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Fabricated Stories About World War II Still Known by Many

Khalid Elhassan November 15, 2019 35 min

Axis territory in yellow, in 1941. Wikimedia

29. The Axis Lacked the Means to Seize the Middle East or Use it to Outflank the Soviets

Seizing Egypt was within the Germans’ grasp, but seizing the rest of the Middle East, or using the region as a base to attack the USSR from the south, were nonstarters. The Germans lacked the shipping capacity to supply a force large enough for such goals. Throughout the North African Campaign, the Axis had struggled to keep their forces minimally supplied, and frequently fell short. That, with forces operating near the shortest supply routes from Italy.

The Axis lacked the shipping to adequately supply a force as negligible as the four German divisions of the Afrika Korps positioned nearby and close to the sea. It is thus inconceivable that they could have supplied a much larger force capable of overrunning the Middle East, or impacting the gargantuan war against the USSR, where the Germans and Soviets pitted hundreds of divisions against each other.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.