Chapter III: Part VII
Chapter III: The Lion’s Den
Part VII
July 9, 1936
It was a muggy day in the Eternal City as the Ju-52 bearing Benito Mussolini back from Africa touched down at Ciampino Airport. Under the shade of the terminal’s wide awning, Cristoph Scholl stood talking with Standartenführer Junge and several members of the Führer’s personal staff.
Mussolini’s transport before departure from Benghazi.
After two and a half months in Abyssinia, the Duce had at last been persuaded to return to Rome. Four days earlier, he had turned over Italian East Africa to the Marchese di Neghelli and flown over British-controlled Sudan with a massive fighter escort, landing at Benghazi in the afternoon to confer with his generals in Libya. Though GdEAO -- Army Group East Africa -- had made considerable gains, forcing the surrender of the last Anglo-French troops in British Somaliland on June thirtieth, the much smaller army in North Africa was now hard-pressed. Some 13,000 Italians, supplemented by 30,000 native Libyans, had ground to a halt in the Egyptian desert as British resistance stiffened. In Tunisia, large French and British forces were gradually pushing back the 15,000 Italians that had driven all the way to Kasserine in the first month of the campaign. Upon arriving in Benghazi, Mussolini had sent much of his entourage ahead to Italy and planned to spend another week exhorting his generals to retake the initiative.
Then, shattering news. In a night battle some 65 kilometers off Malta, a British naval squadron had inflicted a crushing defeat on a large Italian fleet. German intelligence had passed news of the battle to the Führer before word even reached Mussolini, who was incredulous when he learned of it from a German naval attaché. Hitler had demanded that the Duce return immediately, vowing to meet him in Rome on his arrival.
Now, the aircraft door was opening, and Mussolini’s aides were descending the stairs onto the runway. Two lines of soldiers had formed up on either side of the stairs, and a synchronized drill motion by all of them drew Scholl’s eyes to the doorway. The Duce’s unmistakeable silhouette had appeared.
Scholl was startled by a staccato ruffle followed by the blare of slightly out-of-tune brass as a band somewhere out of sight took up the
Marcia Reale. Mussolini was swaggering down the stairs now, but it was plain to Scholl that this was hardly the the triumphant conqueror’s return that the Duce surely believed it to be.
“Strange,” he said, turning to Standartenführer Junge, “that there are not more soldiers to greet him.”
“There are more,” the SS officer said, eyeing the two lines of men between which Mussolini was passing. “He is planning on attending a large review in an hour.”
“But --”
“That is correct. The Führer insists on seeing him immediately, so the review will have to wait.”
“Does Mussolini know that he is here?”
“I do not believe so.”
Twenty minutes later, Junge led a put-off Mussolini and his retinue into the foyer of German-owned mansion not far from the airport. Hitler appeared at the foot of the stairs and greeted the Duce stiffly. The Fascist dictator turned roughly toward his followers and spat out a rapid-fire list of names. Most of them edged out of the room.
Hitler crossed to an open doorway leading to a large drawing room. “Duce, please. This way.”
Mussolini nodded, beckoning to a translator and one of his secretaries. Scholl began to follow them, but the Führer stopped him with a raised hand.
“Scholl, if you’ll excuse us. And,” Hitler added, pointing to Mussolini’s secretary, “him as well.” Dutifully, the secretary paced out of the room.
The two great dictators and their translator slipped into the drawing room and closed the door with a crash that resounded from the marble of the foyer.
Scholl looked behind himself to see the a lone figure -- a balding, reedy man in a civilian suit standing apprehensively by the staircase. He had come in with the Duce but seemed not to have been dismissed by name. He looked like a German.
Scholl extended his hand partway. “Are you one of the diplomats?”
“Yes. Apologies. Carl Feldt.” They shook hands.
“Cristoph Scholl. I’m pleased.”
The two men made their way to a long couch under a window on one side of the foyer.
A belligerent voice swelled up from behind the drawing room doors. Scholl recognized it as Hitler’s. He was desperately angry over the situation in the Mediterranean, and from what Scholl understood, with good reason.
