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Syria, Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula are the Mediterranean roadways to the bridge. Jumbo Wilson helped to take Syria from the Vichyfrench. The British Ninth Army under General Alexander now holds the Mediterranean fringe from Egypt to Turkey. If & when Field Marshal Rommel masters Egypt and Suez, he may choose to turn north toward Syria, seize the Royal Navy's last (and insufficient) eastern Mediterranean bases at Haifa and Beirut, then drive on Iraq. His more direct route to Basra would be straight across the great deserts of Arabia, but even camel trails skirt those wastes.
The Balkan Way. Rommel rolling up from Suez is not the chief menace to Sir Henry's bridge. Neither, as it may well turn out, is the German drive through the Caucasus. Wilson and Wavell do not forget that the Germans have a third approach, one that may be the most dangerous of all, if Egypt falls and the Nazis control the inner Mediterranean. The man waiting on that approach is the Luftwaffe's General Alexander Löhr, commander of all German forces in the Balkans, Crete and the Aegean Islands. A solely airborne thrust from Crete to the British island of Cyprus and on to the Syrian mainland would be difficult and costly, and it may be beyond the resources of the strained Luftwaffe (see p. 38). But General Löhr will be in a better position if Rommel extends his control of the southern Mediterranean to Suez. Then the Germans could move forces from southern Europe through Nazi waters, giving them thorough air protection. Then they would stand all too good a chance to by-pass or conquer Cyprus, to pierce the thinly held Syrian shore line by concerted sea, air and land assaults.
Turkey is the imponderable X in all the Allied calculations for the Middle East. The Russian and British armies in Persia, Iraq and Syria hold guns at Turkey's back—friendly guns, aimed not at the Turks but at the Germans. Turkey's bouncing Premier Sükr ü Saracoglu and the Turkish army's tough, cagey old Field Marshal Fevsi Cakmak have no choice but to play with the winning side.
Last week the German advances in the Caucasus were enough to put the Turks in panic. Premier Saracoglu visited the Caucasian border; General Kiazim Orbay brought up seven Turkish divisions. They were probably there more for effect than for fighting, although the Turkish Government has sworn to battle any invader. The battle for the Turkish gates to the Middle East will be won or lost before an enemy trooper crosses the Turkish border. That battle is being fought in Egypt and the Caucasus.
The armies on the bridge are greater in numbers than in actual fighting strength. According to a report from Istanbul last week, General Wilson has some 150,000 troops in Iraq and Persia. The Fighting French and thousands of Poles reinforce the Ninth Army in Syria and Palestine. But the Poles lack equipment; the Eighth Army in Egypt has necessarily had the first call on weapons, and this priority has probably affected the other British forces in the Middle East. So has Russia's urgent need; the U.S. and British supplies pouring through Iraq and Persia to the Caspian have gone mainly to the Russian fronts.