B E A C H B L A N K E T H O L I D A Y
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Sunday, March 30, 2025
Saturday, March 29, 2025
Barbarossa
History's largest invasion.
Three million German soldiers began their attack
on Russia with an artillery barrage all along the
1,200 mile front. It was 3 am, June 22, 1941;
the first days of summer.
There was no better time than now to battle Russia.
Germany was at the height of its military power, having
just defeated the British and French in a matter of weeks.
Stalin was startled by this demonstration of blitzkrieg.
He made urgent demands on his generals and industrialists,
to grow him the most powerful and modern of armies.
Hitler believed Russia to be vulnerable and the time
he had to take advantage of this would be brief.
German troops overwhelmed Russia's defense.
Stalin was blind to the immediacy of Hitler's threat.
So long as Britain remained undefeated, the Germans
would not open up a second front by attacking Russia.
The order of the day had been 'don't antagonize Hitler'.
The Russian troops facing the Nazis weren't ready.
The military was still recovering from Stalin's purge
of the officer corps two years previous. Most of his
top generals were executed. Uncle Joe had
paranoid tendencies. It came with the job.
It was quickly made clear they were not your friends.
The Germans were your conquerors.
They behaved accordingly.
Russian guerillas sabotaged German efforts behind the lines.
There were those among the Russian population that were
ready to welcome German troops as liberators from Stalin's
ruthless rule. Instead they became lethal enemies of
Hitler's forces. The Nazis couldn't tolerate help coming
from the Slavs.
Allies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
It's politics. You succeed with what you have.
Hitler gambled that he could defeat the Soviet Union
by year's end or lose everything.
What Germany and Hitler feared most, would
come to pass. This alliance of industrial behemoths
could only crush the Third Reich.
And at its leisure.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 23, 2025
Saturday, March 22, 2025
Mussolini
The Individual dies and becomes nothing.
The State is eternal. It is everything.
Charismatic. A born leader. A man of destiny.
The people sweep him into power.
Mussolini is now the State.
Junior partner to the Nazi next door.
Near war's end Mussolini and entourage are captured
attempting an escape to Austria. Italian partisans
shot them on the spot and strung them up for
all the world to see.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 16, 2025
Saturday, March 15, 2025
Paper Tiger
It was a long trail of defeat for Rommel
ever since the loss at Alamein four months previous.
His troops fled the pursuing Eighth Army across
Libya, giving up the major port of Tripoli with
very little fight.
Hitler and Mussolini were furious
with their rogue commander.
No one cheers a loser.
Field Marshall Kesselring, Smiling Al to the troops,
was Hitler's man running the Mediterranean, and
Erwin Rommel's boss in North Africa.
Rommel thought he was finally head honcho in Tunisia.
Then he got word of a battle underway that he knew
nothing about. Smiling Al and Rommel's rival,
General Arnim, schemed together a battleplan without
letting Rommel in on the planning.
Kesselring supported Arnim's insubordination.
Rommel's authority now resembled the thin gloss
of a dime store badge.
Surprise.
General Montgomery, Monty to most everyone,
knew he had a two to one advantage over Rommel
in most every factor that mattered on the battlefield -
firepower. Yet it was Rommel's forces that charged
the Brits at Medenine without any hope of winning.
Rommel could only stir things up to buy time.
In the picture above Monty is the cat that just ate
the canary. He knew Rommel's plan right down
to the when and where. So much for the surprise
Rommel counted on to win. It was the Tommy cyphers
that stole German secrets from the Enigma machine.
They were 'listening' in as Rommel gave a detailed
explanation of his plan to his superiors in Rome.
Monty stuffed the area around Rommel's objective
with as much artillery, tanks and anti-tank weapons
as the terrain would allow.
Rommel's three undernourished Panzer divisions
walked into a lights-out experience. A third of his
tanks were lost in this useless effort to slow Monty.
From here on Axis troops could only back up.
This tactic might be called stretching out defeat.
The plan to attack Medenine was not Rommel's.
His men no longer listened to him. He was on
borrowed time. Rommel was not a military genius.
He'd become a has-been.
The Field Marshal flew to Rome three days
following the battle. He made his case for
evacuating Africa with both Mussolini and Hitler.
Neither man could tolerate this embrace of defeat.
Hitler hospitalized Rommel for a needed rest.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 9, 2025
Saturday, March 8, 2025
End Game
Rommel's victory in North Africa depended on an
army of bumbling Yanks as an enemy. Turns out
the GIs learned quickly from their rookie mistakes.
The vaunted Afrika Korps was stalled outside Tebessa
and 21st Panzer was stuck, well short of its objective,
Sbiba. Both pinned down by Allied fire.
It's Sunday and time had run out.
Rommel's final move was 10th Panzer to take Thala.
The breakthrough must be here and now or this
entire adventure would be a colossal waste.
It's either stampede the Yanks or be caught in a vise,
ground down between two imposing Allied armies.
10th Panzer was too big to be stopped.
Troops defending Thala worked frantically to get
their men and equipment in place and ready.
They needed more time.
General Dunphie's orders were to slow Rommel down.
Make the panzers pay dearly for every foot they advanced.
Dunphie's Valentine tanks would have to go toe-to-toe,
exchanging blows with German tanks that were a
few armored classes better than Dunphie's best.
Buying time meant sacrificing the tankers manning
those Valentines.
