abandon Libya altogether, pulling back to a new line at Gabès in
Tunisia, where he proposed to fight a completely new campaign.
Icily contemptuous, Hitler asked Rommel which front he did
propose to hold. If North Africa were lost, he pointed out, Italy
would probably defect. Writing in his own diary that night,
Rommel dictated, “Five .., conference with Führer in pres-
ence of Reichsmarschall. Talked until eight. Führer is flatly
against giving up the African theater.... The Italians must be
put under pressure to make a really serious effort to ferry sup-
plies to Africa.”
Hitler packed Göring and Rommel off by train to Rome
that same night, with orders to tackle Mussolini. The
Reichsmarschall grudgingly packed his bags, hoisted himself
aboard Asia and set off with the desert commander for Italy.
Rommel’s wife, Lucie, who joined the train at Munich, would
recall later with distaste that Göring chatted only about his art
acquisitions and his gems throughout the journey. But Rommel
humored him, and used the two-day train journey to work on
him: By early on the thirtieth, as their train puffed into the Ital-
ian capital, Rommel was recording that Göring now fully en-
dorsed his Gabès plan. Exuding optimism, Göring ordered
twenty of the powerful new eighty-eight-millimeter flak guns
rushed to Rommel’s forces, and he phoned Milch to come down
immediately to Rome to step up Italian aircraft production.
Then, however, he received Field Marshal Kesselring. Kes-
selring pointed out that retreating to Gabès would bring the en-
emy air force within close range of the Axis bridgehead harbors
in Tunisia. Accepting the logic of this, Göring now declared that
Rommel must on no account abandon Tripoli.
He was driven across Rome to see Mussolini that evening.
In a three-hour wrangle with him, the thin and pale-skinned
Duce made plain that he too had favored the Gabès plan; but he