Erwin Rommel: An overview for althistorians

1. As a matter of record, the German OKH lost track of several panzer divisions during the French campaign in 1940 because of Wehrmacht politics. The German general staff liked timetables and sticking to plans, since if you went off plan you produced fog of war and created situations where surprise and defeat was certain as they learned in WWI and in Poland in 1939. The panzer generals, were more Individualistic and very Careerist and Promotion-oriented than a German staff officer. More flashy and ostentatious got you noticed by Hitler, the Boss. In this respect, Rommel was no more different than any other panzer division commander. The staff cramped his opportunities and his ability to be flashy. Rommel was lucky when he was faced by incompetents, but as the Battle of Arras proved; even his "ghost division" could be mauled up when his lacksadaisical tactical attitudes and careless management style ran into a stubborn even though incompetent Anglo French attack/defense. That same battle proved that he would be a war criminal or allow war crimes to happen without restraint in his area of tactical operational control. It was a result of Arras that Hitler reined the panzer generals in, because OKH complained they had lost operational control of movement and needed to sort the chaos that Rommel and his fellow panzer generals had caused. It was not Goering's boast and intervention as is commonly assumed that caused "The Miracle of Dunkirk". The Wehrmacht had outrun its logistics and its communications had failed and we can lay that squarely on the arrogance and stupidity of the panzer generals, Rommel included, who disobeyed orders and cut his com links to higher headquarters and refused to stay on his assigned mission. Rommel was out on a joyride in search of glory, instead of linking up with the infantry battering ram to cut north France off which was the Mannstein Plan in the first place.      

2. It is hard to argue that in North Africa, that Rommel was a trickster as much as these factors allowed him to win.
a. The Italians had learned their logistics lessons and concentrated on making their supply system for 10th Army work after their first defeats in Cyrenaica. The Africa Korps benefitted from this logistics effort. No Lanzia truck convoys with ammunition, fuel, and WATER resupply and no Afrika Korps offensives. 
b. The Germans had TWO important intelligence advantages, a tactical signals unit which knew English and could listen to the British yakking away in the clear over their own radio nets, and...
bsub1 the ITALIAN Special Intelligence Service that had agents inside Egypt who reliably intercepted American and British coded diplomatic and military CABLE and radio traffic, burgled US and British embassies and HQs and sent Rommel complete orders of battle and operations plans before the Desert Army got them themselves. 
    
3. Rommel's one real trick was not so much a trick as ITALIAN special operation forces reconnaissance. 

Just like the British, the Italians had long range desert groups that roamed the "open flank" poking at things, shooting up important installations and generally making nuisances of themselves with ONE important difference from their British opposites:
a. The Italians mapped water holes.
b. The Italians mapped ground flotation and KNEW where tanks could go in the Sahara without bogging or sinking to a stop.  The British generally did not do this and it cost them repeated opportunities to reply to open flank march attacks in kind and left them vulnerable to Axis surprise flank attacks seemingly from out of the desert where nobody "should" be able to navigate or operate.  
c. The Italians acted as guideons for those repetitive right hooks that Rommel used as his one trick, over and over again. They navigated by stars and sun the way mariners do at sea. They never were lost at sea in the desert like the British were until the British set up American invented LORAN. 

4. Italian infantry, when given a chance, was VERY GOOD in attack and defense. It is true that above the regiment level, the Italian army officer corps was fascist "political reliables" infested and those officers (Bagladaccio for example.) could not be trusted to pour water out of a boot, but at field grade and below, their leadership was solid, the soldiery knew their business and the line could fight. German infantry was few and far between as was German artillery. The bulk of Rommel's infantry and artillery combat power was ITALIAN and more reliable than his German line. Italian unit commanders could read and execute a competent "German (Italian) staff plan", and unlike Rommel, would stick to it and on several occasions this rock solid professionalism, saved Rommel's posterior when the British acidentally (Battle of the Cauldron) or deliberately (2nd Battle of El Alamein) had Rommel on the ropes. Italian infantry divisions either chopped open escape corridors or fought vicious rear guard or delay actions that allowed the German panzers to resupply or run away and escape British encirclements. 
 
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One by one, first Auchinleck and more importantly, MONTGOMERY, chopped away these fundamental Rommel information and material advantages, tightening up British unit operational security, encrypting British tactical radio, improving recon in imitation of the Italians, and bolstered up their own infantry and artillery.     

