"Is Rommel Overrated?" Topic

To suggest that Rommel was a great general because he did the best he could with limited supplies leaves me scratching my head.

Really?

Are we suggesting that somehow a corps or army commander should try whatever he wants, regardless of his supply lines? That he should commit tens of thousands of men to actions doomed to failure, but not bear the burden of blame because no one else delivered supplies that didn't exist in the first place? That he should not take stock of his supplies, understand the potential it represents for him, and engage in military actions appropriate to the level of supplies available to him?

This is Rommel's failure. No one owns it but him. Army commanders don't get to say "I dunno", "not my job", "it's HIS fault".

The supply line from western Libya to Egypt is longer than the supply line from Berlin to Moscow. And it is primarily ONE ROAD. Should a commander simply ignore this inconvenience?

He did as much as he could? So what rail lines did Rommel have built? How many layers of defense did he construct around Tobruk? What mobile reserve was held back to ensure retention of this vital supply base? How much did he expand the port facilities available to him? How many weeks worth of operational supplies did he put in place before launching his offensives?

Tactically he was exceptional. Operationally he was a repeat offender. He behaved like a junior officer when he was serving in the role of a corps, group, or army commander. He is worth studying on both counts, as an example of how bold tactical maneuver and high tempo of operations can keep an opponent off balance, and as an example of how to throw away 1,200 miles of hard-won territory by ignoring the realities of supply.

He didn't do a great job considering what he had to work with. He failed because he didn't want to work with as much as he was given.

At least that's my view. That, and a couple of bucks, will get you a cup of coffee.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Mark,
The situation was a little more complicated than you suggest and I think that you are pushing the envelope with respect to your criticisms.

For example, Tobruk was in the possession of Axis forces for less than 6 months (June – November 1942. At the time of its capture its cargo-handling capacity was a paltry 600t per day according to historical estimates. It was nevertheless immediately put into service. Any idea how long it takes to build new port facilities, source and erect pier-side cargo handling derricks, heavy lift cranes, etc? I used to be in the intl logistics / ocean freight forwarding business; port expansion projects are measured not in weeks or months, but in years … and that does not take into account repeated bombing attacks and periodic commando raids.

Building railroads? Almost as complicated – route surveys, road bed construction, delivery of rails and ties and rolling stock and associated switching and signaling gear (none of that coming from the local Tripoli bazaar) … not to mention that neither side was in uninterrupted control of the landscape for the necessary period of time. Why didn't the British run a rail line to Benghazi or Tripoli after they had initially routed the Italians? They never got past Mersa Matruh and that was a pre-war spur construction. As I said, it's complicated.

Rommel didn't do anything logistics-wise that Patton didn't do when Eisenhower shut 3rd Army off to focus support to Montgomery and Market Garden. Patton knowingly pushed his elements forward until they reached the end of their tether and then sorted things out from there.

That's my view. That and a couple of bucks and maybe we can have coffee together sometime. It would be fun.

Happy holidays / B

@ Blutarski

Doesn't all that amount to saying that Rommel advanced beyond what his supply situation could ever have supported, and thus should have stopped at Benghazi?

At the end of the day ALL generals have to work within constraints of some kind. No commander ever has unlimited resources whether it be manpower, supplies, or time. So, while one could say a general did well or not within his constraints, it doesn't make him a good general. A good general will recognize his constraints, take them into account, and accomplish his mission.

I would argue Rommel did none of this -- at the strategic level. At the tactical level he did extremely well, and nothing can be taken away from him as a division commander. But at more senior levels warfare is more than tactics.

BTW, this has all been an interesting conversation.

"Doesn't all that amount to saying that Rommel advanced beyond what his supply situation could ever have supported, and thus should have stopped at Benghazi?"

:-) …… I'm guessing that this was written from a certain tongue-in-cheek aspect.

