Rommel: A Reappraisal by Ian F. Beckett

Author:Ian F. Beckett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HBWQ; BIO006000; TRANSPORTATION / Ships & Shipbuilding / History
ISBN: 9781473831728
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2013-02-11T16:00:00+00:00

When Rommel returned to the headquarters of the newly renamed Deutsch-Italienische Panzerarmee on the evening of 25 October, he was confronted with a mass of bad news. 15th Panzer Division’s tank strength had been reduced from 119 to thirty-two tanks. The supply situation remained precarious and the lack of fuel limited the ‘mobility of the motorised formations to an almost unbearable extent’. 46 Rommel was ‘bitterly angry’ at the lack of fuel, but the truth was that he had ignored the clear warning provided by the events of late August. 47 Alam Halfa had served notice that the British air and naval forces were now in a position to severely restrict the flow of Axis supplies to the front. If Rommel feared that he would now ‘fight this battle with but small hope of success’ 48 the fault lay largely with his refusal to withdraw from the Alamein line after Alam Halfa. Rommel immediately ordered that the Panzer forces must be held back for mobile operations. Enemy tanks were to be dealt with by guns in position, not armoured counter-attacks, but it remained to be seen whether Rommel’s presence could stem the crisis. 49

Yet even when he gathered all of his armoured forces for a major counter-attack, the once formidable Afrika Korps could make no headway against the Eighth Army. Rommel found that, inexorably, his reserves were being sucked into the intense fighting in the northern sector of the battlefield, but also that he was increasingly unable to stem the tide. The Panzerarmee’s daily reports began to paint an increasingly gloomy picture. Although the enemy was still being ‘held almost everywhere’, the fighting was ‘heavy and costly’. When, on 27 August, the tanker Proserpina was sunk just off Tobruk, the Panzerarmee only had sufficient fuel to bring up supplies for the next two or three days. It was reemphasised to Berlin that: ‘Unless every possible assistance is given in bringing over fuel the defensive battle cannot be brought to a successful conclusion.’ 50

With his main attack held, Montgomery launched the 9th Australian Division in an attack towards the coast which, over the next few days, saw some of the fiercest fighting of the desert war. Rommel launched counter-attack after counter-attack to try to stem the Australian advance to no avail. He later bemoaned the fact that at Alamein: ‘Rivers of blood were poured out over miserable strips of land which, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have bothered his head about’, but there was little doubt that the tide of battle was inexorably flowing in Montgomery’s favour. 51 On 28 October Rommel exhorted his men thus: ‘The present battle is a life and death struggle. I therefore require that … every officer and man will give of his utmost and thereby contribute to its success’, but the blunt fact was that willpower alone was no longer enough against the British superiority in numbers and, above all, firepower. 52

Rommel’s attention was increasingly fixed upon the coastal sector, where

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