ABSTRACT
In any case, Malta was very nearly starved into submission – the success, with heavy losses, of the vital convoys of June and August 1942, was a near thing. Oil was the only substantial thing in the Middle East of great value to the Allies. But in those days the developed world was not yet dependent on Middle East oil. Britain's own supply during World War II came not around the Cape but from the Americas. For one thing, portraying World War II as a narrow escape from total disaster undoubtedly makes more interesting reading than showing it as tedious effort to deal with foes who, however terrible, were taking on a task that was just too big for them. By 1943 the Western air forces in the Mediterranean theater alone outnumbered the whole Luftwaffe. Hitler's actual policy in the Mediterranean was basically defensive, at least in the short run.
