Better Prepared Afrika Korps

What if the Germans anticipated an Italian fiasco in North Africa and had a fully equipped panzer corps ready to go near the Italian border. In addition what if they had the prudence to have updated a significant number of panzers with long barrel guns?

I think the Germans could have come to the decision to improve gun performance prior to the invasion of France. I certainly think they should have decided to do so urgently after the experience of that campaign.

Although operations in North Africa were mostly constrained by logistics, I think a full enhanced panzer corps at the right time could have overcome British opposition in Egypt.

What would happen after that is another aspect of the discussion.
 
How could they have anticipated Italian fiasco? Italians had triple the number of troops, their equipment is roughly comparable to British standard, aside from Matilda tank. Furthermore, Mussolini was this type of guy who would lash out on his own and come running back if he gets whipped.

Full panzer corps is a formidable formation, though in 1940, Germans still used Panzergruppe, an ad hoc collection of mobile units grouped together under single commander, but for the sake of argument, let's say it consists of two panzer and a motorized division. I don't have the data how much supplies they would need handy. IIRC it was around 300 tons of supplies per day for a panzer division and say 200 for a motorized one. So this unit (which is remarkably similar to later DAK) would consume around 800 to 900 tons of supply a day, or up to 30.000 tons a month. That is one third of total port capacity of North African ports available to Axis at the moment. Supplies could certainly be improvised.

We come to the tricky part now - redesign of panzers. IIRC, Panzer IV and III required extensive redesign and in case of Panzer IV they basically ended up with virtually completely new vehicle, as turret needed to be made completely anew to provide place for larger gun. This program took a year to complete. Even if they decided to do it in, say June 1940, first tanks would not be around until Barbarossa.

In 1940, Germans felt they could get along with current variant for the time being. They had some prototypes made and running, but it was a low priority programme. Only by the end of 1941 they realised T-34 was a generation ahead of their panzers and started a crash program to make a new tank. This program also brought first results by the end of 1942. After being given a high priority from Hitler himself. Even then, tanks were rushed into combat, without adequate toothing.

German PzKpFw IIIs and IVs were certainly adequate to handle British tanks in the desert up until 1942, when Grants and Shermans started appearing. Their undoing was solely logistics. I do not see how this helps.

I'll summarize my post, since I may have made a jumble out of it while writing.

1. No one could anticipate Italians would fold. They had all advantages, yet failed. It follows Germans won't be ready to bolster them any earlier than they historically did.
2. Making a decision to upgrade German changes nothing by the time of Sonnenblummen in the best case for Germans. Upgrades will be too late for effective use in February/March 1941. Germans just might have first tanks some time in October or November 1941.
3. Logistics remain the same. Heavier tanks might exasperate the problem further.
 
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Unless Germany can upgrade all their tanks to such standard those upgraded will be earmarked for Barbarossa with North Africa receiving older/not upgraded versions. Once Barbarossa starts and Germans start facing T-34s and Kvs anything good will be sent there, not to secondary theatre of North Africa.
 
This might seem like a dumb question, but I'm a bit ignorant about this aspect of WW2, so please enlighten me - what were the Germans trying to do in North Africa?
The whole German presence in Northern Africa seems fairly odd. There were some worthwhile things to be achieved in that region (cutting the Suez canal is the obvious example), but the DAK never received the sort of support and priority that might have made them reasonably practical. It's hard to see what good they did, apart from tying down a noteworthy fraction of the British army. So why were they there at all?
 
This might seem like a dumb question, but I'm a bit ignorant about this aspect of WW2, so please enlighten me - what were the Germans trying to do in North Africa?

Well, they went there to save Italian North Africa from being overrun. Their mission was to tie significant forces of British army there and force long term British commitment to that theatre instead of allowing them to use those troops elsewhere. IIRC, Rommel was supposed to set up defensive position at El-Agheila and wait there until Barbarossa is finished. He would then attack towards Egypt and link up with German forces coming down through Caucasus.
 
Gunnarnz wrote:

This might seem like a dumb question, but I'm a bit ignorant about this aspect of WW2, so please enlighten me - what were the Germans trying to do in North Africa?

That's a good question. The conventional answer is that they were trying to prevent the conquest of Italy's NA colonies, though I've never really understood the importance of this - apart from the propaganda aspects.

Another good question is what the British were doing in North Africa? Yes, they had to defend the Suez Canal but otherwise what was achieved by all the thrashing around in the desert? The area had no intrinsic value (at least until the discovery of oil) so why fight for it? Again, one conventional answer is to capture airfields to cover convoys to Malta, but most of the successful relief efforts started from Gibraltar.

