Read more into Rommel. He wasn’t as great as he was cracked up to be. He certainly was not without skill I’ll grant and although not a Nazi he served an evil regime. I look more at what men do then what they say or is said about them.
“..Read more into Rommel. ...”
I have. I’ve studied these men most of my life. Including Rommel. With inferior numbers, Rommel defeated three British generals (Wavell, Auchinleck, and Alexander) before Montgomery came along, and Monty ONLY overcame him with massive numerical superiority.
And yes, he served “an evil regime”, but so did Von Mantueffel, von Rundstedt, and other Wermacht (Not Nazi) officers. But that does not negate how they performed on the battlefield, which, again, is what this discussion was about.
Helmuth von Moltke and Otto Bismark were great generals; they destroyed a French army at Sedan in 1870 and took the humiliated French Emperor back to Paris as a captive. How did they do it? They looked at a map, studied the terrain and the French deployment, and used envelopment, which they’d studied from Hannibal at Cannae in school. They were great generals as well. They also killed one hell of a lot of people in doing so.
One could say Friedrich Von Paulus was a lousy general (Field Marshal, by then) for letting himself get surrounded and cut off in Stalingrad and then surrendering the Sixth Army; most of them never returned home from the gulags, ultimately. He followed ridiculous orders from a stupid man, and did not even try to break out when they could have.
“.. I look more at what men do then what they say or is said about them....
And I look at what is studied in the war colleges and schools where officers are taught about warfare and the people who fought those wars throughout history.
Hannibal was a great general. So was George S. Patton, George Washington, William Tecumseh Sherman, Vercingetrix, Sulla, Julius Caesar, Heinz Guderian, John J. Pershing, Arminius, Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, Georgi Zhukov, Konstantin Rokossovsky, Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov, etc.
Every single one of those men gave orders that were responsible for massive deaths; it’s what happens in war. That fact does not diminish the other facts about their leadership skills, tactics, and strategic thought processes, etc., and why men followed them.
Their actions are taught in schools to teach present and future leaders - in OUR schools of war as well as elsewhere. I can GUARANTEE you that General Norman Schwarzkopf - another great general - studied Guderian and Rommel in the war college and put some of the blitzkrieg tactics to use in the 100 hour ground war in the Desert Storm campaign. I can also guarantee you he also studied Hannibal and the double envelopment and utter destruction of the Romans at Cannae.
It’s easy to sit here, years hence, and second-guess, because we weren’t there, and it wasn’t OUR asses getting shot off. But the people who WERE there thought differently at the time, and followed those men because they respected them and their judgement. Right or wrong, it’s just facts.
You and I probably agree on about 99% of other issues, so I’ll not argue with you further, we’ll agree to disagree.
Have a wonderful evening.