Rommel, 12th SS and Normandy

@SuperbattleshipYamato hard to argue against any of this really. The IJN was so far gone by this point in the war that there’s not really much they could have done to salvage their situation one way or another. The bit about the allies not having many LSTs in general is something I never knew before though.

I’m sure many of you have heard of Infantry Attacks, a book by Erwin Rommel in the interwar era. It is about Rommel’s experiences in World War 1 as a mountain infantry commander mainly in Romania and Italy, but he also fought in France for the first year of the war, as part of a regular infantry unit. Throughout the book, especially in Romania and Italy, Rommel assumed higher and higher commands, ending in the command of the Rommel detachment of the Wurttemberg Mountain Battalion. This also doubles as a military textbook, with the English translator and the US army writing an introduction at the start of the book. I finished it and it is a great book.

One of the highlights is the Tolmien offensive in Italy, where the Rommel detachment of the Wurttemberg Mountain Battalion destroyed five Italian regiments and took 9000 prisoners in three days, the most successful of Rommel’s career.

I highly recommend it, but it’s quite a long and complicated book. It really shows you Rommel’s power as a commander. A sequel, Tank Attacks, was planned but never completed, due to Rommel’s suicide in 1944. It was meant to be based on Rommel’s experiences in North Africa. What was written can be found in the Rommel Papers. I just don’t recommend it because it was edited by Liddell Hart, a British general who edited the works to make it seem like Rommel was his “pupil”, and that Liddell Hart taught Rommel what he knew. It was also edited by one of Rommel’s staff in North Africa, and his wife and son.

If you have read this book, what are your thoughts on it? Thank you!

@SuperbattleshipYamato I will have it read it then :)

I would have doubled the committment in Africa.

If you end it there, you end it for Britain after the fall of Egypt.  Opening a third front -with- Arab allies on the communists.

ATTACK!!! That what Rommel would do :lol:

"He wasn’t a complicated philosopher or thinker, but he quite simply said: ‘We’re just not going to make it, and just imagine, people are saying all kind of things, but look, an infantry division has just been deployed and they hardly have artillery support, and for every two kilometers, we have a single battery.’ "

Had Rommel of had the Panzer divisions at the beaches on D-Day would it of actually made any meaningful difference to the outcome of the battle?

This statement said it all so the ansewr is…. no.
Rommel was not a foul…

I suppose that if you’re a POW, there are worse places to be held than that camp. I wonder if any of these men stayed in Canada after the war, if that option was available.