OKH refused adequate troops and equipment to complete the conquest of North Africa, citing needs in elsewhere such as Russia. Using my 20/20 hindsight, it becomes obvious that not supporting the DAK with sufficient troops was a colossal mistake that affected the war adversely for the Wehrmacht far out of proportion to its importance to the German war effort.

Had OKH sent the requested divisions and supplies early (Mar 1941) when requested by Rommel, then most likely North Africa could have secured, as the British situation was problematic at best. A large number of the desert fighters that had embarrassed Graziani's Italians in 1940 were either PoWs or had lost their equipment in the futile defense of Greece and Crete. OKH wanted Rommel to conduct a defensive campaign, but Rommel refused, choosing instead to attack as soon as the 15th Panzer was unloaded. He did not wait for the follow-on units to arrive. The effect that the extra men and equipment requested by DAK but denied by Herr Schnicklgruber can be appreciated by the magnitude of the defeat endured by the UK forces, resulting in the capture of Generals Neame and O'Connor.

However, the surges to the Sinai by the DAK in Spring 1941 and Autumn 1942 was not be because of the urgent needs on the Eastern Front. Very likely, after the conquest of North Africa, the Germans could have defended both ends of the Med Sea with about 8-10 divisions. As it was, they lost North Africa and was forced to defend the southern coasts of Europe to the tune of about 40 divisions, exacerbating the manpower crisis that plagued the Eastern Front from late 1943 on. Can you imagine what a difference 30 or divisions would have made in July 1944, when Army Group Center disintergrated? And to add insult to injury, Hitler belatedly ordered the numbers of divisons requested by Rommel after he had left, just in time for von Arnim to surrender them in May 1943. This loss of men was on the magnitude of Stalingrad, though not quite as large. At least most of these PoWs came home after the war, in contrast to the poor souls hung out to dry with Paulus.

So, in the end, the refusal to provide adequate troops, saving them for Russia, ended up tying up far more troops later than were saved in the beginning.

I have no idea if Rommel could see the situation as it was to play out, but he fully understood that going onto the defence as OKH wanted him to do was a plan fraught with problems that would only result in German defeat in North Africa. He dove into the fight straight up using the German Army's usual disdain for logistical considerations. But he had no choice.

The German losses in North Africa were felt for the remainder of the war and were critical, both in men lost and men tied up defending the huge Southern European coastline.

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Best Regards,
JW

I meant to respond to this earlier but totally yipped up on it. I think this oft-made claim that Rommel was a glory seeking medal collector makes a great contrast to this statement he made to his wife on the occasion of Hitler presenting him with his Field Marshal's baton:

"I would rather he gave me one more division."

The truth is that Rommel was far more interested in winning battles that in winning medals. That is why he was so often willing to tell his superiors to take a flying leap when they tried to rein him in.

I also wanted to remark about the frequently repeated, even in this thread, claim that Rommel was no great military leader at all, made principally by those who simultaneously tout Monty and others who faced him as military genii due to their eventual victory over his forces. The truth was that by the time of the failure of Battleaxe, the British command had gotten tired of hearing their own soldiers' admiring comments about Rommel. It was common in the 8th Army to hear soldiers and low-ranking officers refer to any particularly adept or clever move as "pulling a Rommel". They took this as proof of an inferiority complex and a morale problem when in fact it was just healthy respect for a dangerous adversary.

Their response was to wage a propaganda campaign to "demystify" Rommel and undermine his well-earned reputation. That campaign even went so far as to blatantly lie to the public and their own internal circles and officially report, after its failure, that Battleaxe was just a "reconnaissance in force" when it fact its own planning document described it as a plan to "destroy" Rommel's forces and score "a decisive victory" over the Axis forces in North Africa. In any case, the anti-Rommel propaganda campaign was a total failure with the soldiery and an almost total success in the post-war history books. This helped it attain a momentum of its own that has continued into the present day. Unfortunately many of the documents, such as the Battleaxe plans, were not declassified and opened to historians until this momentum was already a fait accompli, making it difficult for factual accounts to overcome the effects of the propaganda which preceded them.

