Fate
A date near mid-July 1942 was set for the invasion, partly to allow time to bring troops from other frontline positions and partly because Hitler believed the Italian Navy was no match for the Royal Navy.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel supported the idea of seizing Malta, to the point that he personally asked Hitler to allow him to command the invasion forces. His reasons for supporting an invasion were to hinder the Allied troops fighting in Africa, as well as remove the threat to the convoys heading to Rommel with supplies, oil, and men, of all which he was desperately low on. He put the emphasis on the attack to such an extreme that he was willing to move units from his front for the attack. The head of the German Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, opposed the invasion, fearing it would turn into another near-disaster for his paratroops, as had happened on Crete.
General Field Marshal Albert Kesselring tirelessly promoted Operation Herkules but even he was eventually dissuaded when it became apparent that too many air and ground units had been siphoned off to support Rommel's drive into Egypt, thereby significantly diminishing any chance of Herkules' success. This, along with Hitler's lack of faith in the paratrooper divisions as a result of the Invasion of Crete and in the Italian Navy's ability to protect the invasion fleet from British naval attacks, led to scrapping of the plan.
Read more about this topic: Operation Herkules
Famous quotes containing the word fate:
“Fate forces its way to the powerful and violent. With subservient obedience it will assume for years dependency on one individual: Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, because it loves the elemental human being who grows to resemble it, the intangible element. Sometimes, and these are the most astonishing moments in world history, the thread of fate falls into the hands of a complete nobody but only for a twitching minute.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“What generous beliefs console
The brave whom Fate denies the goal!
If others reach it, is content:
To Heaven’s high will his will is bent.
Firm on his heart relied,
What lot soe’er betide,
Work of his hand
He nor repents nor grieves,
Pleads for itself the fact,
As unrepenting Nature leaves
Her every act.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It is not menstrual blood per se which disturbs the imagination—unstanchable as that red flood may be—but rather the albumen in the blood, the uterine shreds, placental jellyfish of the female sea. This is the chthonian matrix from which we rose. We have an evolutionary revulsion from slime, our site of biologic origins. Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)