James Holland's Fortress Malta is a detailed account of this story that spares none of the grim details. His accounts of the impact of the siege and the heroic defence of the islands are based on archival material and interviews with men and women who experienced these events. Their stories, frequently laced with personal tragedy, are remarkable. It is particular impressive that Holland was able to capture them given that many of those interviewed were speaking nearly sixty years after the events.
Several things stood out to me from the book. The first was that Malta's story is remarkable because of the unique experience of the island. Far from Britain, low on supplies but of high strategic importance, the defenders experienced events that few civilian populations in Western Europe had to deal with. During the heaviest siege this meant that mass starvation was real, as rations were cut to minuscule levels.
British people are used to imagining that only they experienced the bombing in the Blitz, ignoring what happened to people in Europe - especially Germany. But Malta had it far worse than anywhere on the British mainland. On one day more bombs were dropped by the Germans on a single airfield than hit Coventry during the whole war. Almost no buildings in Malta's towns remained standing, and had it not been for the excavations that could be made into Malta's soft sandstone civilian deaths would have been much higher.
In this context the military made decisions they would not have done anywhere else. Mavericks who couldn't follow orders were not disciplined, but rather tolerated - and Holland focuses on the stories of several of these.
I was struck by how the British saw Malta. Admiral Andrew Browne Cunningham, who was Commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, and was closely associated with the defence of Malta, commented in his April 1942 farewell message to the islanders, that "The very extent of the success of the forced based on Malta has led to a ceaseless battering of the fortress, but one has only to think of the air effort the enemy is diverting to this purpose to realize that this is but another of the services that Malta is rendering to the Empire". The horrific reality of siege for the Maltese was to be understood solely in terms of "service to the Empire".
Reading Fortress Malta I got the distinct impression that the British leadership cared little for the inhabitants of the island, so long as they continued to help the greater objective of strategically aiding the defence of the Empire. This is particularly noticeable when thinking about how the high command repeatedly failed to understand the real situation and the need to significant numbers of the latest Spitfires. Long after the Battle of Britain had been won, Malta's pilots were outnumbered 30 or 40 to one in air battles. Despite understanding the strategic importance of the island the British military were unable to offer the material support that would have drastically reduced the suffering on the ground. This failure was not solely because of the difficulties of convoy supply.
These mistakes were only surpassed by the idiocy of the German commanders, particularly Hitler. Malta was bombed into the ground and an invasion would have been easy for the Germans who could have severely undermined the Allied efforts in North Africa, and protected their own supply routes. Yet Hitler intervened to stop this - great for Malta, but an appallingly bad military decision.
Holland tells this story well, and I was certainly drawn into his remarkable account. He also does justice to those men and women, not all servicemen, whose lives were utterly destroyed by the war. The strain of months of siege caused enormous trauma, which today we would know as PTSD or "shell shock", but was dismissed then. Holland quotes a statement from the military, which demonstrates a horrible callousness towards those who had seen real horror, day after day:
Anxiety neurosis is the term used by the medical profession to commercialise fear. Anxiety neurosis is a misnomer which makes 'cold feet' appear respectable. To give way to fear is to surrender to the enemy attack on your morale. To admit to anxiety neurosis is to admit a state of fear which is either unreasonable or has no origin in your conception of duty as a soldier. If you are a man, you will not permit your self-respect to admit to anxiety neurosis or to show fear.
I was a little frustrated that he didn't develop some of these larger themes, and perhaps explore Malta's later history in the context of the siege and British rule. The military focus meant that Holland tended to concentrate on the experiences of the British (civilians and military personnel) with very little on what ordinary Maltese people thought and said. I would have liked to know what they thought of the British, and was interested in passing reference to a number of people who were clearly supportive of the Italian regime - how general was this? Altogether though, this is a good military history that visitors to the islands and those interested in World War Two will get much out of.
Related Reviews
Cameron - Red Duster, White Ensign
Hansen - Fire & Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945
Interesting review of what sounds like an interesting book-the more in as my own reading of World War II history has left me with a lot of questions about perceptions of the battle. Often we get the impression that Britain made much of the siege of Malta (for instance, the award of the George Cross to the island of Malta, the British navy naming its planned next and biggest carrier class the Malta class the way the U.S. Navy named its next big carrier class the "Midway," etc.). However, when reading Basil Liddell Hart's history of the war (interesting because of its status as a monument to the "traditionalist" British view), in spite of its heavy emphasis on Britain's part in the war, especially in northern Africa, he barely said anything about the episode. (Personally I suspect that the post-war "myth" of Britain "standing alone," which tends to emphasize Britain rather than the British Empire, has meant less attention to a siege of Malta at odds with it.)
ReplyDeleteI also noted that in your review the emphasis was on the actions of German forces, and of Hitler, and that called to mind another oddity of traditional historiography of the war--the slighting of Italy as an actor in the conflict, even in the Mediterranean region (even though it was Italy that began the war in the Mediterranean/North Africa, initiated the siege of Malta, etc.). James Sadkovich wrote a book attempting to correct this about thirty years ago (many years before Holland wrote his book), but from what I can tell it did not have very much impact, or lead to much more consideration of Italy's military's role in World War II, at least to go by what I have seen of the literature (Sadkovich's book still the only English-language book on the Italian navy in the conflict, so far as I can tell).
Any thoughts on how this book fares that way?
The link to my review of Sadkovich's book is below:
https://raritania.blogspot.com/2015/09/review-james-sadkovichs-italian-navy-in.html