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Italy's forces in Libya under fierce Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, who succeeded Italo Balbo when the latter was killed, could be reinforced from Italy's total reserves at home as long as Italian transports could safely cross the Mediterranean. Water is the direst military factor in Libya. In East Africa, reinforceable only by air (because Suez would be plugged before being surrendered), Italy had one white division (Savoy Grenadiers) of 21,391 men, seven native militia legions (50,000), 70,000 white farmers and workers trained as a militia reserve. Her airplanes there, which could be added to from home, totaled only 225 frontline, 200 reserves.
The British naval strength at Alexandria comprised only three battleships, with not nearly enough cruisers and destroyers (they had counted on French vessels which instead were disarmed in Alexandria's harbor) to match—on paper—the full strength of the Italian Navy (six battleships, with two new ones coming up). But the British counted on the fact that the thin-skinned Italian ships were not built to stand punching from British 15-in. guns.
With this small force strategically placed, the British hoped to held the eastern Mediterranean. If the Italians succeeded in taking Egypt and the Canal by land or sea, the British Fleet or what remained of it might flee, the Canal might be blocked, but Egypt's teeming millions, whose bond to the British, whom they dislike, is only that they dislike the Italians more, could offer no opposition. There would be imminent danger that the Arabs of Palestine, still piqued at Britain's unfulfilled promises of 1915, would revolt. And certainly the termini at Haifa and Tripoli of the pipelines from Mosul would fall into Italian hands. Britain's hold on the Near East would collapse.