Peter Hoffmann The gulf region in German strategic projections, 1940—1942 I Germany's policy after the First World War stressed the containment of the effects of defeat; economic recovery; and revision of the Treaty of Versailles. From 1930 on- ward, a shift to military policies became increasingly visible1. Four days after Hitler be- came Reich Chancellor in 1933, he assured the Commander-in-Chief and the senior commanders of the Army of his intention to proceed with re-armament2. But he moved with caution. His Middle East policy was governed by the wish to avoid conflict with Britain, and by a pro-Arab stance, which, however, was in jeopardy until 1939 through German encouragement of Jewish immigration to Palestine3. In 1939 Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland. Britain, France, Australia, New Zea- land, South Africa, and Canada declared war on Germany. After the defeat of Poland, Hitler offered peace to Britain and France, which these powers rejected. After the Ger- man defeat of France in June 1940, Hitler again offered peace, which Britain rejected. Three factors changed the position. 1. Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and Britain refused to acquiesce in German conquests, so that Hitler's hands were tied in the west; 2. Hitler failed to secure through aerial attacks a preliminary advantage for an invasion of Britain; 3. when Hitler ordered the invasion of Russia, Britain and Rus- sia settled their differences in the Middle East. The southern flank of a German east- ward advance was not secure. The situation was in flux, however, until the summer of 1941 : the Russo-German non- aggression treaty of 23 August 1939 and the Russo-German border and friendship treaty of 28 September 1939 for a time prevented the predictable power alignments4. There was considerable apprehension in Allied war councils about a German-Italian- Russian threat to the oilfields in the Middle East5. Although Italy had not yet entered the war against Britain, she was engaged in military actions in Africa. The Soviet Union acted as a German ally in her occupation of eastern Poland (17 September 1939) and the Baltic countries, and in her attack on Finland on 30 November 1939. Germany sup- ported the expansion of Russian influence towards the Persian Gulf, as the Command- er-in-Chief of German Naval Forces, Grand Admiral Raeder, said in a briefing of his section chiefs6. In the spring of 1940, the British and French high commands became so worried about German troop movements in the Balkans, and about Soviet troop move- ments in southern Russia, that the Allied Supreme War Council, on the suggestion of Ministerpräsident Paul Reynaud, discussed the destruction of Soviet oilfields in the Caucasus in order to deny Germany access to their product, and in order to curb the military activities of the Soviet Union7. Baku and Batum were photographed by British intelligence air crews on 30 March and 3 April 1940, respectively. In June 1940 Ger- man forces captured in France Anglo-French plans for the destruction of the Cauca- sian oilfields8. The plans proved unrealistic; but apprehension grew about German and Russian advances through the Balkans and into Persia against the Anglo-Iranian oil- fields9. German plans for an invasion of the British Isles were postponed in July 1940. The German Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Fieldmarshal Walther von Brauchitsch, and his Chief of the General Staff, Colonel-General Franz Haider, discussed alterna- tive moves against Britain on 30 July 1940. Haider noted: 1. an attack on Gibraltar over 61 MGM 2/88 land; 2. sending tank forces to North Africa (Egypt) to support Italy; 3. an attack against the British in Haifa; 4. an attack on the Suez Canal; 5. instigating a Russian at- tack on the Persian Gulf10. Haider continued and agreed: »Die Frage, ob man, wenn gegen England eine Entscheidung nicht erzwungen werden kann und die Gefahr besteht, daß England sich mit Rußland liiert, den dann entstehen- den Zweifrontenkrieg zunächst gegen Rußland führen soll, ist dahin zu beantworten, daß man besser mit Rußland Freundschaft hält. Besuch bei Stalin wäre erwünscht. Die Bestrebungen Rußlands an den Meerengen und in Richtung auf den Persischen Golf stören uns nicht. Am Balkan, der wirtschaftlich in unseren Wirkungsbereich fällt, kön- nen wir uns aus dem Wege gehen. Italien und Rußland werden sich im Mittelmeer nicht wehe tun. Unter dieser Voraussetzung könnten wir den Engländer im Mittelmeer entscheidend treffen, von Asien abdrängen, dem Italiener sein Mittelmeerreich auf- bauen helfen und uns selbst mit Hilfe Rußlands das in West- und Nord-Europa ge- schaffene Reich ausbauen. Wir können dann einen jahrelangen Krieg mit England ge- trost in Kauf nehmen.