralty, Blocking of the Suez Canal, 13 March 1923, ibid. Naval Plans Division, Passage of the Fleet to the Far East, June 1925, TNA ADM 116/3123. By 1935 the draught was 35 feet. For a detailed analysis of the Main Fleet strategy, see A. Field, Royal Navy Strategy and Tactics in the Far East, 1919–1939 (London: Frank Cass, 2004). Haggie, Britannia at Bay, p. 46; Chamberlain to Hughes, 11 March 1938, document 133 in R. G. Neale, ed. DAFP, Volume I 1937–38 (Canberra: Government Publishing Service, 1975). Roskill, Naval Policy II, p. 235. Montgomery-Massingberd to Chatfield, 19 January, Ellington to Chatfield, same day, Admiral official to Ellington, c.January 1934, TNA ADM 116/3489. Chatfield, Defence of the Suez Canal against Blocking Attack, 14 April, revised 2 May 1934, TNA ADM 116/3489. Chatfield memorandum, 18 December 1934, TNA ADM 116/3489. Admiral J. H. Godfrey, Unpublished Memoirs, CAC GDFY; LieutenantCommander Simpson to Admiralty, 15 November 1934, Godfrey, Navy and Naval Intelligence, TNA ADM 223/619; Admiralty to Fisher, 22 May 1935, TNA ADM 116/3489. Notes by Captain Godfrey, 28 May, TNA ADM 116/3489; Chiefs of Staff, 145th

Notes and References

22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42

237

meeting, 4 October 1935, Admiralty to Fisher, 2 August 1935, TNA ADM 116/ 3489. For the background, see L. Pratt, ‘The Anglo-American Naval Conversations on the Far East of January 1938’, International Affairs, 47, 4 (1971); N. Clifford, ‘Britain, America and the Far East, 1937–1940: A Failure in Co-operation’, Journal of British Studies, III, 1 (1963); D. Reynolds, The Creation of the AngloAmerican Alliance, 1937–40: A Study in Competitive Co-operation (London: Europa, 1981), ch. 4. Record of Talks, 3 January 1938, TNA FO 371/22106; CAC ACAD 1/6 Cadogan diary, 20 December 1937. Record of Meeting between Admiralty, War Office and Foreign Office to ensure Canal not Blocked, 14 January, Phipps, Suez Canal: Passage of Fleet to the Far East, 12 January 1937 TNA FO 371/21987. MEC Lampson diary, 18, 19 January 1938. Pound to Chatfield, 7 February 1938, NMM CHT/4/10. Lampson to Eden, 21 January 1938, TNA FO 371/21987; Pound to Admiralty, 15 February, TNA ADM 116/3833. Minutes by Wilson-Young (24 January), Beckett (26th), Orde (27th, his emphasis) January 1938, TNA FO 371/21987. Lampson to Eden, 22 January, Cavendish-Bentinck minute, 25 January, reply 5 February 1938, TNA FO 371/21987. Record of meeting at Foreign Office, 28 January 1938, TNA ADM 116/3833. Pratt, ‘Anglo-American Naval Conversations’, p. 757. Chatfield and Chamberlain minutes, 11 January, TNA FO 371/22106; Chatfield to Inskip, 25 January, NMM CHT/4/10; Hankey to Inskip [to show Chamberlain], 14 January, TNA CAB 63/53; Chamberlain in Foreign Policy Committee, 19 January 1938, AP 20/6/29 A. Admiralty to Foreign Office, 29 June, 20 July 1938, TNA FO 371/21990. For the revised versions of 1937 and 1938, see TNA ADM 116/3657. Bonnet to Lord Cromer, 10 February, Admiralty minutes, 24, 25 February 1938, TNA ADM 116/3833. Malcolm to Campbell, 8 April, meeting in Paris, 29 April, correspondence May–November 1938, TNA ADM 116/3833. Pound to Naval Liaison Officer, Port Said, 30 April, FO 371/22345; Lampson to Halifax, 29 April, TNA FO 371/23329; Kennedy to Ismay, 17 June 1939, TNA CAB 21/3303; Playfair, Mediterannean and Middle East, I, p. 37. G. C. Fitzmaurice, Foreign Office Memorandum respecting the Proposal to Station a British Battle Squadron Permanently at Singapore, 27 January, Admiralty to Foreign Office, 29 March 1939, TNA ADM 1/9909. Cavendish-Bentinck, Probable Effect on British Position in Egypt if a Large Fleet is Sent to the Far East in the Event of War with Japan, 19 March, Danckwerts and Backhouse minutes, 22, 24 March 1939, TNA ADM 1/9909. A. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies. The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy: Strategic Illusions 1936–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 45–6. Chamberlain to Menzies, 20 March, TNA CAB 21/893; Stanhope minute, 17 March, TNA ADM 1/9831; Captain Packer, Review of the Strategic Situation in the Eastern Basin of the Mediterranean, 21 March, Godfrey minute, 3 April 1939, TNA ADM 1/9941. Phipps to Halifax, 9 April, DBFP, 3rd Series, V, number 103. French Delegation, Intervention on the Part of Japan, 25 April, TNA CAB 29/ 160; Chiefs of Staff, Covering Memorandum to the Chiefs of Staff European Appreciation, 1939–1940, 25 May 1939, TNA CAB 53/48; Committee of Imperial Defence, 355th meeting, 2 May 1939, TNA CAB 2/8.

