Prelude to Casablanca: British Operational Planning for Metropolitan Italy and the Origins of the Allied Invasion of Sicily,1940–1941

Introduction

During the interwar period, the Mediterranean has been traditionally seen as a British ‘vital’ strategic interest and theatre of operations. Following the end of the First World War, the region had experienced increasing tensions due to the rise of Fascist revisionist policies aimed at ensuring Italy a Mediterranean power status. ¹ After the outbreak of the Abyssinian crisis in 1935 – the most serious episode originating from these policies – political and diplomatic relations between London and Rome were marked by a strong process of rapid deterioration. ² The causes and development of the Anglo–Italian rivalry in the Mediterranean in the second half of the 1930s have been studied in depth by both British and Italian scholars. ³ Its relation with British war planning also sat at the centre of several accounts, all explaining the ‘jigsaw nature’ of London’s strategic thinking vis-à-vis the Italians in the region. ⁴ It is in fact impossible to understand the British diplomatic and military approach to Italy and analyse British strategy in the Mediterranean without having in mind the interlocking challenges faced in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans by the Royal Navy. ⁵

It was not until the late 1930s, however, that London, borrowing from the more aggressive French Navy’s strategic stand, adapted to the new Mediterranean landscape with a reassessment of its military priorities. ⁶ The appeasement that characterized British attitude towards Italy before 1939 made way for a strategic shift that envisaged planning for a direct confrontation with the Italians across the Mediterranean. ⁷ What recent studies insist upon is the idea that the ‘quick fix’ – the strategic principle according to which Italy was to be eliminated first from the war – had already faded by mid-1939, leaving ground to a different approach after its ‘bubble of expectations [had] burst.’ ⁸ According to this perspective, British military attention toward the Italian mainland came to a halt in 1940 and 1941, replaced by a more cautious and conservative attitude, waiting on the means of the American ally to flow into the European theatre. The operations planned against Italian metropolitan territories during those same years suggest otherwise. They show the presence of an aggressive predisposition in large portions of the British military planning machine that was never satisfied with staying on the defensive in the war with Italy. They also shed light on the early roots of the British planning staffs’ insistence on a peripheral approach to the European war and on the prime minister’s near-obsession for the elimination of the Italian enemy, two factors that would become an integral part of the Casablanca debate in 1943.

Existing historiographical accounts on the Anglo–Italian relations during the first three years of the European war largely focus on well-researched issues such as appeasement, non-belligerency, contraband control, and Mediterranean naval warfare. ⁹ Further, studies on British military planning mostly concentrate on the value of the ‘wear down approach’, which envisioned the adoption of alternative solutions to military intervention in the conflict with the Italians, namely subversion, propaganda, blockade, and bombings. ¹⁰ This article, on the other hand, zeroes in on the activities of the British planning agencies and their confrontational relationship with non-military branches of the War Cabinet that highlight a complex and layered process of military and political production within the British wartime establishment.

A systematic study of British operational planning targeting metropolitan Italy in the months after the outbreak of the Anglo–Italian conflict and before the beginning of combined Anglo–American planning for the Mediterranean is still missing from the picture. By the time the Americans joined the fray in December 1941, the British had planned and prepared for the execution of four major operations having metropolitan Italy as their main target. Two plans regarding Sicily, Influx and Whipcord, were developed in December 1940 and over the course of the autumn of 1941, respectively; a third, Workshop, from November 1940, concerned the conquest of Pantelleria; and a fourth, Yorker, the seizure of Sardinia in February 1941. ¹¹

By analysing the interagency strategic debate in London, therefore, this article seeks to reassess the decision to eliminate Italy first and to outline the role that that decision played in the overall strategy drawn up by Britain in the initial three years of the conflict. It also argues that the planning elaborated by British military and political officials in 1940–1 would serve as a base for future interallied planning. ¹² By doing so, on the one hand it reinforces the view that Britain entered the strategic debate with its American counterpart in 1941 holding organizational advantages that would allow London to lead the first phase of what has been suggestively called a ‘transatlantic essay contest’. ¹³ These planning experiences, on the other hand, at the same time show how rooted the belief that Italy could be eliminated in the early stages of the Mediterranean war really was among British planners and leaders between 1939 and 1941, and the role that this same belief played in the future developments of Allied combined planning. The Casablanca decision would mark the apotheosis of the peripheral approach that the British planners had been adopting towards Italy since before the outbreak of war. The weakening of Italian military strength and the arrival of US support created the conditions to finally set in motion the British plan to ‘knock Italy out of the war’ first, a plan that in 1943 had already been years in the making.

