Hello everyone, right here. Before you listen to this episode, it might be who you to glance at a map of East Africa.

We'll be talking about Sudan and to the southeast of that as Abyssinia.

We're the Duke of Oestas troops or rats. We'll be talking about Italian Somali land, a little bit of Kenya and Eritrea.

And of course North Africa as well. We've already left Salam Bardia. We're now talking about Tobruk and further up the coast.

Almost at the peak of where Sinai Erica sticks out into the Mediterranean as Derna and do west from Tobruk is Benghazi and that's where we'll end.

So again, if you just glance at a map it might make all this make a little more sense and hopefully we'll make it that much more enjoyable.

Hello and thank you for listening to the history of World War II podcast episode 77 Tobruk.

As Operation Compass went from a five day raid to a four week old campaign western desert force, unofficially the army of the Nile and now officially 13th Corps continued to pursue the really Italian 10th Army westward.

But it's very success allowed a rift between Churchill and Wavel to grow and fester.

The question now that Egypt seemed all but secure was where to focus next and the two strong personalities each felt that their view of the war was the correct one.

In early January 1941, Prime Minister of South Africa Jan Smuts offered up a South African division for operations in East Africa.

Anything to counter the Duke of Oestos large Italian force to Churchill. This was a godsend to Wavel. It was more of what he didn't need.

What Churchill could not see and no one is perfect after all is that Wavel for now needed replacements for his experienced troops when they fell in battle, not an altogether new group of men to be trained and equipped.

But even more than that, he needed logistical units to increase the efficiency of the men he had already fighting and of course more equipment of all kinds.

By January of 1941, each and every communication between the two British leaders seemed only to fuel the fire more.

On January 6th, Anthony Eden, now foreign secretary, told Churchill that he was hearing from different sources that Germany was building up its resources in Romania, which it already controlled, and preparing for a campaign in the Balkans, with Greece as its ultimate objective.

Four days later, on January 10th, the C&C's Middle East were told they might soon have to give up their tank, anti-tank artillery.

Oh, and yes, our AF squadrons to help Greece in the near future. In other words, practically everything they were using now in Operation Compass and planning to use in East Africa.

But Wavel did not take this personally. He simply replied back to London that there was a good chance that this information was being purposefully leaked so the Greeks would get nervous and demand British aid.

His thinking was, if we got our forces in Africa and Egypt and send them to Greece, we will be sufficiently weakened in all three places, and we'll be able to resist absolutely no one.

And lastly, if London desires that 13 corps continue pushing the Italians west, we can't possibly do that and then get all those units listed to Greece in time to stop the Germans, if they are making a serious run at Greece at all.

This reply was the exact opposite of what Churchill wanted to hear from a general he did not already trust. And the Prime Minister's reply was a stinging one.

...