The recent reverses in Africa particularly incensed the Führer because he saw them as entirely avoidable. While the Duce had concentrated 110,000 men in Abyssinia -- which was now cut off and of very limited relevance to the wider war -- he had deployed the equivalent of just five divisions to all of Italian Libya, which the Grand General Staff considered of far greater strategic importance. Worse, a quarter of a million men had been sitting idly along the French border since Italy entered the war -- catering to King Victor Emmanuel III’s driving fear that France would somehow drive out the Germans and then sweep down the Boot of Italy. Mussolini, technically only Prime Minister, had for two long months enabled this wastefulness of forces in order to appease the king.
With secret preparations for Operation Löwengrube underway, the Grand General Staff had pressured Hitler to incite the Italians to a change in strategy. “If Libya is lost,” Bayerlein wrote to Hitler at the beginning of July, “so many British and French units would be diverted to the Northern Theater (Britain especially) as to make an invasion impracticable.” The entire operation now depended on maintaining an escalation of the war in the Mediterranean, and that upon the deployment of the bulk of the Regio Esercito to North Africa.
Mussolini had to be convinced -- even if that meant missing his own triumphal review.
“You are a member of the Füher’s staff then, Herr Scholl?” Feldt was eyeing him inquisitively.
Scholl glanced upward. “Yes. I am his Military Adjutant. You accompanied the Duce in Africa?”
“I heard that he did not learn of the action off Malta until he was told by one of the Germans with him. That wasn’t you, was it?”
A strange expression set on Feldt’s face.
“What?”
“I was at the battle myself.”
“I thought you said you were with the Duce...”
“I was. We flew to Libya together. And then he sent home most of the entourage, sending us on to Italy, mostly by ship.” And then, it was as if a dam broke, and the diplomat began recounting the experience in a single rush. “I set sail on the morning of July sixth aboard the
Giulio Cesare, bound for Italy. Foreign Minister von Neurath had urged me to report back on the condition of the Regia Marina -- the Italian navy -- and gauge the readiness and morale of the officers and men. And so we set out -- I aboard the battleship
Giulio Cesare, with the light cruiser
Libia and the destroyers
Tigre and
Pantera forming the rest of our squadron, which was called 3a Squadra. I toured the ship, and was generally impressed with everything. The ship was just returning from being rushed into service after a complete modernization and overhaul program, so it was freshly painted and in good order. I was below decks around ten in the morning, being shown around the engine rooms when alarms were sounded for General Quarters. By the time I made it up to near the bridge, the ship had increased to maximum speed. Two British battleships had been sighted -- HMS
Barham and HMS
Valiant, though the latter was learned after the battle to have been the HMS
Queen Elizabeth. With them were HMS
Exeter and HMS
York, the two-funneled cruisers, as well as two other three-funneled County class cruisers. I spoke to the first officer, who said that although the British cruisers were fast enough to catch us, they would not risk leaving the battleships behind to fight us, so would probably just try to shadow us. The British surely knew this too, and opened fire on us before we could slip away. Not long afterward, the
Libia was hit by a 15 inch shell which opened a fissure along its hull, and it sank very quickly under a hail of smaller shells from the cruisers.”
RN Giulio Cesare
, before sailing from Benghazi.
“So then it was just the battleship and two destroyers?”
“Yes. I was watching the sinking
Libia with binoculars when everything went white -- I lowered the glasses to see the whole rear section of the
Giulio Cesare bathed in frothy water. Soon, the Italians were shouting through their telephones and I learned that it had been a near miss but would lower our speed slightly. This would negate our slight speed advantage over the British and allow them to maintain distance.”
“How unlucky.”
“That is what we all said. So for hours, we sped north at maximum speed while the British units trailed us just inside the horizon. By late afternoon, the cruisers seemed to be gaining on us. The
Giulio Cesare readied its rear gun turrets and at one point fired a ranging shot to scare off the cruisers, but they kept creeping closer to us. You must remember, Herr Scholl, that this was unfolding over hundreds of kilometers of ocean -- a chase of stamina, if you understand.”