And when that happened, it turned out that Rommel was just another panzer general; sloppy as to logistics, a poor planner and not very good tactically against a set piece battle genius like Montgomery. 

Proof? 

Compare Salerno to Omaha beach. It took Mark Clark NINE days to claw ashore against Vietinghof and Kesselring. The Americans at Omaha Beach, the WORST of the D-day landings, a site personally laid out and engineered and planned by ROMMEL, took ONE day and the Americans at the end of it were inland far enough not to be thrown back into the sea.

So why did Rommel gain his reputation?

The Anglo-Americans needed a "good Wehrmacht general" around which to build the Bundeswehr and create the "clean Wehrmacht myth" so it could be stood up in West Germany to fight the Russians.  It was a political LIE to make the prospect of a rearmed Germany acceptable to Western Europe and NATO. 

The Anglo-Americans sorted through their candidates and what did they find? Rundstedt, Guderian, Braubitsch, von Beck, Kesselring, etc. ? Are you KIDDING?  If that gang of cutthroats, liars, war criminals and poltroons was the best the Anglo-Americans could "reform" as a "clean Wehrmacht German hero" then they would be laughed off the planet. 

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But there was ONE candidate; who could be shaped to fit the role. First and most important, he could be actually historically linked to the Stauffenberg assassination plot against Hitler, even if only peripherally. Second, he was conveniently DEAD, since Hitler had him poisoned, and his family could be relied upon to LIE about him to false front the cockamamie story the Anglo-Americans cooked up to explain why he was a "German hero" because of his late and alleged anti-Hitler stance that got him extrajudicially murdered. The patina of plausibility was just barely present to make the lie fly. Third, not only had Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, turned Rommel into "a military genius" for the German public: but the British, to explain their own military shortcomings and downright Desert Army incredible stupidity before Montgomery fixed them up right and proper, decided to inflate Rommel into a "military genius" themselves, for the same reason, they disparaged the Italians and claimed it was the "Germans" who were trouncing them after First Cyreneaica. I can even give you a name to source all of these lies and falsehoods about Rommel. It was his BRITISH biographer, Sir Basil Liddell Hart who was as big a liar about WWII for the British as Heinz Guderian was for the Germans.              
  

As a parenthetical, it was German army necessity to make the 8.8 / 56 as universal as possible, due to the Versailles treaty. The technical basis of German gun design also drove this outcome. 

The Germans already had a naval gun of this bore diameter to shortcut the design process. Weimar gunmakers may have been chicanes, but they were not stupid. Start with AP shells, design a timed fuse HE shell and adopt a ballistic computer and aiming setup to throw shells into a "sky basket". Voila AAA gun. The "naval" AP shell could punch holes in concrete and new-fangled (Franco-British) tanks. It was the anti-infantry and anti-aircraft shells and features that were the problems. 

I might point out that the Germans were not alone in a "universal gun".

The US 90 mm M3 was designed to the same exact purposes though it started with HE and ended up with AP as its development sequence cycle    
  

The maxim is: "Proof of capability is proof of intent." The curious thing is that while "capability" may be present, as in the case of the British 2 pounder gun and its explosive grenade rounds that were available during the Battle of France in 1940 and in North Africa in 1941-1943, we have the exception which proved the rule.

The British, you would have thought, would have used this high explosive shell capacity of their 2 pounder guns to counter 88 / 56 or even 50 / 60 and 37 / 50 AT gum gun lines that Rommel's units set up as traps for British armored units? It is logical that high explosive shells be used against rather vulnerable AT guns exposed in open topped gun pits?

Not so. With the even larger bore diameter 57 / 60 (6 pounder) AT guns, the British army tankers persisted in using "slugs" and ignored the HE rounds that British ordnance supplied them for anti-soft target work.

Why?

Politics. British service branches had a pernicious exclusionary roles and missions rivalry, that makes the American army and Marines rivalry look like a fraternal comradery fest.

This curious rivalry was especially intense between the "Royal" artillery and the rest of the British army. You will notice that the term "Royal" was applied to the artillery? That bit of title shared with the other exclusive "club", the Royal Engineers, made the artillery branch a bunch of snobs who insisted that THEY be the ones who handled such missions as "counterbattery" as an exclusive branch mission.

