Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: oleary111

The question is - did Rommel rally do a great job in the Africa campaign - or is history simply biased because the big time British propaganda machine hype Rommel up (since they beat him)

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If you play out these excellent scenarios - You can see that Rommels two great drives took place against forces that had been really weakened by withdrawals to other fronts.

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Im a lousy wargamer - and even I can do what he did!

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

With the exception of March and April of 1941, Rommel was under a material disadvantage of about 1.3:1 for most of his desert victories, based on some analyses I've seen.

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I can only point out that I found it necessary to impose a net 8% shock advantage on the Axis vs. the CW/Allies in my scenarios, during Rommel's period, both in CFNA and in France 1944, as well.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
I can only point out that I found it necessary to impose a net 8% shock advantage on the Axis vs. the CW/Allies in my scenarios, during Rommel's period, both in CFNA and in France 1944, as well.

For France 1944? I really don't think that's appropriate. I don't see Rommel's performance in that campaign as any more impressive than the norm for German commanders.

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For CFNA, I know it's not really possible in TOAW without peculiar affects, but the ideal would be to allow the German player to give additional benefits to one stack or one small area each turn. This was what Rommel did.

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Also, since the player is effectively replacing Rommel and his staff, it seems a bit weird to give the player an edge because he's supposed to be a better general than he is.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Regardless, it was necessary

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Now, whether one can attribute it all (or even any of it) to Rommel is another issue, but he was in command while the Allies were stuck, and soon after he was wounded, they broke out.

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I suppose I could have attributed it to Montgomery instead. (The breakout occurred just after Bradley got out from under him.)

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Perhaps. But then the effect would have to be larger. So, a big, but localized effect, or a small, but theater-wide effect? It may be six-of-one/half-a-dozen-of-the-other.

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Common for Desert War games

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The Axis mustn't perform as well under Graziani as under Rommel.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious
Is it not possible that some other factors could be fiddled with? There are a lot of factors.

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Now, whether one can attribute it all (or even any of it) to Rommel is another issue, but he was in command while the Allies were stuck, and soon after he was wounded, they broke out.

I think this is coincidence. What exactly would have Rommel done to prevent the Cobra breakout had he been in command- that he couldn't have already been doing before he was wounded?

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I suppose I could have attributed it to Montgomery instead. (The breakout occurred just after Bradley got out from under him.)

Montgomery was overall ground commander until well after the breakout.

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Common for Desert War games

Just because something is usually done doesn't mean that it's right. Of course if your intent here is to interest the players then I can see where you're coming from- also of course you are trying to replicate a particular board game, which I imagine had a similar rule. Sometimes I get tunnel vision about simulation above all else.

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The Axis mustn't perform as well under Graziani as under Rommel.

Because that would be ahistorical. Heaven knows what would happen if the players were allowed to vary from the historical course.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

Of course it could be attributed to any number of things. One factor that TOAW tends to model poorly is the need to build up stockpiles prior to a major push, and this may account for the way the Allies did it. But it is simply a fact that I needed a shock effect for this period, and it reasonably corresponds to the period when both Rommel and Monty were in command. (12th Army Group formed on 8/1/44).

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No, it would be absurd. The characteristics of the commanders (plus their staffs, plus their force command-and-control, etc.) are part of the conditions of the Desert War - as much as the sand.

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ORIGINAL: TOCarroll

I think it should be pointed out that in N Afrika, a significant number of Rommels men were ill. Dysentary, jundace, ect (e.g. whatever is carried by lice).

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While he shares blame for the failure to take Malta,

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That said, his grasp of logistics was on a par with Hitler's.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious
I think attrition has more to do with it. In another discussion, it was mentioned that at the time of Cobra, Panzer Lehr had something like 3,000 effectives- and this must have been the norm for the units facing the American forces. The Germans were able to keep on matching the increases in Allied strength for six weeks, but when their ability to do that ended, it was only a matter of time before they broke out.

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I thought the purpose of wargaming was to imagine what would have happened if the Generals were different.

