Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
This article was originally written by Sasha, please refuse any media reprint
After Rommel defeated Africa, why couldn't he go to the Soviet battlefield? November 4, 1942: After the fiasco of the in the Second Battle of El Alamein, the African Army Commander Rommel ignored the Führer's order and ordered the entire army to retreat.
Rommel has no chance to set foot on the Soviet battlefield.
First of all we have to figure out one thing, any general is a man and not a god.
Especially in wars at the national level, it is by no means that a general can change everything.
Take the North African campaign as an example, Rommel was an excellent general, much better than his Anglo-American counterparts.
Rommel relied on his excellent performance to allow the German army to continuously defeat the British army under the absolute disadvantage of soldiers and equipment.
However, Rommel was powerless to change many things.
With the rout of the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean , the sea supply line from Germany to the North Africa was cut off.
and 's British and American troops in the North African battlefield have an absolute advantage in strength. They just need to change to a professional general and use the overall combat power advantage step by step to carry out crushing operations, and Rommel can't stand it.
Even if there is no supply line being cut off, Hitler did not pay attention to the North African battlefield and did not provide Rommel with enough troops and supplies. Even though Rommel won the battles one by one, he could only sadly see the German army in North Africa getting weaker and weaker. On the contrary, the British army became stronger and stronger through massive supply reinforcements.
In the Second Battle of El Alamein, the British Montgomery had 220,000 troops and 1,100 tanks , while Rommel had only tens of thousands of people and 200 tanks, as well as unreliable Italian friendly troops.
The elite German tankers still maintain a 1:4 exchange rate, that is, if they destroy 1 tank, they will destroy 4 British tanks. Even so, it was the Germans who were ultimately defeated due to the small number of German tanks.
Of course, Hitler was very clear about the reasons for the failure of the North African campaign, and he did not take his anger on Rommel.
In March 1943, Rommel was ordered to return to Berlin. The German North African Army completely collapsed in May!
It is said that this was Hitler's fear that the famous Rommel would be captured by the British army, so he let him return to China early.
By the time Rommel returned to Berlin, had already fallen into a terrible decline.
In February 1943, the Germans suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad.
Rommel believes that the war of attrition, such as Stalingrad , is precisely to confront the strengths of the Soviet army with the weaknesses of the German army, and failure is inevitable.
The most serious problem in this battle is that a large number of Axis armies were encircled and annihilated by the formation.
In the battle, the Axis powers lost 240,000 people, wounded 500,000 people, and captured 110,000 people, a total of 850,000.
Although the Soviet army suffered 1.12 million casualties, including 480,000 casualties and 750,000 civilian casualties, the two sides had different tolerances.
Before the Battle of Stalingrad, the German army had firmly held the initiative on the battlefield, and the Soviet army was only a passive defense.
Now that the German army has lost nearly one million troops all at once, it is difficult to replenish in a short time, but the Soviet army is just the opposite.
As a result, the German army began to lose the initiative on the battlefield, and the Soviet army also turned to a strategic counter-offensive.
Of course, the German army is still capable of fighting, and there are many elite generals.
In March 1943, only one month later, after Manstein was reinforced by five domestic armored divisions, he launched Kharkov counterattack , temporarily repelling the Soviet army. The 210,000 Soviet troops who participated in the war suffered nearly 100,000 casualties, of which more than 40,000 died. 52 Soviet divisions were severely damaged by the Germans, and the 120,000 German casualties were only more than 10,000. They also recaptured the Kharkiv area. Stabilized the position after the defeat of the Battle of Stalingrad.
At this time, the Soviet army still has a strategic advantage and is ready to attack again at any time.
At this time, the high-level German army almost reached a consensus that it is basically impossible for to win the Soviet-German war. After Pearl Harbor, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union have formed an alliance. The strength of this alliance is too strong, far exceeding the German-Italian-Japanese alliance.
Hitler also understood that the Allies would open up the second battlefield in Europe in 1943 or 1944. In the face of the powerful military forces of the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union, Germany could not stand it at all.
Hitler was unwilling to sit still and decided to take a military adventure in Kursk and launch a large-scale offensive to reverse the passive situation on the Eastern Front.
However, the Soviet army in the Kursk region can concentrate about 2 million troops and at least 5,000 tanks. The German army has only about 800,000 and 3,000 tanks, and its strength is at a disadvantage.