From Italian Non-belligerency to a Mediterranean War, 1939–40

At the outbreak of war in Europe, the Italian decision not to intervene had taken the British government by surprise. By September 1939, London had been debating what attitude should be taken toward Italy for several months. In the previous June, during Anglo–French staff talks, it had been decided that defeating Italy would be the Allied primary objective in the forthcoming European war. ¹⁴ The Italians’ choice to sit out during the opening phase of the conflict did not alter the British position on the matter. ¹⁵ In November, in fact, the War Cabinet restated that, in the event of a southward expansion of the conflict, ‘the first step obviously was to beat the Italians and recover the command of the Mediterranean.’ ¹⁶ The uncertainty created by Italian belligerency in the region forced Britain to take all the necessary precautions. The entire second half of 1939 was marked by a pronounced British focus on Italy, which was placed at the centre of London’s strategic attention. During those months, the Chiefs of Staff and their Joint Planning Sub-Committee worked tirelessly in preparation for a regional clash in southern Europe. ¹⁷

The preservation of the ‘Mediterranean Route’, the cornerstone of the immense circulation of goods and people run from London through the Suez Canal, was considered vital for the survival of the British Empire. ¹⁸ A hostile Italy in the Mediterranean would prevent the free movement of the Imperial fleet and, in time of war, cause the emergence of important additional difficulties in terms of transporting both supplies and troops. ¹⁹ In such a dismal geopolitical framework, it was only natural that the British military’s major concerns and plans would focus on two main items: the defence of the Motherland and the control of the Mediterranean. It was equally obvious that, regarding the latter issue, the intervention of the main regional power in the enemy field would cause an alarmed reaction in London. Two key objectives of British strategy, the retention of the Middle East and the protection of Imperial shipping routes, passed through the mastery or at least the maintenance of a certain degree of stability in the Mediterranean, where Fascist Italy had implemented an aggressively revisionist policy from the early 1920s through the whole interwar years. According to British military historian Michael Howard, in fact, the Middle East, ‘as a center of gravity for British forces, was second only to the United Kingdom itself’. ²⁰

London’s choice to seek out Italian neutrality was thus shaped a few months before the war began. The Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) warned the Cabinet that avoiding Italy’s full alignment with Germany ‘could be decidedly preferable to her active hostility’. The Committee considered the adoption of an aggressive attitude toward Italy to be not merely inadequate but damaging in terms of global strategy. It added that a premature offensive stance in the Mediterranean, ‘far from improving, would tend to weaken our position in the Far East’. ²¹ The limited resources London had at its disposal during that critical juncture, moreover, did not permit it to be of any assistance to Greece and Turkey’s defensive efforts against the Nazi and Soviet threats ‘unless and until the neutrality of Italy [had] been assured’. ²²

Italian neutrality presented itself to the British political and military establishment as an unexpected and particularly welcome gift. The chance to entirely concentrate economic and military resources on the fight against Germany and, on the side, to keep the Western front temporarily inactive thanks to the Italian non-belligerency and the strenuous French resistance was of great relief to the demanding task that had fallen on Britain. Considering the interests at stake in the Mediterranean, the British decided to adopt a benevolent approach: preventing an Italian descent into war took precedence over any other concern. A conciliatory policy was thought of as the most effective answer to the dilemmas posed by the regional situation. In September 1939, the War Cabinet ordered to thoroughly avoid any unnecessary provocation. ²³

In the first few months of 1940, however, Italian neutrality proved to be a military necessity, rather than a mere political wish. The position held by the British in the Mediterranean was a delicate one necessitating caution, as the Royal Navy was both unprepared and outnumbered in the region vis-à-vis the Regia Marina. ²⁴ If the Allies decided not to attack Italy during the non-belligerency period, they did so not only in the hope of avoiding a potentially fatal battle for the Empire, but also because the available resources did not allow them to adopt an openly offensive strategy.

The British attitude in managing the Italian non-belligerency could not have been more lenient. The decision to partake in the European war rested exclusively in the hands of Mussolini, for the British had nothing to gain and much to lose in a military dispute with Italy. It was only when Italian intervention appeared to be inevitable that newly appointed Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and the planners with him, fully came to realize that the purely defensive stand maintained until then was not sustainable any longer. The darkening clouds on the Mediterranean front also pushed London to plan with greater speed and decision. Although combined with a resort to last-minute attempts to avoid war, the intensification of the efforts to ready the Royal Navy for battle was as effective as it was inescapable.

Italian intervention, as feared and undesired as it was in London, was not from a strategic standpoint the most tragic of the events that occurred in June 1940. In a few days, the whole European situation took a turn for the worse: war eventually came on June 10, when Italy attacked France, thus opening a new front in the crucial Mediterranean region. On June 14, German forces entered Paris, and on June 22, the French government surrendered to Hitler in Versailles. By the end of the month, the United Kingdom was left alone in the battle against Nazi-Fascism in Europe. To make matters worse, the Germans were now in control of the French northern coast that directly faced the British Isles, and the Mediterranean – the Empire’s vital artery − was challenged by a hostile rival. Set against such a dramatic background, a panicked reaction on the part of the military staff was not unjustified. On June 17, the Naval Staff proposed a rash withdrawal of the fleet from Malta and Alexandria so that it be harboured at the safer station of Gibraltar. A week after the Italian declaration of war, the Royal Navy was seriously considering the option of leaving the Mediterranean in the hands of the Regia Marina. ²⁵

After a couple of months of discouragement and disorientation during which projections based upon worst-case scenarios were made, London finally reacted. Between August and September 1940, the War Cabinet commissioned a host of appreciation plans regarding a wide range of offensive targets, all having the elimination of Italy from the conflict as their primary goal. To solve the challenges now faced in the region, London developed a series of strategic plans centred on the necessity to regain, or gain altogether, control of the east-west Mediterranean sea lane. In late August 1940, a Joint Planning Staff report endorsed an aggressive stand against Italy, laying out the basis of British planning over the months to follow. Italy, the planners argued, constituted ‘a soft spot in the Axis front’, and as such had to be Britain’s main target in the upcoming European campaign. ²⁶ The elimination of the Mediterranean foe was regarded ‘as a strategic aim of the first importance’, as an Italian collapse was believed to largely relieve the threat to the Middle East. ²⁷

