Table Of ContentThe
Desert
Generals
The Desert Generals
Introduction
In 1960 the historian Correlli Barnett published The Desert Generals
in which he had the temerity to challenge the all-pervasive cult of
Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein by re-evaluating
the roles of Montgomery’s sacked predecessors in the North African
theatre, including both Richard O’Connor, who drove the Italians from
Cyrenaica in late 1940 and early 1941, and Field Marshal Sir Claude
Auchinleck (whom he pointedly described as ‘The Victor of Alamein’),
who forced Rommel, ‘the Desert Fox’, to a halt at the First Battle of El
Alamein, only to be dismissed by Churchill for his pains. This publication
takes its title from Barnett’s book but its purpose is rather different.
Barnett’s book offered a comprehensive account of the campaign in the
Western Desert between 1940 and 1943 but this work has no such
aspiration.
Secondly, Barnett examined the contribution of five commanders
to the war in the Western Desert : General Sir Richard O’Connor,
General Sir Alan Cunningham, General Sir Neil Ritchie, Field Marshal
Sir Claude Auchinleck and Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of
Alamein. This work considers the contribution of only three. Two of the
five – Auchinleck and Montgomery – were of Ulster-Scots stock and
were proud of their Ulster ancestry. A third, Richard O’Connor could
be regarded as ‘Scotch-Irish’ in the sense that his father was Irish and his
mother was Scottish. Furthermore, O’Connor’s father was a major in
the Royal Irish Fusiliers, an Ulster regiment whose regimental depot was
in Armagh and whose traditional recruiting area was Counties Armagh,
Cavan and Monaghan.
Finally, while this publication has no pretensions to iconoclasm, there is
a desire to do justice to both General Sir Richard O’Connor and Field
Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck.
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The Desert Generals The Desert Generals
The Forgotten Victory And The Forgotten Victor
Richard O’Connor was born in Srinagar, Kashmir, bar to his DSO. O’Connor had ‘a good war’ and was mentioned in
India, on 21 August 1889. His father, Maurice dispatches nine times.
O’Connor, was a major in the Royal Irish
Between the two World Wars, O’Connor enjoyed a rich and varied
Fusiliers, and his mother, Lilian Morris, was the
military career. Here we only concentrate on those aspects of his career
daughter of Sir John Morris of Killundine, Argyll,
which had the most decisive impact upon him. In 1920 O’Connor
a former Governor of India’s central provinces.
attended Staff College, Camberley. Between 1921 and 1924 he served
Although not Scotch-Irish in the technical
as brigade major of the Experimental Brigade (or 5 Brigade), under the
sense in which the term is understood in the
command of J. F. C. Fuller, one of the earliest theorists of armoured
United States, O’Connor could be regarded
(or tank) warfare. This brigade had been formed to test methods and
as Scotch-Irish in the sense that his father was
procedures for using tanks and aircraft in co-ordination with infantry
Irish and his mother was Scottish. Despite his
and artillery. This experience must have served O’Connor well in his
name, O’Connor’s Scottishness was strikingly General Sir Richard O’Connor
stunning campaign in the Western Desert between December 1940
more obvious than his Irishness. First, he was commissioned into the
and February 1941. Unfortunately, Fuller’s insights had a greater impact
Cameronians in 1909 and became Colonel of the regiment in 1951.
on the Germans, notably Heinz Guderian, the leading advocate of
Secondly, he was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ross and Cromarty in
Germany’s Panzer forces and the mechanization of the Wehrmacht and
1954. Finally, a decade later, he was appointed Lord High Commissioner
the principal architect of Blitzkrieg, than on his fellow-countrymen.
of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
Between 1925 and 1927 he served as a company commander
In 1914 O’Connor served as Signals Officer of 22 Brigade in the 7th
at Sandhurst. He returned to the Staff College at Camberley as an
Division and saw action in the First Battle of Ypres. In the second year
instructor from October 1927 to January 1930. From April 1932 to
of the war he fought in the Battles of Neuve Chapelle and Loos and
January 1935 he was a general staff officer, grade 2 at the War Office. He
gained the MC. In 1916 he served on the Somme. In 1917 he was given
attended the Imperial Defence College in London in 1935. In April 1936
command of the Honourable Artillery Company, participated in the
he was promoted to full colonel and appointed temporary brigadier to
Third Battle of Ypres (commonly known as Passchendaele) and won
command the Peshawar Brigade in north-west India. In September 1938
the DSO. In November, the 7th Division was moved to the Italian front
O’Connor was promoted to major-general and appointed Commander
to prop up the faltering Italian forces against the Austrians at the River
of the 7th Division in Palestine, a role he combined with the Military
Piave. In late October 1918 the 2nd Cameronians captured the island
Governorship of Jerusalem.
