Rommel speaks

[PoorOldSpike]

Try as I might, I can't fault Rommel, no doubt I'm biased because his strong stubborn arrogant personality is so like my own and I therefore can't help but admire him..;)

As regards taking Malta, I'm sure Hitler must have spent hours dreaming of having it, but decided he hadn't enough shipping to land troops and keep them supplied in the face of the Royal navy..

In Rommels place I'd have ordered a Dash to the Wire on the lines of- "We routed the Brits once before because they're hopeless at open desert warfare and a proportion of them are holed up in Tobruk where we can't get at them, so now's our chance to get at them in the open desert and punch them on the nose again!"
His punch hit thin air, but hey that's war,you have to keep swinging, so he pulled back to Agheila, simply giving up a chunk of worthless barren desert.
Later of course he came back and broke the Brit Gazala line.

As for the push on the Nile, again in his place my attitude would have been- "Ja let's go for it, that's what we're here for and have been ordered to do by Hitler, and even if don't manage to go the extra mile we can always dig in at Alamein which is the best defensive line in Africa sandwiched between the sea and the Qattara Depression"

In the end of course he was beaten by the sheer overwhelming weight of Allied men and materiel after America entered the fray.

"We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us [Rommel], and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general......To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy"
-Winston Churchill