It is not surprising, then, that the planners developed a strategic concept aimed at achieving the ultimate goal, the defeat of Nazi Germany, through an intermediate stage − the preliminary elimination of Italy − that would allow the British forces a gradual approach into the heart of the European fortress and a progressive weakening of the main opponent through a relentless strategy of attrition. At this stage, in fact, Italy was seen not so much as a military end in itself, but as a means to slowly drain the Germans’ capacity to resist. The Mediterranean rival represented the only target that the isolated British forces in the region could realistically hope to defeat. ²⁸

In September 1940, the Chiefs of Staff joined the debate by producing a 300-page survey that, partially aligning itself to the premises posed by planners, concluded that British strategy for 1941, if circumstances had allowed it, should focus on taking decisive action against Italy through a combination of air strikes on continental territories and the invasion of its colonial possessions. ²⁹ This was the first organic proposition of an attack against Italy. A period of carpet planning had been started.

At the beginning of October, Churchill was presented with several options. The planners thought of the necessary operations to insure the Italian withdrawal from the conflict as a sequence of two phases, starting from the seizure of a base in Sicily, Tunisia or Sardinia, ‘followed by an eventual lodgement in the toe or heel of Italy’. ³⁰ A couple of weeks later, plan number 1 was delivered. The JPS divided the plans under preparation in two separate categories: the first one, concerning operations ‘for immediate consideration’, included the occupation of Crete or the Dodecanese, the seizure of the Libyan ports, and a substantial increase of air pressure on Southern Italy; under the second one, ‘for subsequent examination’, fell far-fetched attacks on Sardinia or sending strong reinforcements to Greece. ³¹ In October, a successful attack on the Italian islands or mainland, in striking contrast with what had been thought possible in August, seemed so unlikely that it didn’t even make the list of options considered. The JPS specified that Italy’s elimination could be achieved without an effective invasion of its mainland, an invasion that could not be launched until ‘the balance of military power has turned largely in our favor’. ³² A long wait was to be expected. The final prediction would not be inaccurate: the invasion would only take place thirty-four months later.

The need for a more forward attitude on Mediterranean issues was felt beyond the planners’ circle. The idea that an actual invasion of the country was not indispensable to bring the Italian military and the Fascist regime to their knees emerged from the consolidated perception of an imminent Italian collapse. This was generated by both a frank assessment of the military situation in the Mediterranean and by several reports on the state of Italian morale prepared by Whitehall officials from the Southern Department. ³³ Starting from March 1941, however, both the Foreign Office and the War Cabinet came to realize that the upheaval they were waiting for was not nearly as close as they expected. The hope of standing by as the Fascist Regime crumbled in upon itself was rapidly vanishing. Nonetheless, a good portion of the overall British planning for Italy was until then developed under the assumption that the Italian enemy was about to facilitate London’s task by removing itself from the equation altogether. ³⁴

The Mediterranean strategic landscape was about to change dramatically in those same weeks. The Italian invasion of Egypt on September 13 and Greece on October 28 added a significant burden on the British military commitment in the Mediterranean region that threatened to derail operational planning altogether. ³⁵ The intensity of the clash with Britain reached new heights, further embittering Anglo–Italian relations. The consequences of this change can be found in a renewed British focus on the prioritization of the Italian defeat starting from November 1940. Within the framework of the British Mediterranean policy, Egypt and Greece had in fact long played a decisive role. Even before the outbreak of war, the Greek government had been promised, on two separate occasions, full support in the event of an Italian aggression. ³⁶ On the evening of the 28th the Defence Committee decided that every effort should be made to launch as soon as possible a series of air strikes on central and southern Italy, as proposed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Bomber Command, Charles Portal. ³⁷

The defence of Greek independence was closely tied to the increasing priority London assigned to the fight against Italy. The change in attitude, attested by the surge in aggression and intensity both in the British public discourse and in the official documentation following the explosion of the Greek affaire, is clear. The prime minister’s words, calling for his government ‘to pace [Britain’s] fullest effort upon Italy’, would not go unheeded: the renewed anti-Italian momentum was immediately translated into actions. ³⁸ As a prelude to further and bigger operations, on the night of November 12, British combined forces launched an attack on the port of Taranto, one of the Regia Marina’s two main bases, which led to the sinking of a handful of Italian battleships and serious damage to the remaining ones. British retaliation in Taranto happened to be the opening episode of a succession of reverses that considerably reduced Italian military strength. Italian troops were forced to retreat from their recently gained positions in Africa and the Balkans following a series of defeats inflicted by the Greek resistance and the counteroffensive launched by Field Marshall Archibald Wavell in Egypt. ³⁹ Consequently, from November 1940, the elimination of Italy became once again the primary objective of the entire British war planning. The geopolitical and military scenario that emerged gave the British new confidence and reinforced their emphasis on reaching a final resolution in the Mediterranean during the European war. The defensive approach adopted up to that point seemed conservative now that Italian positions had been weakened and overextended across the whole Mediterranean.