of Grave di Papadopoli on the Piave River for which O’Connor received
the Medaglia d’Argento al Valor Militare (Silver Medal of Honour) and a Shortly after Italy declared war on the UK and France on 10 June
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The Desert Generals The Desert Generals
1940, O’Connor was promoted to temporary lieutenant-general and be outnumbered.
appointed Commander of the Western Desert Force (subsequently
O’Connor’s modest force
renamed the XIII Corps) and given the task by Lieutenant-General
‘hemstitched’ its way
‘Jumbo’ Wilson, commander of the British troops in Egypt, of expelling
westwards between the
the Italian Tenth Army, commanded by General Mario Berti, from Egypt
desert and the sea, taking
and of protecting the Suez Canal from attack.
in turn each Italian fortified
Correlli Barnett has described O’Connor as ‘a small, self-effacing man position. By 10 December,
with the shy and gentle air of a scholar’. While there was ‘little of the the British and Indian
façade of greatness … no one could talk a quarter of an hour with him forces had taken more than
without being aware of unusual qualities of character and personality.’ 20,000 Italian prisoners. The following day, the British and Indian forces
The controversial and brilliantly original military thinker Brigadier attacked Sollum. They were closely supported by the Royal Navy and
Dorman-Smith, one of whose principal defects was an inability to suffer the RAF. Sidi Barrani fell on the same day.
fools gladly, was struck by O’Connor’s intensity: ‘He was always springy
By mid-December the Italians had been thrown out of Egypt, leaving
and alert, even when still – always alive and vibrant.’ Like Montgomery,
38,000 prisoners and huge quantities of matériel in British hands. One
O’Connor enjoyed the affection and full confidence of his men. Yet,
British officer said:
in one very obvious respect he differed from Montgomery. Whereas
Montgomery revelled in the limelight, O’Connor shunned publicity. No defeated army has ever cooperated with its opponents to the extent
that the Italians did … They assembled their own lorries. Refuelled them
On 9 December 1940, O’Connor mounted Operation Compass, to
with their own fuel, and drove them full of their own prisoners to Mektila,
destroy the Italian Tenth Army and was brilliantly successful. O’Connor
and then came back for more, all without any escort of any kind.
drew up his plan of battle, one worthy of the Wehrmacht in its
originality, with the assistance of ‘Chink’ Dorman-Smith, an Ulsterman Little wonder Anthony Eden, paraphrasing Churchill, quipped: ‘Never
from Cootehill, County Cavan. has so much been surrendered by so many to so few.’ After drawing up
an inventory of captured Italian military hardware, one British historian
At his disposal O’Connor had the 7th Armoured Division (the ‘Desert
has wittily added: ‘and much more useful, large quantities of Italian wine
Rats’), one infantry division (the Indian 4th Division), two additional
and cheeses.’
infantry brigades and 275 of the new Matilda tanks. O’Connor confronted
an enemy four times larger themselves. Yet, it was the Italians, who were In the House of Commons on 12 December 1940 Winston Churchill
caught completely off-guard, who consistently believed themselves to paid tribute to Wavell (C-in-C in the Middle East), Wilson (C-in-C in
Egypt), and the staff officers who planned the operation. However,
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The Desert Generals The Desert Generals
Churchill failed to mention either O’Connor or Dorman-Smith by me – very conceited, perhaps – but it was miles behind our own front and
name. by sheer bad luck we drove into the one part of the desert in which the
Germans had sent a reconnaissance group and went bang into the middle
By February 1941 O’Connor had destroyed nine Italian divisions and
of them.
part of a tenth. He had advanced 350 miles, captured 130,000 prisoners,
nearly 400 tanks, and 845 guns at a cost of 500 killed, 1,373 wounded Although he escaped from a POW camp in Italy in December 1943,
and 55 missing. The road to Tripoli, the Libyan capital, was wide open but O’Connor’s period in captivity deprives us of the opportunity of seeing
on 12 February orders came to halt. In retrospect a serious strategic how well he would have performed against Rommel. In O’Connor, the
blunder, Churchill had decided that aid to Greece was the top priority. commander of the Deutches Afrika Korps would have found himself
Richard Holmes has observed: ‘The troops that might have clinched confronted with an infinitely more wily opponent than Montgomery.
victory were diverted to Greece at Churchill’s behest’.