Why did Monty have a pic of Rommel in his command vehicle if he considered that Rommel should not be talked about by his troops? A bit odd, I think.

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To be fair, the anti-Rommel propaganda campaign began long before Monty came onto the scene. Just my own opinion, but I think Monty was only the second British general (Wavell being the first) to truly understand how it was that Rommel kept winning battles he had no business winning, i.e. a genius for rapid paced, highly mobile battles. Which is why Monty made shrewd use of his material and numerical superiority to make sure his own battle against Rommel was neither fast paced nor highly mobile. But again, that is just an opinion. I have seen very little direct evidence for this having come across almost no reliable first hand accounts from within Monty's circle.

Let's face it. Every general on both sides of World War II will have their detractors and admirers.
For me, I respect Rommel's military record. He did what he could with what he had. I personally believe that he is a victim of the Peter Principle. He proved that he was a good combat leader. However, when he was promoted to field marshal, he didn't have the additional training to really fulfill such a role. From what I read, he didn't had the necessary education needed for senior staff officers.

Rommel was an excellent general, but it should be remembered that he was only sent to North Africa to prevent the total collapse of the Italian army in the theater. North Africa was an unimportant sideshow for Germany, but due to Rommel's success's it led to Germany diverting valuable resources from the battle on the Eastern front at a time when the battle was still in the balance, and eventually led to Germany suffering a defeat of Stalingrad proportions.

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if in doubt....Panic!!!!

Agreed.

If Rommel was a Genius as some like to claim, he would be fighting on the Eastern front along side the greatest German commanders of the war.

The loss of Africa did not mean a Loss for Germany. A loss in the East meant just that.

The best of the best of what Germany had to offer was in the East not Africa.
Rommel was good, but far from the best.

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The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. -Adolf Hitler

The 2 last post point out very good points!!!

I coudn't agree more.

Whose to say..Hitler had sent somebody else to the unwanted Afirca theatre of war, and they became famous there????

meh...just a thought

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Facta non verba. "Deeds, not words"

I believe the ban on mentioning Rommel was started by Auchinleck who also said "There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel is becoming a kind of magical or bogey-man to our troops, who are talking far too much about him. He is by no means a superman, although he is undoubtedly very energetic and able. Even if he were a superman, it would still be highly undesireable that our men should credit him with supernatural powers."

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American by birth, TEXAN by the grace of GOD!

I don't mean to sound confrontational, but this is complete nonsense. You are basically making two points here, both of which are quite erroneous:

1. You are saying that the German involvement in North Africa was just a sideshow that had no strategic value to Germany. The opposite is actually true, in that it was a vital necessity to the Germans to deny the Allies a victory in North Africa, and could have proved a decisive blow against the British had they gone farther and deployed enough force and supplies to actually evict the British from North Africa. With the Allies in control of North Africa there was no way to prevent them from invading Italy and the southern coast of France, which in the event they did to devastating (for Germany) effect. And if the Axis had been able to seize the Suez canal from Britain that would have limited the Allies' axis to the Mediterranean to just the strait of Gibraltar. It would also have given the Axis access to the oil fields of the Middle East, which would have vastly affected their operations in all theaters for the rest of the war.

2. You also state that the forces employed in North Africa are somehow linked to the failure of the campaign against the Soviets. Again this is completely in error for two reasons. First, the forces employed, namely two understrength panzer divisions with less than 18,000 troops, were a drop in the bucket compared to the forces employed in Barbarossa (nearly three million troops). They would have made absolutely no difference there, however another two divisions from the Eastern Front deployed instead in North Africa in 1942 could have tipped the scales enough to permit Rommel to push all the way through the Middle East to open a second front against the Soviets in their most critical weak spot: their southern oil fields. As to the second point, the main reason Barbarossa failed was not inadequate forces but the idiotic way in which Hitler continually interfered in the operational decision making of his generals.

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The sky over Germany has grown very dark. - Rommel's last words in his memoirs

Never underestimate anyone's capacity for stupidity....including your own. - Pro_Consul