World War Two
Published 14 Jun 2025May 12, 1940: Blitzkrieg, WW2’s new form of war, arrives in Sedan as Heinz Guderian’s Panzers capture the town and prepare to cross the river. Further north, Erwin Rommel drives toward the Meuse in the face of fierce French resistance. With the Luftwaffe dominating the skies and French reinforcements en route, the battle for Sedan is about to ignite.
June 15, 2025
Day Three – Guderian, Rommel, and The Race to Cross The Meuse – Ten Days in Sedan
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May 25, 2025
Rommel’s Dark Secrets in North Africa – WW2 Fireside Chat
World War Two
Published 24 May 2025Indy and Sparty handle your questions on the German intervention in North Africa. Why did Rommel make such an impact so quickly? What was the war like for the local populations? How deeply involved was Rommel in the persecution of North African Jews?
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April 22, 2025
Young Rommel’s First Triumph: Battle of Caporetto 1917
The Great War
Published 13 Dec 2024In October 1917, German and Austro-Hungarian troops went over the top into the rain and fog to attack the Italian trenches opposite them. They would go on to break the trench deadlock on the Italian Front, and nearly destroy the Italian army in just two weeks. The Battle of Caporetto was Austria-Hungary’s greatest victory of WW1 – and where a young Erwin Rommel learned to fight like a Desert Fox.
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October 15, 2023
The Isolation of Army Group North – WW2 – Week 268 – October 14, 1944
World War Two
Published 14 Oct 2023Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt meet at the Moscow Conference and talk about future “spheres of influence” in the Balkans. They also make plans for the future of Poland. In the field the Soviet Red Army completes the isolation of Army Group North and also advances in Hungary and Yugoslavia. The Allies enter Aachen in the west and cross the Rubicon in Italy. The Americans are still fighting the Japanese on Peleliu, and this week also make raids against Japanese airfields ahead of next week’s invasion of the Philippines.
01:00 Recap
01:22 The Moscow Conference begins
03:43 Isolating Army Group North
06:29 Soviet advances toward Belgrade
08:14 The Debrecen Operation
13:20 Horthy and Hungary
14:30 Chiang Kai-shek accuses Joe Stilwell
16:19 American raids on Formosa
19:29 The fight for Peleliu continues
20:01 Antwerp and Aachen
22:01 The Allies cross the Rubicon
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September 30, 2023
Why did the North Africa Campaign Matter in WW2?
The Intel Report
Published 8 Jun 2023As Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps rolled into Egypt in 1942, the only thing standing between them and Cairo and the Suez Canal was the British 8th Army. In this video we look at what was at stake for both sides, and why the North African campaign made a crucial impact on the outcome of the Second World War.
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June 17, 2023
Why Rommel Lost the Battle for North Africa
Real Time History
Published 16 Jun 2023The North African campaign of WW2 is one of the most famous ones. The almost mythical story of the British “Desert Rats” defeating Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. But why did Rommel lose in North Africa?
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April 28, 2023
QotD: The high-water mark of the Panzerarmee Afrika
The Gazala-Tobruk sequence was the greatest victory of Rommel’s career, not merely a triumph on the tactical level, but an operational level win, a victory that even General Halder could love. Call it Rommel’s Rule #1, which is still a recipe for success today: “Be sure to erupt into your opponent’s rear with an entire Panzer army in the opening moments of the battle.”
Even here, however, let us be honest. Smashing 8th Army at Gazala and taking tens of thousands of prisoners at Tobruk did little to solve the strategic problem. Unless the British were destroyed altogether, they would reinforce to a level the Axis could not match. Many later analysts argue that the Panzerarmee should have paused now, waited until some sort of combined airborne-naval operation had been launched against Malta to improve the logistics, and only then acted. Such arguments ignore the dynamic of the desert battle, however; they ignore the morale imperative of keeping a victorious army in motion; above all they ignore the personality of Rommel himself.
Pause? Halt? Wait? Anyone who expected Rommel to ease up on the throttle clearly hadn’t been paying attention. Instead, the Panzerarmee vaulted across the border into Egypt with virtually no preparation. To Rommel, to his men, and even to Hitler and Mussolini, it must have looked like a great victory lay just over the next horizon: Cairo, Alexandria, the Suez Canal, the British Empire itself.
