A. Logistics. As pointed out, Axis capabilities were shitty and further they advanced further they went from their depots. Fuel tankers burn fuel to bring fuel to forward troops.
B. No clear strategic objectives. What was objective anyway? Seize Suez canal? Seize Egypt? Some grand pincer movement in coordination with Germans pushing into Caucassuss?
After Rommel took Tobruk Churchill was faced with a no confidence vote in parliament, but survived. Rommel's goal was quite clear... get the UK out of the war before with American help they achieve the required men and supplies to drive the Axis out of Africa.
If Rommel took Egypt and the Suez canal his hope I am sure was there would be another no confidence vote against Churchill and he would be removed in favor of a new leader in the UK willing to negotiate peace with Germany for getting their colonial holdings back. If that didn't happen he would try to take the fight to the UK in Iraq to get an armistice. If he managed to achieve peace with England he knew the U.S. would then turn its attention to fighting Japan.
Then he planned (as shown in the book The Rommel Papers based on his letters to his wife to go after the Russian oil fields in the Caucasuses from the South unhindered by the UK. He believed (and called in his papers) the Caucasuses the Soviet Union's achilles heel and if taken away their fuel for their heavy armor and planes would dry up.
Rommel wasn't the greatest tactical commander in history, but if you read his papers you can see he saw the strategic reality of the situation in stark terms.
Lets say Rommel didn't over run his supply lines as he has been attacked for. It was only a matter of time before the UK and newly arriving U.S. supplies and forces overwhelmed the Germans and Italians regardless of where they were in Africa and then they would go on to Italy.
As for the reason Rommel was so well liked by the British Army (and by extension their citizenry) as well as his own Army during the war and after the war it was because unlike most generals on both sides who would stay far far away from the lines he wouldn't and was always there going out meeting with the fighting men, both German and on occasion English as well and not just in POW camps.
In the summer of 1941, two groups of German and British soldiers met deep in the Libyan desert. Instead of shooting at each other, the enemies chatted and exchanged cigarettes before going their separate ways. What made the encounter all the more remarkable was that Erwin Rommel, the German commander in North Africa, was among them.
Mr Schneider, now 86, said: "The common soldiers did not act out of hate. When we met the English soldiers in the desert that time, we were far, far from anywhere. There was no reason to shoot. We swapped cigarettes and I talked with the English officers. But there were also times when we were shocked by the enemy. "Rommel enjoyed touring the front lines. We would go deep into the desert to explore. One time we came across 14 German soldiers who seemed asleep. When we got closer we saw each had his throat cut. Nearby we found a kukri – the knife of the British Gurkha soldiers. I still have that knife."
The extent to which the ferocity of a war fought by young men has been replaced by comradeship among former enemies was underlined this weekend when Mr Schneider met five former Desert Rats, including an ambulance driver who accidentally drove into a German tank position while it was being inspected by Rommel and was promptly sent back to his lines by the field marshal with Mr Schneider at his side.
"We are now friends, very good friends," he said. "I was once a German soldier and they were English soldiers but now we find it difficult to understand why we had to fight against each other. Rommel was always first a soldier. We did not forget that we were fighting fellow human beings." Mr Schneider said: "I was one of Rommel's drivers. I was chosen because I knew English and could operate their equipment.
Mr Schneider said: "When the propaganda photographs were taken of our unit, they would drape Swastika flags over the vehicles. When the cameramen went away, Rommel would order the Swastikas to be taken away. He didn't like Nazi insignia and took it off. He said, 'I am a German soldier'."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/rudolf-schneider-i-was-rommels-driver-1706924.html
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