British Countermeasures, Late 1940

After the invasion of Greece and the first round of battles in Africa, the elimination of Italy grew close to an obsession for the British prime minister and his planners. Two operations were planned in those months to answer the pressing need to take the fight against Italy to a deeper level. The first JPS plan regarding the ‘capture of a certain island’ was presented on November 14. ⁴⁰ The seizure of Pantelleria, codenamed Workshop, was considered by the planners the easiest among the options London had in sight and received wide support from both Anthony Eden, ‘anxious to hit the Italians’, and Churchill, excited by the prospect of a plausible prelude ‘to raids on the coastline of the Italian mainland or upon Sicily’. ⁴¹

The assessments of those who were supposed to organize and manage the operation did not echo the prime minister’s enthusiasm. Admiral Andrew Cunningham, in charge of naval operations in the Mediterranean, was ‘totally averse to the operation’. He reckoned that, since the Italians would maintain control over the straits even from Sicily, the British fleet would be much safer if stationed in Malta rather than in Pantelleria, where no harbour was able to host it. ⁴² With the Commander-in-Chief strongly expressing his concerns, the Chiefs of Staff, who had the final say in the selection process, also started showing doubts. They deemed the operation – the success of which was far from obvious − poorly remunerative in relation to the deployment of forces that it would have required. The planners themselves, adopting a long-term strategic viewpoint, thought that the resources allocated to actions in the central Mediterranean could be used more profitably somewhere else. ⁴³ Consequently, the Defence Committee dismissed the plan in its current form, partly approving it a few days later with a clause that allowed for its cancellation if the circumstances had suggested otherwise. ⁴⁴

With the issue still not settled, Churchill advocated for the operation with growing impatience. The prime minister, ‘increasingly convinced of the need and urgency of Workshop’, ⁴⁵ had exerted all his authority so that the project could move forward. Several personal letters addressed to Cunningham and to General Hastings Ismay, principal military adviser to the prime minister and liaison with the COS, communicated his mounting sense of urgency in resolving the controversy with Italy. ⁴⁶

Despite the arrival in January of the Luftwaffe’s Fliegerkorps X squadrons in the Sicilian airfields, Churchill was not ready to shelve the operation just yet. The presence of the German aviation only increased the appeal of the island to British strategy, as a strong and stable enemy presence in Sicily would result in the permanent loss of control over the Straits. ⁴⁷ Workshop remained cardinal in the vision of the prime minister, who ordered yet another round of evaluations, ⁴⁸ trying to persuade the Defence Committee to reconsider the senseless abandonment of a ‘priceless strategic rock’. ⁴⁹ On January 17, the final JPS report was ready. The perceived value of the island was drastically reduced by the arrival of the Luftwaffe, and the risks were consequently higher than the benefits that could be gained from the operation, now deemed inadvisable. On the following day, the Chiefs of Staff underwrote the position taken by the planners and suggested its definitive cancellation. ⁵⁰ The plan to hold the small Mediterranean island located in the middle of the Sicily–Tunis route was eventually abandoned due to profound disagreements among the agencies responsible for its development. Pantelleria would only be seized in June 1943, during the weeks preceding the Allied landings in Sicily, over two years after its original planned execution.

The missed realization of Workshop was due partly to the absence of the favourable specific conditions necessary for its implementation, and partly to a general strategic context that left the British no margin of error. Studies for its preparation in the period between November 1940 and January 1941 would lay the operational foundations for all subsequent planning in the region, and the war scenario in Europe was changing again rapidly in ways that would allow a further evolution of Britain’s Mediterranean strategy. The Workshop episode, however, was instrumental in showing the first signs of what would become a clear pattern in the years to come. The insistence and determination with which Churchill pursued the plans he himself had suggested or even devised could not but strain his relationship with the planners, causing tensions that would play a major role in the interallied debates during the upcoming Anglo–American strategic conferences. ⁵¹

Despite Workshop having been abandoned, the coincidence between the decline of Italian aspirations and the rise of British confidence could only lead to greater fervour in the planning of operations aimed to the elimination of Italy, an objective that was, in the minds of London’s leaders, increasingly accessible. In late 1940, the pressure exerted by the demanding prime minister for the complete reconquest of the Mediterranean reached new peaks. As described by Trumbull Higgins, Churchill ‘was beside himself with offensive projects in the Mediterranean with which to bedevil his overburdened commanders’, ranging from Pantelleria to the Dodecanese, from French North Africa to the Balkans. Fortunately, the American historian concluded, the Chiefs of Staff were still able to slow the prime minister down ‘on such premature squandering of Great Britain’s still exceedingly slim military resources’. ⁵²

The concentration of efforts on the Italian elimination, established as a military priority months earlier, entered a phase of greater pragmatism. Preparatory schemes concerning the first assaults on Italian territories had arrived, the first operations against Italian colonial possessions had been launched, naval incursions along the entire Mediterranean basin had begun, and bombings on the mainland had been intensified. The British policy for the elimination of Italy was finally taking shape.

