The Year of Strategic Crisis
Part 18: Conclusion
And so the year ended. Spain was firmly held. The Soviets were stalled in Dacia and, despite their efforts, were also stopped in Anatolia. Meanwhile, Italian marines and Da Zara’s fleet pursued a strategy of limited liability around the Horn of Africa. Italian research and doctrine has continued forging ahead, and despite greater demands than ever before its industry was easily coping. The question thus was, what sort of position did it hold geostrategically, going into 1942?
With the conquest of Spain, Italy had finally, albeit unwillingly, secured its eastern frontiers by taking out a potentially—and indeed actually—troublesome neighbor. Italian garrisons in Spain’s major port cities looking west—La Coruña and Cadiz—prevented direct Allied invasion of those locations, as the disastrous British attempt of later during the year proved. An ambitious amphibious landing outside these major port cities with the intent of gaining a beachhead before securing logistics seemed to be beyond the operational creativity and virtuosity of the Allies. Indeed, neither the Allies, nor the Germans nor the Soviets seemed to have any sort of operational creativity and virtuosity whatsoever. This failure might have been mitigated if their strategic visions were at any point realistic and their capabilities able to carry them out. As of the end of 1941, this did not appear to be the case with either of the three. Only Italy seemed to have the strategic vision, the technical capabilities and the operational virtuosity to take the latter and with it implement the former. Spain had virtually closed down as a theater, save against the odd guerrilla fighter.
In the east, the status quo was more precarious. Two Italian armies faced the Soviets in Dacia, holding a front from Hungary to the Black Sea. They together comprised no more than twenty divisions. Italian military intelligence was sketchy on how many Soviet formations faced them, but it was likely at least as many as the Italians themselves had. Regardless, the only possibility in Dacia was stalemate or defeat. No Italian offensive could possibly attain objectives of major strategic significance and would, indeed, only increase the likelihood of Italian defeat in that theater as the Italian forces would be obliged by success to disperse and form a coherent front from its one end to its other end. The Germans were of little help either. The inroads they had achieved by the end of the year resembled the inroads they had made by 1916 during the Great War, only less so. The eastern half of Latvia had fallen, as had the eastern half of Lithuania. The Germans were however stuck on the Daugava River. Further south, nowhere had the Germans even reached the Dnepr River. German forces seemed stymied in the Soviet Union. They seemed too intent on pursuing irrelevant overseas projects such as the intermittently slow conquest of India, which had hardly moved forward in the entire year despite the complete and utter lack of British or Indian Army resistance, and their conquest of much of the Dutch colonial island of Java and other minor Dutch islands. These were mere dispersions of strength that did not benefit Germany at all. The Germans’ only success of the year was their conquest of Sweden and Norway, which had been in progress since 1940.
In Anatolia too the situation was tenuous, and more so than in Dacia. Here the Soviets were actually applying pressure against Italian defenses. As opposed to Dacia, where there was a relatively high density of Italian brigades on the front, it was quite low in Anatolia. This is why Mussolini had been putting together a new army to reinforce Pintor by taking over the southern half of the front. Fortunately, the Soviets seemed aimed at a slow and deliberate advance, likely to prevent their logistical system in Anatolia from collapsing in on itself: the Soviets at the year’s end had more divisions that did the Italians. In Vienna, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before its destruction in the Great War, there was a cynical saying: hopeless but not serious. It described very well the situation that empire found itself in on the eve of the Great War, and it is possible that it may be applied with profit to the defense of Anatolia. Eventually, the Soviets might inevitably grind their way forward to Istanbul. It was potentially hopeless. Nevertheless, it was hardly a serious threat. It unfolded as if it was entrapped in gelatin.
Thus only around the Horn of Africa did events move with any speed. There, the small and agile Italian marine divisions have inflicted two defeats upon the British, in Somaliland and in Aden, and Da Zara has wreaked havoc with British shipping in the region. However the marines too seem to have been stymied by the surprise of actual British operational skill. Nevertheless, the British were unlikely to do anything with it, leaving the Italians the advantage of initiative. The Italians in Africa had suffered a temporary setback, but were ready to rebound and attain victory in the end.
Thus, geostrategically, Italy was beset only in Anatolia. Spain was safe, Dacia seemed safe, and Africa was being won. Only Anatolia had an element of real, if not immediately significant, danger. Italy was in a fairly secure position, from which it could act without being acted upon too considerably in turn.
The regions of the world that matter in this war on the eve of 1942.