B

For example, Tobruk was in the possession of Axis forces for less than 6 months (June – November 1942. … It was nevertheless immediately put into service. Any idea how long it takes to build new port facilities, source and erect pier-side cargo handling derricks, heavy lift cranes, etc?

And why was it in Axis hands for only 6 months?

Did Rommel view holding Tobruk as the single greatest achievement of his campaign? Did he recognize that holding and enhancing Tobruk harbor was the most likely path to victory over the 8th Army? If he did, what did he do about it?

Any idea how long it takes for 5 infantry divisions to create a deep, wide, layered defensive position? Here's a hint: it's less than 6 months.

But it's really hard to do when all of your resources are pushed forward to a line you can not possibly hold (due to "lack of supplies"), leaving the line you MUST hold under-staffed and underdeveloped, and without supplies.

Rommel didn't do anything logistics-wise that Patton didn't do when Eisenhower shut 3rd Army off to focus support to Montgomery and Market Garden. Patton knowingly pushed his elements forward until they reached the end of their tether and then sorted things out from there.

Well, despite the great TMP tradition of taking threads FAR off course, I will suggest you not ask me my opinion "Is Patton overated?" … at least not in this thread.

But I will suggest this … if Patton's 3rd Army had been the ONLY army in ETO, and he still did those same things, I would rate his performance as slap-dash and negligent at the very least, but then there would not be any controversy in that, as his army would have been encircled and digested by the Germans within 6 or 8 weeks of advancing out of the Carentan Peninsula. As it was, his flanks were for the most part secured by other armies, and those other armies were keeping the Germans very busy at the time that he ran his army out of fuel.

Does that also describe Rommel's environment? No, it doesn't.

And so he managed to retreat farther and faster than the Red Army in the summer of 1941, avoiding encirclement and destruction due to the combination of having Monty in pursuit, and by using the expedient of providing what little fuel was available to get his panzers back, abandoning several Italian divisions to their fates. If anything he might claim title of commanding the biggest retreat in German military history.

Doesn't all that amount to saying that Rommel advanced beyond what his supply situation could ever have supported, and thus should have stopped at Benghazi?

If not, he probably should have stopped just beyond Tobruk. At least until he had sufficient forces to do something useful.

Building a westward facing German equivalent to the Mareth Line would have been a good plan as well. Hard to believe he never did, as it would have been such an obvious step in 1941, if he actually had thought through an Axis strategy for North Africa, which no one did.

I would argue Rommel did none of this -- at the strategic level. At the tactical level he did extremely well, and nothing can be taken away from him as a division commander. But at more senior levels warfare is more than tactics.

Quite agree. A concise statement of my view.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

raylev3 –
We will have to agree to disagree on this issue. OTOH, I do agree that it has been an interesting discussion.

My opinion is that the greatest generals are the ones who are willing to push the envelope (or gamble) when the occasion demands. Rommel was assigned a task in North Africa, but provided with clearly inadequate resources to accomplish it. He nevertheless exerted every possible effort to achieve the goal and IMO came impressively close to pulling it off.

B

Mark -
You clearly have a strong opinion on the subject of Rommel. So do I. I suggest we just leave it at that.

B

It always amuses me these type of discussions. Rommel is criticised for dashing off into the desert and out running his supplies, whereas Monty who did understand logistics and set the pace of his advance to ensure all his units remained adequately supplied is called a plodder.
And yes Patton is over rated. Very much the one trick pony.

equating the "distance" of a retreat in North Africa with one in Russia is a little bit disingenuous. The theaters offered completely different terrain for maneuvering, speed and cover as well as supply. Considering that Rommel was NEVER going to win in North Africa- no how, no way- perhaps his work there should be viewed in that context. What would have happened if he folded earlier? I think if it is viewed from the perspective that he could not have won considering resources and the bigger situation in the Med, then he needs to considered to have done pretty well with his resources. Strategically, it didn't change anything…but it certainly was a speendbump for the allies.