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ORIGINAL: TOCarroll
Rommel also was astute enough to have the correct plan for defeating the invasion (on the beaches), and was on of the few senior officers to understand the effect of Allied Air Superiority.

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That said, his grasp of logistics was on a par with Hitler's. There was simply no was the German's could supply a drive to the Nile Delta, much less the Missle Eastern Oilfields.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

That's like saying they broke out because they achieved a breakthrough. Why did it take them as long as they did to achieve enough attrition to break out?

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I repeat, my experimental evidence (playtests of France 1944) seems to show they should have reached it sooner.

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Or if those Generals made different decisions.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
Certainly the drive to El Alamein put a logistical strain on the Axis. But, at the same time the impact of the US production was first being felt there. Mass quantities of Stuarts, Grants, and Shermans were poured into the CW lines post Tobruk. And the Tobruk losses were more than made up. The CW material superiority increased significantly. Same for aircraft. The CW first achieved Air Superiority over El Alamein. Had that not happened, it's debatable whether the CW could have held the El Alamein position. Once past that, Alexandria's capture would have solved the Axis logistical difficulties.

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ORIGINAL: TOCarroll

The other option was to use Tunis and Bizerte as supply heads, but thats 2,000km worth of gas to get the jerrycans to the front.

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I'm greatful for the point about illness in the 8th Army. Every book I've read (German, Italian, or Allied) gives you the impression of a group of healthy, cheerful, beer-swilling, courageous and competant (up to the rank of General) young men, having a great time trying to kill those damned Jerries. And being really PO'd (until Monty) that the Jerrys had a better CO. (Actually it wasn't the CO, the British problem was middle-management). But I did not know about serious medical issues. I guess I thought only the Germans drank the water).

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to Quote Sir John Hackett..."Quite a few of us LIKED being there").

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ORIGINAL: Dabbs

What seems to me the single largest contributing (not the only) factor to Rommel's defeat in North Africa was the lack of oil to power the Italian navy on a consistent and extended basis.  That would have been helpful for the escorting of merchant marine supplies to Libya and likely could have extended to starving Malta of supplies.  As it was, I think the Axis came close to bringing Malta to a real emergency; but pressure relented as it was starting to take effect.

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Would consider Rommel "good", but Guderian probably best in class and a class above Rommel...IMO.  That's one thing about the German Army though, they had a lot of good generals from division-level up to army; whereas it's difficult to come up with any comparable list of generals by country.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

That's like saying they broke out because they achieved a breakthrough. Why did it take them as long as they did to achieve enough attrition to break out?

Attrition takes time. A lot of attrition was achieved in the six weeks or so of Rommel's command, and a little more in the following week. That the Germans broke after that last week doesn't mean that the fighting in that one single week was more important than in all of the previous six. It was just the straw that broke the camel's back.

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I repeat, my experimental evidence (playtests of France 1944) seems to show they should have reached it sooner.

Perhaps historically the attrition divider wasn't so low.

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Or if those Generals made different decisions.

.... how can you allow the Generals to make different decisions, and yet say that their ability- which produces an 8% increase in the fighting strength of all their units- remains exactly the same?

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ORIGINAL: TOCarroll

Rommel's choice was wrong to push into Egypt--he forfitted either air superiority or supplys.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Dabbs

What seems to me the single largest contributing (not the only) factor to Rommel's defeat in North Africa was the lack of oil to power the Italian navy on a consistent and extended basis.  That would have been helpful for the escorting of merchant marine supplies to Libya and likely could have extended to starving Malta of supplies.  As it was, I think the Axis came close to bringing Malta to a real emergency; but pressure relented as it was starting to take effect.

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I suspect the Italian navy used lack of oil as an excuse not to act, rather than it being a real reason.

Anyway, the work of blockading Malta was done by the Luftwaffe- but there were long periods in which virtually no pressure was being put on Malta from the air at all. Had the significance of Malta been realised in 1941, the island could probably have been reduced in a year. Of course the Luftwaffe saw Russia as a rather higher priority.