In this case, the German executives thought that the battle of in Kursk and could not be successful.
took a step back and said that even if the battle was successful, it would not make much sense, and the Soviet army could still bear the losses of the battle. Even if the German army temporarily regained the initiative on the battlefield, it would collapse completely after the Allied forces landed in Europe.
At this time, the German command system on the Eastern Front was very mature, including Erich von Manstein , Gunter von Kruger , Hermann Holt , Walter Mo Del and many other famous players do not need Rommel to run around to intervene.
Besides, the situation of the German army is unfavorable, and changing generals on the spot is also a taboo in the military.
And the German defense line is also riddled with holes, there are still many places where Rommel is needed.
Rommel was still ill when he returned to Berlin and was going to spend some time at home in Germany.
Just over a month later, in May, Hitler convened Rommel for a meeting, informing many of the real power factions in Italy that they were trying to destroy the Musoniiri regime and surrender to the Allies, helping the Allies to occupy the whole of Italy.
Italy bordered Germany at that time (Germany which annexed Austria), once the Allied forces occupied the entire country, they could take a shortcut and invade the territory of Germany. The consequences would be disastrous, and the war would even end in 1944.
Hitler ordered Rommel to serve as commander-in-chief of the Italian theater as soon as possible.
Sure enough, in July 1943 the Allies attacked Sicily .
In August of the same year, Rommel was transferred to the command of Army Group B, responsible for the defense of northern Italy. Hitler's order to him was that if the Mussoniri regime failed, Rommel would have to go south to occupy the whole of Italy and disarm the Italian army.
On September 6, the Italian real powers really imprisoned Musoniiri, and then announced their surrender to the Allies. Rommel quickly surrounded and disarmed all the Italian troops in the fighting territory, capturing 82 Italian generals, 13,000 officers and 430,000 soldiers on the 19th.
However, Rommel works with Kesselring YuanHandsome overlaps. As early as July when the Allies attacked Sicily, Marshal Kesselring was in charge of the island's defense.
Kesselring performed very well, holding back the heavy landing Allied troops with a small force for more than a month, and successfully withdrawing the main German army. Kesselring then commanded his Army Group C, stationed in Italy with Rommel's Army Group B.
Hitler thought Kesselring knew more about Italy. Most importantly, Kesselring was familiar with the Italian military and political leaders and was more suitable for the job here.
At the same time, there is no room for two tigers. Hitler avoided the conflict between the two generals, handed over the Italian work to Kesselring, transferred Rommel's troops back to France, and was responsible for the construction of the Atlantic iron wall that blocked the landing of the Allied forces.
However, only after Rommel took office did he discover that Goebbels boasted that the unbreakable iron walls of the Atlantic turned out to be some tattered shore fortifications, most of which had not been completed.
For example, the in Normandy landed by the Allies, although Rommel's rush to build, the completion rate of fortifications is only 30%. What shocked Rommel even more was that the German troops stationed there were generally of low quality and were seriously lacking. The German Army on the Western Front, which claims to have 950,000 troops, only has 1,500 tanks!
Rommel believed that the Atlantic wall could not stop the Allied troops from landing. The only chance of victory for the Germans was to repel the Allies on the beachhead on their first day of landing. Therefore, Rommel advocated that the troops, especially the armored troops and the , should be distributed in several places where the Allied forces were most likely to land.
However, this claim was firmly opposed by Marshal Rundstedt and others. They advocated deploying a small number of troops on the beachhead and deploying the mobile corps on the second line to prepare for the beachhead. Rommel has repeatedly pointed out that in the later period of the North African campaign, even if the German army has local air superiority, it is still unable to effectively mobilize the armored troops. From this, Rundstedt's claim is tantamount to self-destruction. However, Rommel's statement was denounced as absurd by many generals.
As it turns out, Rommel was right. Immediately after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the German Second-Line Corps was bombarded terribly. In the face of the 1.45 million Allied troops that landed quickly, the mere 380,000 German troops could not protect themselves, so there was no way to talk about a counter-offensive.
As Rommel predicted, the Germans could only watch the Allies land 2 million troops, and then watch them advance towards Berlin.
The biggest tragedy of a general is that he has tried his best, but he still cannot save the defeat.
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