O’Connor’s formidable achievement ought to be celebrated. Yet, in The
Mussolini appealed to the Führer for help, a pattern which had already Hinge of Fate (1951) Churchill recorded: ‘It may almost be said that
been established with respect to Il Duce’s botched invasion of Greece. “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had
Hitler responded by dispatching Erwin Rommel, a relatively unknown a defeat.”’ Unfortunately, the all important qualification – ‘It may almost
lieutenant general, with two divisions to North Africa. Rommel arrived be said …’ – is rarely remembered or quoted but the reality is that
in Tripoli on 12 February 1941, the very same day on which, as we have the British won spectacular victories over the Italians in north Africa
just seen, O’Connor was ordered to halt his advance. Although formally long before Montgomery defeated Rommel in the Second Battle of El
under the command of more senior Italian generals, Rommel took his Alamein. O’Connor’s spectacular victories between December 1940
orders solely from Hitler and would alter the course of the desert war. and February 1941 and Auchinleck’s impressive victory over Rommel
Without waiting to build up his forces, he launched a bold offensive on at the First Battle of El Alamein are unjustly overlooked. We should not
24 March but that is another story. perpetuate this injustice.
Both Correlli Barnett and Richard Doherty regard O’Connor as
‘Britain’s greatest desert general’. Yet, O’Connor is a largely forgotten
figure for essentially two reasons. First, he was shy, modest and self-
effacing. Secondly, on 17 April 1941 he and another British general had
the misfortune to be captured by a small German unit operating behind
the British front line. He later confessed:
It was a great shock to be captured. I never thought it would happen to
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The Desert Generals The Desert Generals
Claude Auchinleck:
the victor of the
First Battle of El Alamein
Auchinleck, as John Terraine has observed, was Colonel John Claude Auchinleck of the Royal Artillery died when his
‘the first British general to defeat a German son was only eight. The young Auchinleck was raised by Mary Eleanor
general’ during the Second World War. Eyre, his mother to whom he was devoted, and grew up in impoverished
The German general was Erwin Rommel, circumstances but he was able, through hard work and scholarships, to
commander of the Afrika Korps, and the battle secure a first-class education at Wellington College and Sandhurst.
was the first battle of El Alamein in July 1942.
In 1904 he was commissioned into the Indian Army as a 2nd Lieutenant
Sir Claude Auchinleck
Rommel had won the Pour le Mérite in the
and attached to 62nd Punjabi Regiment. He exhibited a remarkable
Great War, Germany’s highest decoration for valour. His role in the fall
flair for learning the languages of the Indian subcontinent, an important
of France in the summer 1940 greatly added to his growing reputation.
element in his excellent rapport with the native troops.
With respect to Rommel’s campaigns in the Desert, the British viewed
his performance with awe and respect. Following the fall of Torbruk, During the Great War he saw service in Egypt (1914-15), Aden (1915),
Churchill told a ‘querulous’ House of Commons on 27 June 1942 that Mesopotamia (1916-19) and Kurdistan. As a captain in Egypt he helped
in Rommel ‘We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, repulse a Turkish attack on the Suez Canal and in Mesopotamia he was
may I say across the havoc of war, a great general’. Yet, despite defeating mentioned in despatches three times, was awarded the DSO, Croix de
this ‘very daring and skillful opponent’, Auchinleck was relieved of his Guerre and an OBE and completed the war
post in August 1942. as a Brevet Colonel.