«11 Hitler's priorities and the rational nexus between his various objectives during the Sec- ond World War were distorted by his overriding concern with Russia and by his racial policy12. Hitler recognized in August 1940:1. that Britain might not be defeated during that year; 2. that the United States might intervene in the war in 1941 ; 3. that the exist- ing German-Russian relationship might change in 1941 — a euphemism for a war aris- ing either from Russian designs, from German preventive action, or from Hitler's deci- sion to realize his long-term goal of acquiring Lebensraum™. The Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov revealed Russia's long-term goals to Hitler and to Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop in Berlin in November 194014. Molotov's state- ments were not reassuring: Russia was looking for control in Hungary, Yugoslavia, Greece, Bulgaria, and for full freedom of movement in the Baltic and Black Sea. These goals could not be contemplated unless Germany was presumed absorbed with the war against Britain, or, better still, defeated by the Western Powers. The ideas ventilated by Brauchitsch and Haider were pursued temporarily in 1940, al- though Hitler had no use for them in the framework of his aims. Japan wished to secure her flank for her »southern program« and initiated negotiations with Germany at the end of August, seeking to improve relations with the Soviet Union through German mediation15. Ribbentrop discussed the proposition with Mussolini and the Italian For- eign Minister Count Ciano during his visit to Rome on 19 September. It appears, how- ever, that the clearest concepts for dealing with the German-British conflict were devel- oped in the Naval High Command. Grand-Admiral Raeder had developed the concept of Axis domination of the entire Mediterranean region as an alternative to the invasion of Britain {Seelöwe). He placed his views before Hitler on 6 September 1940, explaining that all available forces ought to be concentrated for the defeat of Britain before the intervention of the United States which Raeder considered inevitable16. Raeder spoke to Hitler again on 26 Sep- tember 1940. Hitler temporarily tended toward the idea of a continental block of Ja- pan, Russia and the Axis Powers against the British Empire. He thought this might force Britain out of the war; then he could launch the German Army on the destruction of the Soviet Union. Raeder, on the other hand, wanted to defeat Britain and hoped to dissuade Hitler of his plans against Russia17. Raeder proposed the conquest of the Canary Islands, Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, and an advance through Palestine and Syria to the Turkish border, thus placing Turkey in German hands. The Russian problem would be solved, because Russia was afraid of Germany and an intervention against Russia from the north would no longer be necessary. Hitler agreed18. Raeder repeated his proposals to Hitler on 14 November and 27 December 194019. Hitler had regarded the Mediterranean an Italian sphere of interest ever since the Ger- man-Italian discussions of October 193620. He would have preferred to assign the role of anti-British foe in that region to Italy, or to a Mediterranean block consisting of Ita- ly, Spain, and Vichy France. He replied to Raeder immediately, in September 1940, that he would be in contact about this with the Duce and possibly with General Franco as soon as the German-Japanese alliance was sealed. In October 1940, he travelled to Hendaye on the Franco-Spanish border for discussions with Franco; he met with Ministerpräsident Laval and Marshal Pétain, during stops in Montoire on the way to and from Hendaye, respectively; on the return journey he travelled on to Florence to meet the Duce21. He told Raeder further that he would seek to induce Russia to move southward against Persia and India for access to the Indian Ocean which was more im- portant to Russia than positions in the Baltic. Hitler had shifted to the idea of a con- tinental block with Russia against Britain22. Raeder had not presented a global strategic concept but one for a duel between Ger- many and Britain, although he expected an American intervention. Raeder seemed to assume that Britain would agree to peace after the loss of her imperial position in the Mediterranean. This was fallacious at least insofar as the trans-Atlantic sea-lanes for supplies and support from America were far more important to Britain and her strate- gy23. In any case, Hitler did not agree with Raeder that the defeat of Britain must have priority over the attack against Russia24. The commitment of some military forces in the Mediterranean area in 1941 could have been so interpreted. But this diversion of German forces was necessary to help maintain Italy as a political factor in the Mediter- ranean after set-backs in Greece had thrown her into military disarray. Hitler's ideas, however, were more complex. He had expected Britain to come to an ar- rangement with Germany after the defeat of France and to give him a free hand in the east25.