As a radical suggestion, once Compass had failed to drive the Italians out of NA completely, why not pull back to El Alamein and dig-in there, and let the Germans and Italians sit in the desert with their LoC being flayed by the RN and RAF? Without an open flank to exploit, any Axis attack would play to Britain's strong suits - infantry and artillery. The British could also inflict a steady stream of casualties by sudden artillery concentrations and trench-raids, and (absent a decisive defeat) it is very unlikely that Hitler would permit a strategic withdrawal - and even if he did, that would be fine with the British: the Germans could do little harm if they were all at (say) Benghazi.
 
Gunnarnz wrote:
Another good question is what the British were doing in North Africa?

It was the only place where they could engage Germans in combat. Otherwise they would concede into a virtual truce, and be seen as making overtures for white peace. I guess. Churchill was not the guy who would sit around, satisfied to watch enemy wither away if he could attack them.
 
This might seem like a dumb question, but I'm a bit ignorant about this aspect of WW2, so please enlighten me - what were the Germans trying to do in North Africa?
The whole German presence in Northern Africa seems fairly odd. There were some worthwhile things to be achieved in that region (cutting the Suez canal is the obvious example), but the DAK never received the sort of support and priority that might have made them reasonably practical. It's hard to see what good they did, apart from tying down a noteworthy fraction of the British army. So why were they there at all?

At first they were there to prop up Italians and prevent them from being defeated. Once Rommel showed up he acted in long standing Prussian/German tradition of "when in doubt, attack!". Once that went to good start Hitler thought something could be done there so Germans kind of stuck around. Once things turned sour Germany stuck around because retreat was not one of Hitler's concepts.
 
Another good question is what the British were doing in North Africa? Yes, they had to defend the Suez Canal but otherwise what was achieved by all the thrashing around in the desert? The area had no intrinsic value (at least until the discovery of oil) so why fight for it? Again, one conventional answer is to capture airfields to cover convoys to Malta, but most of the successful relief efforts started from Gibraltar.

It was the only place Britain could get in a land fight with Germans. This had also desired effect that it showed to Roosevelt that Britain will fight on and that US support will not be wasted.

As a radical suggestion, once Compass had failed to drive the Italians out of NA completely, why not pull back to El Alamein and dig-in there, and let the Germans and Italians sit in the desert with their LoC being flayed by the RN and RAF? Without an open flank to exploit, any Axis attack would play to Britain's strong suits - infantry and artillery. The British could also inflict a steady stream of casualties by sudden artillery concentrations and trench-raids, and (absent a decisive defeat) it is very unlikely that Hitler would permit a strategic withdrawal - and even if he did, that would be fine with the British: the Germans could do little harm if they were all at (say) Benghazi.

Because that would mean surrendering a lot of ground for no apparent good reason. Pulling that close to Egyptian positions brings the risk that if those are breached there is no fall back line.
 
I'll summarize my post, since I may have made a jumble out of it while writing.

1. No one could anticipate Italians would fold. They had all advantages, yet failed. It follows Germans won't be ready to bolster them any earlier than they historically did.
2. Making a decision to upgrade German changes nothing by the time of Sonnenblummen in the best case for Germans. Upgrades will be too late for effective use in February/March 1941. Germans just might have first tanks some time in October or November 1941.
3. Logistics remain the same. Heavier tanks might exasperate the problem further.

Not so hard. Paulus might have noted in his report that the Italians have turretless machine gun carriers and a few dozen very light self propelled antitank guns - but that's it. He might have gone on to point out that masses of unmotorized infantry in the desert are pretty much limited to digging in and waiting to die of thirst if they're outmanouvered by mechanized forces.

Remember this was at a time when there were plans to ask Spain to enter the war so as to allow an assault on Gibralter and Turkish entry in the war would be far more likely after seizing Suez. And though we might disagree now, Turkish cooperation would likely be seen as making seizure of the middle east oil fields a much easier proposition.

I don't see heavier German tank guns at this point as being ASB. IIRC there were some PIIIL60's during Barbarossa. We're just talking about being a little more diligent carrying out Hitler's original 50mm order and lengthening it a few months earlier.

By the way, a 75mm L30 like the Grant had has been described as similar in anti-armor ability to the 50L60. That would have been a much better original choice and a German version or better could have been adopted during the late 30's.

I think the last part is worth retaining because annihilation of British armor (seems to be a possibility against early British tanks) could have had a much different consequence than a lesser tactical victory.
 
By the way, a 75mm L30 like the Grant had has been described as similar in anti-armor ability to the 50L60. That would have been a much better original choice and a German version or better could have been adopted during the late 30's.

There were plans for putting a 75mm L33 gun on the PzIV, but they gave up on it and went for the 75mm L43
 
There were plans for putting a 75mm L33 gun on the PzIV, but they gave up on it and went for the 75mm L43

Certainly much better than the L24. I just didn't change things so much that it becomes a wank. Even if they went for an L30 or L33 from near the beginning, I think they still would have planned on the L43 in 1941 or 42 even prior to encountering the T34. A natural progression like the 50mm to L60.
 
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