"Is Rommel Overrated?" Topic

Was he a great general, or just lucky?

Great generals are lucky. Most of them make the opportunity for themselves to be lucky.

…Great General..!!!

To my mind "great general" includes understanding supply and logistics -- fields where Rome was deficient.

Over rated.

He was a very effective Division commander. He was a marginally effective Corps commander. But much like Patton, he was past his depth as an Army commander.

Brash and swagger and showmanship are all fine and good, but an Army commander needs to STAY IN CHARGE OF THE ARMY, and keep the whole of the Army coordinated, not rush off, out of communications, so he can be at the interesting place at the interesting moment.

Rommel was a talented tactician and an inspiring leader of men. He was not competent in logistics, and was chronically impatient not only with the formations under his command (a good thing), but with himself (a shortcoming). He repeatedly disappeared from HQ to be on the front lines at critical moments, leaving his Corps, and later his Army, under the leadership of his subordinate staff. Better to lead the Corps or Army, and leave the Divisions and Battalions under his subordinate commanders.

Or so I have read.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Great leader who did a lot with a little – and to be fair it is hard to have a robust logistical tail when it depends on the Italian Navy and Air Force out-fighting the RAF and Royal Navy

Just sayin'

He beat a lot of poorer generals. He became a bogey man in the desert due to his better grasp of tank warfare tactics.
He was as good as he was. 'Great' is very subjective.

Good morning Louise! A GREAT GENERAL!

Probably though I think there's a case for him being promoted above his skill level.

In the end, he reminds of the WW2 version of some civil war generals: Highly skilled at the tip of the spear but failing to understand that war had changed.

I think a lot of the mystique came up around the need for a "good" Nazi general without too much political baggage, so he got fluffed up a bit too.

He had little to work with as no supplies were reaching him in N Africa. Like the Confederacy he had to "make do" with what he had. Logistics were out of his control. I think the "great" in any one can be said to be overrated.

If he had been listened to, and swept Overlord back into the sea then there would be no argument!

He's a better leader of men than Manstein but not as good a strategist. He leads from the front and exposes himself to danger more than Manstein, who's more of a stay-at-the-HQ guy. I don't think he's overrated though. He does have a good reputation in the west because he's implicated in the assassination attempt of Hitler and forced to take poison.

His actions in WWI were exemplary, he was a "lead from the front" type officer and a bit of a micro-manager.

In times of stress he tended to move towards the action which is fine for a company or battalion commander and can work for a division commander with a good communications network, but at a corps and army level that can be critical.

He may not have had control over his supply lines in the Mediterranean, but he left the managing of his logistics to others and often ignored the pleas of his staff such as perpetually trying to put his rather small pool of 88mm guns into the front lines, leaving his supply areas without AA protection.

Like most German officers and certain Generals like Patton, he firmly believed in taking the initiative and believed in trying to outmaneuver the enemy, when confronted by a situation where he was unable to fix and outflank his enemy like Tobruk or El Alamein, he did fairly poorly.

Dozens of German generals performed just as adequately on the Eastern Front, but since we don't have a large corpus of post-war Soviet stories and books about such and such German general being a die-hard foe like we have with the British and Rommel meaning the exploits of these men have faded away and we focus on one single character who stood out because of specific circumstances.

Rommel was pretty much a nazi creation, he was a keen, early follower of Hitler. He did not quite understand that Hitler was not playing with a full deck and believed he had a special connection and could influence him. It wasn't until he was approached by others that his name appeared among the conspirators that tried to kill Hitler.

Without Hitler, Rommel would have remained an obscure Captain teaching infantry tactics at the academy. His actions in North Africa gave him two opportunities, one was to cultivate a good relationship with the attached envoys of Goebbels' propaganda ministry and use his talent as an amateur photographer to stage photos and footage that appeared all over Germany at a time where the situation in the USSR was starting to stall.

German propaganda needed the strong image of an invincible and chivalrous general because defeating hordes of "inferior Slavs" to be exterminated like rats felt too easy, before the downward spiral, the British were a more credible foe which could be treated magnanimously in defeat.

