post war propaganda.
the public needed to go from hating the Germans and wanting them dead. to hating the Russians and wanting them dead. which was difficult because a few months ago that same public was building trucks and bombs for their best friends, the Russians.

his tactics worked on the unimportant and not so competent allies that were tasked with fighting in the African wastelands.

>>65218554
He was pretty good but promoted beyond his ability, he would have been better off staying as a division commander.

Manstein, Guderian, Rokkosovky, Ike, Bill slim, Model, Hoth, kesselring, omar bradley, walter krueger all clear him

>>65218596
What's with this extreme inferiority complex, you retarded fudd?

He wasn’t bad by any means, but a lot of the adulation he got post war came from being a German commander who didn’t have an absolutely abhorrent record of massacring enemy civilians. Also a lot of his major successes in Africa were the result of Bonner Fellers not knowing his overly detailed reports on British dispositions were being intercepted. Rommel did not have that in Normandy and was markedly less successful.

>>65218554
By far the most overrated Axis commander, in a sideshow theatre no less

>>65218652
>Rommel did not have that in Normandy and was markedly less successful.
Yeah I'm sure that was the only difference between Africa and Normandy

>>65218629
>extreme inferiority complex
But enough about Rommel fags.

>>65218655
He had a much better supply situation in Normandy than he ever did in Africa. The Allies were also at a massive disadvantage coming off the beaches. If Rommel the man were Rommel the myth it should’ve been a second Anzio. Instead the German Army in France was nearly shattered.

>>65218654
>in a sideshow theatre no less
bait.

Two million men fought in north africa.

Even if he hadn't forced his way to El Alamein and had instead focused on defense as ordered, the pincer attack and rout would likely have been inevitable due to Operation Torch.

>>65218664
Rommels plan was to stop them on the beaches and to keep armor forward deployed. Rundstedt, his boss, said no and kept the panzers in a deep reserve.

So Hitler compromised and split up the armor among them. So you now had the worst of both plans.

And on D-day, unlike Anzio, allies had a massive material advantage.
>Anzio 36,000 men landed in the first 48 hours
>D-day 160,000 men landed in the the first 48 hours

>>65218665
it was still objectively a sideshow compared to asia and the eastern front

>>65218676
His boss had the right of it, if you keep your armor right near the beach it was only ever going to get raped by battleships. Focusing all your resistance directly at the beachhead as Rommel favored was the losing strategy, as was seen time and again in the Pacific. Japan saw more success the less they committed to the beaches. When all your troops are dug in there you’ve turned your front into an eggshell, on good hit and you shatter, which isn’t too far off what happened. Anzio became a disaster because the allies were contained, despite penetrating several miles inland. Granted there is a massive geographic advantage to accomplishing that in Italy, but it was overall much closer to a defense in depth than fully committing to the beaches.

>>65218700
Rommel was a realist. He had zero naval and pitiful remnants of the Luftwaffe to cover his troops. Basically, he hoped to rush in and hold the bull by its horn to neutralize Allied air and naval superiority since the Allies would not want friendly fire casualties. He knew he would eventually have to retreat, but would have inflicted horrendous casualties on the Allies that if luck was on his side, might break the Allies will to move further into France.
>>65218652
By this metric, all of the Allied generals were hacks too, since they had Enigma intercepts.

>>65218714
>He knew he would eventually have to retreat, but would have inflicted horrendous casualties on the Allies that if luck was on his side, might break the Allies will to move further into France.

seems like cope/wishful thinking.

>>65218714
Look at any landing in the Pacific, that’s not realism it’s a shit idea that did not work. The second Japan abandoned it things went from being paint by numbers affairs that were over in days to weeks or months of absolute hell on Earth. All the defenders ever managed to do sending everything to the beaches was to lose everything and be broken on the beaches.

>>65218554
He was lucky not good. So much of what he did is basically in the military handbook of what not to do yet he got away with it due to fortune taking him for a pet.