Well, okay, the British army could live with that if the British armor could RELY on call fires from the British gunners to the rear to suppress a suddenly discovered ambush AT gun line. It was only necessary for the British tanker to forward observe fall of shot and for the tankers to pull back so the barrage could be laid on, right?

Well... there was a PROBLEM. The "capability" was not there, though the "intent" was doctrinal. The British logic, at least in the desert army, was that a 25 pounder gun in indirect fire threw a much bigger grenade much further than a 2 pounder or 6 pounder gun in direct fire. True, so the German AT gun should have been neutralized with WWI British artillery methods. Right? The problem is that the British tankers had to forward observe and correct fall os shots out since it was indirect fire, and they were not trained to do it, nor were they equipped with a common radio that interconnected with the wired in British artillery battery director networks.

That is right, the British tankers could not easily pick up a mike and say: "Hey, Jocko, I need you to lay some berries on mapgrid such and such, pronto. Jerry has some can openers that need breaking right away, old boy."

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You would think the Royal Artillery would fix this? Keep the mission, fix the radio net problem (As in creating ONE) and train the British tankers to be their eyes, and who knows, maybe train the British infantry to do it, too?

Nope.

If he was not Royal Artillery, he had no business calling in fires over the wire, or the newfangled radio. Our mission, lads. You just stick to your knitting and let us handle the complicated mathematical stuff.

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THAT changed.




American tank gunner's quadrant for the gun howitzer on a Sherman tank

Not only did the British tankers have to learn how to drive and shoot the right way, but they were introduced to interoperative radios and THE GUNNER'S QUADRANT and how to use it to indirect fire the 75 / 40 with in support of British infantry. MONTGOMERY insisted on it. 

It was a way the Sherman could be used to fight as artillery as the French derived 75 /40 tended to LOB  shells a bit more than the higher velocity British 6 pounder guns in common use just before 2nd El Alamein. The 75 / 40 was, by American doctrine and capability, supposed to kill infantry and enemy artillery, both in indirect fire and direct fire. The tank killing was part of the overall package and not the sole or even the main tank mission. Furthermore, thanks to experiments and wargames, the Americans had worked out how a private could be trained to call back to an artillery battery director and lay on indirect fires from a MAP to that battery director. Not only could howitzers be so employed under such direction, but TANKS and antitank guns, AAA guns, and anything else which could be indirect fired and gridded in on the enemy to be removed at map coordinates 12345678. It was HOW the Germans were finally stopped at Kasserine pass when British infantry (Actually Americans embedded within the unit, because the British of 1st Army had not learned how... M.) called in indirect fires to American artillery and tanks posted to backstop them at the final line of defense. 

The Germans did not figure the every gun within range of enemy called in by PVT Smith method either.  At places like Mortain in France in 1944, it cost them dearly.   

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Which the British did as well as the Germans, but as with the Royal Artillery myopia earlier, one did not see the British use the rather good 3.7 inch AAA gun in the same fashion as the German 88 / 56, anywhere near as often, possibly because the heavier British 94 mm bore gun was a bit more awkward and less mobile and the mount was even more AAA centric specialized than either the American 90 or German 88.


That I did not know. Thanks.


But getting the general idea past the institutionalized inertia of; "This is how we do things, because it is our role and mission" remained and remains a problem for most militaries.

I do agree that Rommel used what he had, the way he did, because that was German doctrine. But not even the Germans figured everything mechanically out. In this they were like anyone else. They overlooked obvious methods and means such as interoperable radio and reconnaissance and plot fires by mapgrid zero and premeasured rulers from that survey point to landmark or grid coordinate for impactors as read off topo maps. Then thumb through your firing table books for charge loads and cranked in elevations, and then fire for spot, wait for the observers to call you for overs and shorts and then once corrected, "Fire for effect".

Just as a coda...

If you had to rate artillery performance in North Africa before the Americans arrived?

1. Italians.
2. French
3. British
4. Germans.

The Italians lacked radios, but they had that every gun in range on target tied into their network thing down pat, and everybody from a senior sergeant up, could get on the field telephone and call it in off a landmark or a mapgrid if they had a decent map. The British and the Germans insisted on trained officers and trig on the spot at the firing battery. This surprised the Americans who got a very nasty Italian mirror image of themselves in Tunisia but were thankful that the Germans were a bit technique backward, as the German equipment was good, but application was lacking in simplifed callfire methods or in assigned guns numbers that could be massed onto a target.