A N T I C S O V E R N I T E
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Rommel needed Tobruk and the British didn't.
Briton's Middle East commanders had no desire
to support another outpost in a siege well behind
enemy lines. Even if successful, the venture
wasn't worth it to the military way of thinking.
Tobruk appears safe for the moment.
Rommel is stalled for lack of fuel.
"We have him now," General Ritchie proclaims.
Rommel's forces meanwhile take Sidi Muftah,
enabling them to directly resupply their formations.
British minefields inadvertently add to German defense.
Rommel takes this time to plan his next move.
Four days later Rommel sprung from his lair,
known as 'The Cauldron,' to attack a series of
British outposts strung between Knightsbridge
and El Adem. The military situation everywhere
soon turned against the 8th Army.
Britain's generals were never trained to deal with
mobile armor. Instead, the foot soldier still ruled
the battlefield. The Matilda, Britain's best tank,
went no faster than troops moving double-time.
There was no need for a tank to go faster
than a guy with his rifle.
If your a corps commander you better quickly
learn to think three times faster than you planned.
Forget your carefully prepared flank defense.
According to Rommel, delivering the first iron
punch is all the defense you need to know.
The 8th Army learned bitter lessons from the man
who first figured things out.
Orders from General Ritchie were ignored by
commanders on the scene. They were desperately
trying to get their forces to the Egyptian border
before they became trapped and annihilated
by the approaching panzer forces.
Tobruk fell quickly to Rommel.
For Churchill the fall of Tobruk could not have come
at a worse time. He was currently in Washington
conferring with his most important ally, Roosevelt.
The Prime Minister said, "Not only were the military
effects grievous, but it had affected the reputation
of the British Armies. Defeat is one thing, disgrace
is another."
This string of failures had to end.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
General Ritchie, commander of the British 8th Army,
was cut off from his men and had no idea what had
happened to them nor did he know the direction of
his attackers.
About 1530 hours that afternoon a British patrol
of armored cars caught sight of an enormous
formation of German tanks speeding south towards
Bir Hacheim. The reconnaissance unit radioed HQ
with their report. They transmitted their warning
every half hour without a single message received
in response. No one was listening to the radio.
A monitor had never been assigned.
The British troops were enjoying a glorious morning in May.
They sat about and leisurely ate their late breakfast.
The first sign of trouble was the frantic firing of a guard,
quickly followed by the sound of earth rumbling and a dust
cloud made from hundreds of tanks headed their way.
Brigades of British armor were quickly eliminated.
Ritchie had ignored the warning from Cairo to
concentrate his tanks. These pockets of armor,
scattered miles apart, were small bites easily
swallowed.
Despite this catastrophe the British fought on courageously.
Opposing forces became hopelessly intertangled.
Both Ritchie and Rommel were now without the
ability to command. The Afrika Korps was battled
to a standstill.
Rommel's tank force was now prostrate - without fuel.
His supplies couldn't keep up and were forced to halt,
unprotected, many miles to the south.
Ritchie did nothing in response. He couldn't.
He didn't know. His HQ was too far removed
from events for him to have any accurate idea
as to what was going on.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
The British are once again overmatched
by Rommel's Afrika Korps despite a
valiant stand by the Commonwealth defense.
Rommel's objective is Tobruk.
The harbor there will go a long way toward
solving his supply problem. Right now all his
fuel, food and ammo come from Tripoli -
800 miles further away than Tobruk from
the Afrika Korps' front line.
The afternoon of 26 May 1942 Rommel orders
a frontal assault on a line of well-placed British
fortifications in Gazala. Defeating the enemy
is not the goal. Rather, this is a diversion.
It keeps you thinking about what's happening
in front of you.
Meanwhile...
out of the desert, off to the south,
comes a horde of Panzer tanks -
in far greater numbers than British generals
thought possible. The Brits are stunned by a right
hook, a flank attack around their best defended
outpost, Bir Hocheim, then wheels into the
Royal backyard. Their Matilda tanks all
nicely dispersed.