>>65218554
>Why was he so good
He was one of the rare commanders that understood the importance of being in a position where you can act to exploit advantages, and was willing to take risks once through enemy lines. Patton was similar. Like Patton, Rommel was subject to outrunning his logistics while trying to exploit holes created in enemy lines. He was a good commander, but underutilized, and eventually killed due to his percieved involvement in a plot against ze furher.

>>65218554
Von Luck's book is a good read.
Talks a lot about Africa and Normandy/Caen. Also about Rommel.

A lot of kameraden out on 4chins it seems

File: pulling a Rommel.jpg (1.89 MB, 2097x1949)

1.89 MB JPG

>>65218596
He was already a great tactical commander before WW2 though.

>>65218554
He was against Brits who wanted to play as leaders and hide at base with their black comfort men instead of actually being a leader and moving with the troops. Once the allies figured out who was useless and replaced them, Rommel got his shit pushed in every time.

>>65218665
Two million over the entire war is a sideshow
The eastern front was about 50 million

>>65218815
>muh epic collection of looted wines
such a cringe dude

>>65218627
>rommel bad
>guderian good
uh-oh
Reddit altert!

I bet you also think guderian invented Blitzkrieg and Tank Divisions

File: 2generic_pepe_stare.jpg (68 KB, 765x700)

68 KB JPG

>>65218664
>Rommel the man were Rommel the myth
I know what you are

you back to your lolbert-tuber

>>65220741
I don’t know what you’re getting at. The only irl stuff I bother with on youtube is unauthorized history of the pacific war and the occasional what’s going on with shipping

>>65218724
>All the defenders ever managed to do sending everything to the beaches was to lose everything and be broken on the beaches
unironically name one example

like I don't doubt you but wasn't the issue that japanese defenses had no depth and that they were using human waves?
like Peleliu is like 10 miles wide (so no way to "hide inland" from artillery) and yet it raged on for 2 months

>>65220770
Peleliu was one of the first battles where they didn’t commit everything to the beach, that’s why it lasted so long. Compare it to Tinian, where they immediately committed to a counterattack to try and throw the Marines off the beach. They burned up their reserves, had their back broken, and the whole thing took 8 days for ~350 American dead, this despite Tinian being ~8x the land area of Peleliu.

>>65220794
>Compare it to Tinian
I read the wiki article and it just mentions ships firing star shells

other than that the counter attack was a failure because the Japanese were mindlessly charging forwards into machine gun fire

>>65220812
Yes, attacking the beach with your reserves did not work once in the Pacific. They had a similar number of forces to Peleliu, but lost much more quickly despite having an island more suited to defense in depth, because they did not plan around those tactics. Peleliu was Japan completely overhauling its tactics, learning from their failures to great effect. They set up better fortifications, drew the Marines inland, and attacked on their own terms rather than throwing away their lives on the beaches. As they repeated and refined these tactics they exacted increasingly greater casualties on the Marines, perhaps best typified by Iwo Jima, which was still a fairly small island but for its size was one of the bloodiest of the war.

>>65218554
>drive forward so hard that you lose track of where you are.
Great commanding bro but the strategy stopped working somewhere in the middle of Barbarossa kek

>>65220937
if this is all rommel did
and it stopped working in 1941
then how did he suceed at Gazala?

cu-ri-ous

>>65218554
If you are constantly bold and constantly attack, you will constantly win against an inferior enemy
And the Brits firstly did not have enough fighters (something like only 3 squadrons in theatre at the start, and numbers could not be built up until late 42) and then began losing in Africa when the longbarrel Panzers were introduced and the Crusader tank couldn't keep up.
Given these advantages, Rommel couldn't stop winning until he reached the extreme end of his supply lines.