238

Notes and References

43 CAC ACAD 1/8 Cadogan diary, 15 June 1939; Ball, Parliament and Politics, 25 June 1939. 44 CAC ACAD 1/8 Cadogan diary 16 June; Chiefs of Staff, Situation in the Far East, 18 June 1939, TNA CAB 53/52. 45 Foreign Policy Committee, 52nd meeting, 19 June 1939, TNA CAB 27/625 See also Cadogan and Harvey diaries, same day. 46 LHCMA Pownall diary, 19 June 1939. 47 Neville to Ida Chamberlain, 17 June, NC 18/1/1103; LSE Dalton diary, 28 June 1939. 48 Cabinet, 2 August 1939, TNA CAB 23/100. See also A. Shai, ‘Was There a Far Eastern Munich?’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9, 3 (1974). 49 Committee of Imperial Defence, 362nd meeting, 19 July, TNA CAB 2/9; meeting with Bruce, 11 July, TNA CAB 21/893; Chiefs of Staff, 309th meeting, 19 July, TNA CAB 53/11; Pound to Cunningham, 24 July, 1 August, Cunningham Papers, BL ADD 52560; Chiefs of Staff, Situation in the Far East, 28 July 1939, TNA CAB 53/52. 50 Halifax, Situation in the Far East, 21 August 1939, CP 178 (39), TNA CAB 24/288. 51 See I. Nish, Japanese Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period (Westport: Praeger, 2002), pp. 134–5. 52 Admiralty War Memorandum (Eastern), 4 August, TNA ADM 1/9767; Chiefs of Staff, Malaya. Period before Relief, 6 June, TNA CAB 53/50; Committee of Imperial Defence, 364th meeting, 6 July 1939, TNA CAB 2/9. 53 Halifax to Loraine, 1 September 1939, TNA ADM 1/9878. 54 H. Schonfield, The Suez Canal in World Affairs (London: Constable, 1952), p. 102; Admiralty to Mediterranean Command, 13 November 1939, TNA ADM 116/339. 55 British Consulate General, Addis Ababa to Foreign Publicity Directorate, 18 January 1940, enclosing a translated article from the Corriers dell’Impero, 21 December 1939, TNA FO 371/24599. 56 Senior British Naval Officer Suez to Cunningham, 5 June, Foreign Office to Sir Ronald Campbell (Paris), 10 June, Senior British Naval Officer Suez to Cunningham, 5 June, Foreign Office to Sir Ronald Campbell (Paris), 10 June 1940, TNA FO 371/24601. 57 Schonfield, The Suez Canal, p. 102; Admiralty to Mediterranean Command, 13 November 1939, TNA ADM 116/339; British Army in Egypt, Appreciation of the Situation so far as it Affects the Suez Canal, 26 April 1940, TNA WO 201/ 2085. 58 Air Staff Plans, Anti-Aircraft Defence of the Suez Canal Zone, 26 April; Pipon to Wilson, 13 November, reply 5 December 1940, TNA WO 201/2085; Brown, Introduction, Royal Navy and the Mediterranean, I, pp. xix, xxi. 59 Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, p. 298. 60 Aldrich, Intelligence and the War Against Japan: Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) p. 57. 61 Malcolm to Hotcham, 3 November, replying to a missive dated 28 October 1924 (destroyed at Hotcham’s request), TNA T 206/1; Admiralty memorandum, 3 February 1928, TNA ADM 116/2395. 62 Inchape to Bonnet, 6 November 1924, T 206/1; Malcolm to Foreign Office, 17 February 1928, TNA ADM 116/2395. 63 Movements Division, Naval Intelligence Centre, Foreign Mercantile Marine, no date, TNA ADM 223/286; Godfrey, Navy and Naval Intelligence, TNA ADM 223/619; J. Rusbridger and E. Nave, Betrayal at Pearl Harbour: How Churchill Lured Roosevelt into War (London: Michael O’Mara Books, 1991), p. 88; A. G ‘Alistair’ Denniston, ‘The Government Code and Cipher School Between the Wars’, Intelligence and National Security, I, 1 (1986), pp. 59–60.

