The Steel Wave - Jeff Shaara [3]
Despite the increasing irrationality of their Führer, the German generals are for the most part the finest military minds of the war, and German commanders in the field understand what they must do to win their campaigns. But Hitler makes another monumental mistake, one he repeats often; he thwarts his most talented commanders by appointing himself Germany’s chief strategist. Yet Hitler never visits frontline positions, never sees for himself what his decisions and his meddling are costing his army.
In 1941, in North Africa, a German campaign to support Hitler’s ally Italian dictator Benito Mussolini becomes a theater of war all its own. The British, based in Egypt, engage in furious battles to prevent conquest of the Suez Canal and the oil fields of the Middle East. Their adversary is Erwin Rommel, a German commander whose energy and audacity have made him a legend. But Rommel’s reputation alone cannot bring a German victory. After enormous success against variously inept British commanders, Rommel is finally stopped. Early in November 1942, his army suffers a major defeat in western Egypt at a village called El Alamein. His British adversary, newly in command, is Bernard Law Montgomery. Monty is a brash and disagreeable man who is no one’s first choice for the job. But when his predeccesor is killed unexpectedly in a plane crash, Winston Churchill reluctantly approves Montgomery for the command. Montgomery’s stunning defeat of Rommel gives the British a much-needed hero and launches Montgomery into the spotlight as England’s most accomplished field commander. Rommel is unimpressed with Montgomery, believing him too slow and methodical. As Rommel retreats westward across Libya, land he had once taken from the British, he is painfully aware that had Hitler responded to his general’s repeated cries for supplies and manpower, guns and gasoline, the Germans would never have been turned back. It is a bitter pill for Rommel, who continues to plague the German High Command with incessant calls for support. As the British bolster Montgomery with a steady flow of crucial supplies, Rommel’s army is increasingly ill fed and ill equipped. Instead of opening Hitler’s eyes to the importance of the North Africa campaign, Rommel has become a pariah, seen by Hitler’s henchmen as a bothersome defeatist.
During most of 1942, as the British wage their seesaw war back and forth against the tanks of Rommel’s formidable Afrika Korps, the American military pours into Britain with the energy and resources to launch their own ground campaign against Hitler’s Fortress Europe. George Marshall vigorously insists that the British agree to an American plan to attack straight across the English Channel, an invasion onto the coast of France. But the British are skeptical. They have already suffered humiliating and costly defeats and have endured far more casualties than the British people can accept.