In early December 1940, just six months after the outbreak of the Anglo–Italian hostilities, London considered all options available in the event of an Italian collapse. The planners were invited to draw up contingency plans to deal with the eventuality of a weakening of the Italian resistance so precipitous and catastrophic as to allow the British to establish a bridgehead on the continent. The exhilarating idea that such an event was soon to become likely assumed the shape of an operation that would allow the Royal Navy to take immediate advantage of the rapidly shifting balance in the Mediterranean by seizing control of its main island. With the Pantelleria option discarded, the focus shifted to Sicily.

On December 18, the Chiefs of Staff ordered the preparation of such a plan, codenamed Influx. ⁵³ The occupation of Sicily was of strategic pre-eminence in the fight for control of the Mediterranean route and a subject of primary interest in future British strategy. In light of the severe crisis in the Italian military machine, the JPS claimed, Britain’s ‘first aim must be to occupy Sicily, in order to use it for our own forces and to deny it to the Germans’. ⁵⁴ Operation Influx offered the Chiefs, in the event of a successful outcome, a perfect combination of results: control of the Mediterranean route and possession of a base closer to the mainland to be potentially used as a foothold for the RAF bombers in their Italian raids. By the end of December, the Mediterranean Fleet had been alerted so that it would be ready to take advantage of any opportunity to regain the control of the Straits. ⁵⁵ The execution of the operation, however, remained entirely dependent upon unfavourable developments in Italian military and political events. Less convinced of the hypothetical and contingent nature of Influx was Churchill, now determined to end the contest with the Italians by means of an overwhelming British victory in Sicily. Giving no heed to the caution recommended by the planners and suggested by the tricky military situation in the Mediterranean, the prime minister continued to ask for a strengthened version of the Sicilian plan. ⁵⁶

On January 14, 1941, the final report prepared on the subject by the Chiefs of Staff came to the attention of the War Cabinet. As for Workshop, the prospects of success for the operation were compromised by the arrival of German reinforcements in the region. Precisely because of the aggravation of the situation, however, ‘the occupation of Sicily would clearly go a long way to restoring the situation in the Central Mediterranean’, a region that would be completely lost were it left at the mercy of the Italo–German combined air forces. Similarly considering the island the key to the whole region, the JPS advised the Cabinet to continue planning and to transfer auxiliary reinforcements to the Middle Eastern naval stations: Sicily remained to offer a valuable platform for attacks on metropolitan Italy and the best chance ‘to sever enemy communications with Libya’. ⁵⁷

The fate of the first British attempt was sealed during a late January Defence Committee meeting. According to several studies presented before the committee, the only real chance to go through with the operation was based on the exploitation of French bases in Tunisia, since June 1940 under the jurisdiction of Vichy and therefore no longer within Britain’s reach. While Churchill proved once again eager to grant the Mediterranean a much more active role in the European war, Pound dismantled the arguments in favour of the operation and outlined the strategy to adopt: gaining full possession of the North African coast before venturing into assaults on southern Italy. ⁵⁸

The descent upon Sicily of the Fliegerkorps X from Norway marked, according to Churchill, ‘the beginning of evil developments in the Mediterranean’. ⁵⁹ The transit of Allied shipments in broad daylight became prohibitive and, with such an effective air cover, Italy was spared further attacks. Regardless of its real importance, the perceived threat of a Luftwaffe squadron active in the central Mediterranean was sufficient reason for the British to refrain from acting upon their planned operations, killing both plans Britain had developed in the region. The limited forces originally allocated to Workshop and Influx were not ready to face the resistance of the Luftwaffe: on January 20, the Defence Committee deemed Workshop impracticable; three days later, because of the arguments put before the Committee by Pound, the same fate befell Influx. ⁶⁰

The air support provided by the Germans to the Italians in the island’s defence had played a key role in the cancellation of the operations. Workshop and Influx were not, however, the only two studies prepared by the Joint Planning Staff. The operations considered in the Mediterranean varied in scope and purpose, but shared a common interest in recovering the control over the route to the Middle East and taking control of different logistical springboards from which to launch operations against Italy: support to Spain against the Germans in Morocco, assistance to General Maxime Weygand’s troops in French North Africa against a possible German incursion from Spain, attacks on the Dodecanese, all fell into this category. ⁶¹

A last attempt to gain a foothold in the Mediterranean was made in early 1941. During the winter months, the planners shifted their focus to Sardinia. ⁶² The idea of seizing the island originally stemmed from the planners’ need to find a viable alternative to Influx that was less costly and yet more easily achievable. Yorker was recognized as an operation of great strategic relevance, deserving full priority on the use of British forces in the region. By the end of January, the island was chosen as the next target. ⁶³

The complexity of the Mediterranean landscape at the beginning of 1941 led both the Joint Planning Staff and the Chiefs of Staff to proceed with caution and advise the War Cabinet correspondingly. ⁶⁴ According to the planners, ‘the risks could only be justified in achieving a strategic object of far greater value than the capture of Sardinia’. The operation would serve its purpose only if the island was later shaped into a base for air attacks against Italy. ⁶⁵ It seemed, however, to pose military problems of such magnitude that, ‘hazardous at any time, without adequate practice [was] likely to be disastrous’. ⁶⁶ Presented on March 25, the final assessment on the operation’s feasibility, now nicknamed Garotter, continued to be negative despite the structural changes made to the original plan.

