Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
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Rommel After defeating Africa, why can't we go to the Soviet battlefield? November 4, 1942: After the Second Battle of Alama, , after the defeat of in , the African Army, Rommel, ignored the order of the head of state and ordered the entire army to retreat.
Rommel no longer has the chance to enter the Soviet battlefield.
First of all, we need to figure out one thing: any general is a man rather than a god.
, especially wars at the national level, are by no means a general can change everything.
Take the North African Battle as an example. Rommel was an excellent general, much more powerful than his British and American counterparts.
Rommel relied on his outstanding performance to allow the German army to defeat the British army continuously under the absolute disadvantage of military personnel and equipment.
However, Rommel is powerless to change a lot of things.
With the defeat of Italian Navy in Mediterranean , the sea supply line from Germany to North Africa was cut off.
and North African battlefield British and American troops have an absolute advantage in strength. They just need to change to a professional general and use their overall combat advantage step by step to carry out crushing operations, and Rommel cannot withstand it.
Even if there is no problem of the supply line being cut off, Hitler did not pay attention to the North African battlefield and did not provide Rommel with enough army and supplies. Even though Rommel won one battle after another, he could only sadly see that the German army in North Africa became weaker and weaker. On the contrary, the British army became stronger and stronger through large amounts of supply and reinforcements.
At the Second Battle of Alamein, the British Montgomery had 220,000 troops and 1,100 tanks. On the contrary, Rommel had only tens of thousands of men and 200 tanks, as well as unreliable Italian friendly forces.
The elite German tank soldiers still maintain a exchange rate of 1:4, which means that if they destroy one tank, they will destroy four British tanks. Even so, because the German tanks were too small, the Germans were the ones who ended up losing a crushing defeat.
Of course, Hitler was very clear about the reasons for the failure of the North African battle and did not take his anger on Rommel.
In March 1943, Rommel was ordered to return to Berlin. The German North African Legion completely collapsed in May!
It is said that this was Hitler's fear that Rommel, who was very famous, would be captured by the British army, so he asked him to return home early.
When Rommel returned to Berlin, Eastern Front battlefield had already fallen into a terrible decline.
In February 1943, the German army was defeated in the Battle of Stalingrad in .
Rommel believes that Stalingrad This war of attrition is precisely because the shortcomings of the German army are against the strengths of the Soviet army, and failure is inevitable.
The most serious problem in this battle is that a large number of Axis troops were encircled and annihilated in an integral manner.
In the battle, 240,000 people were killed, 500,000 were injured, and 110,000 were captured, with a total of 850,000.
Although the Soviet army suffered 1.12 million casualties, of which 480,000 died and 750,000 civilian casualties, the two sides have different endurances.
Before the Battle of Stalingrad, the German army had always firmly grasped the initiative in the battlefield, and the Soviet army was just a passive defense.
Now the German army has lost nearly one million troops in an instant, which is difficult to replenish in a short period of time, but the Soviet army is exactly the opposite.
As a result, the German army began to lose the initiative in the battlefield, and the Soviet army also turned to a strategic counterattack.
Of course, the German army is still combat-ready, and there are many elite generals.
Just one month later, in March 1943, after Manstein received reinforcements from five domestic armored divisions, he launched Kharkov counterattack , temporarily repelling the Soviet army.The 210,000 Soviet troops participated in the war had nearly 100,000 casualties, of which more than 40,000 died. 52 The 4th Division of the Soviet Army was severely damaged by the German army, and only more than 10,000 casualties in the 120,000 German troops were killed and killed. They also recaptured the Kharkov area and stabilized the position after the defeat of the Battle of Stalingrad.
At this time, the Soviet army still had strategic advantages and was ready to attack again at any time.
At this time, the German army's top leaders almost reached a consensus that Soviet and German War is basically impossible to win. After the Pearl Harbor Incident, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union had formed an alliance. The strength of this alliance is too strong, far exceeding that of the German, Italian and Japanese leagues.
Hitler also understood that the Allies would open the second battlefield of in Europe in 1943 or 1944 . Faced with the strong military attacks of Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, Germany could not withstand it.
Hitler was unwilling to sit and wait for death, 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 had only about 800,000 tanks, with 3,000 tanks, which was at the disadvantage. In this case, the German senior leaders believed that the battle between Kursk in would not be successful.