Post-War, the need to revive a strong Germany to oppose the Communist block required some major propaganda, and producing a whole host of "Good Germans" who may have been vital to the nazi regime, but were only acting in the interest of Germany and remained mostly apolitical. Rommel was one such figure that Germans (and NATO) could use as a figurehead for some major mythbuilding.

Rommel was a capable military commander to a certain degree, but with flaws, he had the luxury of fighting a clean war, he was highly ambitious and was very favourable towards Hitler and used him to launch is career and had the advantage of being a talented self-promotor, and being a useful propaganda figure both for the Germans and British.

Overall I rate Rommel as a competent German general who had the luck to stand out more than many of his equally capable or even superior peers.

I like him. But he was one of the first generals to keep a press horde on standby to document his triumphs and raise his prowess.

Usually the more you learn about a general, the less great he seems. I think we are seeing teamwork when we look at "greatness" rather than an individual who is significantly better than average. That is my humble opinion.

However you slice it he won a lot with a little. I've read somewhere, and not tried to follow it up with more reading since I'm just a dabbler in history, that he had intelligence on Allied plans in the desert which is part of how he outdid his opponents earlier on. Later on the Intelligence war went the Allies way. If true that diminishes his achievements somewhat.

Isn't he dead already?

Over rated,,,just my opinion

Rommel was pretty much a nazi creation

Don't forget Churchill. It was necessary for Rommel to be a great general otherwise…

Rommel had very good intelligence from his 621. Radio Intercept company to which was added the fact that SIM (Italian military intelligence) had "aquired" the code which the US military attache in Cairo was using and was able to intercept and read Colonel Fellers daily messages. Rommel called these messages his "Good Source"

When the 621st was overrun and destoryed and the allies learned through ULTRA that the Italians were reading Col. Fellers messages Rommel suddenly lost much of the "magical" touch he had displayed earlier in the campaign.

As for the supply situation, had no supplies been reaching North Africa one wonders how the Germans got all those troops and shiny toys to the desert. Had Rommel kept to his original mission supplies would have been plentiful even lavish.

Overrated? ….. Interesting. On the basis of what exactly?

Caporetto 1917? Won the Pour le Merite leading his battalion in the capture of three important mountain peak positions and 9,000 Italian prisoners in the space of two days.

Post WW1 – Wrote "Infantry Attacks", which is still today read within the precincts of the professional military.

France 1940? He did notably well there in command of 7th Panzer Division, so well as to have been specially singled out and feted by the Nazi propaganda machine.

N Africa? Consistently outnumbered on the ground; forced to deal with a reluctant and qualitatively inferior Italian ally; constantly fighting bureaucratic battles with his titular Italian superiors in Rome while facing a succession of logistical crises; consistently operating under conditions of air inferiority ….. yet still delivered dramatic victories over 8th Army, ultimately driving the British all the way back to the gates of Cairo before finally running out of steam. His British opponents in North Africa certainly thought a great deal of him – enough to attempt an assassination raid.

Atlantic Wall defenses of France – Rommel was responsible for prodigies of effort in organizing and erecting the system of coastal defensive obstacles in the short time available to him before the invasion; he was correct in his insistence that the armored reserves needed to be poswitioned immediately behind the beaches and not in deep operational reserve; he was one of the precious few German senior officers who had an appreciation of Allied tactical airpower in the west but was ignored, then wounded very shortly after the invasion by the very same tactical airpower he warned against.

The criticism of spending too much time "leading from the front"? – No one ever indicted George Patton for the very same behavior and Rommel often used tactical cooperation aircraft to effectively survey the battlefield … something I do not recall any Allied general (please do correct me if I'm wrong on this point) doing during the war.

Intelligence support – Yes, Italian intelligence for a period of time had been able to surreptitiously access (IIRC) coded traffic being sent out by the US military attachι; the offset to that was the vastly better intelligence available to the Allies through ULTRA.

B

Also need to add in, sure he could have sat on the defensive in the desert as originally ordered and most likely would have been destroyed even quicker. Lots of those troops that had to be shipped in for the emergencies Rommel created, by destroying larger enemy forces, were desperately needed elsewhere.

Never underestimate the ability of the armchair generals to denigrate the real ones.