Planners and Chiefs were for once in full agreement on the cancellation of an operation considered far too risky. The need to regain the initiative in the Mediterranean against the German thrust urged the prime minister to further harden his personal opposition against any operational withdrawal from the region. Churchill’s exhortations intensified with the parallel rise in both risks and opportunities offered by the Mediterranean strategic status. At the end of March, he pleaded to Alexander and Pound that the present situation, with the Luftwaffe stationed in Sicily and Libya, could easily lead to the loss of Malta. ⁶⁷ The capture of Sardinia appeared therefore as the last hope of keeping the Mediterranean open to the British Navy. ⁶⁸ In the end, the prime minister was unable to convince his military leaders to support his Mediterranean projects, regarded with increasing annoyance by planners. The operation was initially considered to be an adequate substitute for Influx, only to be discarded in the end as an unnecessary gamble. Garotter suffered the same fate as Workshop and Influx before it, leaving London with nothing to show for after months of intense planning.

The Strategic Stalemate, 1941

With military planning at a halt after the cancellation of the operations planned against Pantelleria, Sicily, and Sardinia, the British handling of Italian affairs came to a stalemate. The battle for the Mediterranean was now a three-power matter and the chances of conquering any territory in the region diminished. The balance in the Mediterranean, founded until January 1941 upon a series of minor naval skirmishes between the English and Italian navies, was disrupted by the advent of Germany on the scene. ⁶⁹ British strategy, severely limited by the lack of means, was forced to recognize the impossibility of achieving any significant result on the southern front of the European conflict, even after several months spent in search of operations whose related plans, ultimately, each turned out to be unattainable for different reasons. ⁷⁰

The year 1941 was transitional and in terms of Mediterranean strategy was of relatively static balance, allowing British policymakers to accumulate data and develop projects that would give London a head start in the opening phase of the interallied strategic debate with the Americans. Even so, British strategy needed to be urgently reassessed in accordance to new assumptions to avoid a counterproductive impasse or, even worse, a dangerous failure.

Between the months of March and September 1941, respectively corresponding to the arrival of German reinforcements in the Mediterranean and the launch of the British counteroffensive in North Africa, Italy disappeared from London’s political and military records, replaced by more pressing and vital instances such as the defence of the Middle East and, of course, the protection of the homeland from the German threat. Churchill was among the few members of the British establishment left to insist on projects aimed at defeating Italy, bitterly complaining about the military chiefs whom he believed guilty, because of their excessive caution, of the enemy forces’ infiltration into the heart of the Mediterranean. ⁷¹ Yet again, the coexistence of two different approaches to the Italian question was driving a wedge between the prime minister and the planners, resulting in a weaker, divided British planning establishment and a slower, less effective operational planning in London.

In those same months, the situation changed once again. The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union marked an unexpected turning point in the European war. The failure of the alliance between the continent’s two major military powers broke the isolation experienced by the British after the collapse of France and was greeted with relief by London. How these unforeseen developments shaped British policy for Italy is easily explained. The newly allied Soviets persistently advocated for a second front in Europe that the British were implored to open at the earliest possibility in order to draw as many German divisions away from the Eastern front as possible. ⁷² In September, the Russian situation was so critical that Ivan Maisky, sent to London by Stalin to negotiate some form of immediate help, explicitly stated that if the British wanted to keep the Soviets in the war, they had to start working on opening a European second front in a matter of weeks. ⁷³

It is in this context that Italy resurfaced dramatically on the British strategic map in the late summer of 1941. London planners saw no probable gain to bringing a substantial attack on the German fortress in France, but considered the use of a few divisions in the Mediterranean, where the Germans had provided increasing support to their Italian ally. ⁷⁴ They deemed it to be a risk worth taking. The opening of a second front, in their view, could only be successful in southern Europe, where the British had a goal above all others, the elimination of Italy. It was consequential that, in an attempt to satisfy Soviet demands, London would refocus the attention on what had previously been its primary objective, only temporarily abandoned due to unfavourable external conditions.

For Britain, the most fitting way to fulfil Stalin’s request and at the same time pursue the preservation of imperial interests was therefore the elaboration of a renewed plan to occupy crucial positions in the central Mediterranean. In October 1941, resorting to a wide personal interpretation of the second front concept presented by Stalin, Churchill devised a strategic plan consisting of two phases: the destruction of Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in Cyrenaica with a view to the possession of coastal bases on the Mediterranean shore (Operation Crusader) and a subsequent attack from those same bases on Sicily (Operation Whipcord). ⁷⁵ This strategy had the advantage of providing Stalin with a second front in early 1942 and fully reopening the naval route to the British imperial trade, while at the same time eliminating Italy from the war.

The idea of invading Sicily was neither new nor improvised. With the idea of landing troops in northern France at this juncture dismissed as impracticable, London envisioned a revival of the plan which had reluctantly been abandoned in February as the natural solution to the problem. Besides, in October 1941 the evolution of the war in Europe seemed to require an urgent British intervention regardless of the risks involved in the operation. The preservation of the Eastern Front had become a vital matter of national security for the British government.

