"dude desert fox lmao"

>"dude desert fox lmao"
>loses against WW1-tier British tactics

Rommel is overrated as fuck

Uh, what? Rommel only started losing when the British adopted modern tactics. Crusader was a serious armor and air based operation, and the 1st El Alamein was a draw, it was the second battle where he got crushed, and that again focused on Monty accurately predicting where Rommel would make his armored break and concentrating anti-tank guns there.

Have you studied the North African theater? Like, at all?

He was also outnumbered like, 3 to 1, and half of his forces were shitty Italians. He was so strapped for firepower that he had to modify his anti-aircraft cannons so that they could fire at tanks.

>"Dude rommel sucks."
>being this unaware that the Germans only devoted a handful of divisions because it was just a sideshow campaign compared to the Eastern Front, while to the British this was the only place they could concentrate their Europe based army at.

Montgomery's autism comes into play as well. He refused to move until he had absolute numerical supremacy.

>"give me my bomber, american, you said i would get a bomber, give it, give it give it, give it give, i won the bet, give it, give it, give it, market garden will be a slam dunk, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."

The British were using maneuver tactics from Operation Compass in 1940 you dumb memefag. Rommel started losing when Brits didn't strip their forces in NA to send to other areas. Have you studied the war in North Africa at all???

If you count the Italians, he wasn't really outnumbered at all at the point of contact. The only way you get "outnumbered 3:1" is by counting all of the Mid-East Command, but that included troops as far south as Ethiopia and as far east as Iran, many of whom had other things they needed to do other than shooting up Rommel's guys.

He was still strategically an idiot and embarked on a plan his superiors warned him had no chance of succeeding, wasting enormous amounts of supplies when all he really needed to be doing was preserve Cyrenica as long as possible.


It wasn't so much numerical superiority as it was having his logistical ducks in a row.

And given how the pursuit post-Crusader over-extended itself and got into trouble, it's hard to blame him. Them's the breaks when you're fighting in a part of the world with no railroads and only the most limited port facilities. Everything needs to be moved by truck, but the trucks themselves need quite a bit of servicing, so unless you want to run your lines of communication ragged by not servicing the motor pool, you can't move that fast on a strategic level.

British desert tactics were deeply flawed, user. They usually tried to do a like beats like, i.e., have their artillery duel German/Italian artillery, their tanks fight tanks, infantry opposed to infantry.

A lot of Rommel's tactical successes came by playing this against them, especially his infamous usage of the 88 guns, lure the British cruiser tanks over to them (since they could reliably be counted upon to chase his own tanks), shred them, and then break somewhere along the right with his own now unopposed armor.


I mean, I guess you could call it "maneuver" tactics, but it was hardly modern 1941-42 stuff they were using up until right before El Alamein, really.

And yes, while the troop pullouts were damaging to British forces in NA, the logistical tethering (or lack thereof) in the Libyan desert sharply limited their ability to deploy anyway. It's no shock that Sonnmenblume or the 1942 initial push faced token forces at the outset. And it's hard to blame the pullouts for Gazala, given that the British enjoyed a comfortable numerical superiority during the battle.


So yes, I have studied NA. Far more than you, I'd wager.

>what are logistics?
>we just don't know

>being this unaware that Rommel had two top Italian armored divisions and several infantry divisions available
>being this unaware that Brits didn't commit more than a handful of divisions either
Muh Rommel only lost because of x meme needs to die.

Plz stop posting.

I should point out I have no love for Rommel and he would have been better deployed to the East while General Walter Model or Gotthard Heinrici headed up a defensive action in North Africa.

>I should point out the generals who were actually good should've been sent to waste Bong time for a couple of years instead of doing the more important job

Model and Heinrici were defensive based tacticians deployed in Russia at a time when the German Army was still advancing.

Why are you so miserable?

>Model
Why do we even dick wank about the German command at all? They had great success against unprepared or incompetent adversaries, then absolutely shit the bed operationally. Kesselring was the only German commander who outperformed the resources available, making the Italian theater an absolute horror show. Two of the worst Allied engagements were fought at both Anzio and Monte Cassino. This was done with a minimum of manpower and equipment.