In reality, it is possible today to see what the great Prussian philosopher of war Karl von Clausewitz once called the “culmination point” — that moment in every campaign when the offensive begins to lose steam, run down, and eventually stop altogether. The Panzerarmee was exhausted, its equipment was worn out and in desperate need of repair. Captured British stores and vehicles had become its life-blood, Canadian Ford trucks in particular. The manpower was breaking down. A chronic shortage of potable water had put thousands of soldiers on the sick rolls. Colonel Siegfried Westphal, the Panzerarmee‘s operations chief (the “Ia”, in German parlance), was yellow with jaundice. The army’s intelligence chief (the “Ic”), Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin, was wasting away with amoebic dysentery. Rommel had a little of both, as well as a serious blood-pressure problem (no doubt stress-induced) and a chronic and bothersome sinusitis condition. While it would be easy to view all these illnesses as simple bad luck, they were, in fact, the price Rommel and all the rest of them were paying for fighting an overseas expeditionary campaign with inadequate resources.
The same might be said for the rest of the campaign. The Panzerarmee made an ad hoc attempt to break thought the British bottleneck at El Alamein in July. It failed, coming to grief against British defenses on the Ruweisat ridge. There was a second, more deliberate, attempt in August. After an initial breakthrough, it crashed into strong British defenses at Alam Halfa ridge and it, too, failed. After yet another long pause, a “third battle of El Alamein” began in late October. This time, it was the well supplied British on the attack, however, and they managed to smash through the Panzerarmee and drive Rommel and company back, not hundreds of miles, but more than a thousand, out of the desert altogether and into Tunisia. There was still fighting to be done in Africa, but the “desert war” was over.
Robert Citino, “Drive to Nowhere: The Myth of the Afrika Korps, 1941-43″, The National WWII Museum, 2012. (Originally published in MHQ, Summer 2012).
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July 29, 2022
Why Ghost Division? What did Rommel do?
Military History Visualized
Published 5 Feb 2019Why was Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division called Gespensterdivsion – the “Ghost Division”? From all we know it earned this name during the Battle of France.
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March 13, 2022
Rommel Leaves Africa – WW2 – 185 – March 12, 1943
World War Two
Published 12 Mar 2022Erwin Rommel loses his command and leaves Tunisia, while change in American command there puts George Patton in charge. On the ground the Axis lose the Battle of Medenine, but in the Soviet Union, Axis forces are on the move and heading for Kharkov.
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March 6, 2022
Another Naval Disaster for Japan – WW2 – 184 – March 5, 1943
World War Two
Published 5 Mar 2022The Japanese again fail to reinforce New Guinea, losing many transport ships, and their forces there are ever more isolated. In Tunisia the Axis lose a bunch of new Tiger tanks, but in the Soviet Union it is the Axis forces that are on the offensive as Erich von Manstein’s offensive continues.
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February 27, 2022
The Blitzkrieg is Back – WW2 – 183 – February 26 1943
World War Two
Published 26 Feb 2022Erich von Manstein’s Axis counterattack on the Eastern Front begins this week and right away smashes through the Red Army lines, threatening all the recent Soviet gains. The Allies — the Americans — also suffer a big defeat in Tunisia at the Kasserine Pass, though in the Pacific it is the Americans who occupy the Russell Islands.
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February 13, 2022
Victory at Guadalcanal – WW2 – 181 – February 12, 1943
World War Two
Published 12 Feb 2022Operation KE, the Japanese evacuation of Guadalcanal, concludes this week and the campaign has been a big loss for the Japanese. The Axis forces are also withdrawing — and the Red Army advancing — in the Donbas and the Caucasus, closing in on both Kharkov and Rostov. And a front that’s been quiet for a while, the Burma front, begins heating up again with an Allied advance out of India.
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January 30, 2022
Time to Fire Rommel? – WW2 – 179 – January 29, 1943
World War Two
Published 29 Jan 2022The Allies are unable to win in Tunisia, though further east Bernard Montgomery has achieved his goal of driving the enemy out of Libya. To the west, the Casablanca Conference comes to its end and the Allies write a list of their war priorities. The Soviets, however, are on the move everywhere, closing in on Stalingrad, and launching new operations up and down the eastern front, to the dismay and detriment of the Axis forces.
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November 7, 2021
The Allies Break Through! – WW2 – 167 – November 6, 1942
World War Two
Published 6 Nov 2021After all these months of fighting, the British 8th Army breaks through Erwin Rommel’s Axis positions in North Africa, but the Allies have even bigger plans for that theater of war — a huge invasion of Vichy French North Africa to take place next week. The Soviets also have a plan for a huge invasion to take place very soon near Stalingrad, though the fighting in the city itself sees a lull the second half of this week.
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October 24, 2021
Showdown at El Alamein – WW2 – 165 – October 23, 1942
World War Two
Published 23 Oct 2021Could this be the beginning of the big break in North Africa? The Allies have the men, the armor, and the fuel … they just have to deal with the Axis minefields to try and get started. And the Axis are throwing ever more men at Stalingrad as the Soviets grimly hold on. Another roller coaster of a week.
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