Claude John Eyre Auchinleck was born on 21 June 1884 at Aldershot. By the outbreak of the Second World
The Auchinlecks were a Scottish family. They take their name from a War Auchinleck was a Major General.
small Ayrshire village between Dumfries and Kilmarnock and about Unusually for an Indian army officer,
fifteen miles east of Ayr. At the time of the Plantation of Ulster, the he was summoned to Britain in 1940.
family had settled in County Fermanagh. The Revd James Auchinleck As an expert on mountain warfare, he
was Rector of Cleenish (near Enniskillen) in the late seventeenth commanded troops committed to the
century. For the next two centuries the Auchinlecks lived in Fermanagh ‘ramshackle’ Narvik expedition. To the
and Tyrone, marrying into the local gentry and finding a living either on intense annoyance of the War Office,
the land or as Church of Ireland clergymen. Auchinleck was very proud Auchinleck was of the opinion that the
of his Ulster ancestry and his identity as an Ulsterman. Only his deep troops were ‘soft and callow’. The War
love for the Indian subcontinent and its people rivalled his affection for Office’s riposte was Auchinleck had been
Ulster. far too short a time in Norway to arrive
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The Desert Generals The Desert Generals
at any worthwhile conclusion, to which To all Churchill’s constant pressure and cajolery he returned a
one might observe that Auchinleck’s bleak factual assessment of the desert army’s unreadiness for battle.
critics had not been in Norway at all. The However, the perspective from London was different. Churchill thought
Norwegian fiasco was too brief to allow reinforcements in troops, tanks, and guns were more than adequate
Auchinleck to demonstrate the quality of (particularly in the light of the enemy’s deficiencies as revealed by
his generalship. Ultra Intelligence); but in Auchinleck’s judgement his troops required
training and acclimatization, while his tanks and guns were inferior to
Auchinleck succeeded Wavell as C-in-C
the enemy’s.
Middle East in July 1941. Wavell was
largely the victim of the Churchill’s well- Churchill had real but seriously limited experience of war. As a young
meaning but ill-judged intervention in Subaltern he had served in Africa and India and during the Great War
Greece, as four of his divisions, including he had briefly commanded a battalion on the Western Front but he
the New Zealand Division and many of had never commanded a larger formation. He had never attended Staff
the Australian troops, were transferred College and he had never learned how to plan operations. He had
to that country to meet the Wehrmacht’s anticipated onslaught. This no comprehension of logistics, the exacting science of supply. In brief,
critically weakened the British position in north Africa without materially Churchill had experience of battle but did not understand the nature
reinforcing the brave Greeks, who by repulsing Mussolini’s invasion, of modern warfare: large-scale, resource-intensive operations involving
were the first European nation to inflict a humiliating defeat on an Axis the mobilization and deployment of large and complex military
army. formations.
Auchinleck had been warned by successive Chiefs of the Imperial Auchinleck was determined to build up his strength before mounting a
General Staff (CIGSs), Sir John Dill and Sir Alan Brooke (later Viscount new offensive. Churchill feared that if he waited too long Rommel would
Alanbrooke), both Ulstermen, that Churchill would expect an early strike first. Auchinleck believed that he needed 50 percent reserves in
offensive and quick results, and if he could not provide them he must tanks. Churchill caustically observed: ‘Generals only enjoy such comforts
explain why very diplomatically. Unfortunately Auchinleck was a bluff, in Heaven. And those who demand them do not always get there.’
uncompromising soldier, unable or unwilling to learn diplomatic finesse.
Auchinleck managed to delay Operation Crusader, the first major
After a brisk exchange of signals he bluntly told Churchill: ‘I must repeat
offensive by the 8th Army following his appointment, until November
that to launch an offensive with the inadequate means at present at our
1941. The 8th Army, under General Sir Alan Cunningham, advanced into
disposal is not, in my opinion, a justifiable operation of war’.
Cyrenaica. Rommel counterattacked on 22 November. As the battle
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The Desert Generals The Desert Generals
appeared to swing against him Cunningham lost his nerve. Auchinleck On 25 June Auchinleck intervened and
acted decisively: he flew to the front, restored confidence, and ordered assumed command of the 8th Army. He
the offensive to be renewed. He replaced Cunningham with (Sir) Neil organized a carefully chosen defensive
Ritchie, his Deputy Chief of Staff from Cairo, on 26 November. The line between El Alamein, a railway halt
Crusader offensive continued and the result was an impressive victory. 60 miles west of Alexandria, on the coast
Tobruk was relieved and Rommel forced to retreat into Cyrenaica with and the Qattara Depression some forty
the loss of 20,000 prisoners and masses of matériel. However, the British miles inland.
triumph was completely overshadowed by the Japanese attack on Pearl
The Mediterranean fleet left Alexandria
Harbor. The entry of Japan into the war also deprived Auchinleck of his
and Cairo was gripped with panic. The
two excellent Australian divisions which returned to Australia to defend
British Embassy and GHQ burnt piles of
their homeland.
