The Germans' initial goal of deploying military forces to North Africa was to shore up the Italian forces in Libya which had been routed by the British and keep the British forces away from the southern flank of occupied Europe. Rommel's initial successes fostered a great deal of mission creep in which the Afrika Korps's invasion of Egypt would be a first step to dislodge the British from their position in the Middle East. But OKW never really abandoned its original rationale for German military force in North Africa. Keeping the Italians in the war and preventing the British from attacking Europe via the Mediterranean theater was the major priority for the Germans. Although there were some voices within Germany calling for a resurrection of Germany's colonial empire in Africa and Rommel's successes emboldened them, these individuals and pressure groups had little influence on the Third Reich's leadership who were far more interested in carving a German empire out of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Operation Felix, the proposed invasion of Gibraltar, was much more contingent upon the success of Barbarossa than the fortunes of DAK in Egypt or even Franco's cooperation. Führer Directive 32 of July 1941 clearly outlined that extensive operations to close off the Mediterranean would follow the destruction of Soviet military forces. The Kriegsmarine began a detailed plan for the invasion of Gibraltar under the direction of Rear-Admiral Kurt Fricke in October. In September 1941, Raeder would forcefully argue in a meeting with Hitler that Felix would greatly improve Germany's strategic situation vis-a-vis Britain and while Hitler agreed with his Navy chief, the prime sticking point was the diversion of troops from the Eastern front for use in the invasion. By late 1941, opinion had shifted against the viability of Felix within much of OKW outside of the Kriegsmarine. OKW had forbid its attaches and officers in Spain from bringing up the capture of Gibraltar with their Spanish counterparts. When the Spanish General José Moscardó Ituarte brought up the subject of invading Gibraltar on 7 December, Hitler told him that Germany had no forces to spare to take Gibraltar. Throughout the latter quarter of 1941, the Kriegsmarine tried to argue that any diversion of troops would be a temporary matter and Felix should proceed, but this assertion fell on deaf ears.

Such was the importance of the Eastern front that even in 1942, the planners in OKW became convinced that DAK and North Africa were peripheral to any dislodgement of the British in the Middle East. After a strategic planning conference of 24 October, Walter Warlimont, Deputy Chief of the Operations Staff, produced a memorandum stating:

Because of the course of the campaign in the east, the development of the supply situation in Africa, and the still unclear attitude of Turkey, of the three possible operational directions for the attack on the Middle East (Egypt, Anatolia, and Caucasus-Iran), at the present time the attack via the Caucasus is the most obvious choice.

Warlimont would note that because of this restricted nature of planning due to Barbarossa's failure to result in immediate victory meant that "Gibraltar has been missed [and] must be left to its own devices."

Again, by the time of the Afrika Korps's deployment in 1941, German strategy in the Mediterranean was primarily reactive to the failure of Mussolini's parallel war and the seemingly imminent collapse of Italian military fortunes. The perception from Berlin was that all of the Italian dictator's military moves in the Balkans, Egypt, and one the Mediterranean had failed and German military forces would be needed to prevent a further deterioration of Italy's strategic position. In the case of the naval war, the inability of the Italian Navy to wrest control of the Mediterranean from the British proved to be quite vexing for the Kriegsmarine. Raeder, had actually counted on Italian forces either tying down significant RN assets at the start of hostilities in 1939. Although the Regia Marina had some advanced equipment, Italian deficiencies in radar, anti-aircraft weaponry, training, and above all coordination of naval power with airpower had meant that the RN usually got the better of their Italian enemies. Allied codebreaking also gave the RN a much greater advantage. After the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941, the German naval liaison to Italy concluded:

That this first offensive operation was such a disaster must be attributed solely to the complete failure of the Italian navy as regards tactical execution, command of formations and ships, and training in the use of weapons.

The liaison report further suggested that German officers and personnel should take command of Italian vessels and staffs. Despite this opprobrium spread against their Italian allies, the Kriegsmarine shared many of the same problems such as inadequate coordination with airpower and compromised naval codes.

Yet for all of this effort, the Germans remained fixated upon the Atlantic. In naval staff's "Memorandum on the Present State of the Naval War against Britain in July 1941," the Kriegsmarine planners were of the opinion:

the collapse of the Soviet Union will not change the British will to resist; even a defeat of the British forces in Africa will not force the British to yield, as they are convinced that only through victory can they recover all the positions they have lost. The extraordinary concentration of all British and American forces on the battle of the Atlantic clearly shows the decisive importance of the final phase of the struggle there.

Even proposals to occupy Gibraltar, the Canaries, and Azores, which Raeder entertained long after they were impractical, were decoupled from the need to aid Mussolini's position in North Africa. The latter was necessary for political reasons, but the former proposals were, to use an outdated idiom, building castles in Spain for the Kriegsmarine.

Sources

Bird, Keith W. Erich Raeder: Admiral of the Third Reich. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2006.

Knox, MacGregor. Mussolini Unleashed, 1939-1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy's Last War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Germany and the Second World War: Volume Vol. 3, The Mediterranean, South-east Europe and North Africa, 1939-41. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.