Rommel stuff.

Saw an ad about a new Rommel book that painted him in rather acidic terms, self promoter,medal collector, used behind the back channels to get what he wanted etc. Couldn't find link to this book, but wondered if anyone else had come across it & if it was accurate etc.

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p417_Irving.html

Speaking of Rommel, this book covers a bit about the captured vehicles the Africa Corps used. Many were captured at Tobruk...

"More than 35,000 prisoners were taken along with 2000 tons of fuel, 2000 operational vehicles, and 5000 tons of provisions. Suddenly the scene was set for the Axis advance to Alamein, carried forward by captured trucks and supplies."


http://www.sonic.net/~bstone/archives/980412.shtml

2000 vehicles, that's quite a load. One wonders how many were fuel lorries, how many were jeeps etc.

[ 07. September 2006, 12:41 AM: Message edited by: chromeboomerang ]

 

it was common for both sides to use captured vehicles, during the fall of benghazi the whole of 7 brigade 4th indian division escaped by breaking into 3 forces and crossing rommels line of advance out into the open desert, they were ordered not to fire on enemy planes and by doing this the planes thought they were german troops in captured vehicles, they made it back to british lines with only a hand full of casualties

 

Clever.

 

Rommel himself used a captured British 25-pdr gun 'Quad' tractor as his mobile command post for a while; there's a photo of it in 'The Rommel Papers'.

( Oh, and don't forget that his trademark goggles were also captured British items.... )

 

And of course his Captured AEC Dorchester Command vehicle(s) 'Mammut'.

Cheers,
Adam.

 

What was the fuel capacity of the British fuel trucks?

 

http://www.mapleleafup.org/forums/showthread.php?s=9e71d3e1f00be58081411a73114a3fc7&postid=22761

Here's some data on Brit vehicles, American too, in north Africa.

http://www.oldcmp.net/hedges11.html

 

Holy sneezes! Thanks for the links, Boom!

 

No prob. Some of the Canadian vehicles were made in 43, so it is hard to figure with exactitude what vehicles were in use on allied side circa 42 in what proportion. I.e. what percentage were jeeps, CMP's & so on.

 

neat stuff...

 

Beware of Irving's book, like all his writings, it is all aimed at prooving his revisionist point about WWII (especialy the part about Rommel's part into the anti-Hitler conspiration).

Irving has also been known to betray his historian status by refering to doubtfull sources.

+ he's a bastard, but that's personal

 

On Rommel

"Rommel was a very aggresive and thrusting General, energetic, always on the ball. He drove his troops hard and he was impatient. he was ambitious and inclined to be spectacular personally and militarily, and there was a great deal of the politician in him. I would say that his military knowledge was not very profound. There were 2 principles which he clung to: Counterattack quickly and exploit every success. He overdid both"

Leslie Morshead 11 June 1947
GOC 9th Australian Infantry Division
Tobruk & El Alamein

(From Tobruk by Peter Fitzsimons)

As he was one who beat Rommel regularly I would assume he knows!

 

If Rommel was such a poor general/tactician are victories over him anything worth boasting about??

Somehow I fail to follow the logic. I can see many people don´t see Rommel as much of a general but somehow victories over him are remembered well. Can anyone explain why this is so?

 

Because at the time those were the only victories the Brits could speak of

 

It could be that the British Command at the time was abysmal.

The tactics he used succeded when against poorly led forces. Dont forget Alam el Halfa, Medinine, Ultimately the Kasserine attacks.

His "bull at a gate" tactics failed and he lacked the ability to reappraise his approach.

And Rommel was lucky, one of Napoleons requirements in his Marshals.

 

I personely believe that Rommel's prestige and achievements are at times over exagerated. Yes he was good and a very capable learder but I wouldn't put him in the top five Germans commanders.