I am in the great camp. He made stone soup with the meager supplies he had and used captured supplies where he could to augment his forces. Properly equipped, it would be interesting to see what he could have done.

I would not place him in the same category as Napoleon or Hannibal, but like Gustavus Aldolphus, he made the best use of the resources available to him.

He was and is a great general. For evidence, I offer the United States Army. The Army have been studying his tactics since during WW2. They have been applying them very successfully.

Certainly Rommel was very good, maybe not a Manstein but he never had a chance to show what he could do in Russia. He was trusted with N. Africa and did quite well with the supplies he managed to get and overrun. He could also make mistakes, such as his dash to the wire during the Crusader battles.
link

Overall I would rate him as a sold 8.

Blutarski +1
Robbyrobot +1

Mein Fuhrer too win we must eliminate Malta! Mein Fuhrer too win we must eliminate Malta! Mein Fuhrer too win we must eliminate Malta! Oh wait a minute I am just a few miles from the Suez Canal I can win in Africa with out sharing the glory with Kesselring and Student! Never mind my Fuhrer Malta isn't important…….I only lost in Africa coz Malta stuffed my supply lines!!!

And it is noticeable he was only anti Hitler once the war was lost and even then didn't commit to removing him.

Good General, overrated Field Marshall and not as lily white as propaganda has made him.

Just my opinion you understand.

Fatman

It depends what you mean by great general. Napoleon, Alexander and Hannibal were truly great, but they were warlords leading empires. Marlborough was great, as was Gustavus Adolphus as they challenged or changed the nature of warfare.

Rommel was an excellent regimental and divisional Commander, a good corps Commander and an average army Commander.

Mass industrialised warfare tends to preclude greatness in both ww1 and WW2. The "great" commanders in that environment are those who understand politics, logistics and the management of attrition. Which makes them rather dull compared to the flamboyant figures of the past. Marshall and Alexander rather spring to mind, neither of them being a Murat.

By whom? Some historians have overrated Rommel, but many others have taken the opposite path and underrated him. According Ben Shepherd (Hitler's Soldiers. Yale UP, 2016), Rommel was a daring commander, with a clear sight of the tactical and grand tactical possibilities of a battlefield, and masterful at combined arms operations. He took a cavalier approach to logistics and intelligence gathering, though, which, again according to Shepherd, was a common trait in many WWII German commanders. As for his Nazism, Rommel was happy to accept the accolades lavished upon him by Hitler, but he wasn't as much interested in racial theories of domination as in improving his career chances. Politically, he was the quintaessential opportunist.

Great tactical general who peaked as a division commander, but a failure at higher level command. He never understood logistics and resources which led to his loss in N. Africa -- he never had the resources, the ports, or the equipment for anything more than the strategic defensive. Then he lost at Normandy. Granted, he was out of it almost immediately, but the German army was executing his plan.

Here's a pretty good book on the issue: Rommel Reconsidered (Stackpole Military History Series)

link

I have to say whatever opinion we hold, this has been an interesting discussion. I learned quite a bit. Things I hadn't considered made me think. I was a kid in the 50s and was taught he was a "good" German and a great general. So this has given me food for thought. This is why I come to this site. Thanks to everyone for a civilized discussion.

Much of Rommel's success would come from his decisiveness and ability to get inside his opponents decision cycle to gain an advantage. Though it wouldnt be formalized in military teachings until defined by Colonel John Boyd, USAF it was innately understood by Rommel. This would become enshrined for those of us who studied it in various staff colleges as the OODA Loop (observe, orient, decide, act).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop

Re North African logistics – Read Van Creveld's analysis of the logistical challenges facing the Axis forces. I would submit that what is deemed Rommel's alleged "failure to grasp logistical issues" is rather his commitment to extract the absolute maximum effort out of what little he was getting from an inefficient and hamstrung Italian-controlled logistics supply network. He had a hard, perhaps impossible choice: take risks to accomplish something or stand inert and accept failure before even trying.

It is worth noting that, in response to the Torch landings, heaven and earth were suddenly moved to deliver and supply a couple of hundred thousand troops + supplies + latest equipment. Had Rommel been supplied to this standard in early/mid 1942 ….. well, draw your own conclusions.