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239

64 Maunsell, Security Intelligence, IWM 23/80/30/1. 65 Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, pp. 34–5, 40; Pound to Cunningham, 16 June 1940, in Simpson, ed. Cunningham Papers I; Sconfield, The Suez Canal, p. 109. 66 Ciano’s Diary, 14 November 1938; Knox, ‘Fascist Italy assesses its Enemies’, p. 368; Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, p. 190. 67 Vice-Admiral Weichold (German Admiral in Rome 1940–43), Axis Naval Policy and Operations in the Mediterranean 1939 to May 1943, May 1951, TNA ADM 199/2518. 68 J. W. Chapman, ed., The Price of Admiralty: The War Diary of the German Naval Attaché in Japan, 1939–43, 5 volumes (Brighton: University of Sussex, 1982–9) Volume I, p. 40; Lampson to Eden, 23 October 1940, TNA FO 371/24633. 69 BBC Television, ‘Timewatch’, 1 January 1986; Aldrich, Intelligence and the War against Japan, pp. 43–8. 70 Chapman, ed., Price of Admiralty II (1984), p. 334; Churchill to Hollis, 8 December 1940, TNA CAB 120/615. 71 These files are referred to in Foreign Office Lists (1940 and 1941) held at the TNA. 72 Chapman, ed., Price of Admiralty, II, p. 335; idem, Price of Admiralty, IV, p. xiii. 73 Taylor review of Haggie, Britannia at Bay, The Observer, 22 March 1981, p. 22. 11 Conclusion 1 Cunningham, Sailor’s Odyssey, p. 173. 2 See R. Mallett, ‘The Italian Naval High Command and the Mediterranean Crisis, January-October 1935’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 22, 4 (2000), especially pp. 82–91. 3 G. T. Waddington, ‘Hassgegner: German Views of Great Britain in the Later 1930s’, History, 81, 261 (1996), pp. 27–8; Conference held by Führer (Obersalzberg), 22 August 1939, in C. Burdick and H-A Jacobsen, eds, The Halder War Diary 1939–1942 (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1989). 4 Lampson to Eden, 18 February 1942, AP Eg/42/17. 5 Churchill minute to Eden and reply, both 6 June 1940, AP 20/8/2 & 11. 6 See Mallett, ‘Fascist Foreign Policy’. 7 Quoted in D. Dilks, ed., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan 1938–1945 (London: Cassell, 1971), p. 135. 8 Loraine, Dispatch on Mission, TNA FO 1011/69. 9 See W. Murray, ‘The Role of Italy in British Strategy, 1938–1939’, RUSI Journal, 134, 2 (1979): 43–4. 10 Loraine notes, 15 January 1942, TNA FO 1011/69. 11 Wavell to Gort, 19 August 1939, TNA WO 201/332; Arthur Smith, comments on official history, volume I, 24 September 1952, TNA CAB 140/123. 12 Thomas, ‘At the Heart of Things’, p. 340. 13 Ironside, Notes on the Strategic Situation, 16 September 1939, TNA WO 193/134. 14 Playfair, Mediterranean and Middle East, I, pp. 73–4. 15 Raspin, Italian War Economy, pp. 162–3. 16 Stafford, ‘Italy in Anglo-French Strategy’, p. 311. 17 Loraine, Report on Mission to Italy, 12 August 1940 (original emphasis), TNA FO 1011/69. 18 Ciano’s Diary, 2 April 1940. 19 Schrieber et al., Germany and the Second World War, III, pp. 11–12; Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins, pp. 216–20. 20 Ironside, Relations with Italy, 31 May 1940, TNA CAB 21/978. 21 Wavell to Delany, 19 March 1946, MEC Delany Papers.

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22 Lampson to Major-General Ruthven, 5 March 1936, cited in Morsy, ‘British Policy’, p. 198. 23 Kelly minute, 15 December 1939, TNA FO 371/23337. 24 Eden to Lampson, 24 October, within MEC Lampson diary, 30 October 1941.

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Index

Abyssinia: Italian military build-up to war against 28–30; Italian invasion of 42–3; conflicting agendas of British government over 44–6; heads towards defeat 75–6 Adam, Major-General Ronald 62 Aden 18, 21, 38, 54, 124 Admiralty: importance of Suez 14; orders Mediterranean Fleet to stand by for war 37–8; disdain for League 45; ultra caution over Italian threat 55–6; Suez defence 87; opposes ‘knockout blow’ 129 Ahmed Hassenei Pasha 178 Air Council: objection to ceding Jarabub 25 Air Ministry: role of Egypt 20–21; intelligence picture 71–2; priority to defence of Britain 148 Air Staff: strategic importance of Egypt 14; reinforcements to Egypt over Abyssinia 36; dismisses Italian threat 47; pro-Arab position 165–6 Air substitution 18, 20–1 Air threat to Egypt 35–7, 126–7 Albania, Italian invasion of 122 Alfieri, Dino 135 Alexandria 11, 13, 15, 40, 53–4, 56, 63, 88, 90–92, 94, 115–16, 127, 158–9, 161, 167, 196, 199, 201, 211 Ali, Prince Mohammed 35, 175 Allenby, General Sir Edmund 12, 15 Allied Demands Committee 167 Aloisi, Baron Pompeo 41, 82 Amery, Leo 83–4, 111 Anglo-Egyptian Conversations Committee 90 Anglo-Egyptian Coordination Committee 160

Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 1936 3, 88 Anglo-French staff talks 127–8, 194 Anglo-Italian Declaration (Gentleman’s Agreement) 101 Anglo-Italian Agreement: negotiations 108–9; assessment 109–11; Italy contravenes 113, 122; bringing into force 119; Egyptian view of 158 Anschluss 31, 33, 102, 107–8 Anti-aircraft position 1935 47–8, 59 Anti-Comintern Pact 107 Aosta, Duke of 103, 117, 144 Appeasement 2–5 Arab nationalism 12 Armoured Division 7th 138–9, 150 Army Council 46, 118 Asquith, Herbert 17 Aster, Bill 168 Attlee, Clement 63 Australia 1, 14, 21, 113, 139–40, 180–81 Automeden incident 203 Avenol, Joseph 37 Axis 1, 100, 103, 107, 123, 126–7, 129, 159, 168, 189, 208 Aziz-el-Masri Pasha 171 Backhouse, Admiral Sir Roger 115, 133, 193 Badoglio, Marshal Pietro 62, 78, 103, 116, 118, 147 Bagnold, Captain Ralph 34 Balbo, Air Marshal Italo 26, 33–4, 85, 124–5, 133, 135, 165 Baldwin, Stanley 3–4, 39, 46, 57, 61, 74, 80, 83, 91, 93 Balfour, Arthur 164 Balkans front 136–8 Bari, Radio 27–8, 35, 104, 109–10, 126 Barton, Sir Sidney 78–80

Index Bateman, Charles 159 Bastianini, Giuseppe 136 Beatty, Admiral of the Fleet Earl 14 Beckett, Walter 76, 96 Bey, Verucci 162 Bombs versus battleships controversy 70–71 Bonnet, Georges 121, 126 Bonnet, George Edgar 192 British Army, debate over role of the Field Force 101–2 British Broadcasting Corporation, Arabic broadcasts 104–5 British Empire 1, 3–4, 18, 38, 98, 106 British garrison in Egypt: size pre-1935 22; role 1935 57, 66–8; size 1936 93–4; size 1939 118–19; strengthening 1940 140 British Residency, Cairo 13, 16 Brooke-Popham, Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert 53, 56, 66, 71, 91–3, 95 Butler, Rab 168 Cadogan, Sir Alexander 107, 159–60, 164, 168, 195 Campbell, Ronald 47, 85, 157 Canada 57 Canal Zone 14, 87, 89–90, 94–5, 134, 158, 161–2, 167, 169, 188, 211 Cape of Good Hope route 70, 118, 129, 186 Cavagnari, Admiral Domenico 32, 115, 147, 210 Cavellero, General Ugo 117 Cavellero memorandum 126 Cecil, Lord Robert 45, 78 Chamberlain, Sir Austen 11, 25, 32, 63, 75 Chamberlain, Lady Ivy 107 Chamberlain, Neville: imperial mindset 4, 91; ‘Big Six’ and Abyssinia 37; attitude towards Abyssinia and the League 45, 82–3; Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 93–4; attitude towards Italy 99, 104–5; Munich 116; favours Mussolini 119; Rome visit 120; pledges support to France 120; Albania 122–3; efforts to assuage French 126–7, 163; view on ‘knockout blow’ 129; parliamentary question on Egypt 166; Far Eastern Crisis 1937–8 191; role of fleet 194; Tientsin 196 Chatfield, Admiral Sir Ernle: complacency over Italian threat 31;

269

naval build-up over Abyssinia 36–7; concern over potential losses in war with Italy 40, 46, 57, 62; evidence to Vulnerability of Capital Ships to Air Attack 70–71; Suez closure 77, 81; withdraws ships from Mediterranean 82; convinced right 84; AngloEgyptian Treaty 92; favours appeasement of Italy 99, 104–5, 107; reviews Italian threat 1937 105–6; endorses reinforcements for Egypt 1939 118; supports ‘knockout blow’ 128–9; favours guarantee to Greece 123; prospect of demilitarised Mediterranean 139; genesis of Suez Canal Defence Plan 186–8; confidence in 188; refrains from sending fleet 191; role of Mediterranean Fleet 194; attitude Tientsin 195–6; obsession 206. Chiefs of Staff: complacency towards emerging Italian threat 30–31; Abyssinia 44–8, 54–7, 58; Rhineland Crisis 70, 74–5; Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 87; appeasement of Italy 101; oppose ‘knockout blow’ 128–9; object to demilitarised Mediterranean 139; delay reinforcement for Egypt 145; assessment 207 Churchill, Winston: Secretary of State for War 14–15; Secretary of State for the Colonies 21; admiration for Mussolini 25; ‘bloodless war’ 121; condemns naval unpreparedness over Albania 122; belligerent attitude 135–6; resists appeasement of Italy 149; sending the fleet to Singapore 203–4 Ciano, Count Galeazzo 6, 104, 108–9, 112, 126, 132, 134–5, 141–2, 147, 150 Contraband control 141–2 Clark Kerr, Archibald 17 Committee of Imperial Defence 9, 30, 35–6, 118, 159, 161, 166–7 Corfu incident 25 Cranborne, Lord Bobbety 80, 100 Cunningham, Admiral Andrew Browne 133, 138–9, 146–7, 150, 152, 168, 196–7, 202, 205 Curzon, Lord 15 CV 35 tank 68–9, 116 Czechoslovakia 128 Daba 117–18 Daladier, Eduard 126–7, 134