The matter becomes a melee.
Rommel races about the battlefield,
micromanaging as he tries to be everywhere.
The assault stalls. Casualties, heavy.
Fight, damn you.
Rommel doesn't quit.
The Free French defending Sidi Muftoh from
Rommel's onslaught, hold out for three days
before being swept from further consideration.
British resistance only increases.
The German armored punch is slowing.
Will the Afrika Korps reach Tobruk?
What will be left of it if it does?
* * * * *
OVER EASY
The climatic face off between Rommel's Afrika Korps
and Montgomery's 8th Army was at El Alamein,
1400 miles from Tripoli where Rommel's supplies
arrive from Italy - supplies that must first survive
air and sea attacks launched from the British
island of Malta.
No one beats Rommel in understanding desert warfare.
He makes brilliant use of his armor. Victories enable
him to ignore a fundamental rule of logistics:
You can't use what you don't have.
Everything Rommel needs come from Italy.
Royal Navy subs operate out of Malta.
So do RAF fighters and bombers.
There are months where no more than half
the supplies made it to Tripoli.
Desperately needed new tanks, trucks,
weapons, ammunition and fuel, all now
on the ocean's bottom.
Bombing Malta doesn't solve the problem.
Maybe invading the island with an amphibious
assault would be worth the high risk.
Rommel and his two German divisions in Libya
are a side show to the Hitler's main event:
Russia.
No one matched Rommel in battle.
They didn't need to. His amazing tanks sat idle
everywhere, out of gas. Trucks worn out.
Troops weak with dysentery.
Maybe we should tell Hitler about our problems.
Maybe not. The Fuhrer's main event seems to be
going not quite as planned.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
German troops arrive in three weeks.
Tanks of the 15th Panzers, 120 of them,
off load at the end of May.
Two months from now.
Two months gives the British time to train
their green troops. It gives them time to
plot their fields of fire, fortify positions,
string barb wire and lay mines.
The Tommy's are untested.
Their leadership green and uncertain.
The speed of desert warfare should
knock them for a loop.
Italians generally perform better when led by Rommel.
But in this frontal assault the Brits are stubbornly
holding their ground.
Then, late in the afternoon, Rommel delivers
a sharp armored hook into the coastal flank
of the British line. The English defense collapses.
Mersa el Brega falls to the Nazis.
Two months early.
How much time do you think armies put into
practicing retreat? It's not easy to do.
In this instance the British formations disintegrate.
Military order becomes a mob heading for the exit.
Rommel's forces stay close on their heels,
gobbling up territory all along the way.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
Operation Compass
At the end of 1940 the British route Italian forces
arrayed along the Libyan border with Egypt.
British Desert Generals
Thinking the Italian threat in Libya is extinguished
Churchill guts his army in North Africa by sending
its best troops off to the Balkans in a futile attempt
to save Greece from a Nazi invasion.
Rommel in North Africa
The legendary Desert Fox arrives in February 1941.
The British, Italians and Germans, even Hitler,
expect the Afrika Korps will launch their first attack
on British forces sometime in May, giving Rommel
the needed time to acclimate himself to the realities
of desert warfare.
Italian POWs
What's there to acclimate to?
Rommel begins planning his offensive the day
he arrives, catching a plane to scout the terrain.
His men haven't even begun to show up. No problem.
He'll use the Italian forces still under Axis control.
They got shellacked by the British but Rommel
is confident they will perform for him.
There are no bad men, just bad leaders.
Charge of Italian M13 tanks
The tanks don't arrive for weeks.
We don't need German tanks when we've got Italian
ones. There are no excuses for delaying this attack.
The British are in disarray. Their new generals
are inexperienced and uncertain.
Surprise them with a swift, hard kick.
In the desert it is all about speed.
Tobruk becomes a famous last stand.
This fortified harbor is manned by a division
of Aussies. They're not much for spit-shined
salutes but they behave with a nasty disposition
good enough to stop the Afrika Korps
in its tracks.
* * * * *
OVER EASY