Revisionism is so often linked to comfortable and sometimes selective hindsight after the passage of time has blurred many of the messy historical details.

As usual, my opinion.

B

Not in his own opinion, he wtote a book where he speaks of himslf at the third person ;)

It is worth noting that, in response to the Torch landings, heaven and earth were suddenly moved to deliver and supply a couple of hundred thousand troops + supplies + latest equipment. Had Rommel been supplied to this standard in early/mid 1942 ….. well, draw your own conclusions.

My conclusion is that you have either not read Van Creveld (Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton) or have not read his work carefully enough. My recollection is that:
(1) To provide sufficient motorisation for Rommel in North Africa Hitler would have had to cancel BARBAROSSA and divert the required resources to Africa
(2) The response to the TORCH landings was possible because of the short LoC between Sicily & Southern Italy that allowed the transfer of troops and permitted their adequate supply (apart from the greater port handling facilities available in Tunisia compared to Libya)

The exasperation of the Italians with him, as reported by Van Creveld, was perhaps because of his inability to see the big picture in preference to getting maximum effort at the local point. Indeed Van Creveld has made a point of stressing the German concern at seeing the critical point being tactically winning on the battlefield whereas the Allies were more concerned about ensuring a superfluity of equipment and supplies that would deliver victory (Fighting Power: German and US Army performance, 1939-1945). Undoubtedly Rommel can be seen as on a par to Hoth and Guderian but equally limited like them in seeing operational matters without reference to bigger issues.

what little he was getting from an inefficient and hamstrung Italian-controlled logistics supply network.

The Italian armed services always get castigated but can you point to evidence to sustain this? How much do you think limited fuel oil availability impacted on the operations of the Italian Navy? I would agree that Rommel tried to get the maximum utility out of what he got.

My personal opinin was that he was good, he knew how to exploit well. However to me he was a risk taker. His risks were well thought out and the risk of loss was small. However he took risks that if they did occour you lost big time. That is my opinion of Rommel. He makes a great colourful picture as had been said. He was certainly competent at lower levels, however in the end he took too many unmitigated risks.

How do you judge. To succeed at the uttely contemptibal or fail attemting the sublime? both have merits.

Monty was not a risk taker. he is less impressive as there are no wild risky advaenture, aleays it was make sure you keep what you have

Blut, while I agree logistics were a constraint within which he had to work, the fact is he never understood his mission to start with. He was not sent to N.A. to throw the Brits out, but to prevent the Italians from losing. Instead, he went on the strategic offensive without the resources he needed….

Hitler was never going to give Rommel what he wanted. Russian was his priority, and the supplies required to support one division in N.A were three times those required for Russia. He was continuously at odds with his superiors because he didn't obey his orders…and his superiors were the ones allocating resources based on their orders.

Again, I believe he was a good tactical general but the bottom line is that he failed in N.A.

In a time of mass industrialization and wars that span continents and indeed the world, I'm not sure that we can really answer this question any more.

As noted above, in WW1 as well as a division and corps commander in WW2 he displayed admirable aggression and can be viewed as getting the most out of the poor German / Italian logistics.

I would have thought his work in preparing Normandy for the invasion showed that he had a greater grasp of defensive tactics (or at the very least, of the potential of allied air power) than he is usually given credit for.

That said, I think it is more appropriate to ask if he could have done as well as Manstein or Guderian if he had been in Russia and directly under Hitlers eye, rather than a side show in North Africa?

Being a side show gave him freedom that was progressively removed from the Eastern front generals (until the good ones such as Manstein and Guderian) were fired or promoted out of the field.

Given that Rommel was ultimately beaten repeatedly by a plodder like Monty, and then given the choice of suicide and a heroes funeral or a sham trial and execution by his own side, I'm pretty sure that we can rule out the idea that he was 'lucky' though.

Hagen,
My previous post was not an effort to gratuitously denigrate the Italian contribution to the Axis war effort; it was to point out that Italy alone, without German support, simply lacked the wherewithal to support operations in North Africa. Rather than write a lengthy tome, permit me instea to recommend – "The War against Rommel's Supply Lines, 1942-1943". Westport, CT; Levine, Alan J. Praeger, 1999. It addresses many of the points you have raised.

