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Douglas Austin: Churchill and Malta’s War, 1939-1943. Chalford: Amberley, 2010. 288 pp.

The story of what Malta endured during World War II is by and large well known. Hundreds of books have been written about the soldiers, sailors and pilots who fought so hard and often gave their lives in our defence.

Maltese authors like Laurence Mizzi have written vividly about what Maltese men, women and children experienced especially during the terrible years of 1941 and 1942, when so much of our country was destroyed by enemy bombing and people spent hours and nights in underground air-raid shelters and lived on dreadfully short rations, sometimes very close to starvation.

Douglas Austin’s beautifully researched book is the first to focus entirely on how Britain’s great war leader, Winston Churchill, constantly looked at what was happening to Malta and what might be happening to it in future and took decisions that determined that very future.

Churchill went on record again and again to express his deep feeling for the strategic importance of Malta. “You may be sure we regard Malta as one of the master-keys of the British empire.” (June 1941).

In 1942, when he had seen for himself the widespread destruction in Malta’s towns and villages, it was he who asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer for generous funds for reconstruction, saying that “the case of Malta is unique and an account of its superb exertions is shattering”.

It was only the king who exceeded Churchill in his praise for the island’s heroism when he bestowed the George Cross on it. Oddly enough, Churchill never mentions the award in his papers or in his post-war memoirs. Was he interested solely in what he himself said or did?

In 1939, when war with Germany began and both Britain and France feared Italy would join Germany in the war, the French (with the British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax supporting them) wished to appease Mussolini by demilitarising or even giving up Malta (and Gibraltar) to Italy. However, Churchill and other British leaders opposed this and prevented it, even after France’s surrender.

When Italy entered the war and began bombing Malta, the island’s defences were very poor – just three Hurricane fighters and a few anti-aircraft guns, while the navy had been moved to the safer base of Alexandria.

The fear of invasion diminished greatly when Italy began its disastrous invasion of Greece. The lull made it possible for important reinforcements to reach Malta, as convoys managed to get to the island and the navy achieved control of the central Mediterranean.

But when, in January 1941, the German air force strongly targeted the south, Malta began to suffer greatly. Both the Royal Air Force (RAF) and the Royal Navy suffered great losses, the attack that left the aircraft carrier Illustrious crippled in Grand Harbour being one famous instance.

We can’t eat the George Cross, said Maltese cynics

Sir William Dobbie reported not just a dearth of fighters but, more importantly, a scarcity of first-class fighter pilots. The RAF’s loss of air control in the central Mediterranean made it easy for Rommel’s forces in North Africa to obtain all the reinforcements they needed.

On the positive side was the arrival of the 10th Flotilla of submarines, which were to become the navy’s most effective weapon. Maltese morale rose in July 1941, when the Italian torpedo motor-boat attack on Grand Harbour was entirely defeated by the Maltese coast guns. Hitler’s invasion of Russia once more put off the possibility of an early invasion of Malta.

At the end of 1941, the return of blitzing by the German Air Force brought back the fear of early invasion. It was this that caused the British to take the infamous decision to deport Maltese worthies and common men to Uganda in February 1942.

Churchill’s papers make no mention of this sad episode, one that has been quoted again and again by so many as a black example of imperialism at its worst. To be fair to Churchill, one should point out that February 1942 was when Britain suffered one of its greatest military disasters, the loss of Singapore to Japan.

Malta was now running short of both military supplies and food: only a small part of a convoy from Alexandria got through in March. Churchill persuaded the US to transport Spitfires to Malta on the USS Wasp, but on one disastrous occasion, the enemy destroyed or damaged most of the 46 Spitfires that had just reached Malta.

Dobbie did his best to urge Churchill to send Malta more resources and better pilots, but the Navy and RAF chiefs said he was a tired man who had lost his grip and urged for his removal. Churchill, who thought highly of him, was at first opposed to Dobbie’s removal, but finally had to agree. Incidentally, Mabel Strickland also urged for Dobbie’s removal, but it seems unlikely that her efforts greatly influenced the decision to replace him.

His replacement, Lord Gort, was a distinguished soldier, and so it was logical to make him not just Governor but also Commander-in-Chief and Supreme Commander. Dobbie, on the other hand, had had no authority over the Navy and RAF chiefs.

“We can’t eat the George Cross,” said Maltese cynics when the award was made in April. But many others felt proud that their sufferings had been recognised. In the meantime, food was certainly running very low, and Churchill was very worried.

“The plight of Malta had become an obsession with him,” his doctor, Lord Moran, was to write after the war. Some ships of one convoy partly reached Malta in June, so Churchill urged the need for a last great effort to send a convoy from the West.

The famous Pedestal convoy in August was escorted by a huge force of battleships, cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines.

The navy suffered grave losses and many of the merchant ships were lost, but the final heroic arrival of five ships is well known.

“The price was worth paying,” Churchill wrote to Stalin, while Lord Moran wrote, “The PM dabbed his eyes with a handkerchief as he listened to Malta’s story.”

Another important convoy, Stoneage, reached Malta in November. In December, the German Air Force made a nine-day, concentrated air attack on Malta.

This would be their last. In November that year, Churchill made his oft-quoted remark that with allied victories in North Africa, “it is perhaps the end of the beginning”.

For Malta, the invasion of Sicily in 1943 marked the end of its real war.

In his preface, Austin writes of the commissioning by the Malta Society of Arts and Manufactures of a bronze bust of Churchill sculpted by that fine Maltese artist, Vincent Apap.

Judge Anthony Montanaro Gauci, a strong anglophile and a highly respected judge, handled the correspondence on the matter with Churchill.

It was he who presented the impressive bust to Churchill in London and, at the statesman’s request, the bust was given back to Malta. It was placed in the Upper Barrakka Garden where it can still be admired.