>>65219995
>The eastern front was about 50 million
Half of those were civilians

>>65218700
>Focusing all your resistance directly at the beachhead as Rommel favored was the losing strategy
Except that's NOT what Rommel did, and furthermore, Allied analysis showed that a tank counterattack would have shattered the beach-head, which is exactly why they took infinite pains to prevent that happening. Which worked.

>>65221039
Where is this analysis, and can you name a single example of an armored assault dislodging a beachhead outside a theoretical? Because I personally can’t name a single example of that happening. Battleship or cruiser fire support effectively precludes it from happening, the best I can recall anyone managing is an effective containment inland of the beach like at Anzio, or the entire thing turning into a clusterfuck well before reserves get committed like Dieppe

>>65218596
>which was difficult
This was not difficult. Everyone knew those commie fucks were the real enemy. It took massive amounts of propaganda for the American public to tolerate the Soviet Union as a material ally, and only begrudgingly so.

The only way Roosevelt was even able to swing us into the war was through Japan, not the conflict in Europe.

>>65221032
>Half of those were civilians
partisans*

Since the subject of Japan has been broached and there's been much talk of Yamamoto, Nagumo, Kurita, other various admirals, who were some underrated Japanese ground commanders? Never really hear much about them.

>>65221084
>Where is this analysis
Go read up on Allied planning for Overlord, the reasons for specifying X amount of troop buildup in the weeks following the landings, the concerns of the planners for as long as the beaches were not linked and Caen not yet taken, and the reasons for the extensive air attacks that they decided upon to prevent such a counterattack.
The battle for the beaches was not automatically over when the first scene of Saving Private Ryan fades to black, you know.

>can you name a single example of an armored assault dislodging a beachhead outside a theoretical
Just because it was prevented from happening doesn't mean it is completely out of the question

>>65221105
>underrated Japanese ground commanders
Kenji Doihara was quite a chad and seems to generate a lot of seethe to this day. Prince Higashikuni was quite competent and forward-thinking by all accounts, which is not common in royalty. Hatazo Adachi was a soldier's general, known for leading from the front and taking care of his men. Hitoshi Imamura is the guy who imprisoned himself.

Tomoyuki Yamashita is OVERrated. But otherwise quite forward-thinking also. He probably was against warcrimes in general, but it's likely that he was pressured by his subordinates into letting them happen.

>>65221131
Legitimately I do not believe a contemporary armored thrust would manage to roll back a beachhead when there are half a dozen battleships and about twenty cruisers sat close offshore. I think they could have managed an Anzio-esque bottling, which still would’ve been relatively disastrous, but without materializing a fleet capable of dislodging the naval gun support I think anything more than containment is an impossibility.

>>65221158
>when there are half a dozen battleships and about twenty cruisers sat close offshore
Anon they were sat offshore BECAUSE they were worried about an armoured counterattack. Otherwise they would've just packed up and gone home the instant all the coastal batteries were blown up.

I might be wrong but I seem to recall Warspite did break up a panzer attack at some point in her career. But i might be wrong.

>>65221163
They still had a lot of utility until the advance got 15-20 miles inland and out of the battleships’ range. They were still monstrously powerful support assets when support an advance, up to a point, not just an insurance policy against dislodgement.

>>65221105
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiz%C5%8D_Nishio

this guy ig

>>65221086
I'm mostly referring to the English public here. who are, as a rule. as stupid as they are stubborn. they've literally been raised as livestock for centuries.

>>65221105
Kinda irrelevant, but it's really funny how in 2 out of 3 alt-his novels about Op Downfall I've read, (1945, Burning Mountain, Death is Lighter than a Feather) Shunroku Hata gets obliterated by an airstrike in the middle of massing a counterattack while taking advantage of bad weather. Got nuked or carpet bombed, guy can't catch a break; I'm almost sure the only reason it isn't three for three is that the last novel only has PoVs from low-ranking guys and civilians.

File: On the Guderians and thei(...).png (399 KB, 2528x1203)

399 KB PNG

>>65218627
>Guderian
You summoned the effort post.