When the German chose to cooperate (the massive air campaign against Malta; the emergency program to establish a western line of defense in Tunisia) the logistics situation improved considerably and so did the axis military situation in North Africa. When Hitler removed or curtailed support for the Mediterranean, the military situation responded accordingly. It is no secret that, in Hitler's mind, the North African campaign was an inconsequential front which suffered from the additional burden of coinciding in time with Barbarossa. Nevertheless, why were Rommel and the DAK sent if not to fight? I have a great deal of trouble indicting a soldier for fighting to win after being sent into battle by his leader.

B

Note – "The War against Rommel's Supply Lines, 1942-1943" has apparently been re-printed by Stackpole Press.

Now available for cheap money.

B

I don't know, but he was probably a better general than any of us could have been or could be. History will remember his name.

I think Rommel was greatly assisted by fighting a coalition that was led by generals with no coherent doctrine for the proper use of armour, and that lacked effective anti-tank capability for 18 crucial months between early 1941 and mid 1942.

He was also ably assisted by the US military attache in Cairo. Ultra should have provided a reciprocal intelligence advantage to the Commonwealth forces, but didn't, because Rommel routinely ignored the orders transmitted to him in that way.

He certainly did achieve a major tying-up of Commonwealth and later allied resource in north Africa, though. To defeat two German panzer divisions and a motorised infantry division required a huge establishment of fighting troops, logistical troops, air assets, naval assets and of course the convoys had to go round the Cape to Suez, meaning far more merchant hulls tied up. So while he didn't "get" his mission, it seems clear that he drew off more resource than he consumed that was needed in Russia.

He was definitely right conceptually about having the tanks close to the D-Day beachheads, although presumably this meant distributing them along every possible beachhead. Whether this would have provided a decisive concentration anywhere is harder to say.

Was that not Van Creveld who pointed Rommel had a Major n charge of logistics in Afrika so much he did not grasp the fundamental importance of it?
maybe as many Germans ( of the time ;)!) a warrior but not a grand strategist?

@ Jcfrog

Rommel may well have done, but that major would have been dealing only with whatever made it ashore. For that, a major may have been sufficient.

Rommel's logistical problem started well before that with the fact that he had pushed a large fuel-dependent army too far east. The supplies he needed had to be landed as far east as possible, otherwise the fuel for the front line vehicles would be consumed by the process of driving it 1,000 miles along bad roads to get it to the front line.

This was a problem whose solution required the engagement of an air force and a navy. It was after all the enemy's air force and navy that were causing it.

it was to point out that Italy alone, without German support, simply lacked the wherewithal to support operations in North Africa. Rather than write a lengthy tome, permit me instea to recommend – "The War against Rommel's Supply Lines, 1942-1943". Westport, CT; Levine, Alan J. Praeger, 1999.

This is very interesting and I will be keen to get hold of a copy; a pity that it does not cover 1940-1941. Everyone claims to understand the importance of logistics but frequently seem to overlook the implications.

For example:

Shortage of oil was also a key factor in limiting the operations of the Italian Navy throughout the war. The Italian war reserve of fuel-far too low a figure-was exhausted by late summer, 1941. The Navy's needs were at least 200,000 tons a month for full freedom of operations: rationing reduced the men-of-war to less than 90,000 tons a month in 1941, and the situation worsened steadily.

By the end of April, 1942, Italian fleet units were reduced to the fuel supply actually on board. As a matter of fact, they never took part in another war mission after mid-June.
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The campaign in North Africa was essentially supported by Italian Naval power, notwithstanding the air bridge of Ju52 transports. The key element were the port handling capabilities of Tripoli, Benghazi and Tobruk. The importance of the last was clearly shown by Rommel's determination to enter Egypt only after he had taken it. Tunis is misleading as it adds another 500 miles for supplies and reinforcements to come, additional to the 1,250 miles from Tripoli to Cairo. Berlin to Moscow is 1,000 miles and the Germans found that tough enough in running supplies and used trains as the main transport for supplies in the Soviet Union. Trains were not available to the Germans in North Africa (as an interesting aside, from memory, the ships for the TORCH landings also included 200 locomotives and 'n' thousand wagons to ensure sufficient haulage capacity for the allied motorised armies).

