Part One - MID-JUNE 1940 – HITLER’S BIG MEDITERRANEAN MISTAKE
[extract from LUCKY HITLER'S BIG MISTAKES]
After Dunkirk, even the Vichy French air force and their navy minister were very keen to go to war with Britain and they were very much in favour of taking control of Gibraltar.
Hitler left it till the last minute before consulting his erstwhile ‘friend’, General Franco, in a meeting that Hitler described as being “worse than a visit to the dentist!”
As soon as Franco refused to co-operate, Hitler hastily made the big mistake of canceling Operation Felix immediately. Considering the enormous military support Hitler had sent to Franco during the Spanish Civil War and the far superior military might of the German forces in mid-1940, not to mention what should have been the natural reaction of a truly great leader. Hitler could have gone ahead regardless.
The suddenness of another blitzkrieg would have ensured him the incalculable benefit of shutting off the mouth of the Mediterranean to the British, enabling him to conquer all the land and to take all the invaluable resources that it contained.
So, once again Hitler’s BIG MISTAKE was his now habitual swithering, changing plans and getting involved in detail beyond his military ability, knowledge, or experience, but just as significant was his decision, based on his mythical ideology, to look eastwards to RUSSIA in preference to his generals’ sound military advice to concentrate first on the Mediterranean and North Africa.
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