File: On the Guderians and thei(...).png (264 KB, 2499x1208)

264 KB PNG

>>65221707

>>65221105
Tangent to a tangent: should Iwane Matsui have been held culpable for the Nanking warcrimes?
He was definitely a fanatical imperialist who regarded China as a Japanese colony by default, but he claimed to have tried to prevent warcrimes, if only because it was "dishonorabu" for a soldier to commit atrocities, and because it would embarass Japan internationally

>>65221707
>>65221709
Say what you want, but he was a PR ace.

>>65221767
Obviously. He should have been tried by Imperial High Command right there and then.
Command in Tokyo literally lost control of what the fuck was going on in China, and later what was going on in Indochina and Burma.

>>65221707
>>65221709
no one here has claimed he invented panzer corps or whatever the other guy was saying. He was still a great commander

>>65218554
>Charge ahead without any concern for retarded things like air support, artillery cover, or 'logistics'
>When it inevitably leads to a colossal fuckup blame it on everyone else
>Demand that your personal propaganda team reshoot the entire thing three times over, because you want a take where the desert sun looks good on your chin
>Do utterly nothing of any note
>Britain fucks you up catastrophically the moment they remove the general who was still thinking in terms of WWI trenchlines.
>Only be remembered as anything more than a vain, useless, hack because the allies needed a 'good German' to show off in postwar propaganda now that West Germany was NATO's new best friend against the Soviets, and everyone else in Europe had excellent reasons to hate Germany to want a Carthaginian Peace for them in 1945.
Why do retards love this guy again?

File: On the Guderians and thei(...).png (463 KB, 2479x1132)

463 KB PNG

>>65221848
>>65221866
The problem is that he lied a lot about his achievements as well, which American scholars take seriously to this day, despite him fucking up majorly a few times.
That doesn't mean he wasn't a good commander, especially after learning from his mistakes, but the view on him is significantly more distorted than the view on Rommel.
>>65222101
And then everybody clapped for your amateur movie and you were carried out of the theater.

>>65222101
>>Charge ahead without any concern for retarded things like air support, artillery cover, or 'logistics'
That's why he wasn't any good leading anything larger than a division. A corps was beyond his skill set.

>>65218627
>Manstein
Lost Victories is the world's longest "cover my ass" publication.
>No, it was all madman Hitler's fault, I'm a military genius
>tactical withdraw leads to strategic victory
>just one more week attacking the southern part of Kursk salient bro, I swear to god they're about to break
Sevastopol was great though

>>65222161
eh his opinion regarding Kursk makes more sense when you realize that the germans vastly underestimated the soviet strength at kursk

also he is the one that pushed for a Sichelschnitt while the entire german high command was against such maneuver (dough the final Plan for the Sichelschnitt was actually drafted up by Hitler iirc while the true Mannstein-Sichelschnitt was never implemented)

>>65222185
>also he is the one that pushed for a Sichelschnitt while the entire german high command was against such maneuver (dough the final Plan for the Sichelschnitt was actually drafted up by Hitler iirc while the true Mannstein-Sichelschnitt was never implemented)
Both Hitler and Manstein came up with it independently. Hitler never did anything without the approval of at least one of his generals though, so he didn't want to do it until he found out that Manstein had the same idea.
In the end, Hitler's Sichelschnitt was the one that ended up happening, while Manstein's version wasn't used. Would've probably been better though since it placed more tanks in the north and they were limited by the streets in the South anyway.

>>65222161
>>65222136
still a good general, look at battle of smolensk

>>65222208
ah I see a fellow Jens Wehner connoisseur?

>good
He got tricked by Bong magicians. He was a retard who got lucky fighting underequipped and undersupplied Bongs and Frogs in Africa and still got rekt.

He was pretty good in ww1 right? Something infiltrating Italian lines again and again.

>>65222220
Big brained stuff, fren.

