Yes, the reader might respond, but surely we are on firmer ground with regard to [Rommel’s] military skill! After all, no less a figure than British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called him “a great general” on the floor of the House of Commons. Even here, it is possible to make a counterargument. Rommel’s daring exploits at the head of the Afrika Korps (later enlarged and renamed Panzerarmee Afrika) were exciting, to be sure, but many officers in his own army reckoned them as an ultimately valueless sideshow. His disinterest in the dreary science of logistics, his “bias for action,” his tendency to fly off wherever the fighting was hottest are qualities that may make for an exciting movie, but they are problematic in an army commander under modern conditions, and they all contributed materially to the disaster that ultimately befell him and his army in the desert.
[…]
When Rommel arrived in Africa, he brought with him a fully realized art of war. He’d won a Pour le Mérite (the famed “Blue Max“) for a series of nail-biting mountain exploits in the 1917 Caporetto campaign; he had been a very popular tactical instructor at the Dresden Infantry School between the wars; he had commanded one of the army’s precious Panzer divisions (the 7th) during the 1940 campaign in the West. In France, Rommel had behaved more like an 18th century hussar cut loose on a raiding mission than a divisional commander. He led from the front, braved enemy fire on numerous occasions, and turned off his radio from time to time rather than risk receiving orders to rein himself in. He drove forward so rapidly that the 7th Panzer became known as the “ghost division” for its tendency to drop off the situation maps and reappear where least expected. There were many in the German high command, including the chief of the General Staff Franz Halder, who didn’t much appreciate Rommel running amok, but as one analyst put it, “it was impossible to court martial such a successful general, so Rommel instead got the Ritterkreuz” [the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross].
Robert Citino, “Drive to Nowhere: The Myth of the Afrika Korps, 1941-43″, The National WWII Museum, 2012. (Originally published in MHQ, Summer 2012).
March 13, 2020
QotD: Rommel’s generalship
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