The Yanks were a worthy opponent, according to
Rommel. Not as good as the Brits, but they were
learning. Even as American GIs were running
from him at Kasserine, Rommel marveled at
the equipment they abandoned. He was positively
jealous, and concerned. He had no idea the Yankee
military could be so well stocked. And with quality
equipment, as well. He'd never seen anything like it.
He remarked about knocking out 40 Sherman tanks
and in a couple of days they had all been replaced.
It was like his victory counted for nothing.
Here was a general frustrated.
He had no answer for this onslaught of military plenty.
It was a soggy experience for everyone at Kasserine.
You were doused by heavy rains and you slogged
your way through thick mud daily.
That held true for Sunday - day of the final assault
on Thala. Dunphie's armor did battle and fell back
throughout the day, until they reached the Allied
final line of defense. Dunphie's jeep was the last
vehicle through. That should be it. But wait.
Here comes a Valentine up the road.
Must be stragglers. Let them in.
Big mistake.
It's the old Trojan Horse ploy.
They were waved on through.
The Nazis captured this Valentine, then drove it
right through the Allied defense. Rommel's
armor quickly followed. A melee erupted.
It was chaotic, with tanks and soldiers running about,
firing point blank into one another. All the while brilliant
flairs drifted down from above giving the view below
a stark light of almost black and white. After three hours
both sides retreated from the fight, exhausted.
The battle was a draw.
Thala held.
The clouds parted on Monday.
Rommel looked upward and saw overhead hundreds
of Allied planes flying about blue skies,
busy bombing and strafing his men.
Kasserine was over. Rommel needed to get his troops
to Mareth. There was no time to lose.
The map shows why Mareth was so important.
The front line was both fortified and narrow.
Any flanking attempt by Montgomery would be
channeled through a roundabout pass that should
be easily defended. But for how long? Time was
still Rommel's enemy. Each day new troops, tanks
and planes arrived to strengthen the Allied position
in Tunisia. Rommel got driblets and empty promises
by comparison, because Germany had problems
with their war in Russia.
Hitler was losing.
Arnim was right. Rommel's plan was too ambitious.
The fuel and supplies wouldn't be there for all
he wanted to do. Rommel knew this but that just
made his venture a longshot. Unfortunately,
every strategy available to the Axis in North Africa
required some longshot maneuver to avoid defeat.
That maneuver was lost at Kasserine.
In Rommel's mind North Africa was gone.
Italy would be the next battlefield.
Imagine how that would go over with
Mussolini or Hitler.
Rommel was just naive enough to take on
that task.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Rommel at Kasserine
1943 Feb 19 Friday
British General Alexander takes command of the
Allied ground forces in Tunisia. Retreat -
moving backwards stops here and now.
Allied backs were to the wall. A Rommel breakthrough
anywhere along this Western Dorsal and the Allies
were finished in Tunisia. They would have to evacuate
to somewhere next door in Algeria.
How satisfying it would be to see the bigshot
Yanks running off, tail between their legs.
But that wasn't yet happening.
Especially not at Sbiba.
Task Force Stark was assigned to stop Rommel
at Kasserine. The Force was mostly engineers,
plus rounding up a hodge-podge of stray military
units. They were run off, but not before stopping
Rommel's thrust through Kasserine Pass for 2 days.
Time was precious, like desert water.
Montgomery's Eighth Army was already probing
Rommel's thin defenses back at Mareth.
His plan was to route the Yanks from Tunisia then
race back to Mareth, in time to meet Montgomery's
main attack. Rommel's schedule required most
everything to go his way. It wasn't the case.
1942 Feb 21 Sunday
Sunday's news had Rommel in a bad mood.
He was stalled most everywhere.
It was easy winning the battle of tanks with the Yanks.
Rommel was expert at maneuvering armor
on the open plain to his advantage.
It was his bread and butter.
Now he was fighting on terrain that heavily favored defense.
Mountain gorges channeled tanks into a sluggish
single file, a rich target for the enemy's artillery.
Rommel's enemy had suddenly become effective.
His 21st Panzer and Afrika Korps were both stopped
by stubborn dug-in defenses and artillery that
demonstrated devastating accuracy.
Rommel was boxed in. His panzers busy pounding
every road for an exit but no cigar. Thala, though,
looked promising. Getting there was a cake walk.
A battalion of poorly armed French infantry was all
that stood in the way of success. Until now.
10th Panzer took too long to get here. Only Rommel
appeared to appreciate the need for urgency.
His generals were sleepwalking by comparison.
He was constantly urging them on.
Pick up the pace! Pick up the pace!
Thala was low hanging fruit.
Rommel could have had it for free
if he had been more aggressive, less cautious,
a couple of days ago. So there it sat, virtually
undefended. Overlooked. The fog of war.
On the map above you see Irwin's artillery
rushing in from out of nowhere to save the town's
bacon, like a cavalry charge seen in some old West
cowboy adventure. They had traveled over 800 miles,
through bad weather and over slick roads, nonstop for
5 days, so they could be here now in order to make
a difference.
The teeth to Rommel's offense was supposed to have been
a battalion of Tiger I tanks. 24 of them. But they were
not available because they were busy with their
scheduled maintenance. It was General Arnim
getting in the last word in his fight with Rommel.
Desperate for armor, Rommel replaced the world's
best tank with an undernourished Italian knockoff -
a substitute thin in armor and short on pop.
Rommel's shark teeth became a mouth filled
with only molars, gnawing its way to victory.
Such was the descension among the top Nazi brass.
Divided command brought out the worst in rivals.
Rommel would now be awarded sole command
over Axis forces in North Africa. The split decision
stagnation was over. But was it in time?
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
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