When the plans for Crete were drawn up and presented to Hitler he was also offered a counter-proposal for the invasion of the Mediterranean island of Malta. Between these two plans, each with its own supporters in the German high command, the Fürher was made to choose the most strategic. Crete may have been the wrong choice.
During the spring and summer of 1941, the Mediterranean was boiling with conflict as the two powers tried to deny each other the use of the inland sea for transporting supplies and reinforcements to North Africa.
RAF squadrons and British Navy warships operating from bases on Malta were a constant danger to German transports. To address this, German air strikes against the these bases intensified in April 1941 but an air campaign alone was not enough. As long as Malta held out, the Axis position in North Africa was in peril.
As Hitler's focus increasingly turned to the Russia, Rommel and the Afrika Corp were forced to rely upon the ever-dwindling supplies that could make the run across the dangerous waters of the Mediterranean to his supply depots. In his quest to take Egypt, Rommel would have to make bricks without straw.
But even Malta was just one piece of the overall puzzle. In the view of some historians, if Hitler had chosen, at this stage of the war, North Africa as the strategic focus rather than Russia, it is likely that he could have captured the entire Mediterranean, the Suez Canal, and much of the Middle East to boot.
For Britain this would have been catastrophic. And for Hitler, the Middle East would be an excellent springboard for attacks on the strategic Russian oil fields in the Caucasus. A master stroke that would have hobbled Russia's military power.
As J.F.C Fuller points out, "the road to Egypt - the overseas base of British Sea Power in the European theatre of war - ran through Malta." But Russia - the bane of Europe's last megalomaniac - held Hitler in thrall for the next four years of the war proved to be his undoing.