In modern machine warfare the individual is part of a system and Rommel certainly understood the German system in WWII. Fortunately for the Allies, the Germans had a system that had not been created for industrialised warfare on a scale they now faced.

Assessment of Rommel depends on how you see him fit within that viewpoint.

4thCuirassier wrote – "otherwise the fuel for the front line vehicles would be consumed by the process of driving it 1,000 miles along bad roads to get it to the front line."

….. IIRC, Van Creveld observed that for every gallon of fuel that reached the front, a gallon was consumed by the logistics ground transport.

B

I don't have the books here, but I sort of remember someone saying that quite a lot arrived after all, but yes bringing it in and that organiazation was weak.

4th cuir:
No, a major for logs of a corps or three is not enough. Any lt colonel can pull rank on him and take over "his" trucks on the way as local needs etc.
in the same book, it says the Brits had a major general or the like.

We have the same kind of story with artillery generals in napo and acw times.

Actually the low regards for the importance of logistics ( and standardization/ simplicity) by the gerries is not just Erwin's own but a SOP from them from 1870 on. I think there was a book written called " why Germans lose at war" saying so.

In Russia, same story. When the kaporal of Bohemia asked for a study of invasion of Sovietland, he was honestly told the unacceptable answer they will lose because of logistics.
From memory one Korps had 20000 vehicles of 2000 different types.

Too many quick victories and non warrior like bookeeping unsexy jobs for them.

Hi Hagen – True words re the Regia Marina. Their operational capabilities were utterly reliant upon the amount of fuel Germany would agree to mete out to it. I wonder whether the Regia Aeronautica suffered under similar circumstances (although, from what I understand, the RA had its own problems with shortages of ordnance).

B

If you want to consider "what they had to work with" as part of the evaluation as how good a general was, then in World War Two, the outstanding generals by far were Albert Kesselring for the Germans and Mark Clark for the Americans. Kesselring had the defensive terrain that his enemy had to take and he did not have to take back. Clark had the ocean and air superiority and supplies. Both of them had to do their jobs in a sideshow theater that was the bastard, idiot illegitimate step child of both sides and both had to deal with on the one hand, remnants of units chewed up on the Eastern Front, rank conscripts straight from boot camps, doubtful allies, and multinational forces of indifferent motivation. On the other, they dealt with bickering and arrogant allies who considered them amateurs and buffons and others who joined the war only to hog up on free military equipment. On the whole if you want to find two masters of war those are the two. Clark was encumbered at every turn by political maneuverings of his superiors and Kesselring was a Luftwaffe General who ran a whole theater, and even, for the first time in the war, got the Italians to cooperate and be effective.

If you want the greatest general of all times by that yardstick, it's Bellisarius. He was sent out with 10,000 men, no money and no help to reconquer the Western Roman Empire, which he did, mostly in spite of having no supplies, no support and no money from home (and his boss, the emperor wanted to kill him) and his only friend was the Emperors one-time prostitute wife who actually saw lot of good in him.

But generally this whole question is moot. It is no good blaming Rommell for lack of expertise in logistics. He didn't have any anyway, and was dependent on what he could steal through air resupply, and the convoys from Italy. Just enough got through to keep him and the Afrika Corps alive, (at a tremendous cost to Axis shipping and airpower), but not enough to let him do anything major.

But beyond that, it's pointless to argue points like this. When a general wins a victory no one complains. Even Ambrose Burnside was cheered when he won Knoxville against Longstreet, and everyone thought he was a great general after his work in the Carolinas. No one complained about Grant except at Cold Harbor. No one complains when a general wins a battle. Few national leaders (their bosses) have the cheek to look a gift horse in the mouth. When they lose a battle then everyone turns into an expert, especially war gamers, who think they are small-time Napoleons and military genius' when in reality they couldn't lead a corporals guard across a ditch.

No he may have been defeated several times but he never had a high priority in supplies, quality of troops or new panzers. So he did a great job considering what he had to work with.