AND a lack of resources might actually be an incentive to be audacious (if you will permit that word) or if you prefer "reckless". As I said earlier, playing conservative because he had few resources was NOT a recipe for anything better than what happened in reality. He was fated in that theater to being nothing but a delaying action.

Building a westward facing German equivalent to the Mareth Line would have been a good plan as well. Hard to believe he never did, as it would have been such an obvious step in 1941, if he actually had thought through an Axis strategy for North Africa, which no one did.

And of course manning defensive positions with Italian infantry divisions had worked so well in the past! :-) Can't see that leading to anything other than defeat. The British would have been at leisure to build up an overwhelming force. Even if Tobruk had held they could have simply bypassed it as Rommel had in the past and left the Italians to be bombed, shelled and starved out.

I think the obvious point is that Rommel was trying to change Axis strategy by racing on towards the Suez canal. He was hoping more resources would be sent his way rather than poured into Russia.

Was it ever on the cards? Doubtful. Could he have broken thru at El Alamein and seized Alexandia? We can never know.

If he had he would be lauded as a military genius. As is I suspect a lot of his reputation is from Allied [British] propaganda. Our troops and Generals can't be at fault – it's that sly and sneaky Rommel. Well, the fox is always trapped and ripped to shreds in the end.

You can't have a hero without a villain.

I don't see how that works. Bugging up Rommel made the Commonwealth forces look worse, not better.

Rommel was sent to save the Italians from catastrophic defeat. If he had simply fought a Kesselring-esque delaying campaign then he could have been the Lettow-Vorbeck of WW2: undefeated in Africa in 1945.

Rommel was sent to save the Italians from catastrophic defeat. If he had simply fought a Kesselring-esque delaying campaign then he could have been the Lettow-Vorbeck of WW2: undefeated in Africa in 1945.

Much easier in Italy to fight that sort of campaign. N Africa is not packed with readily defensible terrain like Italy is. Also Italy benefitted from very short lines of communication making supply much easier. In N Africa attack is probably the best form of defence. Keep the enemy off balance.

The supply line from Sicily to Tripoli is pretty short too Fred.

Rommel could have dug in behind miles of mines at somewhere like Sirte or Mersa el Brega in the east and Algiers in the west. Then he could have conducted a mobile defence under an air umbrella. He could have used air to make Benghazi about as useful as Tobruk, and thereby forced on the Allies the logistics that defeated him, i.e. drive everything to the front across a thousand miles of desert in 3-ton trucks.

The effort involved in dislodging two weak and undersupplied Panzer divisions from Alamein with complete air superiority was enormous as it was. Imagine trying to fight that battle a thousand miles further west against well-supplied troops. He would still have been there in 1945.

The unique feature of the Alamein position (for both sides) was that the operationally impassable Qattara Depression secured the southern flank and the frontage between the sea and the Qattara Depression was very compact. Nowhere else along the North African coast did this sort of southern flank security exist.

A Libyan defensive posture on the part of the Axis would have meant the expenditure of important manpower and logistical resources to defend essentially useless desert terrain (oil resources not industrially exploited in Libya until after the war) and it would ultimately have been completely vulnerable to any Torch-like landing in its rear.

B

The unique characteristics of the area around Alamein made it an excellent position for defense -- from a tactical perspective.

And for the British it was also an excellent position, for defense or attack -- from an operational perspective.

But for the Axis any static position on the Egyptian border was untenable -- from an operational perspective.

As a division or corps commander, I can fully understand Rommel's selection of the Alamain position. If his army commander gave him the mission of setting up a static defense as close to the Egyptian border as possible, he chose the right position.

But the army commander who gave him those orders should have been replaced, because there was NO hope of holding a static position on the Egyptian border with the logistical infrastructure that the Axis had in place.

The fight for the Alamein position was, by needs, a battle of attrition. There was no room for operational maneuver. The two sides had to batter at each other, with each side pursuing the goal of weakening the opponent more than they were themselves weakened. This process of weakening the opponent in attrition battles is a self-accelerating cycle of advantage flowing to the side that can bring more force on to the battlefield, eventually leading to an accelerated collapse of the weaker side.