At least that's my opinion

( something tells me I'm going to attacked for this one )

 

Rommel was one of the most brilliant generals of the war, but his brilliance was somewhat tempered by his flaws. Probably his biggest flaw, or at least the one that acted most to blunt the effects of his genius, was his inability to persuade others, particularly his peers and superiors, of the correctness of his position.

Examples:

1. He knew from his experience as the only German Field Marshal to face the Allies under the umbrella of complete Allied air superiority that the basing of the German reserves far from the beaches would lead to disaster.

2. He knew that one or two more armored divisions in the USSR would be relatively minor while those same forces in North Africa could yield enormous benefits in 1941-42.

3. He knew that trying to hold the line and defend the position at El Alamein was a hopeless cause and that those forces would be far better employed if they fell back along their supply lines and made their stand at a later time and in a better position.

In each of these cases he immediately identified the correct course of action and then took the head on approach to try to convince his superiors of it. But in each case his headstrong "I am right and you are wrong" attitude simply made the people he was trying to convince close their ears to his arguments. It is odd that someone who so favored the indirect approach in battle had not the slightest clue how to use it in diplomacy. In the above cases it led to:

1. Runstedt's original plan for placing the mobile reserves well behind the coastal defenses was endorsed and those reserves were largely disrupted, reduced and in some cases outrightly destroyed by massive Allied air attacks before they could play any part in the bridgehead battles.

2. His forces were always kept relatively small and well below the level necessary to maintain any balance with the British 8th Army, let alone strong enough to truly defeat the British and seize the Suez Canal, which would have been a huge blow to the British and given Germany access to the oil fields of the Middle East.

3. He was ordered to stand because he was now being seen as a defeatist for flatly stating the truth that his forces and supplies were completely inadequate to defend that position against the massively superior British forces. As a result his forces were mauled in situ and a great many highly experience German and Italian soldiers marched into prisoner of war camps, to be later replaced by soldiers and officers whose only experience was in the vastly different theater of the Russian front.

So basically my opinion is that his greatest enemy was his own mouth.

 

Some people in this forum take a different view on Rommel. See this for instance:

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=11816&highlight=rommel

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=10761&highlight=rommel

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=10583

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=18298

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=10226

http://www.ww2f.com/showthread.php?t=11890

This forum has a tremendous post backlog, the Search feature comes in very useful.

Cheers!

 

I know. I read those threads and have to say that I have run into such opinions repeatedly over the years. But I have yet to see any logical, factual analysis to support such portrayals of Rommel.

In particular probably the most frequent criticism of Rommel is the assertion that he was a reckless gambler. The dictionary defines "reckless" as "indifferent to or disregardful of consequences". So his critics most frequent complaint is that he had a tendency to gamble without regard to the consequences. A study of his own working notes, the writings of some of his subordinates and the records of actual operations shows that the truth is quite the opposite. Indeed, his operational plans show clearly that they were based on careful calculation with great regard for preserving his forces intact even should his plans fail. And in the main this is precisely what happened in his lost battles: he kept his army intact. In other words while he might have risked losing a battle, he never risked losing an army except when he was ordered to at El Alamein.

And the bottom line is, one who is unwilling to take risks when placed up against an army superior in basically every way is 100% assured he will win no battles. The British practice of insisting on 100% assurance of success before undertaking any offensive operations only works when one has an overpowering superiority of forces. And even then Rommel managed to defeat several such British attacks which were believed (by the planners) to have that 100% assurance of success.

These successes of Rommel's were not accidents and they happened when he was commanding multi-divisional, multi-national forces with inferior numbers, inferior quality of weapons and inadequate supplies. And nothing I have read to date shows any factual explanation for these successes that holds up logically except for those that acknowledge Rommel was possessed of a genius for rapid mobile warfare. The argument that they were reckless gambles comes across as gross exaggeration of the simple fact that he was willing to accept risks so long as the survival of his army was not threatened by them. And the arguments that he was only a capable commander at the divison level are completely shredded by the fact that his greatest victories came when commanding an entire army.