Once again, it was Churchill’s input prodding the planners into action. At the end of the previous July, the Joint Planning Staff had argued that the occupation of Tunisia and the seizure of Sicily would be the only effective answer to the British Mediterranean problems. ⁷⁶ A month later, the two Commanders-in-Chief weighed in, outlining a broad strategy that envisioned the conquest of the North African coast as a prerequisite for the continuation of the war in the Mediterranean. Britain was presented − in the opinion of the C-in-C Middle East, Claude Auckinleck − with two options, in order to take the fight to continental Europe from the Mediterranean: to either focus on Greece, or ‘to invade Italy through Sicily’. ⁷⁷ Auchinleck’s position stands out for two reasons. For the first time since the beginning of the war, Churchill received his commanders’ and his military staff’s support for his Mediterranean project. For the first time, too, one of the British war effort’s leaders mentioned the invasion, rather than the simple elimination from the conflict, of Italy. Sicily, in the Commander’s plans, no longer stood merely as a base for intensifying the bombing campaign on southern Italy, but provided a bridgehead for a future landing of British troops on the mainland. His colleague, Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Andrew Cunningham, also supported the project of an invasion of Sicily having as ultimate goal the elimination of Italy, albeit with a more limited scope. According to Cunningham, it was essential to capture Tripoli ‘as a stepping stone to knocking Italy out of the war’. He argued that attacking the Axis powers in France ‘is only to go for a limb, whereas if we can control the Mediterranean and get into Italy we are striking at the heart’. ⁷⁸ The Foreign Office had already resolutely supported the implementation of a Mediterranean strategy in August, with Eden painting a rather bleak picture of the Italian domestic situation. Arguing that ‘each blow against Italy is a blow against Germany’, he too saw the only solution worth taking into consideration as being the exercise of military pressure against the peninsula. ⁷⁹

The endorsement offered by commanders, planners and diplomats was completed by a report drawn up by the Chiefs of Staff that provided Churchill with the consensus he needed to finally realize his long-sought plan of conquering Sicily and subsequently eliminating Italy. The COS reminded the War Cabinet that the occupation of Sicily would guarantee the control of the central Mediterranean and ‘an excellent base for attacks on Italy’. According to Pound, this was the reason that made it preferable, if conditions were favourable, to attack Sicily immediately after the conquest of Cyrenaica. The traditional caution expressed by the COS in the early planning stages was softened by the political reports coming from Rome, where it seemed that ‘the Italian Army, already against Mussolini to a man, may at some time take charge’ and support British military intervention in the hope of avoiding a German occupation of the peninsula. ⁸⁰

Ten months after the abandonment of Influx, the occupation of Sicily − now codenamed Whipcord − officially returned to take up a substantial portion of the British government’s organizational energies. Having gathered the support of almost all decision-makers, Churchill felt the operation approaching. His confidence in the outcome of the conflict was greatly reinvigorated by the prospect of landing British troops in Sicily and setting the extenuating Mediterranean clash with Italy aside. ⁸¹

Surprisingly enough the War Office, until then on the sidelines of military planning, entered the debate by drastically tearing the Sicilian operation apart. In a note to the War Cabinet, it harshly criticized the decision to focus on Sicily as a primary objective of British strategy in the Mediterranean after the success, only hypothetical at this stage, of Crusader. Attacking the strategic concept behind the operation, it explained that the only way the reopening of the Mediterranean could be guaranteed was by gaining possession of the North African coastline, whereas the control of Sicily would only have granted the illusion of regaining control over the region. If it were decided to focus on the Italian island, the War Office argued, the British would commit the grave mistake, ‘perhaps even a fatal one, to expend our meagre resources prematurely and in the wrong place’. Because of its huge costs, it stated, the execution of Whipcord would seriously impair Britain’s capacity to operate in other theatres. ⁸²

In the wake of the War Office statements, the across-the-board support previously shown began to fade away. Harold Alexander, one of the strongest supporters of an aggressive strategy in the Mediterranean war, was convinced of the plan’s benefits but not of its timing, and defined Whipcord ‘attractive but premature’. ⁸³ Churchill himself began to show a marked softening of his enthusiasm. ⁸⁴ Still unwilling to shelve the tantalizing prospect of a central Mediterranean regained to British control, the prime minister deemed Whipcord ‘a case of now or never’. If Britain could secure before January the combination of airfields − Tripoli, Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia − and establish troops in the region, a ‘heavy and possibly decisive attack (could) be made upon Italy’. ⁸⁵

The closing argument was put forward, as was the case for Workshop, Influx, and Yorker, by Admiral Pound, who expressed the Chiefs’ concerns about the strain the expedition would impose upon the Atlantic convoys. ⁸⁶ However, its cancellation was not definitive. Churchill, faced with the choice between the safety of the vital oceanic trade and the vague prospect of an indecisive success in the Mediterranean, could not but put aside his Sicilian ambitions and turn his attention elsewhere, specifically to the North African coast. The planning for Whipcord had been conducted with the utmost commitment by all, but the latest assessments had shown there was nothing to be gained from the execution of a project whose success depended on a number of prerequisites that were by no means certain, namely a sudden collapse of Italian morale and the non-arrival of further German reinforcements in southern Italy. ⁸⁷ Essentially, from being the British military action of choice in late 1941, Whipcord was downgraded to a contingency operation, giving it the same fate as Influx.