“Yes.”
“Around four twenty, we saw a dark gray column of water erupt just behind the
Tigre. The destroyer was dead in the water and immediately dropped far behind us. Naturally we could not turn to assist in any way. The destroyer was very distant by the time we saw it finally sunk by the British cruisers.”
“Were the battleship guns firing as well at this point?”
“Whose?”
“The British.”
“No, but they soon began to do so. Their 15 inch guns threw up giant fountains of water behind us, growing closer and closer as the British gained on us. At this point, I could see the Italian officers getting nervous. Then, suddenly, I was thrown against the far wall -- I was watching from an observation tower -- and I remember the ship swaying, but no sound -- and I got up and looked and there was a neat hole through the deck far below and I could see fire within.”
A crazed bellow from the drawing room cut him interrupted his narrative.
Scholl stilled his breathing to try to make out the words. Hitler was shouting again and again: “Before it is too late!” Then something quieter that ended in “vain confidence.” The sounds from behind the doors subsided.
“Sorry, Herr Feldt. Were they able to put out the fires?”
“Yes, and quickly. It was not much later that the officers began to cheer. I asked them what was the cause of the cheering, and they pointed to the northeastern horizon. I saw only a little bit of smoke, but they told me that it was the 5a Squadra there to turn the battle for them. They would rendezvous and at last have the force to destroy the British. They got on the radio and told me that it was three battleships, five cruisers and seven destroyers. I did not know what exactly such a force was capable of, but evidently the Italians were very confident, for they celebrated greatly. As sunset neared, we had joined the larger fleet, and the four battleships formed a line and began firing in the direction of the British at very long range.”
RN Giulio Cesare
fires on the HMS Queen Elizabeth
, around 17:30.
RN Giulio Cesare
, photographed from the RN Conte di Cavour
early in the battle.
“Were the British hit?”
“I do not think so. After some time, British shells began to fall all around us, though, and after only a few minutes, one of them hit one of the Italian cruisers, the
Trento, which was said to be poorly armored. Black smoke rose from it and it was on fire. Then the color of the smoke changed, and there was bright fire visible. One of the officers was just telling me that that meant a magazine fire when a terrible explosion happened. It tore off most of the ship’s upper works -- I remember seeing a large part of the funnel flying through the air, with red-hot debris raining down on the
Guilio Cesare -- and obscured the whole ship with smoke and fire. The
Trento drifted away from the battle line and one of the British cruisers hit it again and it sunk quickly, before the destroyers could do anything.”
The RN Trento
, an imposing but vulnerable heavy cruiser which spent the early part of the war preying on Allied shipping.
“How terrible!”
“Yes.” Feldt paused to collect his thoughts. “Anyway, the sun had just set, and it soon became dark, so the fleet commander, de Courten, decided to stop the attack. And so, we withdrew for awhile and the destroyers rescued as many survivors as they could. The British were still there, the men in the gunnery tops said, waiting at 25,000 meters distance. There was no firing on either side then from about seven thirty to eight forty. The British were pressing the attack in the dark, which the Italian officers thought was very foolish, considering our numerical advantage -- four battleships to just two. Nonetheless, the sky was soon bright with flares. And then, we were very surprised to see a shell hit the
Andrea Doria, which was de Courten’s flagship. The range was over 20,000 meters, which was most unusual, I was told. So the Italians started firing back, but their guns could not hit the British, because they were staying just out of our range. Some time later, after many more salvos on both sides, the
Andrea Doria was hit by two shells at once. The ship could now be seen without the flares, because fires sprang from below deck.”
HMS Queen Elizabeth
(right) and other units from Force G. Photographed from unknown Italian destroyer around 19:25, shortly before dark.
Shouting had crescendoed again from the drawing room. Three voices could now be heard -- Hitler, Mussolini and the translator seemed to be in the midst of an epic row.