classified papers, showering the city with
Rommel counterattacked, reinforced with fresh troops, again on 21 ash and charred documents. Thus, the day
January and drove the 8th Army back to the Gazala line by 4 February. came to be referred to as ‘Ash Wednesday’
The Desert War had a pendulum-like quality. or ‘The Flap’. On the morning of 1 July Rommel, only 200 kilometers
from Alexandria, wrote to his wife Lucie: ‘There are still some battles
Churchill unfairly believed that Auchinleck lacked ‘offensive spirit’ and,
to be fought but the worst is long over’. By evening Rommel had only
as in 1941, pressed him hard to take the offensive again. Auchinleck
60 miles to go. Succumbing to ‘the lure of Cairo’ and believing that the
unwisely refused to fly to London to explain his case that offensive
British were demoralized; Rommel attacked the British positions on the
operations before 1 June might risk defeat and the loss of Egypt. He
same day but was repulsed. On 2 July Auchinleck counter-attacked. The
thereby forfeited any sympathy he might have gained with Churchill and
rest of July largely consisted of a seemingly inconclusive slogging match
the war cabinet. Auchinleck was instructed to attack before 1 June only
but one in which Auchinleck systematically degraded Rommel’s forces.
to be pre-empted by Rommel on 26 May.
Rommel sensed the effect of Auchinleck’s intervention:
The 8th Army was defeated by concentrations of German armour and
General Auchinleck … was handling his forces with very considerable skill
then outflanked, essentially the same tactics which enabled the Wehrmacht
… He seemed to view the situation with decided coolness, for he was not
to overrun France in 1940. By mid June and the Germans captured
allowing himself to be rushed into accepting a ‘second best’ solution by any
Tobruk and the 8th Army’s retreat was on the brink of becoming a rout.
moves we made.
Rommel’s Staff Officers were beginning to plan which hotels in Cairo
they would stay in and which they would take over as their HQ. Rommel’s advance had been decisively halted and by the end of July
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Rommel was writing home to his wife, accurately describing Auchinleck’s Churchill failed to appreciate the scale of Auchinleck’s achievement
tactics and in terms just falling short of admitting defeat: and Montgomery sought to deny him any credit either for checking
Rommel or bequeathing a feasible defensive plan. Montgomery was
I can’t go on like [this] for long otherwise the front will crack. Militarily this
being disingenuous when he informed Churchill a few days after he
is the most difficult period I’ve ever been through ... the enemy is using its
had taken command that Auchinleck had no plan and in the event of a
superiority, especially in infantry, to destroy the Italian formations one by one
heavy attack intended to retreat to the Nile delta.
and the German fortifications are too weak to stand alone. It’s enough to
make you weep. Any fair assessment of Auchinleck’s role would have to acknowledge
that ‘the Auk’ took over as C-in-C Middle East in difficult circumstances.
Furthermore, Rommel constructed a massive minefield in front of
However, it is necessary to challenge the charge that his selection and
his forces, providing conclusive proof that he was on the defensive. In
handling of subordinate commanders left much to be desired. Those
Correlli Barnett’s estimation,
making this case will point to Cunningham, Ritchie, Corbett and Dorman-
The sudden defeat following upon easy triumph broke Rommel; ahead of Smith. However, they will fail to acknowledge that in choosing Guigand,
him lay the dogging ill-health that is born of disappointment and frustration he made a very successful appointment, and that Ritchie managed to
– desert sores, the infected liver, the duodenal ulcer. The old Rommel, that make a convincing success out of Operation Crusader. It is also worth
dynamic optimist, was never seen again. pointing out that the Long-Range Desert Group, the ‘Jock Columns’, the
Special Air Service and the Chindits (in Burma )were all either formed
Churchill now demanded a British offensive, despite the fact that
or flourished under Auchinleck’s aegis, so Auchinleck cannot be accused
Auchinleck’s troops were exhausted. Field Marshal Lord Carver (and
of lacking flair or imagination. His defensive victory over Rommel in the
future Chief of the Defence Staff), a participant in as well as a shrewd
first Battle of El Alamein proved to be decisive and paved the way to
historian of the Desert War, vividly recalled the acute sleep deprivation
ultimate victory in the Western Desert. Ronald Lewin, both a veteran
they had endured. In August Churchill flew to Cairo and, concluding that
of the campaign and a distinguished military historian, cannot be faulted
‘the Auk’(Auchinleck’s nickname) was insufficiently ‘offensive-minded’,
for observing that ‘Neither Parliament, nor the nation, nor, in particular,
replaced him as C-in-C Middle East with General Sir Harold Alexander
the Prime Minister had grasped its profound significance’. This was not
(later Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis), the third son of 4th Earl
to their collective credit.