Take a step back, even if the battle is successful, it doesn’t make much sense, and the Soviet army can still bear the losses of the battle. Even if the German army temporarily regained the initiative on the battlefield, it would completely collapse after the Allies landed in Europe.
At this time, the German command system on the Eastern Front was very mature, with many famous generals such as Erich von Manstein , Gent von Kruger , Hermann Hotter , Walter Model and many other famous players. Rommel didn't need to run around and intervene.
Moreover, the German army's battle situation is not good, and changing generals at the last battle is also a taboo for military strategists.
Moreover, the German defense line is also full of holes, and there are still many places that need Rommel.
Rommel was still ill when he returned to Berlin and was preparing to recuperate in Germany for a while.
Just over a month later, Hitler convened Rommel for a meeting and informed many Italian power factions that tried to eliminate the Mussonian regime and surrendered to the Allies and assisted the Allies in occupying the entire territory of Italy.
Italy borders Germany at that time (annexed Austria's Germany). Once the Allies occupy the entire country, they can directly seize the shortcuts and attack Germany. The consequences are unimaginable, and the war will even end in 1944.
Hitler ordered Rommel to serve as commander-in-chief of the Italian theater as soon as possible.
As expected, in July 1943, the Allied forces attacked Sicily .
In August of the same year, Rommel was transferred to the commander of the Group B Army Group, responsible for defending northern Italy. Hitler gave him the order that if there was a problem with the Mussonian regime, Rommel had to go south to occupy the entire territory of Italy and disarm the Italian army.
On September 6, the Italian powerhouse indeed imprisoned Mussoniri and then announced his surrender to his allies. Rommel quickly surrounded and disarmed the Italian troops in the combat territory. On the 19th, he captured 82 Italian generals, 13,000 officers and 430,000 soldiers.
However, Rommel's work overlaps with Marshal Kesseling. As early as July when the Allied forces attacked Sicily, Marshal Keselin was responsible for the defense of the island.
Kesseling performed very well, dragging the landing Allied heavy troops with weak forces for more than a month, and successfully withdrew the main force of the German army. Keseling then commanded his Army Group C and stationed in Italy with Rommel's Army Group B.
Hitler believed that Kesselin knew Italy better. What is particularly important is that Keseling agrees that the top Italian military and political leaders are familiar with it and are more suitable for the work here.
At the same time, one mountain cannot withstand two tigers. Hitler avoided conflicts between the two generals, handed over Italy's work to Kesselin, transferred Rommel's troops back to France, and was responsible for the construction of the Atlantic iron wall that blocked the Allied landing.
However, after Rommel took office, he discovered that Goebbels boasts about the unbreakable Atlantic iron walls are actually some broken shore fortifications, most of which have not been completed.
For example, Normandy , which was built by Rommel, has only 30% completed the fortifications. What shocked Rommel even more was that the German troops stationed in the defense were generally of low quality and severely shortage of personnel. The German army on the Western Front, which claims to have an army of 950,000, has only 1,500 tanks!
Rommel believes that the Atlantic iron wall cannot stop the Allied forces from landing. The only chance for the Germans to win was to repel them on the beach just the first day the Allies landed. Therefore, Rommel advocated the deployment of troops, especially the armored troops, , at the most likely landing points of several Allied forces.
However, this claim was firmly opposed by Marshal Longdestedt and others. They advocated deploying a small number of troops at the beachhead and deploying the mobile corps on the second line to prepare for support to the beachhead. Rommel repeatedly proposed that in the late stage of the North African campaign, even if the German army, which had local air supremacy, could not effectively mobilize armored troops. From this, it is inferred that Longdestedt's claim is tantamount to self-destruction. However, Rommel's statement was denounced as absurd by many generals.
It turns out that Rommel is correct. After the Allied Army landed in Normandy, the German Second Line Corps was immediately bombed by terrible bombing, and most of the troops were unable to move forward, and almost no troops could reach the beach to support it. Faced with the 1.45 million Allied troops that landed quickly, it was difficult for a mere 380,000 German troops to protect themselves, so there was no way to talk about a counterattack.
As Rommel expected, the German army could only watch the Allies landed on 2 million troops, and then watched them advance towards Berlin.
The greatest sorrow for a general is that he did his best and still could not save the defeat.
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