Johnson nodded. A political operator without equal in Washington, he hated the idea of making a decision he could not later reverse, modify or compromise. At the Conference table, Lillith was collecting up the documents for secure storage, brushing her heavy black hair back when she bent over the table to collect a pad that had migrated to the table center.
“That assistant of yours, I wish I had a dozen like her. Where did you find her?”
“She had a dispute with her previous employer over positions, so we hired her sir.”
“You lucked out. She’s an angel.” “No, Mister President, she isn’t.”
The King Tut Club, Cairo, Egypt
The music was provided by a reasonably good imitation of an American swing band. Perhaps a little old-fashioned by modern standards but suited to the clientele. Mostly rich tourists from America and the Mediterranean Confederation with some from the Triple Alliance and a few from Northern Europe. And then, of course, were the local luminaries who wanted to show off their “modernity” by going the places the tourists went and doing what the tourists did. There was a floor show as well, one that was allegedly Egyptian but was really straight Wilson, Keppel and Betty with no Wilson, no Keppel and a lot more Betties.
What made the King Tut different from the other nightclubs that serviced the tourist trade in Egypt was its food. Despite the dated music and tacky floorshow, the King Tut was actually a first-class restaurant. Even more remarkably, it was the British who were responsible.
The British armistice with Germany in 1940 had left Egypt in a state of confusion. Just over a week earlier, Italy had declared war on Britain and France, The British position in North Africa seemed hopelessly outmatched. British Army General Percival Wavell commanded 40,000 Dominion soldiers caught between 200,000 Italian troops in Libya and 250,000 to the south in Ethiopia and Somaliland. Wavell’s immediate response to the Italian declaration had been a bold gamble. He’d thrown a small force into Libya, seizing a few border positions and, essentially, doing little more than show the flag. The Armistice, just nine days later, had left the overwhelmingly outnumbered Wavell in the almost incredible position of having won a victory, albeit a purely symbolic one, that his enemy had been left with no means of reversing.
In doing so, and although he had no means of knowing it, Wavell had struck a blow that was to have profound long term consequences. During his negotiations with Germany, Lord Halifax made it quite clear that maintaining the Suez Canal under British control was a vital and non-negotiable interest. The problem was that it was by no means clear whether Wavell and the forces he commanded actually considered themselves bound by any British government decisions. Most of the rest of the Empire had already given a very clear negative to that question but Wavell had kept quiet. Mussolini hadn’t, he wanted the British out of Libya and he wanted the Italians in Egypt. In the end, the negotiations came down to one thing, the Suez Canal was considered as being vital by the British; it was not vital to the Germans. The German government agreed to a status quo in North Africa and its surrounding areas and told Mussolini if he didn’t like it, he would be on his own.
Mussolini’s reply came on August 17, 1940, two months after the UK/German armistice and two weeks after the peace agreement. The Italian Army under Marshal d’Armata Rodolfo Graziani invaded and occupied British Somaliland, threatening merchant transit through the Red Sea and cutting of the British from India. The attack went relatively well on land, the capital of Berbera was evacuated on the 14th and the garrison was withdraw by sea to Aden.
For the Italians, though, the sea war was a disaster. The Italians had a small fleet in their Red Sea, base at Massawa, seven destroyers, eight submarines and two torpedo boats. Within five days, three of the submarines had been sunk and one captured intact. One of the submarines managed to sink an Indian sloop before being destroyed. As a result, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa, all now acting as independent countries, declared war on Italy. Over the next few weeks, the rest of the Italian Red Sea fleet was methodically hunted down and sunk.
Four weeks after the assault on British Somaliland, Graziani reluctantly invaded Egypt under pressure from Mussolini. Under his command, the Italian Tenth Army recovered the captured border posts, then crossed the border into Egypt. The sheer momentum of the Italian assault carried them all the way to Sidi Barrani, 65 miles inside Egyptian border before the attack came to a halt. At that time, there were barely 30,000 British troops standing between 250,000 Italian soldiers and Cairo. However, Graziani didn’t know that and chose to stockpile fuel and ammunition while fortifying Sidi Barrani as his main operational base. Aware of the overwhelming force that Graziani could deploy once that base was completed, Wavell sent his best field commander, General O’Connor to raid the Sidi Barrani base and destroy its supply stockpiles.
The raid was expected to be difficult and the British anticipated heavy casualties. Instead, the Sidi Barrani defenses collapsed almost without a fight and O’Connor seized the moment. He turned his raid into a full-scale assault, drove the Italian Army out of Egypt and then launched a full-scale invasion of Libya. Within a month, he had advanced in Cyrenaica and taken almost 130,000 prisoners. Simultaneously, the assault to drive the Italians from East Africa started. Eritrea in the north was invaded from the Sudan by largely Indian forces, while East African and South African troops attacked Italian Somaliland from Kenya to the south.
With one army rampaging through his North African provinces and another sweeping through Italian possessions in the Horn of Africa, Mussolini was in despair. In February 1941, he appealed to his German allies for assistance, only to be told “You have made your bed. Now go whore in it.”
The Germans were already gearing up for the invasion of the USSR and unimportant sideshows against already-neutralized countries were anathema to them. Hitler swore that not a man nor a round of ammunition would go to aid the Italians in North Africa. Eighteen months later, Mussolini would have his revenge when an overstretched Germany demanded troops for service in Russia. Vichy France and Halifax Britain refused and were occupied as a result. Mussolini supplied just enough Italian troops to avoid that fate but the Italian force in Russia was small and never fit for more than rear area duties. Quite without realizing it, Wavell had been responsible for bringing about a decisive split in the German-Italian Axis.
However, that still lay in the future. Before then, Mussolini had to face the fact that he was being defeated. The capital of Italian Somaliland, Mogadishu, fell on the 25th of February, after which Wavell’s British-Australian forces advanced northwest into Ethiopia. British Somaliland was recovered by early March 1941, with all Italian resistance ending in the horn of Africa by the end of the month. It was rumored that Mussolini had had a stroke or nervous breakdown on hearing the news.
Certainly, when he re-appeared he was a changed man. The bombastic self-confidence had gone and he negotiated a cease-fire that recognized the status of Egypt and the Horn of Africa in exchange for a withdrawal from Libya. Significantly, the deal was negotiated with Wavell and the authorities in Cairo; the London government under Lord Halifax was never even consulted. By April 1941, a delicate, tenuous, but lasting peace had been established.