To complete the rout, the allies landed an expeditionary force further west, in Morocco and Algeria. Over 12 days he failed to break through the British lines and was forced into a headlong retreat across the desert. But when he resumed his advance, he was met with massive defensive positions prepared by the meticulous British general Bernard Montgomery at El Alamein. In mid-1942 he captured the key seaport of Tobruk. Rommel's eastward push across northern Africa was designed not just to cut off Britain's supply route through the Suez canal but above all to break through to the Middle East and gain control over the region's vast reserves of oil.
But this was not enough to satisfy the appetite of the Wehrmacht's gas-guzzling tanks and fighter planes.
Romania and Hungary supplied a large proportion of Germany's needs. The Germans' ruthless requisitioning of fuel, industrial facilities and labour from France and other countries reduced the economies of the subjugated parts of Europe to such a state that they were unable – and, with their workers becoming ever more refractory, unwilling – to contribute significantly to German war production.Ībove all, the Reich was short of fuel. Nor did Germany's commandeering of the economies of other European countries do much to redress the balance. In 1943 the combined allied production of machine-guns exceeded 1 million, compared with Germany's 165,000. It was the same story with tanks, where 6,000 made in Germany each year had to face the same number produced annually in Britain and the Dominions, and three times as many in the Soviet Union. Added to these were the aircraft produced in the Soviet Union – 37,000 in 1943, for example – and the UK: 35,000 in 1943 and 47,000 in 1944. Yet such was the economic might of the Americans that they could pour increasing resources into the conflict in both theatres of war. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in early December, Hitler saw the opportunity to attack American convoys without inhibition, and declared war on the US in the belief that Roosevelt would be too preoccupied with countering the Japanese advance in the Pacific to trouble overmuch with events in Europe. Throughout 1941, rightly fearing the consequences of total German domination of Europe for America's position in the world, US President Franklin D Roosevelt had begun supplying Britain with growing quantities of arms and equipment, guaranteed through a system of "lend-lease" and formalised in August by the Atlantic Charter. His methods helped increase dramatically the number of planes and tanks manufactured in German plants, and boosted the supply of ammunition to the troops.īut by the end of 1941 the Reich had to contend not only with the arms production of the British empire and the Soviet Union but also with the rapidly growing military might of the world's economic superpower, the United States. Imbued with an unquestioning faith in Hitler and his will to win, Speer restructured and rationalised the arms production system, building on reforms already begun by Todt. When Todt was killed in a plane clash on 8 February 1942, his place as armaments minister was taken by Hitler's personal architect, the young Albert Speer. Leading economic managers such as Fritz Todt had already begun to realise this.
The fundamental problem facing Hitler was that Germany simply did not have the resources to fight on so many different fronts at the same time. Yet in retrospect this proved to be the high point of German success. Surrounded by a girdle of allies, from Vichy France and Finland to Romania and Hungary, and with the more or less benevolent neutrality of countries such as Sweden and Switzerland posing no serious threat, the Greater German Reich seemed to be unstoppable in its drive for supremacy in Europe.
Above all, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 had reaped stunning rewards, with Leningrad (the present-day St Petersburg) besieged by German and Finnish troops, Smolensk and Kiev taken, and millions of Red Army troops killed or captured in a series of vast encircling operations that brought the German armed forces within reach of Moscow. In north Africa, Rommel's brilliant generalship was pushing the British and allied forces eastwards towards Egypt and threatening the Suez canal. German forces had overrun Greece, and subjugated Yugoslavia. The failure of the Italians to establish Mussolini's much-vaunted new Roman empire in the Mediterranean had been made good by German intervention. Western Europe had been decisively conquered, and there were few signs of any serious resistance to German rule. Two years into the war, in September 1941, German arms seemed to be carrying all before them.