“Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind.”
— Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense
Posted on 07/22/2017 9:06:51 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Montgomery would never have won at El Alamein if the boys at Bletchley Park had not broken the Enigma code. Rommel was not even there when the battle started and as far as I am concerned, Rommel’s successful withdrawal was a masterful one that made Montgomery’s pursuit look like a coward’s chase of a superior force. Montgomery was an overstuffed toad and never was blamed for the failures he had which cost thousands of lives, including Market Garden and Dieppe.
This Brit agrees with you.
agreed and not only Hollywood!
Operation Barbarossa stripped Rommel of his support in North Africa. He lost his aircover, replacement troops, and supplies to Barbarossa and the British navy.
IIRC, that photo of the crying man was taken when the city of Tunis was liberated from the Nazis by the western Allies.
Those are tears of joy. Notice the woman next to him applauding. They are not seeing an army of occupation.
“Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion. You just leave a lot of useless noisy baggage behind.”
— Jed Babbin, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense
Tunisia (Torch) and Algeria were far more important than El Alamein mostly because of Hitler.
He freaked over the invasion and proceeded to occupy Vichy France and send hundreds of tanks including dozens of new Tigers into Tunisia that were never seen again.
All at the time (Nov 42') when Stalingrad really could have used the vehicles. Panzer divisions in Russia were starved of replacements so there was a reason that comparatively few tanks were lost.
Those tanks quite likely could have relieved the encircled 6th Army.
Then to make things worse, shortly afterward Hitler and Himmler decide to turn the Waffen SS divisions into armored formations and further starve Panzer divisions of replacements.
They were motorized infantry before. Experienced tankers were taken from the panzer divisions for this and more tanks were withheld.
Americans got a well needed scrimmage against the German forces and incompetent officers like Fredendall were weeded out.
They ran out of tanks attacking El Alamein, not before. El Alamein had port where the Italians could have landed fuel supplies if it had been captured and there was nothing to stop Rommel from rolling all the way to Ciro if he’d won.
Alamein wasn't much of a port. It was the end of a rail line running all the way to Alexandria though.
Germany never had manpower problems but they had huge production problems because their socialist production system was awful.
Germans had massive manpower issues thanks to catastrophes like Stalingrad.
That's how you get formations like the Volksturm (Old folks and kids) . And all army formations shrunk as the war went on.
Patton was referring to the French Generals more than the Soldiers. He always thought the French were fighting the ‘previous war.’
The only French port Rommels 7th Panzer took, that I know of, was St. Valery, where the British were unable to evacuate. The 51st Highland Division was surrounded and forced to surrender.
Perhaps you are thinking of Boulogne, where the British 20th Guards Brigade was indeed (mostly) successfully withrawn, leaving the French garrison behind (those fighting were remnants of the 21st Division d’Infanterie, which certainly wasnt locked into cellars). There were besides some 7000 mostly unarmed raw recruits, mostly Belgians, left behind. The attackers were the 2nd Panzer Division, not Rommels 7th.
George III was Britain’s ruler when we declared INDEPENDENCE. LaFayette, Admiral de Grasse, Rochambau and thousands of Frenchmen fought for American sovereignty. France was the first country to acknowledge America’s independence.
Kinda like why EuroDisney failed. First night, as soon as the fireworks started, the whole country surrendered. (H/T to Johnny Carson)
Yes, that’s very true. The most recent episodes of “Turn: American Spies” includes them. It’s the last season for the show. Victory will be ours!!
The Germans were out of tanks and out of gas by the time they got to El Alamein. It still took Montgomery months to clear them out. German losses in the battle were 1,100 killed, 3,900 wounded and 7,900 prisoners and Italian losses as 1,200 killed, 1,600 wounded and 20,000 prisoners.
Germans lost 400,000 at Stalingrad, Italians 114,000, Romanians 109,000, Hungarians 105,000.
A catastrophe like that isn’t propaganda.
Exactly. El Alamain was nothing compared to Stalingrad.
After El Alamain the Germans could still go on the offensive. After Stalingrad, the war was basically lost.
They surrendered because they love their buildings more than their culture. It almost cost them their buildings.
Ever nation in Europe, except Denmark, collaborated with the German in removing the Jews from their territory.
Kursk made it official.
>Germans had massive manpower issues thanks to catastrophes like Stalingrad.
That’s another Stalinistic myth that was widely pushed in the press. The German death to kill ratio with the Russians was 3/1 during the war.
>That’s how you get formations like the Volksturm (Old folks and kids) . And all army formations shrunk as the war went on.
The Germany army actually swelled in size in the last 2 years of the war thanks to the Volksturm divisions, but those divisions had very limited amounts of armament. They were effectively under-armed militia though many Vokstrum divisions fought quite well in the east. It was a last ditch attempt to build a military large enough to fight a 3 front war. Of course without enough weapons those divisions didn’t fight well.
Germany reduced their numbers of the eastern front not because they didn’t have enough men, but because they were fighting a 2 front war, then a 3 front war with a very large defensive force in the Balkans to stop any allied landings there. This require stripping units out of the east to fight in North Africa, Italy, and France.
However, the biggest problem for the Germans was the lack weapons. Army Group Centre in Byelorussia was utterly destroyed by the Russians in 1944 not because it didn’t have enough men(644,396) but because it had almost no tanks, guns, or airplanes. German war production was unable to fully equip the existing German army for combat on one front and when it went from 1 front to 2, then 3 + mass allied bombing things really got bad for German armies.
The reason we think that Germany ran out of manpower is Russian propaganda about bleeding the German army white in the east. In reality the German army kept right turning Russian offensives into disasters for the Red army right up until Operation torch opened up a second front with Germany. This weakened the Germany army in Russia to the point where offensive operations became quite difficult and getting replacement gear close to impossible. Even the battle of Kursk was well on it’s way to being a Germany victory before Hitler halted it due to the invasion of Italy and troops were stripped from the eastern front to protect Italy and the Balkans.
Paris was declared an open city in 40'
Hitler wanted Paris fought for in 44' instead his military governor Choltitz doesn't comply and Hitler has another of his famous meltdowns after asking "Is Paris burning?"
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