“By God,” Feldt said. “Mussolini is telling him to shut up or he’ll -- he -- now he’s shouting something about the French -- the French battleships. He says that we are still ahead.”
Scholl bit his lip. Evidently the Duce was trying to salve Hitler’s fury by citing his navy’s victory over France two weeks earlier at the Battle of the Ligurian Sea, in which
Andrea Doria and
Caio Duilio had caught the slow old French battleships
Lorraine and
Provence off Corsica and damaged both badly enough that they had to be scuttled the same day. By a strict count of battleships, Mussolini may have had a point, but that neglected two facts. First, that French losses represented two out of seven battleships, while the Italians had lost one out of four, with the remaining three out of action for an unknown number of months -- and second, that while all but a hundred French sailors survived, Italian losses off Malta ran into the thousands.
RN Andrea Doria
and RN Caio Duilio
, just before the Battle of the Ligurian Sea. June 23, 1936.
“Were you able to inflict any hits on the British?” Scholl asked.
Feldt nodded. “Soon after, the
Conte di Cavour -- the battleship last in the line -- was seen to have scored a hit on the
Queen Elizabeth. Another salvo hit one of the British cruisers less than a minute later. This encouraged the Italians, because it meant that the fleet had closed some of the gap with the British. There was perhaps half an hour when no further hits occurred, until just before ten.
Andrea Doria took another hit from the
Queen Elizabeth and soon its fires had become serious. At this time, I spoke to
Ammeraglio di Squadra Bergamini -- commander of 3a Squadra -- who said that it showed the excellence of the British fire control that they were concentrating their fire on the
Andrea Doria as the lead ship in the line and had hit it four times at night at such great range.
“Minutes later, the
Caio Duilio, which was second in line, between
Andrea Doria and
Giulio Cesare, was hit twice in a row -- probably by the
Barham. And then, the
Andrea Doria was hit a further two times as I recall. It seemed in this time that the Italian gunnery had not been successful at all. Soon the burning flagship was visibly low in the water, but kept firing.”
“The
Giulio Cesare had not taken any further hits during this time?”
“No, luckily. But around ten thirty each of the other three battleships sustained hits, and if I recall correctly at least one of the Italian cruisers did as well. I heard afterward that a second hit was scored on
Queen Elizabeth during this time, but I do not remember hearing about it at that time. Finally, the
Andrea Doria took a hit that sent fire mushrooming up from behind its fore-funnel. A second later fire also shot out of the side of the hull near the waterline. The Italians were very distressed to see this, evidently believing this a mortal wound. Fires were now burning across the whole length of the ship, but it kept firing. At a quarter to eleven, one of the destroyers,
Luca Tarigo, came alongside to try to assist the
Andrea Doria. They started to offload some of the injured, and men from the destroyer came aboard to try to control the fires. Then there was a series of very low thuds.
Bumm, bumm, bumm.”
“What were they?”
“I do not know. But they were very low, and I could feel the vibrations in my lungs. We looked up, and fire was venting from the side of the hull facing away from us. Then another series of explosions, and debris was scattered everywhere, which damaged the destroyer trying to assist. One turret continued to fire, which was astonishing. But in the confusion and smoke one of the British cruisers -- I think the
Exeter -- approached closer to the battle line and managed to hit the burning battleship before it was itself hit by
Giulio Cesare and retired.”
View out a hole in the hull of HMS Exeter
caused by a shell from RM Giulio Cesare.
Photo taken during repairs at Malta, July 8. Through the hole, HMS Valiant
can be seen in the background.
HMS Exeter
at Malta, July 8. Shell damage to her bow clearly visible. From some parts of Malta, distant flashes of gunfire could be seen through the night of the battle.
“Evidently the cruiser’s hit had been damaging, though, because after this we heard no more firing from
Andrea Doria.”
“Were there still men aboard her?”
“Yes. But at least a small number were rescued by the destroyer. With the
Andrea Doria out of action, the heaviest British fire concentrated on the
Caio Duilio, which had to slow down to steer around the blazing flagship. Meanwhile, we and the
Conte di Cavour dueled with two of the British cruisers.”
