Rommel gets a mountain division in 1940?

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Deleted member 1487

Apparently before becoming really acquainted with Hitler, Rommel was more likely to have been promoted to be a mountain division commander based on his WW1 experience, but in 1939 after surviving his assassination in the Beer Hall in Munich, the Elser attempt, he gave Rommel his choice of command and Rommel asked for a Panzer division. I'm getting this from a documentary about Rommel according to his son in an interview. So what if Rommel became a mountain division commander instead because say he doesn't get command of the Führerbegleitbrigade or Hitler doesn't give it to him? What would he have pulled off there and would he have been better suited to that? Who replaces him with 7th Panzer and the Afrika Korps?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Rommel#Poland_1939
Rommel received a promotion to a general's rank from Hitler ahead of more senior officers, skipping a rank. Rommel was subsequently able, with an intervention from Hitler, to obtain the command he aspired to, despite having been earlier turned down by the army's personnel office, which had offered him command of a mountain division instead.[57]
 
Rommel knew this war was going to be lightening fast movements on land not mostly trench warfare which he did or playing duck duck goose in the mountains which he also did not that he knew it wouldn't happen, but he believed the tank and modern aircraft would revolutionize warfare for the coming war and it did.
 

Deleted member 1487

Rommel knew this war was going to be lightening fast movements on land not mostly trench warfare which he did or playing duck duck goose in the mountains which he also did not that he knew it wouldn't happen, but he believed the tank and modern aircraft would revolutionize warfare for the coming war and it did.
The German mountain divisions were involved in a lot of very important engagements and were considered a special force/elite within the infantry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebirgsjäger#Gebirgsj.C3.A4ger_in_World_War_II
In Norway, the Balkans/Crete, Finland/Murmansk, the Caucasus, and even Ukraine, the mountain divisions were all there.
 
Maybe ge makes his mark in Norway and Crete rather than France and the desert. But given the short nature of these campaigns and the difficulty in showing flair and dash with an infantry division in the mountains I think his impact would be less.
 
Rommel instead of Dietl in Norway? but was there much more he could have done during Barbarossa? my understanding Dietl was more than competent, Murmansk not lending itself to any creative solutions?
 
The German mountain divisions were involved in a lot of very important engagements and were considered a special force/elite within the infantry.

It doesn't matter it's not a position where he would gain public attention outside some military circles.

So, we wouldn't even be talking about him here. He would be lost in the face of endless German generals unless the coup worked and he was enough of a player to get a seat on the table after.
 

takerma

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It doesn't matter it's not a position where he would gain public attention outside some military circles.

So, we wouldn't even be talking about him here. He would be lost in the face of endless German generals unless the coup worked and he was enough of a player to get a seat on the table after.
He would not be as famous but people would know him even just from WW1 and Infantry Attacks book. He was a really brilliant tactician, maybe he could do something special on Krete? Unlikely but who knows. Maybe it is not as bloody and Germans try for Malta
 
He would not be as famous but people would know him even just from WW1 and Infantry Attacks book. He was a really brilliant tactician, maybe he could do something special on Krete? Unlikely but who knows. Maybe it is not as bloody and Germans try for Malta

The WW1 book only became popular outside of Germany because of his success in North Africa. Take that away and Infanty Attacks is not going to suddenly be mass printed in America and the British Empire in 1941-43 and onwards.

He was a brilliant tactician and he made the British and American troops and publics feel good about their troops, but if he is stuck fighting in the mountains I don't think the WAllies will get to know him. The Russians perhaps.
 
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Deleted member 94680

So maybe he doesn't become famous. What could he bring to the Barbarossa operations with a mountain division? Would success with a Mountain Division lead to a Corps, a Corps to an Army, etc?
 
Best-case scenario for Rommel personally is he gets sent to Narvik, botches the whole thing up and ends up either interned in Sweden or in an Allied POW camp.

Best-case scenario for the Nazi war effort? Hmm...

Less resources pumped into Libya (on account of an earlier loss there) swings the outcome of a crucial battle somewhere on the Eastern Front? Maybe Manstein breaks through Soviet lines and reaches 6th Army, and then they somehow retreat through that narrow corridor?

As for what Rommel could PERSONALLY do (so no butterflies) to help the Nazi war effort - that's hard.

- Narvik was impossible to hold on account of Allied superiority, and even holding it wouldn't have made a difference, since the Germans papered over the period where they had to rebuild the Allied-destroyed harbor by using up French iron ore stockpiles.

- Crete was already a victory pulled from the jaws of defeat by the Germans, and about as close to a best-case as things can get (barring the British deciding to unilaterally evacuate the island). Plus, the operation would always have been directed by the Fallschirmjaeger commander (OTL Kurt Student)

- Murmansk was not going to be taken with the forces available, even if those units were ordered around by God himself

- Maybe Rommel could have made some impact in some alternate Italian campaign

- The biggest post-war impact I can think of is if he somehow managed to take out Tito in Yugoslavia as part of one of the German anti-partisan operations there
 
Apparently before becoming really acquainted with Hitler, Rommel was more likely to have been promoted to be a mountain division commander based on his WW1 experience, but in 1939 after surviving his assassination in the Beer Hall in Munich, the Elser attempt, he gave Rommel his choice of command and Rommel asked for a Panzer division. ...

It was a "Light Division" not a Panzer Div in 1939 that Rommel took command of. The difference at the time was important. The division was converted to a armored div after the Polish campaign & redesignated 7th Pz Div.
 

Deleted member 1487

It was a "Light Division" not a Panzer Div in 1939 that Rommel took command of. The difference at the time was important. The division was converted to a armored div after the Polish campaign & redesignated 7th Pz Div.
Rommel took command of it in February 1940, so it was after the conversion to a Panzer division, as the 2nd Light Division became 7th Panzer in October 1939.
 
You are right. i was remembering his remarks about supervising the stages of the conversion post February, & placed those events much earlier in 1939.
 
Just so that it is fully understood a German 'Light Division' is to all intents and purposes a Mechanised division or Mechanised Cavalry Division and not a light infantry Division as per our modern 'Western - British/US' understanding.

There were a total of 4 + the ad hoc 5th used in Africa - all eventually became panzer Divisions - 1st through 4th becoming the 6th, 7th, 8th and 7th respectively with the 5th leichte famously becoming 21st Panzer a core component of Rommel's Africa Corps.

As for what happens to Rommel - Gen. Manstein commanded an infantry Corps (XXXVIII Armeekorps) during the Battle of France and despite the units relatively small part in the campaign compared to the Panzer Armee he still went on to be one of the better Generals of the war.

I can see Rommel regardless of where he leads his command getting 'noticed' and he too going on to bigger and 'brighter' things - so long as there is some one else managing his logistics ;)
 
If Rommel had been given command of a mountain division, he might not have gotten it before the war with France was over as he probably would have gotten one of the new ones established in October 1940: I do not see the Heer replacing an existing commander of a division just to make place for Rommel. The other possibility is for him to get the 3rd Mountain Division after Dietl is promoted: this would be June 1940 and would mean he would stay in Norway for the rest of the year, missing the campaign in France.
 
The biggest post-war impact I can think of is if he somehow managed to take out Tito in Yugoslavia as part of one of the German anti-partisan operations there

This. If he's commanding a mountain division I see him partisan hunting, and Tito's the biggest target of all...
 
If he can avoid Norway or Crete, I'd expect to see his promotions to begin in Southern Russia, getting a Corps by 1942, maybe an Army by 1943.
 
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