>>65222243
Rommel was good in both wars there are 3 types of people who seethe about him and only 2 of them are White.

>>65222224
at gazala allies had 20% more soldiers, 50% more tanks and 8% more aircraft
tf you mean
>underequipped

plus
>undersupplied
applies to Axis units too

>>65222101
>be told that if he can seize such and such port he will be reinforced and supplied
>Hitler's promises inevitably fall short because the shitalian navy and luftwaffle can't hold open the med. for effective supply
>hurr durr rommel thought tanks ran on well wishes!

>>65222101
>>Demand that your personal propaganda team reshoot the entire thing three times over, because you want a take where the desert sun looks good on your chin
BASED IF TRUE (which it probably isn't)

>>65222101
>Do utterly nothing of any note
this nigga singlehandedly prolonged italian collapse by 2 years

>>65222101
>Britain fucks you up catastrophically the moment they get a 2:1 superiority in numbers and open a second front
ftfy

>>65218554
If he was so good at warfare, how come he lost and killed himself?

>>65222470
if Patton was so great then why did he die due to a car accident?

>>65218554
For me, it's Model

>>65218554
Oh you've done it now. The history revisionists are going to come in and say that Monty was not only better than Rommel, but was the best WW2 general of all.

File: A1i2zIOlu8L._AC_UF894,100(...).jpg (95 KB, 707x1000)

95 KB JPG

>>65223295
vor me it's Schorner

>executes thousands for (supposed) cowardice
>disobeys the unconditional surrender and orders his troops to keep fighting
>meanwhile goes AWOL to Austria and gets captured by American Troops

>>65219061
>tactical commander
Keyword: tactical.
He was operationally incompetent and only got as far as he did because the Brits were also fucking retards.
>The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

>>65223300
Yes, Monty was better than Rommel.
Grant was better than Lee.
Wellington was better than Napoleon.
Scipio Africanus was better than Hannibal.
Losers who lose don't get to claim first place.

>>65223489
Dude was legit crazy but he did manage to be a pretty competent commander

>>65223300
>Monty was not only better than Rommel
Remind me, which one of them won and which one of them lost when they fought in north Africa?
>but was the best WW2 general of all.
Ah, you're one of those morons who thinks that military history is some kind of RL top trumps games. That would explain a lot about you.

Wasted digits.

>>65223017
He got too used to driving a tank

>>65218700
It doesn't work the same in the Pacific since the islands are much smaller and even if japs gave up the landings there's only going to be so much US troops you can muster and keep reasonably supplied. Not an issue in France given Britain is just on the other side of the channel and there's infinite space for logistics once you do breakout of the beaches.

>>65224319
>>65224442
>uhm generals of the losing side can't be better because they lost
retarded viewpoint

if not for the Afrikakorps Italy would have been BTFO out of africa in 1941 (possiblity leading to a collapse of Italy and Vichy joining the Allies)

Rommel got like 10% the supplies the Allies got. You can't always win.
This has nothing to do with the "skill" of a commander

>>65224319
I guess you know how to be in 2nd place far too well

>>65224319
>Yes, Monty was better than Rommel.
I doubt it
>Grant was better than Lee
I dunno nuts about the ACW
>Wellington was better than Napoleon
Facts
>Scipio Africanus was better than Hannibal
Yes
>Losers who lose don't get to claim first place
No

>>65223017
Speaking of Patton, it's weird to me that """people""" will criticize Rommel for outrunning his logistics while praising Patton for doing it.

>>65222161
>Lost Victories is the world's longest "cover my ass" publication.
That or Japanese Destroyer Captain

>>65218554
High espirt de corps. You can read his memoir for more info, but he always stayed connected to the ground level and had more operational/tactical knowledge than other commanders. He was also a fast mover at heart and was always willing to push for the initiative. Wasn't good at the boring side of war and should have been used as the tip of the spear rather than running the whole spear.

>>65222161
>Lost Victories
pretty cool title