Why rommel lost

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. It would be the same in Africa. The force he led was appropriately tiny: the reconnaissance battalion and an antitank detachment of the 5th Light Division soon renamed the 21st Panzer Division.

The rest of the division was still en route to Africa, and a second division, the 15th Panzer, would not arrive completely until the end of May.

Rommel had his orders, but he had ignored orders in the past and been decorated for it. With British forces stripped to fight an exceedingly ill-advised campaign in Greece, he carried out a quick personal reconnaissance in his trusty little Fieseler Storch airplane, then launched an offensive in concert with his Italian partners Ariete armored division and the infantry divisions of X Corps, Bologna and Pavia. He penetrated British defenses at El Agheila on March 24th, then drove on to Mersa el Brega on March 31st, pausing only long enough to take and ignore a number of radio messages from Berlin and Rome warning him not to do anything rash.

These three tiny encounters, none of them exceeding regimental strength, were enough to unhinge the entire British defensive position in Cyrenaica. Rommel now expanded his "reconnaissance in force" into a general offensive, although the forces involved were still minuscule.

One column headed up the coast road towards Benghazi, while two more sliced across the Cyrenaican bulge, scooping up a mountain of British supplies at Msus and Mechili.

The British rear was in chaos. By April 11th, the Germans had surrounded the coastal fortress of Tobruk while smaller formations pressed on to the east, taking Bardia and reaching the Egyptian border at Sollum and Ft. This was top speed maneuver, and the distances were vast, with the Afrika Korps covering over miles in less than two weeks. An amazing feat, to be sure, but may we not legitimately ask, Six-hundred miles to where?

Rommel had lunged from central Libya to the Egyptian border in a great bound, but now he had an unconquered fortress sitting in his rear, a serious threat to his lines of communication and supply. Two hastily marshaled attempts to storm Tobruk went badly wrong. In the "Easter battle" April 10thth and the "battle of the Salient" April 30th-May 4th , the defenders of the 9th Australian Division hung tough.

Minefields channeled the German attacks, while direct fire from artillery, antitank guns, and supporting tanks shot up the assault forces quite badly and killed General Heinrich von Prittwitz, commander of 15th Panzer Division. The very presence of an unconquered Tobruk rendered the drive across the desert pointless. Indeed, for all the fame it had brought Rommel in the world press, this first campaign won him few friends among command echelons in Berlin.

General Halder was especially unimpressed. A German division-plus had overrun territory--a vast wasteland, to be precise--but it hadn't really won anything. There had been no battle of annihilation, no Kesselschlacht, nor could there have been.

The Afrika Korps had come a long way, but now sat precariously on the edge of nowhere. Although Rommel and his command had shown a satisfying level of aggression, something the entire officer corps understood, most of them saw his drive to the Egyptian border as a misfire. Subsequent operations deserve the same cold eye. Both sides spent the summer rebuilding, replacing, and reinforcing, but by and large, the British were able to do it more rapidly.

Crusader led to hard fighting with heavy losses on both sides. In the course of this wild ride the Panzers overran, in quick succession, the headquarters of the XXX Corps, 7th Armoured Division, 1st South African Division, and the 7th Armoured Brigade, unleashing panic as he went.

With his tank strength near zero and his largely Italian infantry well blooded, he had no choice but to retreat back to where he had start-ed, El Agheila. By now, the dynamic of the desert war was well established. There was an iron logic at work, and neither side could escape its grip. Long advances did not simply take you away from your railhead, they took you entire time zones from it.

Supply became not just a problem, but the problem. Rommel was far more dangerous at El Agheila, relatively close to Tripoli, than he was on the Egyptian wire, six-hundred miles to the east. Germany only became involved in North Africa because of their alliance with Italy. Mussolini had grandiose dreams of recreating the Roman Empire and he sought to control North Africa, in the wake of the British and French defeats in This led him to order his army to attack British controlled Egypt from the Italian colony of Libya.

However, the Italians despite having numerical superiority and tactical surprise did not achieve their goals. The British, along with troops from the British Empire easily repelled the Italians.

The Italian army was on the verge of defeat and it looked like it would lose its colony in North Africa. Mussolini asked Hitler for help and Germany dispatched some divisions under the command of a gifted commander Erwin Rommel. Rommel defeated a British offensive and in , he took Tobruk and this opened the way to Egypt.

After this victory, he and Hitler believed that they had an opportunity to seize Egypt from the British and close the Suez Canal to Britain. This would have disrupted trade and supply links between Britain and her Empire and greatly weakened its war efforts. He commanded a joint Italian and German army. Because of the terrain, his army was motorized and the invasion was spearhead by tanks or panzers.

The British 8th army was forced to retreat into northwestern Egypt. The Afrika Korps advanced into Egypt and made his way by the coastal route to Alexandria. If he could seize that city, then he would have been in a position to challenge the British and their control of the Suez Canal. The 8th Army laid many miles of mines and dug many tank traps. The battle took place only 60km from Alexandria. The Allies were close to their supply bases in Egypt and the Axis forces supply lines had become stretched in contrast.

Rommel launched a direct attack on the British positions. However, Auchelick had superiority in artillery and his forces had been well dug in. This allowed their lines to hold. The Allies then launched a counter attack, Rommel used a brilliant defensive strategy to repel the attacks [8]. The Allies had denied Rommel victory and they had stopped his advance to Alexandria.

The western forces had suffered heavy casualties some killed and wounded. Initially, General William Gott was appointed as its commander but he was killed in a plane crash. Churchill then had Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery appointed and he took command of the 8th army on the 13th August. Rommel could have withdrawn at this stage and given that his supply lines had been overextended this perhaps should have been his strategy. The Germans expected a massive Allied counter-attack.

The Afrikakorps eschewed the atrocities committed by the German army in other theatres of war, especially on the Eastern Front. By , in Normandy trying to defend the coast from an impending Allied landing, Rommel realized the war was lost and grew disillusioned.

Despite having links to some of the plotters, he never joined the abortive July 20, conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. They argued that he played a greater role in the resistance than the producers believed, said Hofmann. The family have declined to talk to media about the film. Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics. Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically.

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Glossary : Full Glossary. Key Facts. More information about this image. Cite Share Print Tags German military. Rommel, the Nazis, and the Holocaust One of the most widely debated questions about Erwin Rommel is the extent to which he supported Nazism, and by extension, the Holocaust. Glossary Terms.

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