270

Index

Dalton, Hugh 81 Darlan, Admiral François 134 Dawson, Geoffrey 84, 93 De Bono, Marshal Emelio 29–30, 77 Defence of Egypt: decision making process 8–9; origins 11–12; reinforcement over Abyssinia 38–40; development of infrastructure 139–41; overall significance 207 Defence Policy Requirements Committee 39–40, 46, 48, 59, 61–2 Delany, Gerald 162 Derby, Lord 12 Deverell, Field Marshal Sir Cyril 90–92, 102 Dill, Brigadier-General Sir John 59, 70, 88 Disraeli, Benjamin 180–81 Dominions 14, 90, 113, 115, 159, 161 Douhet, General Guilio 26, 30–31 Drummond, Sir Eric (later Lord Perth) 6, 31, 36–7, 41–42, 45, 61, 100, 106, 108–9 Duff Cooper, Alfred 59, 74, 94, 101, 110, 114–15 Dugdale, Blanche 164 Edelston, Captain John 190 Eden, Anthony: resignation 2, 107–8; absence from Stresa 32; Zeila proposal 36; Hoare-Laval 64; oil embargo 73–74; gas 79; Suez closure 80–81; Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 92–4, 96; opposes appeasement of Italy 100, 102–3; despairs over rearmament and Egypt 155–6; visit to Egypt 172; importance of Suez 181 Edward VIII, King 100 Egypt: strategic importance 1–2; 1923 constitution 15; role in imperial defence 18–23; attitude towards Abyssinian Crisis 87–88; fears Italy 34, 72, 84–5, 89, 159–60 Egyptian Air Force 86–7, 154, 161 Egyptian Army 22, 86, 96, 154, 161, 179 Egyptian Department of the Foreign Office: formation 8; attitude over Abyssinia 44–5, 47; worries over Mahmoud 157; opposes move of fleet to Far East 190–91, 193 El Alamein 2, 10, 117, 167 Eritrea 28, 36, 54, 69, 77 Export Credit Guarantee Department 161

European Department of the Ministry of the Interior 22 Eyres-Monsell, Admiral Sir Bolton 59, 61–2, 73, 79 Far East Combined Bureau 201 Farouk, King 7, 156–57, 162–3, 176–79 Fascist Grand Council 58, 122, 141, 202 February Declaration (1922) 15 First World War and Egypt 12–13 Fisher, Sir Warren 106 Fisher, Admiral Sir William: concern over growing Italian threat 30–31; offensive plans 54–6; intelligence blind spots 71; Suez 77; confidence in victory 83–4 Fleet Air Arm 54–5, 65, 147 Ford, Edward 156 Foreign Office: priorities 1926 3; attitude to Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 87, 96; prospects of restoring Italian friendship 100; position over the Sudeten Crisis 112–13 Foreign Office Arms Orders Committee 154–5 France: lukewarm attitude over Abyssinia 37; lack of military preparedness 60–61; for military action over the Rhineland 75; opposes Italian director on the Canal board 120; concern over Italian intentions 121; guarantees to Greece and Romania; Anglo-French staff talks 127–8; favours Balkan strategy 136–7; willingness to discuss terms with Italy 149 Franco, General Francisco 123 Fuad, King Ahmed 15–16, 27, 35, 87, 174 Fuller, General John ‘Boney’ 64 Gamelin, General Maurice 62, 134 Gayda, Virginio 144 George V, King 59 George VI, King 163, 169, 176 Ghini, Pellegrino 23 Godfrey, Captain J.H. 187, 201 Goering, Field Marshal Hermann 165 Gordon-Finlayson, Lieutenant-General Sir Robert ‘Copper’ 113–14, 117–19, 123–5, 159–60, 162–3, 165 Gort, Field Marshal Lord 102, 117–8, 124, 133, 138, 166 Graham, Ronald 25

Index Grandi, Count Dino 26, 32, 38–39, 63, 73–4, 127, 135, 144 Graves, Phillip 93 Graziani, Marshal Rodolfo 78, 204 Greece 25, 61, 65, 122, 155, 194, 196 Green Shirts 100, 107 Halder, General Franz 132 Halifax, Lord Edward: Abyssinia 48; succeeds Eden 110; sees Egyptian Minister of War 112; Sudeten Crisis 112–13; Rome visit 120; Albania 122; guarantees to Greece and Romania 123; French 127; favours appeasement of Italy 149, 171; agreement Mahmoud 158–59; supports strengthening Egyptian Army 160–61 Hankey, Sir Maurice: Abyssinia 44–5, 60, 64, 99; Army role 102; pro appeasement of Italy 103, 105–6; supports Lampson 119; Suez 180, 191; Tientsin 196 Henderson, Arthur 89 Henderson, Sir Nevile 17, 154 Heron, Force 118, 124, 166–7 Hitler, Adolf 26, 31, 33, 47, 98, 111, 120, 132–33, 135, 143, 151, 154, 163, 202–3, 206 Hoare, Sir Samuel: warning to Italy 38; reassures Mussolini over military sanctions 41; danger of public opinion 42; Geneva address 45; pressurised 47–8, 57; Paris talks 61; resignation 63–64 Hoare-Laval Pact 50, 59, 63–4, 69, 73, 206, 208 Hore-Belisha, Leslie 101, 129, 134, 155, 160–61, 170 House of Commons: endorses February declaration 15; air power 70–71; Suez closure 80–81; endorses AngloEgyptian treaty 95 Hussein Sirry Pasha 163 Imperial air routes 21 Imperial cable and wireless system 22 Ingersol, Captain Royal 188 Inskip Report 102 Inskip, Sir Thomas 91, 107 Intelligence, British: diplomatic 6; extent Italian military preparations in Libya 66, 69–71; improvements to 129–30; Italian intentions 1940 148–52

