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Rommel speaks - Printable Version +- Forums (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards) +-- Forum: The Parade Ground (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards/forumdisplay.php?fid=2) +--- Forum: Historical Discussion (https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards/forumdisplay.php?fid=17) +--- Thread: Rommel speaks (/showthread.php?tid=46456) Pages:
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RE: Rommel speaks - Steel God - 07-26-2008 PoorOldSpike Wrote:Steel God Wrote:at the operational level or the strategic level, his inconsistency would work against him in a BIG way. Here are two of his largest: His "counter-attack" after Operation Crusader referred to as the "Dash for the Wire" was borne of his over estimation of the damages he had inflicted, against the estimates of his own staff, and would have only worked if the British simply panicked and routed. His forces were inadequate for the tasks he set for it, and his decision to lead the attack personally let the real battle area around Tobruk and Bardia for the British to consolidate while he shot up a few supply columns before the Axis were forced to withdraw, ultimately all the way back to El Aghelia. The other was the whole chain of events leading up to the El Alamein debacle. The North African theater for the Axis was never about anything more than trucks and gas. The simple reality of the laws of supply and demand dictated that unless they could push more supply into Libya than they were, and manage to get more of it forward than they did, the Axis leash was NEVER going to reach to the Nile Delta. Despite all the advice against it from OKH, Commando Supremo, and his immediate boss Kesselring, Rommel pushes on into Egypt after the fall of Tobruk when the ONLY real chance would have been the neutralization and capture of Malta, without which, they could have pushed 10 panzer divisions into Libya and not altered the odds of the Germans capturing Egypt. It was his failure to grasp and accept when any Major in supply could have explained to him, that doomed Rommel in Egypt, and why I think he should be rated as no higher than gifted but inconsistent field commander. RE: Rommel speaks - PoorOldSpike - 07-27-2008 Try as I might, I can't fault Rommel, no doubt I'm biased because his strong stubborn arrogant personality is so like my own and I therefore can't help but admire him..;) As regards taking Malta, I'm sure Hitler must have spent hours dreaming of having it, but decided he hadn't enough shipping to land troops and keep them supplied in the face of the Royal navy.. In Rommels place I'd have ordered a Dash to the Wire on the lines of- "We routed the Brits once before because they're hopeless at open desert warfare and a proportion of them are holed up in Tobruk where we can't get at them, so now's our chance to get at them in the open desert and punch them on the nose again!" His punch hit thin air, but hey that's war,you have to keep swinging, so he pulled back to Agheila, simply giving up a chunk of worthless barren desert. Later of course he came back and broke the Brit Gazala line. As for the push on the Nile, again in his place my attitude would have been- "Ja let's go for it, that's what we're here for and have been ordered to do by Hitler, and even if don't manage to go the extra mile we can always dig in at Alamein which is the best defensive line in Africa sandwiched between the sea and the Qattara Depression" In the end of course he was beaten by the sheer overwhelming weight of Allied men and materiel after America entered the fray. "We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us [Rommel], and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general......To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy" -Winston Churchill |
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