>but muh Italy is easy to defend
Yes, it is - and he showed how little effort it took to turn the "soft underbelly" of Fascist Europe into anything but. If OKW (see:Hitler) had been able to give him something meaningful in the way of manpower and equipment, he could have probably made the entire peninsula a complete disaster.

>Rommel had control of logistics
>OKW had control of anything
That's cute.

>Kesselring was the only German commander who outperformed the resources available

What about von Manstein? He took Sevastopol with a handful of divisions. Managed to even absolutely btfo the soviets that tried to come at him through the Kerch peninsula to relieve their comrades at sevastopol. Then after defeating the relief effort he reorganized and took Sevastopol.

I would have liked to see him do something in the Afrika Korps.

Poor Rommel.

This humiliation lasted over three weeks for him.

>Manstein
I agree with you completely - a thoroughly overlooked general. I suspect the fame of German generals is linked directly to their time in the spotlight against the Allies, and even then the Brits and Americans.

von Lettow-Vorbeck is the general wheraboos wish Rommel was.

With 3,000 Europeans and 15,000 black soldiers, equipped with inferior equipment and with limited heavy artillery, he held down 250,000 Allied soldiers in Africa for the entirety of WWI and tied up another 150,000 people supporting them.

Arguably he helped ferment the later revolutionary movements in Africa because he showed that native troops could beat the white man in battle.

Too bad he was another Prussian elitest cunt

>monty predicting

More like enigma getting cracked and he knew Rommel's plans.

Fun fact, Rommel could read British code until 1942.

>Elitist cunt

>Lettow-Vorbeck tried to ensure decent treatment and an early as possible release for the German Askaris caged at Tabora.

>In June 1926, Lettow-Vorbeck met Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen in Bremen, the British Intelligence officer with whom he had fought a battle of wits until Meinertzhagen was invalided back to England in December 1916 (he was later posted to Palestine).[44] Three years later, Lettow-Vorbeck accepted an invitation to London, where he met face-to-face for the first time J. C. Smuts;[45] the two men formed a lasting friendship. When Smuts died in 1950, Lettow-Vorbeck sent his widow a moving letter of sympathy.[46]

>Between May 1928 and July 1930, the former General served as a Reichstag deputy for the monarchist German National People's Party. He intensely "distrusted Hitler and his movement,"[46] and approached his relative Hans-Jürgen von Blumenthal with an idea to form a coalition with the Stahlhelm against the Nazis. This resulted in the Vorbeck-Blumenthal Pact. Later, when Hitler offered him the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James's in 1935, he "declined with frigid hauteur."

>In 1953, he visited his former home, East Africa, where he was heartily welcomed by surviving Askaris, who greeted him with their old marching song Heia Safari![50] and was also received with military honours by British colonial officials.[51]

This man is the very definition of based.

The man was simply an upperclass dick that hated Hitler because he came from a poor background.

The poor should be hated though. If they were of any worth they wouldn't be poor.

>WW1 tier

You mean zerg rushing like the soviets?

Divisional level orders were not broken by ULTRA intercepts. He knew there was an attack in the works, and the location and date, but tactical data like that was his own intuition.

>In two and a half days, from October 25 to 27, Rommel and his 150 men captured 81 guns and 9,000 men (including 150 officers), at the loss of six dead and 30 wounded.[22] Rommel achieved this remarkable success by taking advantage of the terrain to outflank the Italian forces, attacking from unexpected directions or behind enemy lines, and taking the initiative to attack when he had orders to the contrary. In one instance, the Italian forces, taken by surprise and believing that their lines had collapsed, surrendered after a brief firefight.[23] Acting as advance guard in the capture of Longarone on 9 November, Rommel again decided to attack with a much smaller force. Convinced that they were surrounded by an entire German division, the 1st Italian Infantry Division – 10,000 men – surrendered to Rommel. For this and his actions at Matajur, he received the order of Pour le Mérite.
He was a great infantry commander, and later an impressive Panzer commander, but North Africa was a shit-show. I don't think anyone could have done any better in his position.