“So was the Italian commander still aboard
Andrea Doria?”
“Oh, no. Though at the time, I did not know what was going on, I learned later that he had been badly burned and was taken off onto the
Luca Tarigo before the explosions. But we did not know that when we saw more detonations around eleven forty-five. The ship was now an indescribable inferno just to our left and behind us. We were closer, and could see through some of the pall of smoke -- one could still see the silhouettes of sailors in the blazing wreckage of the superstructure. After this latest series of explosions, the ship began to slip lower and lower in the water -- but did not list or go down to one side or the other first. It just slipped lower and lower in the water until the decks were awash. By midnight, it had slipped from sight entirely, leaving just some flotsam and a burning oil slick. Soon after, de Courten was taken aboard
Giulio Cesare for treatment of his injuries. Bergamini then assumed command of the whole Italian fleet and ordered all the ships to break off the attack, and to disengage.”
“And they did?”
“Yes. They disengaged and tried to conduct damage control and rescue survivors. The whole line had been battered. We and the
Conte di Cavour had both taken serious damage -- including a below-deck fire that ripped through the forward portion of the
‘Cesare -- and under the concentrated gunnery of all but two of the British units the
Caio Duilio was battered terribly. Great holes had been torn through the ship’s hull and superstructure -- large enough to be seen through binoculars from where I was standing. It had stopped firing, and some fires were visible, but mainly just smoke. Nothing like the inferno of
Andrea Doria. Bergamini knew that the British would try to take advantage of the confusion in the Italian line, so he ordered the destroyers to make a torpedo attack. At two thirty, the eight surviving destroyers began their attack.
Pantera, the destroyer that had accompanied us from Benghazi, was the first to be sunk on the approach. The British were able to sink four more before the surviving destroyers turned back. They had not managed to inflict any torpedo hits, and by four the attack was ended.”
“It would have been getting light by then, yes?”
“Yes. Dawn was at four thirty, and just as the sun was rising behind us the British reengaged, knowing that the rising sun would silhouette us for their guns -- for by that point they were directly to the west of us.”
“Did they inflict any more damage?”
“Not immediately. Bergamini ordered a withdrawal, and the ships all made smoke to make British gunnery more difficult. Nonetheless, one of the light cruisers,
Armando Diaz, was hit several times and sank. Both of the remaining heavy cruisers,
Trieste and
San Giorgio, were damaged during the withdrawal.
Caio Duilio, little more than a blasted hulk, was hit again as it was being towed by the destroyers, but did not sink. Everyone was sure that we would be overtaken again sometime in the morning and destroyed. Amazingly, the British turned back just before six, and we managed to limp back to Benghazi with the help of Italian airplanes. From there I flew back to Italy with the Duce.”
Newly-promoted Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, in command of Force G during the action, was featured in Time
magazine as the hero of the Battle of Sirte, as the July 6-7 engagement off Malta was known to the Allies.
Scholl sat silently for a time. “Do you believe the numbers the British published?”
“The Italians do, and that is perhaps most telling of all. The report Mussolini was given said one battleship destroyed, one battleship crippled, two battleships badly damaged, one heavy cruiser sunk, two heavy cruisers damaged, two light cruisers sunk, six destroyers sunk and one destroyer damaged. Perhaps 4,150 dead or presumed dead. In return, one British battleship lightly damaged and two heavy cruisers damaged. A total of 90 casualties, which is taken from the enemy’s own accounts.”
In the days after the battle, British destroyers risked enemy submarines to pull Italian survivors from the water.
The drawing room doors were thrown open. Scholl half expected to see one of the two dictators fleeing for his life, but instead Hitler and Mussolini emerged arm-in-arm, both beaming. That could only mean one thing -- that a quarter of a million Italians would soon be bound for North Africa. As sore a blow as the battle had been, perhaps, Scholl thought, it had spurred the Duce to finally see sense. Maybe good would come from the very heart of Italy’s misfortune.