271

Industrial Intelligence Centre 99–100, 105 Inchape, Lord 201 Internal Security Scheme 22 Iraq 18, 20–21, 23, 115, 148, 161 Ironside, General Sir dmund ‘Tiny’ 116–7, 136, 139, 209 Ismay, Colonel Hastings 56 Italian community in Egypt 27, 56 Italo-Abyssinian Emergency 42–3, 70–71, 86, 98 Italian East Africa 98, 103, 117, 139, 151 Italian Legation, Egypt 23, 27, 34–5, 85, 175, 178 Italy, fascist: Mediterranean ambitions 1; builds threat in the Mediterranean 24–7; courts and cajoles Egypt 27–8; threatens Abyssinia 29–30; increased used of Suez 34–5; intensifies air threat 36–7, 40; reinforces Libya 40; offers non-aggression pact to Egypt 89–90; alleges British military preparations for ‘revenge’ 100; Anglo-Italian Declaration 101; Anglo-Italian Agreement 108–11; military position 1938–9 115–16, 118; Rome visit 119–20; Pact of Steel and aftermath 126–7; non-belligerence 135–6; uncertain position 141; lead up to war in the Mediterranean 142–5, 148–52; attitude over blocked Canal 202 Jacob, Major Ian 117, 122 Japan, Imperial 23, 42, 55, 60, 107, 115, 120, 188, 193–7, 200, 203–4 Jarabub 25 Jodl, General Alfred 203 Joint Intelligence Centre 134 Joint Intelligence Committee 91, 149 Kelly, David 160, 167, 170 Kennedy, Captain A.L. 33, 37 Kennedy, Brigadier John 127 Kennedy, Paul 2 Kondu, Vice-Admiral 203 Lampson, Sir Miles: personality 6–8; Abyssinia 32–3, 35, 47, 84–5; Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 88–89, 91–3, 95, 97; meeting with Neville Chamberlain 104; reinforcement campaigns 105–6, 118–9, 124; Anglo-Italian Agreement 108–9; drops into background 138; senses war

272

Index

imminent 144; presses for Hurricanes 148; praised by Nahas 153; favours Nahas 156; attitude to Farouk 156–57; opposes Mahmoud agreement 159; favours Arab cause over Palestine 164; reports Egyptian feeling war inevitable 166; relationship with Ali Maher 168–70, 171–7; urges more generous treatment of Egypt 172–73; Far Eastern crisis 189; assessment 206 Laval, Pierre 41, 60, 62–3, 74 Lausanne Conference 16 League of Nations: Egyptian membership issue 15; Corfu incident 25; admits Abyssinia 30; Abyssinia brings Wal Wal dispute to 31; departure of Nazi Germany and Japan from 42; declares Italy an aggressor 42; League Covenant 31, 45; cynical British attitude towards 45–6; Article XIV of the League Covenant 36, 65; Committee of Eighteen 74–5; Committee of Thirteen 79; Egyptian entry into 90–91, 94 League of Nations Union 36, 73, 75–6, 80 Lelong, General Albert 127–8 Lesseps, Ferdinand de 1 Lessona, Alessandro 32–3 Libya: merger of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica 33; threat to Egypt 1935 96; threat to Egypt 1937 103; reinforced during Sudeten Crisis 113; threat to Egypt 1939 121 Liddell Hart, Captain Sir Basil 59, 70–72, 113 Liddell, Guy 142–3, 150 Little, Vice-Admiral Sir Charles 187 Lloyd George, David 13, 15, 18, 57 Lloyd, Lord 17–18 Locarno, Treaty of 25, 65, 74–5 Longmore, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur 145, 147–8, 151 Loraine, Sir Percy 127, 134–35, 142–3, 149–50, 208–10 Lyttelton, Oliver 8 MacDonald, Malcolm 164 Macready, Lieutenant-General Norman 171 Maffey Report 31, 33, 47, 73 Maginot Line 1, 147 Maher, Ali 153, 157, 162, 168–71 Maher, Ahmed 179