The Italian Navy did really have problems with oil. They had a lot of large ships and had even more problems than the germans in getting any oil at all, while Germany at least had the Romanian Ploesti oilsources (and before june 1941 also relied on oil from Soviet). Hitler was forced to part with some of his oil reserves to Italy so that the navy and airforce could conduct their important missions in harassing Allied shipping in the Mediterranean (prior to 1942) and to escort all the supply and merchant ships to North Africa. I agree that the Italians seldom showed the agressiveness that the germans did and they had problems in coordinating their navy with the airforce in operations but the fact remains that on most occassions they had to decide wether it was worth sending out their capital ships to harass the allied or not depending on the successrate in relation to how much oil such an undertaking would consume.

Personally I would say Enigma was one of the major things the allied had in winning the war and also the constant lack of oil for the axis. The Axis (After autumn 1942) where always in lack of oil and in 1944 that was critical. They became static and had to abandon as much equipment as they had lost due to enemy fire. Enigma also always give the Allies information on where and when axis reinforcements was and where to arrive as well as orders to the current army, navy and airforce. Ok, that last paragraph was out of the topic though

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Would consider Rommel "good", but Guderian probably best in class and a class above Rommel...IMO.  That's one thing about the German Army though, they had a lot of good generals from division-level up to army; whereas it's difficult to come up with any comparable list of generals by country.

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Mm. Nazi Germany had all the right characteristics for producing fine generals. First, the country had an excellent military tradition in the first place, and had come up with a pretty good system come 1918. Second, they had lost the First World War. This made them take a long, hard look at the way war is fought and come up with radical solutions to its problems- something the Allies did not do to the same extent. Third, the National-Socialist movement was so revolutionary in nature that it was natural for it to encourage revolutionary forms of warfare and the newest types of equipment- at the same time avoiding the destructive purges which broke the back of the Red Army. Fourth, the army's tiny size between 1919 and 1934 meant that only the very best military men could be in uniform at all (some of the generals of the Second World War were not even comissioned officers prior to 1934), and the expansion to the Wehrmacht was done so rapidly that these men were promoted to high command much faster than in other circumstances, preventing the domination of army thought by conservatism which occurs in most armies.

(in reply to golden delicious)

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

My point remains that the attrition rate is just fine in the scenario from Cobra onward. But not from D-Day to Cobra - during that period, the rate in the scenario was too high, making shock necessary.

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What's wrong with that? It's like having leader units - Napoleon, Lee, Jackson, etc.

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

From Rommel's perspective, the CW had just been ravaged by the losses at Tobruk. He had no reason to suspect those losses were going to be more than made up. And, if they hadn't, logistics might not have been enough to stop him.

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ORIGINAL: karlxii

I agree that the Italians seldom showed the agressiveness that the germans did and they had problems in coordinating their navy with the airforce in operations but the fact remains that on most occassions they had to decide wether it was worth sending out their capital ships to harass the allied or not depending on the successrate in relation to how much oil such an undertaking would consume.

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Personally I would say Enigma was one of the major things the allied had in winning the war

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Enigma also always give the Allies information on where and when axis reinforcements was and where to arrive

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ORIGINAL: Sarkus

What bothers me the most is the tendancy of Rommel fans to ignore the questions about his relationship with Hitler.

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Since his family also insisted he had nothing to do with the plot to kill Hitler in 1944, he's hardly exonerrated.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious
Maybe this has something to do with the excess quantities of active defender equipment, which have a tendency to produce density penalties.

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ORIGINAL: golden delicious

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ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

From Rommel's perspective, the CW had just been ravaged by the losses at Tobruk. He had no reason to suspect those losses were going to be more than made up. And, if they hadn't, logistics might not have been enough to stop him.

It was quite obvious that the Allied logistical situation would recover with the retreat to Egypt (just as Rommel's own had recovered when he was forced to retreat back into Libya earlier in the campaign). The forces lost in the Summer of 1942 were not that irreplaceable either- 8th Army was largely able to extract itself from the Gazala battles and 2nd South African lost at Tobruk was not a first-line division in the first place (though the three other brigades lost there were).