In late 1941, the attention was entirely focused on the execution of Crusader and its prospective developments. The range of options available once Britain regained control of a section of the North African coast presented the planners with a less ambitious but much more concrete strategy. The recently appointed Chief of Imperial General Staff Alan Brooke brought with him a peripheral approach to the Mediterranean war that would eventually be adopted by the Allies in the years to come. Brooke outlined the essential features of British strategy in 1942, describing how from an early conquest of North Africa Britain ‘shall be able to reopen the Mediterranean and stage offensive operations against Italy’. ⁸⁸ With yet another operation against Sicily abandoned, the British operational efforts against metropolitan Italy were forced to a stop. It would take another year of combined planning with the Americans to bring the British back on the Italian path.

Conclusion

British strategic planning during 1940 and 1941 was supported by a constant and extensive work aimed at selecting and outlining the conquest of territories variously located in the Mediterranean that could serve as springboards for attacks on metropolitan Italy. After months spent planning unlikely operations that were not compatible with the strategic situation of the time, London was forced to acknowledge her inability to achieve any significant result in the Mediterranean war. Given this failure, British planning for Italy − and its analysis − could be dismissed by the reader as a futile venture. In the case of the Anglo–Italian conflict, however, planning goes a long way towards offering a powerful insight into the balance of forces within the British military and political establishment, and particularly into the tensions and internal divisions existing within the organizational framework of British war planning. Furthermore, these plans show how ingrained British interests in achieving the early elimination of Italy from the war really were long before the Casablanca decision was taken in January 1943. They also illustrate the political pressure coming from the top onto the planners and the lengths to which Churchill was willing to go to achieve the Mediterranean campaign’s main goal.

In 1940, a long and unexpected series of heavy defeats suffered by the Italian armed forces on the Greek mountains, in the Ionian waters, and in the North African deserts, had temporarily confirmed to the British that Italy was, in fact, the ‘weak link’ of the Axis. In this transitional phase of the war, the defeat of Italy was not the goal, as it would become in 1943, but rather its simple military withdrawal from the conflict. London was pervaded by the comforting thought of a Fascist government ready to collapse under the shockwave of British Navy’s limited interventions. The belief that a handful of small-scale operations were enough to drag the Mussolini regime to the brink of collapse was something more than just a naive illusion cultivated by marginal fringes of the planning machine. Instead, it was the backbone of British policymaking.

Despite this mostly defensive approach being perceived as conservative, London adopted in the first phase of the Mediterranean war a minimalist approach designed to reduce risks and maximize profits. The unsystematic nature of the planning itself was part of the problem: British strategy had to be flexible, for the intention of defeating Italy was subject to the ever-changing military landscape and the limited resources available. Its three-phase development, in a slow and unsteady progression from appeasement towards an all-out military effort against Italy, maintained only one lasting guiding principle, the objective of regaining control of the Mediterranean through the neutralization of the Italian Navy. This strategy was shaped by contingencies, yet structured in pursuit of a fixed target.

This predicament was worsened by the internal separation between several conflicting approaches to all matters of Mediterranean strategy and its relevance within the wider framework of British and Allied European grand strategy. The British planning apparatus presented a divided front. A clear separation between aggressive and conservative attitudes, Churchill and the military, and the Chiefs and the planners, marked the entire process. There was a difference, subtle yet substantial, between the active promotion of a series of operations aimed at knocking Italy out of the war sponsored by the Joint Planning Staff and the preference for a low-key strategy pursued by the Chiefs of Staff. Both organizations agreed on the need to concentrate Britain’s limited military powers on the elimination of Italy. The path chosen to implement this policy, however, differed in terms of pace and military involvement. Churchill’s role, moreover, was pivotal in creating the conditions that allowed such a disordinate and disunited strategy to be. As highlighted by Canadian historian Doug Delaney, the Chiefs of Staff were left in a subordinate role, ‘less involved with creating strategic options than they were with refining (or disproving) the many and varied schemes that had originated with Churchill himself’. ⁸⁹

In conclusion, it is perhaps useful to make a reference to the vexata quaestio concerning which rival was better able to achieve its own goals during the Mediterranean war in 1940–1. It is arguably unwarranted to assert that the Italians succeeded in successfully challenging the British Navy, forcing it on the defensive for the whole duration of the conflict, as suggested by American historian James Sadkovic. ⁹⁰ There is, however, an argument to be made regarding the Axis’ ability to keep the British forces at a relatively safe distance and at the same time compel the British military machine to refrain from mounting any significant operation in the region until the arrival of the Americans. It could also be argued that this impasse was the result of a different, more cautious, process favoured by London policymakers not to risk their limited resources on problematic operations and focus instead on more easily reachable targets, such as the conquest of the North African shore, with the intention of adopting a more gradual approach to the Italian objective. The answer to these key questions lies somewhere in between these two arguments, the inefficiency of British planning being more likely caused by British strategic shortcomings rather than by effective Italian policies. The idea of an outright invasion of Italy would only gain strength in late 1942, when British strategy would be able to rely on the numbers and the means of the Americans. Until then, British dreams of a Mediterranean supremacy achieved through a plain defeat imposed upon the Italian rival repeatedly clashed with an increasingly hostile strategic landscape.