and Countess of Caledon, and as Commander of the 8th Army with
Lieutenant-General William Gott, who was killed in Egypt before taking As C-in-C India, Auchinleck made a very significant contribution to
up command. On Gott’s death, Lieutenant-General (later Field Marshal the war against Japan by mobilizing India’s resources, training troops
Viscount) Bernard Law Montgomery was appointed Commander of for the Burma campaign and supplying the South-East Asia Command.
the 8th Army. He continued As C-in-C India after 1945, assisting, though contrary to
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Erwin Rommel
a note about ‘the Desert Fox’
his own convictions, to prepare the future Indian and Pakistani armies It is perhaps worth noting that Rommel was the only
for the partition of the subcontinent in August 1947. In June 1946 he German general the British fought between 1940 and
1943. Churchill was completely in awe of Rommel and
was promoted to Field Marshal but declined a peerage because he
in August 1942 he told Brigadier Ian Jacob: ‘Rommel,
did not wish to be rewarded for implementing a policy with which he
Rommel, Rommel, Rommel! What else matters but
profoundly disagreed. He resigned as C-in-C and retired in 1947. beating Rommel?’ Rommel
Churchill subsequently claimed that it pained him to sack Auchinleck. It is difficult to fault the accuracy of Hitler’s observation in July 1942 that ‘not a little’
of Rommel’s ‘world-wide reputation’ was due to Churchill’s speeches in the House
This may well be true because ‘the Auk’ conformed to the military
of Commons.
stereotype for which Churchill had a weakness: tall, handsome and a
Ironically, the man who had the measure of Rommel was Auchinleck. He realized, as
hero of the Great War. Harold Alexander was also a beneficiary of this
Churchill clearly did not, that the mystique surrounding Rommel was detrimental to
aspect of Churchill’s makeup. Churchill compared sacking Auchinleck
British morale. Hence, his letter to his field commanders, observing:
to ‘shooting a noble stag’. In November 1942 Churchill told a group of
There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel is becoming a kind of magical or bogey-
MPs that it had been a ‘terrible thing’ to sack him. He continued:
man to our troops, who are talking far too much about him. He is by no means a superman,
although he is undoubtedly very energetic and able. Even if he were a superman, it would
It is difficult to remove a bad general at the height of a campaign: it is
still be highly undesirable that our men should credit him with supernatural powers … I am
atrocious to remove a good general. We must use Auchinleck again. We
not jealous of Rommel.
cannot afford to lose such a fine man from the fighting line.
Auchinleck tried in vain to convince his officers that the best German generals were in
But that is exactly what Churchill did. At a function in London in the Russia, which was indeed the case. Erich von Manstein, who put the ‘blitz’ in ‘blitzkrieg’
in the west in 1940 and who was the architect of great victories in Russia in 1941-42’,
1950s Churchill approached Auchinleck and acknowledged that he had
was, in Max Hastings’ view, ‘the finest German general of the war’.
wronged him. ‘The Auk’ simply said: ‘I know, Prime Minister.’
In his forward to Desmond Young’s Rommel (London, 1950), Auchinleck wrote: ‘Rommel
gave me and those under my command many anxious moments … He showed no
mercy and expected none. Yet I could never translate my deep detestation of the
regime for which he fought into personal hatred of him as an opponent…’
In the 1970s Auchinleck told David Dimbleby that Rommel was ‘very agile’ and ‘very
dangerous’ and that ‘you couldn’t sleep when he was about but you could tell – more
or less – what he was likely to do in certain circumstance’.
Max Hastings notes in All Hell let loose (London, 2011): ‘The Allies esteemed Rommel
more highly than did many German officers, partly because British and American self-
respect was massaged by attributing their setbacks to his supposed genius’. That would
also be the view of most German historians.
18 19
Description:who forced Rommel, 'the Desert Fox', to a halt at the First Battle of El. Alamein ..
superiority, especially in infantry, to destroy the Italian formations one by one.
