How many tanks did rommel have

In so doing, they portrayed Rommel as a chivalrous combatant, pointing out, among other things, that he apparently never joined the Nazi Party. Yet his devotion to Hitler was incontrovertible. After leading a tank division in the blitzkrieg of France, Rommel was transferred to North Africa in order to help the struggling Italians fight the British.

Finally, in October , the numerically superior British halted his advance near El Alamein, Egypt. Running low on tanks, ammunition and fuel, Rommel prepared to retreat. He also disregarded an order directing German generals to execute Allied commandos caught behind enemy lines.

In the end, Rommel fled all the way to Tunisia, winning a tank battle there against the Americans—and losing one against the British—before returning to Europe in March Two months later, the Allies kicked the Germans out of North Africa altogether, setting the stage for their invasion of Italy.

Despite Nazi propaganda to the contrary, he found the area highly vulnerable. This was low-intensity fighting of the Kampfgruppen variety, without a fully formed division in sight. It included few battles and generated minimal casualties, and by February 6th, Rommel stood on the Gazala line, just east of the Cyrenaican bulge and thirty-five miles west of Tobruk.

Here, the hyper-movement of the desert war ground to a halt. Both sides had wasted themselves racing back and forth and were, for the moment, incapable of further action. For nearly four months, the opponents sat, dug in, and glowered at one another.

The Gazala position came to bear all the hallmarks of Stellungskrieg, or static warfare: trenches and rifle pits, barbed wire and machine gun nests. For the British, fortified "box-es," dense degree concentrations of tank obstacles and mines, came to dominate the front, with the gaps between them protected by great "mine marshes. Here, on the Gazala line, Rommel would finally win a real victory, not the meaningless to-and-fro of the "Benghazi sweepstakes.

Once that had taken effect, Rommel carried out the most audacious move of his career, launching his entire mechanized force--five full divisions, thousands of vehicles, and virtually every Axis tank in the order of battle--on a deep end run around the British flank. It was a solid block of armor nearly fifteen miles on a side stood on the British flank. At hrs, this immense force crashed into the fortified box at Retma. It was an amazing scene. Sitting out in the sunshine of a lovely May morning, the defenders looked on with curiosity as a dust cloud appeared on the horizon.

This one, however, suddenly clarified itself into something worse: tanks, tanks, and more tanks, vehicles of every description, sailing out of the dust. To the east, near Bir Gubi, lay the 7th Motorised Brigade. Half the unit had been given some well-earned rest and recreation and the men were swimming in Tobruk harbor that fateful morning.

West of Retma, 3rd Indian Brigade was caught equally unprepared. Its commander, General A. He was actually seeing Italian tanks of the Ariete division, but it was early in the morning so we can forgive Fi-lose his imprecision.

Both brigades, along with the Retma box, were overrun with hardly any fighting in the opening minutes. Strewn all over the battle area, it rushed to the aid of 7th Motorised Brigade, and was overrun by the onrushing 15th Panzer Division. Then, 22nd Armoured Brigade rode to the relief of 4th Armoured, and it too went down in flames.

By noon, the British left wing in the desert was in shreds. Once past the initial shock, however, 8th Army dug in its heels. By now, the British finally had an adequate tank, the M3 Grant courtesy of U.

Treated cavalierly by World War II historians, it was far superior to anything 8th Army had yet fielded. Sure, it was ungainly and clumsy, and yes, it really did present a monstrous 9-foot, 3-inch tall target profile to German fire. On the plus side, however, its thick armor made it impervious to just about anything but a direct hit from an 88 mm antiaircraft gun.

It was also one of the most heavily armed tanks of the day, packing two forms of main armament: a short-barreled 75 mm gun in a fixed mounting or "sponson" in the hull and a 37 mm gun in the turret. By the end of the first day, the Panzers had formed up into a laager behind the British lines, and in the next days, Rommel had them launching an attack backwards, i.

It was a marvelous improvisation, and enough to flummox the British, who preferred to fight on one front at a time rather than three. Klopper, actually radioed back the understatement of the century: "Situation not in hand," he said. Even here, however, let us be honest. Smashing 8th Army at Gazala and taking tens of thousands of prisoners at Tobruk did little to solve the strategic problem.

Unless the British were destroyed altogether, they would reinforce to a level the Axis could not match. The famous Afrika Korps of the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions was a fine example of the expertise in armoured warfare of the German Army.

Since the s, this army had developed a sound doctrine of warfare, and created powerful Panzer divisions of tanks, infantry and artillery.

These formations were 'glued' together by comprehensive radio communications, and powerfully supported by tactical airpower. It was little wonder that these units proved difficult to beat. Much of Rommel's 'fingertip feel' for the battlefield was due to his excellent signals intelligence. Signals Intercept Company , which listened into British radio transmissions, provided him with unparalleled tactical insights, and was actually responsible for many of his most striking successes.

When these sources were discovered and stopped by the British in , his tactical feel was never again as accomplished. His lack of staff training meant that, for all his tactical success, he never properly understood the broader context of 'his' war in North Africa - or the fact that the campaign was essentially defensive for the Axis. Most importantly, his failure to understand the complex logistics of the North African theatre meant that his daring advances were never sustainable.

For all his talents as a commander, Rommel did not pass the one true test of generalship - he never achieved a lasting victory. Instead, his flaws dovetailed with the wider bankruptcy of the German army in World War Two. By focusing upon the detail at the expense of the broader operational picture, and by down-playing the importance of logistics, the German army fought brilliantly at the tactical level but was overwhelmed by the combined might of the Allies. Their strength lay in the fact that they were prepared not just to fight but to wage war.

Most importantly of all, Rommel - and indeed almost every other German army officer - failed to see, until it was far too late, that their narrow conception of military duty had trapped them in the service of a brutal, murderous regime.

Ultimately, Rommel failed. He was defeated in Africa and then in Normandy, but the bright, if brief, flash of his brilliance in the Libyan desert continues to attract our gaze even to this day.

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Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets CSS if you are able to do so. Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, is typically dismissed as militarily incompetent and whose involvement in military operations hampered the German war effort.

Rommel was right in arguing that Allied air power would hinder the movement of the Panzer divisions, and that concentrating the armored divisions for a lethal counterattack wouldn't work in the terrain of Normandy and Brittany. On the other hand, by deploying the Panzer units before the location of the landings was known, Rommel effectively took them out of contention in the critical 48 hours after the landings started.

In retrospect, holding the Panzer divisions in reserve and then rushing them to support individual infantry units, rather than massing them for a counterattack, would have been the best strategy, even if Allied air power would have taken its toll on the tanks. That could have been a logical compromise between Rommel and von Rundstedt but, when Rommel went around the chain of command, he made such a compromise impossible. What he ended up with, fortunately for the Allies, was the worst of both worlds.

Rommel's mistake in deploying his Panzer units was the result of an elaborate British subterfuge -- Operation Fortitude. That's the topic of my next column. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions military.

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