In attritional warfare the guy who has the best re-supply usually wins. Force amplifiers like tactical advantage or better equipment do play a role, but without room for operational level maneuver, it becomes a process of combat resource vs. combat resource. The Brits, of course, had far MORE resource in their flow. Also they had far more firepower in their resources (more artillery, more ammunition). So setting up the battle as close as possible to the British base of supply, and ensuring that the battle was a pre-set assault on fixed positions with no substantial component of operational maneuver, was brilliant. Can't hardly think of a better way to stack the odds in favor of a British victory. Now remind me, who chose the Alamein position for the next major engagement?

Rommel, the division/corps commander, did the best he could with the resources he had, but the army commander who gave him the order to make his stand on the Egyptian border clearly had no idea how to fight at the operational level, and could do nothing but loose the whole campaign by that selection.

So remind me again, who was that army commander who ordered Rommel to make his stand on the Egyptian border?

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I don't believe Rommel is overrated. I think he is overexposed when it comes to American and British audiences. Of the very good German commanders of WW2, Rommel was the one in contact with the Anglo-Americans from 1940 to early 1943 and again in the critical days of the invasion of NW Europe. This lets him loom larger than other commanders who spent less time facing Anglo-American forces.

Rommel had his faults and made mistakes. The same can be said for other great commanders. Rommel also had weaknesses, but he had others he could rely on to deal with the issues Rommel was weak on. There is an argument those others should be entitled to more attention, but that does not take away from Rommel.

Mark – If you have not already done so, I suggest that you might want to read "Dilemmas of the Desert War" by (Field Marshal Lord) Michael Carver. He personally served in the North African campaign as a brigade commander and later went on to quite high command in the British Army. He has many interesting things to say about 8th Army as an organization that bear directly upon this discussion and any assessment of what many see as Rommel's apparent "rashness". Carver also wrote separate studies of Tobruk and Alamein, but "Dilemmas" offers a focused view of 8th Army as a military organization.

Not sure what has you so fired up, but if it is something I wrote in a previous post, it was never my intention to annoy or insult you.

FWIW.

B

The supply line from Sicily to Tripoli is pretty short too Fred.

Depends what you mean by short. Italy is a lot closer to Germany than Tripoli is! Also involves a sea crossing with all the extra effort and risk that involves.

So remind me again, who was that army commander who ordered Rommel to make his stand on the Egyptian border?

Lol! Yeah I can imagine that conversation with Hitler. Sorry boss I got stopped at El Alamein and I don't have enough strength to break through so I am going to pull all the way back as it is an untenable position given my state of supply. Hitler would have given his blessing for sure.

The lines from Sicily to Tripoli are short it is true, but there is the problem of Malta and the extreme difficulty of the Italians in arranging sea transport of supplies. Read Fracioli's book The Italian Navy in World War Two, published by Naval Institute press. Italy BEGAN the war with only 20% of its storage tanks full, and it never got much better than that, so the Italians were mostly locked in port for need of oil. Think 20% is a lot? Not really, at that level its barely above the sludge that accumulates in the bottom of the tanks and if you pump them down much further you will suck all that gum and sludge up into your nice turbines to gum up the works and the lines. The Italian navy was under extreme disabilities in the war, and the only way Rommell was going to get anything but a trickle was if it could be brought over in convoys, which it never did. Italian mercantile losses were severe from British submarines operating out of Alexander and Gibralter and air operating out of Malta. The only reason Britain sent convoys through the med was when Malta had to be reinforced, quickly. Everything else they needed like oil and ammo came around the cape and went to Suez.

The Italian Navy as it was took stupendous risks to try and supply Libya. One time they loaded up two light cruisers with oil drums to try and get them to Rommel. An absurd idea! The British caught them and they went up like firecrackers.