Quote:
Originally Posted by Oberon
I'm a big fan of Rommel as a general, but his dash through France has been somewhat overblown, if anything it was only the collapse of the French communications ability and disorganisation that prevented him from being isolated and destroyed.
Likewise the tanks he used, only a handful of them were a match for the French and British armour they faced. At the Battle of Arras it was only the Flak 88 which managed to blunt the British attack of Matilda II tanks.
That being said, one of the great successes of the invasion, aside from the surprise of the Ardennes, was the one day when the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht were actually organised enough to work together. I believe the Wehrmacht called it 'The day when everything went right', I think it was on the Breakout at Sedan and the crossing of the Meuse. At this point the French government itself believed it was beaten, and things broke down pretty badly. That, really, was the best success of 'Blitzkrieg', the speed and shock, the morale side of it. If the British and French had managed to retreat out of Belgium in time and organise a better defence then they could well have halted the German advance.
In Africa, Rommel was better, but I'm not so sure he deserves the almost mythic status he has attained in modern history, although as generals of the Wehrmacht go, he wasn't a bad one, but I wouldn't have put him as the best.  |
In many ways the Allies lost the Battle of France far more than the Germans won it. Rommel's dash was successful in the end but it was a small part in a large amount of failures on the part of the Allies to deal with the Germans offensive.
In my opinion there's a fair reason Rommel is considered one of the best German generals of the war. I think he was one of the few generals on both sides to really managed to adapt to the conditions of the Western Desert campaign, especially because of his ability to launch full-scale offensives with little warning or preparation to exploit the enemy's weakness. There's a tendency to blame him for the Axis' logistical shortcomings in the North African theater these days but I think that's usually unfair considering the situation he was in.
As for overrated people, in my opinion Attila the Hun often gets an undue amount of attention. He pursued a couple of successful campaigns against the Eastern Roman Empire, which was in a hardly impressive state at the time, but failed to take any significant part of the already collapsing Western Empire until his death, which was followed in short order by that of his empire. Ultimately, I think his reputation is much greater than his actual achievements.