At almost the same time, a plan to occupy Malta was started up, in fact even before the initial vanguard of Erwin Rommel’s troops had landed in North Africa. It was considered by the Army planners as too fantastic and far-fetched to be realistic about, but was improved upon and amended several times and was even scheduled to be put into effect ALMOST, but Mussolini was always somehow opposed for differing reasons and considered it as not essential, evidentially believing Malta could be collected like a ripe fruit automatically, once Egypt was conquered and the Suez Canal closed to shipping and occupied. This as we know, never happened because coming close is never the same as succeeding and for that the German forces in North Africa were always too weak and under equipped.

The occupation of Malta, everybody in the know pretty much agrees, would not only have been possible with few losses and only minor problems, but despite changes in name and plans for that operation, it was just never implemented and several times stopped just short of getting the final go-ahead order.

As it would by necessity have been initially largely a Luftwaffe operation, General Student, the commander of the parachute forces, opposed it in many ways because the occupation of Crete, which was a lot less essential, had been carried out with high losses of trained paratroopers because the English had broken the Enigma codes of the Luftwaffe and Army, and were literally waiting for the German attack and completely informed upon all details in advance.

Therefore, Student felt his depleted and patched up forces would be totally wiped out without any surety of being able to conquer Malta, where the naval support from basically only Italian ships was considered as very uncertain and even unreliable.

But all later investigations with access to the true situation on Malta, not just hindsight, clearly showed that the operation would have succeeded without any question and with only very few problems and few losses. Because Malta was not occupied, Erwin Rommel and the Afrika Korps was eventually beaten and deprived of supplies, food, ammunition and fuel due to Ultra directed due to the ULTRA directed counter action of British aircraft and submarines that were based at Malta and were replenished periodically because the British realized fully, how imperative it was to retain Malta and fend off the North African challenge by Erwin Rommel. Clearly it appeared to most people in the know and also to me, that the refusal to start up operations against Malta was the decisive factor to get kicked out of North Africa and the Mediterranean also, not the non-occupation and taking over Gibraltar even if that would have made many things a lot easier, it was less important but not deleting Malta as a base sealed the doom of the Afrika Korps and prevented the occupation of Egypt and the Suez Canal area with links to various Arab groups and countries that wanted to get rid of British occupation, such as Iraq and Egypt itself.

Furthermore, it would have been possible to do this with little or no support from the Italian Navy and Air Force, even if the Italians would be somewhat sour in that case at least initially. But Gibraltar without the Spaniards was considered and judged impossible to conquer, even at heavy losses by available German forces alone!

Like in so many situations and cases, some things, decisions and plans look great on paper but just do not turn out in actuality. BUT GERMANY DID NOT RULE THE SEAS, had hardly any surface forces and no aircraft with enough range and load to do it.

Another factor was the fact that unrealistic operations in Russia sucked soon the last human and industrial strength from an already over-committed Germany, so that there were neither people nor weapons or other supplies fur use elsewhere already not later than the summer of 1942, if not actually sooner in many ways.

The finest strategic plans stay just that - without the forces and equipment to implement them successfully.

Stalingrad/Kursk not the Turning Point

While many people consider Stalingrad and/or the tank battle at Kursk as the turn around, Germany was actually grossly over extended in the fall of 1941 in almost every respect, even though this may not have been obviously apparent to folks without access to inside information.

‘Stalingrad at Sea’: Black May of 1943

Just like the so-called ‘Black May’ 1943 was not the real turning point of the Battle of the Atlantic - the decisive break in the U-boat campaign, as the actual decision already did occur in the late summer/early fall of 1942, once new ship construction exceeded sinkings of merchant marine tonnage and kept growing together with numbers of escort vessels and more effective aircraft with new radar equipment and more powerful depth charges etc. The ‘Stalingrad at Sea’ was only the unwilling acceptance of undeniable facts by Karl Dönitz and the U-boat Command, that the U-boats had been defeated even though Karl Dönitz, in his often unrealistic forceful optimism, believed that only a battle had been lost, not the entire U-boat tonnage war in general and the war in every other respect.

But that is another story again. To be blinded by unwarranted optimism and steady propaganda tirades accepted as the truth - that is something else again.