When World War II ended in Europe in May 1945, most Western military leaders and analysts regarded Erwin Rommel as the war’s greatest German general. But that was not how most German military leaders felt. Instead, in their memoirs they argued that Rommel was at best an adequate tactician and not a bad leader of small units, that he had been an adequate division commander, but his command of corps, army and army groups was often flawed. Rommel, they asserted, had involved himself too much in the day-to-day details of the tactical fight and not enough in the operational and strategic issues that must concern those at the highest levels of command, and he paid too little attention to matters of intelligence and the enemy’s order of battle. Thus, his German critics allege, as the commander of the Afrika Korps, ‘the Desert Fox’ had won some spectacular victories but willfully ignored problems of logistics.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in World War II magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

Of course, Rommel was no longer present to defend himself. His peripheral involvement in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler had led the Gestapo to compel the field marshal to take his own life that October. The debate on Rommel’s ability was, therefore, left to be fought out among his contemporaries and was picked up by historians who continue this debate to the present day. Much of the criticism of Rommel’s suitability for high command is focused around his performance as the commander of Heeresgruppe (Army Group) B and its defense of northwestern Europe against the Anglo-American invasion in June and July 1944.

Rommel’s actions in that assignment can perhaps give the best indication of the validity of the charges that the field marshal was not up to positions of great responsibility. They can also provide insights into how German military leaders as a whole approached the strategic and operational problems of World War II and how well they understood the larger issues involved in the war.

Rommel’s Glory Years
For Rommel, the first three years of the war were spectacular. He had risen from the obscurity of a mere division command (one among approximately 140) to an army command with the rank of field marshal. His leadership of the 7th Panzer Division during the blitzkrieg in France had contributed considerably to his rapid promotion through the command hierarchy. One recent German account of the invasion of France asserts that Rommel played an even more important role in the breakthrough on the Meuse — which led to the Allied collapse — than Heinz Guderian did.

Fresh from the victory in France, in early 1941 the Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH — Army High Command) selected Rommel to command a small corps of German mobile and mechanized troops that was being sent to North Africa to prevent the collapse of the Italian position in Libya. Under strict orders to remain on the defensive once he arrived, Rommel instead hit the ground running and began attacking the British even before his entire force had reached the desert. In a series of spectacular advances, he consistently disobeyed the instructions of not only his titular bosses in Rome, the Italian Comando Supremo, but also his superiors in Berlin, the OKH. Unimpressed by the Afrika Korps‘ early victories, the chief of the German General Staff, the schoolmasterly Colonel-General Franz Halder, was instead soon moaning that Rommel had gone ‘mad’ in North Africa.

Whatever the criticisms issuing from the OKH, Rommel’s performance was brilliant. His mission was to keep the British out of Libya and to restore the Italian position in North Africa. He more than accomplished this. His masterstroke came in June 1942 when his outnumbered Afrika Korps wrecked the British Eighth Army on the Gazala Line immediately to the east of Benghazi. He then pursued his beaten foe all the way back to El Alamein, the Eighth Army’s last defensive position in Egypt before the Nile.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to