Mahmoud, Mohammed 94, 109, 121, 157–68 Main Fleet to Singapore strategy 182–6 Malcolm, Sir Ian 187, 200–1 Mallett, Robert 32, 84, 116 Malta 31, 35, 37–8, 40, 63, 100–1, 127, 129, 146, 148, 151, 184, 208 Manzoni, General 69 Mareth Line 116, 127, 137 Marshall-Cornwall, Major-General James 154–5 Maund, Air Vice-Marshal 145 Maunsell, Brigadier R.J. 201 Maxwell, General Sir John 13 Mazzolini, Count 175, 178 McClaughty, Group Captain 66 Mediterranean Fleet: oil supplies to 23; courtesy visit to Tripoli 33–4; stood by for war 37–8; arrives Alexandria 1935 40; preparations for war 1935 53–5; Albania 122–3; readiness 1939–40 134, 139; build-up 1940 146–7; role 1920s 184 Men on the spot’s perspective 44, 54–7, 69–70, 119 Mersa Matruh 34, 50–51, 53, 83, 88–9, 110, 113, 117–18, 123, 133–4, 139–40, 162, 167 Middle East Command 20, 137 Middle East Intelligence Centre 130, 145 Middle East Reserve Brigade 118, 123–5, 165 Milne, Field Marshal Sir George 30 Milner Mission 13–15 Ministry of Economic Warfare 142 Mitchell, Air Marshal Sir William 124, 145 Mobile Division 113–14 Mobile Force 66, 68–9 Montgomery-Massingberd, Field Marshal Sir Archibald 45, 50, 56, 69–70, 90 Montreux Convention 100, 153 Munich Agreement 112, 115, 159–60 Murâd Said Ahmed Pasha 173 Murray, Professor Gilbert 73, 76 Mussolini, Benito: sees Italy as prisoner in the Mediterranean 5, 122, 144; ambitions 24–7, 32–3, 122–3; rejects Zeila proposal 36; threatens mad dog action 40, 58; concern over prospect of military sanctions 41–2, 58; Rhineland Crisis 74–5; proclaims victory in Abyssinia 82–3; proclaims empire and

Index visits Libya 98; plans to attack Egypt 103–4; Anglo-Italian Agreement 110–11; disdain for Loraine 127; promises to reinforce Libya 133; inclines to intervention 134; declares Italy a ‘non-belligerent’; frustration 140–45; enters war 150–51; Suez 202; British government assessments 207–8; last interview with Loraine 210 Muslim Brotherhood 157 Mustard gas, Italian use of 31, 45, 50, 72, 75, 77–80 Nahas Pasha 88–9, 90, 92, 94–5, 105, 153–4, 156, 177–8 Naval Intelligence Department 130 Naval Operational Intelligence Centre 130, 133 Naval Plans Division 77 Navarino, Port ‘X’ 37, 40, 56–7 Nazi Germany 2, 23, 31–2, 42, 60, 74–5, 107, 115, 119–21, 127–8, 131, 140, 142–3, 169 Nessim Pasha, Tewfik 87–8 New Zealand 140–1, 167, 180–81, 207 Norton, C.J. 173 Nyon Conference 104 Occupation of Egypt by Britain 11–12 O’Creagh, Major-General M.O.M. 139 Oil 22–3 Oil sanction 57–61, 69 Orde, Charles 190 Osman, Amin 160, 167 Oweinat Well incident 28 Ow-Wachendorf, Baron 161 Pact of Steel 126 Pakenham-Walsh, Major-General 122 Palestine troubles 92–3, 100, 104, 164–6 Panama Canal 191 Pariani, General Alberto: Italian potential to invade Egypt 1935 41; plans to attack Egypt 103; Sudeten Crisis 116; unrealistic plan 118; reassures Mussolini Army ready 133 Paris Peace Conference 12 Peace Ballot, League of Nations Union 36 Peterson, Maurice 28 Phillips, Captain Tom 189 Phipps, Sir Eric 60, 126, 194 Phoney War debate 208–11 Pipon, Vice-Admiral 199

273

Poland 128, 13–32, 169–70, 197 Pope, Lieutenant-General Vyvyan 69 Pound, Admiral Sir Dudley 104, 117–8, 123, 133, 139, 146–7, 158, 164, 189, 195–6, 205 Pownall, Lieutenant-General Sir Henry 8, 39, 59, 90, 110, 123–4, 196 Pratt, Lawrence 4–5, 191 Prestige, British 84, 98, 110, 126 Priestman, Brigadier J.H.T. 51 Qattara Depression 51 Quartararo, Rosario 54 Radar (radio direction finding) 130 Raeder, Grand Admiral Erich 202 Raikes, Rear-Admiral R.H.T. 95 Ramsay MacDonald, James 32, 37–8, 86 Red Sea 1, 22, 27–8, 33, 36, 54, 72, 105, 109, 118, 164, 199 Regia Aeronautica: formation 26; growing threat to British interests in the Mediterranean 30–31 Rendel, Sir George 109 Reserved Points 86 Reynaud, Paul 149 Rhineland Crisis 74–5, 82, 93, 207 Ribbentrop, Joachim von 132, 134, 206 Romania 123 Roosevelt, President Franklin 188, 191 Royal Air Force Middle East: Egypt’s importance to 14; air substitution 18–21; air routes 21; preparations 1935 50; role 1935–36 53, 56, 66; Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 95; attitude to defence of Suez 199–200 Russell, Sir Thomas 16, 96 Sabry, Hassan 178–9 Saadists 157 Salonika 136–7 Sarwat Pasha 15 Savoia Marchetti 81 36–7, 53, 56, 66, 70–72, 105, 206 Saudi Arabia 109, 171 Security Intelligence Middle East 6, 201 Senussi 26, 33–34, 40–41 Servizio Informazioni Militari 5–6, 117 Sidi Barrani 53, 56, 68, 114, 140 Sidky Pasha 161–2 Simon, Sir John 32, 83, 90 Simpson, Lieutenant-Commander 187 Singapore 6, 21, 139, 181–84 Sino-Japanese war 188–9

