He's a loser. Hitler said it.
Look at what he sees.
Rommel loses at Alamein.
He's currently running from Montgomery.
And he has the audacity to contradict
his Fuhrer.
Hitler expects winning.
No excuse for delivering less.
Rommel was a celebrity general
with his reputation on the rocks.
He was being called back to Europe
for reasons of health. But not just yet.
Let Rommel be Rommel one more time.
He had a plan to route the Yanks and
then turn on Montgomery, whose
Eighth Army was currently encamped
at Tripoli.
His plan brought out the best in him-
brash confidence; a boxer with
a blinding left hook.
Rommel found a rival. It was inevitable.
General Arnim was the new teacher's pet.
Hitler's latest golden boy had stopped the
Allied thrust into Tunisia.
Now Arnim controlled his own German army
in North Africa.
Rommel's plan required Arnim's full support.
Support meant turning his army over to Rommel.
Arnim thought Rommel reckless.
What a beast. The Tiger 1 - best tank anywhere
on the globe. Here was the blade to Rommel's
plan. A flotilla of these tanks coming at you
at thirty miles an hour, firing all the way.
Heaven help us.
The Yankee line would look like tenpins
hit by a bowling ball. Strike.
Suddenly we're at war and now we need a tank.
The M3. Not bad for a rush job.
Still these tankers were mere shooting gallery
ducks in the gunner's scope of a Tiger 1.
Definitely not a fair fight.
The American commander of II Corps was AWOL,
secure but blind in his bunker sixty miles from
the front line. His troops were drifting about
without instruction. They knew how to fire their M1,
but not much more.
Three thousand of them were silently marched off
to Nazi prison camp after Kasserine.
It was first in the string of bad news that results
when the wings of prayer meet unforgiving gravity.
Heads would roll.
* * * * *
OVER EASY
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