The Year of Strategic Crisis
Part 15: Enemy Countermoves, October 6 – November 10, 1941
This period of one month in mid-Autumn saw the lashing out of the Grand Alliance—that is to say, of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union—at the Axis powers in Europe. The Western Allies, the bulk of whose might resided in the military and remaining free naval power of Great Britain, began assaults on Europe in an attempt to create a meaningful front on which they could face significant Axis forces. As the situation stood, their strength was simply being sapped away in secondary, far away fronts, mostly by the Italian marines. This was, however, a direct repudiation of Liddell Hart’s teachings of the indirect approach and the so-called British way of warfare. British policymakers must have realized that the indirect approach pandered to Italian rather than British strategic prerogatives.
The British thus began this new strategic policy with an assault on Hispania on October 6. A heavy British division, its make-up unknown but apparently largely motorized, was flung up against the defenses erected by Major General Silvestri’s infantry division at La Coruña. The Royal Navy still predominated outside the Mediterranean, Black and Red Seas—Lisi and Da Zara were just at this moment fighting for the conquest of the port of Aden by which they hoped to safeguard the latter sea—which meant that they were free to concentrate in time, on a much greater scale than the Italians had done in Greece. Whether pursuing this course of action would truly benefit them remained to be seen. In the event, the British proved exceedingly stubborn at La Coruña. They only gave up the assault sixteen days later, having suffered grievous casualties for absolutely no gain. Silvestri handily defeated the landing attempt, suffering a mere five casualties and inflicted twelve-hundred upon the British. This hybrid of the direct and indirect approach, due to being a direct assault upon what they saw as a more subsidiary theater of war, was a disaster for them.
The British assault on La Coruña on October 6.
By early November, meanwhile, the Soviets had closed up to Pintor’s front in Anatolia. They had advanced slowly, but surely in the face of no resistance up to that point and had managed logistics sufficiently to outnumber Gambara’s corps by nearly two-to-one in the north in divisions, which likely meant an advantage of twenty-one brigades to eight. In these latter terms, the advantage was even starker, and the Soviets nearly had enough to launch an assault upon the entire line. What they did, in fact, was punish Frattini’s division, whose division was exposed at the southern reaches of Gambara’s line where it linked up with Roatta’s corps. Frattini’s division occupied the bottom of a sort of balcony, and could be hit from three different directions at once. This is what the Soviets indeed did, throwing three divisions—nine brigades—against Frattini’s one division of two brigades. Italian counterattacks against Soviet bases could not redress the balance.
The Soviets attacking Frattini’s division at Refahlye.
Within twenty-four hours, Frattini’s forces had been broken and were withdrawing westward to Kaynar. The bottom of the balcony had been broken. With Frattini now further back, Caracciolo di Feroleto’s division was the new bottom of the balcony and could also be assaulted from three different axes. The Soviet strategy seemed obvious. They were not going for a logistically intensive deep operation, not yet at least. Instead, their progress would, if they were continuously successful, be slow and steady. They would crumble the Italian front bit by bit, forcing them further and further westward. Pintor, his corps commanders and his superiors could all see the awful potentialities of the situation. The defense of Anatolia required reinforcement.
The same day the British finally failed at La Coruña, October 22, they struck again, thus time in France. British marines landed at Cherbourg, whose important port was apparently undefended by the Germans. By November 9, they had put three marine divisions ashore and had conquered the town of Abbeville. However, they were not bringing units into the beachhead quickly enough. Massive German forces, including numerous armored formations and a paratrooper division, were being rushed to the new perimeter. It was likely that the in the near future the British bridgehead would be crushed by the concentration of superior German forces.
The British Bridgehead in Normandy on November 9.
In the atmosphere of success created by Italian marines in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, and indeed in any milieu of triumph, it can be easy to forget Clausewitz’s reminder that war was a duel of wills. Strategy was not the application of force by one intelligent adversary against something inert, or at least unknowing, such as terrain, as great a factor as that is in strategy. Instead, strategy had to account for an enemy who wished to do to the one side as that side wished to do to the enemy. These actions by the British and the Soviets served to remind Italy that their enemies were not going to lay down and accept Axis dominion. Of these attacks, however, Italy was only worried of those in the east, in Anatolia. La Coruña served to show that the British were not ready for a major, or indeed even a minor, European campaign. Refahlye, however, took on the color of a dreadful promise for the future.