274

Index

Sirry, Husayn 179 Siwa Oasis 34, 50–51, 72 Slessor, Air Chief Marshal Sir John 126 Smart, Sir Walter 92–3, 108, 164 Smuts, Jan Christian 18 Sollum 25, 50, 69 South Africa 14, 113 Spain 109, 112, 119, 123 Stack, Sir Lee assassination 17, 25 Starace, Achille 135 Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb 36 Strategic Appreciation Committee 125 Stresa Conference 31–32, 44–5, 74–5 Sudan 4, 17, 28, 94–5, 103, 117, 137, 164 Sudeten Crisis 110, 112, 115–7 Suez Canal: importance 2, 12, 34–5, 180–1; possible closure to Italy 37, 41, 58, 76–81; Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations 90; possibility of an Italian director 119–20, 134, 151; 1888 Convention 12, 34–35; Anglo-Italian agreement negotiations 109; danger of blocking 184–85, 191–2; post Albania scare 192–93; control during Phoney War 197–8; Canal defence 1940–41 199–200; Japanese pilot 200–201; possibility of berthing a fleet in the Bitter Lakes 197–8 Suez Canal Brigade 34, 117, 192–3 Suez Canal Company 76, 79, 99, 119–20, 162, 186–7, 189, 192–3, 200–1 Suez Canal Defence Plan 77, 115, 186, 191–3, 197–200, 204 Suez route 11, 181–82 Suvich, Fulvio 57 Swinton, Lord (Phillip Cuncliffe-Lister) 61, 73, 105 Taylor, A.J.P. 204 Tétu, General Marcel 128 Thomas, Martin 209 Thompson, Geoffrey 32 Thorpe, D.R. 82 Tientsin Crisis 194–7 Tobruk 36, 57, 66, 105 Tombak Scheme 113, 169, 178–9 Treasury: Suez shares 11–12; attitude over Abyssinia 44; Treasury Emergency Expenditure Committee 9, 48, 50; Treasury Inter-Service Committee 9; Anglo-Egyptian Treaty 94; appeasement of Italy 99; Army role 102; approves Middle East Intelligence Centre 130; Egyptian

cotton crops and armaments issue 171–3 Trenchard, Air Marshal Sir Hugh 14, 18–22 Triple threat 46–7, 85, 107, 115, 203 Truforce 66 Tsana, Lake 33, 47, 90, 109–10 Tunisia 60, 62–3, 116, 121, 128, 135, 137 Turkey 61, 123, 136–7, 171, 194, 196 Uprising, Egyptian 1919 13 United States of America 12, 14, 48, 57–8, 107, 188, 191 Valle, Giuseppe, General 133 Vansittart, Sir Robert 32, 36, 38, 44, 48, 59–60, 63–64, 85, 92–3, 100, 114–5, 154 Victor Emmanuel, King 27, 122, 135 Wafd 13, 16–17, 86–87 Wal Wal incident 28–9 Ward-Price, George 39–40, 82–4 War Office: substitution 21; attitude over Italian threat from Libya 1935 41; refuses air protection Egyptian cities 47; reluctance to reinforce Egypt 56; Suez 77; mechanisation programme for Egypt 101; indifference to Egyptian arms 155; position over reinforcement of Egypt 166 Washington Naval Treaty 46 Wauchope, Sir Arthur 46 Wavell, General Sir Archibald 133, 136–40, 147–8, 174, 176, 178 Weir, Major-General Sir George ‘Rosey’ 35, 46, 69–70, 89, 95, 205, 110 Western Desert 34–5, 50–51, 89, 101–2, 108, 114,127–8, 134, 176 Wigram, Ralph 99 Wilson, Lieutenant-General Henry ‘Jumbo’ 125, 147, 170 Wilson, Field Marshal Sir Henry 14 Wilson, Horace 106 Wilson, President Woodrow 12–13 Wood, Sir Kingsley 167 Yamamoto, Admiral Isoroku 203 Yapp, malcolm 96 Yeghen Pasha, Adly 15 Yugoslavia 65, 136 Zaghlul Pasha, Sa’ad 13, 15–18, 86 Zog, King 122, 165