What if the Germans go south instead of east?

Germans DID go south, reinforced the Italians in North Africa and aided the coup in Iraq.

my scenario would be for them to develop "Plan B" when they discover how ... unprepared the Italians were for war.

capture Malta and sign whatever treaty necessary to use Vichy airbases in Syria and Morocco.

You were talking about landing the troops in Iraq, which for a short while had a pro-axis government, not moving your troops via Beirut, which in case you can't geography was Vichy French territory and as such was (nominally) neutral. Now, I could see the French turning a blind eye to limited air operations through their territory per the German attempt at supporting Iraq in OTL, but I do not see them allowing the Germans to airlift a whole bloody army right through their territory. Try it and you'll find the airfields are not open to you...

according to the book Traditional Enemies the operation to support Iraq coup (through Syria) was a trial exercise in cooperation. of course the German effort was tentative but forced the British hand, resulting in loss of French Mandate. during the British invasion at least some in Vichy regime wanted to reinforce but Germany would not allow them to reactivate their cruisers for that purpose (assume because of Italians?)

of divided opinion on aid to Iraq coup, but the Axis should have expended every effort to keep Vichy in Syria. the airbases to strike USSR were in far eastern Syria, to lose them the month before Operation Barbarossa was idiotic (IMO they never should have launched that but does not matter, you still want to keep the option of striking the Soviet oilfields.)
 
Just because I hate seeing someone being piled unto with nobody trying to bring up points that are somewhere along the lines that he's thinking, I'm going to jump in.

Thanks for the support! My only goal was to post some interesting ideas that would give ideas on how the OP could be correct.



I'm going to summarize some points to support the OP post.

In Spring 1941, the Germans make plans to attack the British at Alexandria and not the Russians to the east. This is the OP.

Success at Alexandria all but expels the British from the Mediterranean and opens up access to Iraqi and Iranian oil, plus places the Axis within attack range of Baku in Russia. There are already anti British and pro German people in the middle east as well as anti Russian elements in the region. This success might but is not certain to sway Turkey to lean towards the Axis.

To accomplish this, the Germans need to take a defensive position on the east and to utilize some of the resources from Barbarossa to north Africa. Items like armored / tank units (5-7 divisions), trucks, fuel, air craft (750-1,000), food, medicine, clothes, ammunition, etc.

These choices would if enacted enable the Germans to have supply, forces and air superiority from Tunisia to Suez.

Before we deal with what the Germans would do if they succeed in taking Egypt, let's look at whether or not they can succeed and address some of the concerns.

1) The Italians won't let them into north Africa because they are possessive and proud. This can hardly be taken as serious. The Germans conquered Italy in 1943 against almost no resistance and arrested the Italian army. Even if Mussolini was peeved, he wouldn't have gone to war to protect the British from Germany. This was immediately after the Germans had saved their bacon in the Balkans as well. And the scenario does not assume the Germans kill the Italians or force them to leave Africa. It simply assumes that the Germans spearhead a capture of Egypt.

2) There would be insoluble supply problems due to lack of ports or lack of roads. I've already posted this information. There was plenty of supply sitting in the ports that wasn't getting to the axis front. It was due to a lack of transport vehicles not due to port size or road conditions. Of course, more ports placed along the coast would have made the supply conditions better, but the supply needs would have been met OTL with more trucks. These are the trucks that were in Barbarossa.

3) Air superiority in 1939-1945 has little or no effect on naval conditions or ground conditions. This belief is somewhat remarkable enough that there should already be a thread on it. The German Navy and Army were adamant against an invasion of Britain without air superiority as a means of neutralizing the British Navy, the British believed they won the Mediterranean campaign due in part to air superiority, the US lost at Pearl Harbor due to air superiority and the dominant capital ship of 1870-1940 disappeared in significance almost over night due to air superiority (battleship to ACC.) Indeed some 40-45% of all ships were destroyed by planes. The amount of documentation supporting the need for air power is enormous.

4) German planes need fuel. This enlightening discovery is meant to imply that planes without fuel can't fly. But....the German planes in Barbarossa were flying all over. So we can dispel this concern by remembering that the Germans were bringing a lot of planes and their fuel to Sicily and north Africa in order to complete this scenario.

5) The Russians would conquer Germany in 1941 if Barbarossa wasn't done as in OTL. The scenario does not suggest that 3.2 million Germans are going to north Africa. It suggest 5-7 armored divisions plus supply personnel, 750-1,000 planes plus those personnel. The Germans still will have at least 2.2-2.5 million (or more) military on their border to fight a defensive war if needed. Keep in mind that Stalin had no plans to attack Germany in 1941. And keep in mind that the front for Germany in 1941 before Barbarossa was significantly shorter than afterwards. It's therefore implausible that 2.5 million men can't defend a smaller front against the USSR when 3.2 million destroyed millions of Russians on offense on a much longer front.

6) The British positions in Egypt were impregnable to attack due to the desert to the south. This is an incomplete statement. The British fought with air and naval superiority and therefore their position was very strong. Take that away and their positions are no longer impregnable. Armor can't stand up in fixed positions against aircraft, supplies can't be sent when trucks are under air attack, etc. Rommel believed he could have taken Egypt with more supply alone and the British believed he could have taken Egypt with air superiority alone. It's hard to argue that giving the Germans BOTH plus 5-7 more divisions leaves them as unable to take Egypt.

7) The British didn't need Alexandria since they had Malta, Cyprus and Palestine. The British primarily based their forces at Alexandria for a reason and I've already posted the British view that loss of Alexandria meant loss of the Mediterranean. Taking Alexandria provides virtual control of the Suez and closing the Suez means no supply for most of the ships, troops or planes in the Mediterranean (barring traversing hundreds of miles by sea across enemy territory patrolled by aircraft and subs.) Crossing the Suez which is an obvious next step leaves the entire Levant open as well as exposes the Euphrates Valley. Again, the British had that view strategically from 1880-1950.

8) British forces between Suez and the Persian Gulf would pose a risk to German conquests of the region east of Suez. There is no doubt the British would try to mount some resistance in the area. However, the Germans seemed more popular in the region and would (from dint of controlling the Mediterranean and Alexandria), have access to more supply (by ship) than British forces which would likely have to rely on Persian Gulf ports.

9) There are no real ports in north Africa along the 3,000 miles between Gibraltar and Turkey. Well if this was true it would be a problem. Naturally, one would assume that Algiers, Oran, Tripoli, Tobruk, Tunis among others qualify as ports, but we do know that at least Alexandria is a port. So taking that would solve a lot of supply problems. As was pointed out and documented earlier there was already adequate port capacity for more forces than the Axis had in north Africa excluding the ports east of Libya.

10) There are no roads along the 3,000 miles of north African coast from Gibraltar to Turkey. Here we can remind those of the OP. The scenario does not restrict us to May, 1941 or June, 1941. Even if we assume there are no roads or that the roads are inadequate (neither of which is true) the Germans can with a plan to initiate Barbarossa in May 1942, spend a full YEAR building roads if they want them. Indeed, they can expand a port or two or even begin laying some track. Again, this is a 1 year diversion. The British built a road in the dead of winter in the Crimea in 1854. Surely the Germans can build or add roads.

Secondary issues. We discussed peripheral routes to attack Egypt through Turkey. The argument against this was that the Germans could not take 30 divisions across Turkey due to supply problems. I won't debate that because after looking at it, the better approach would have been the one the Germans looked to take after all. Besides, it's clear that unless the British had been expelled from the Mediterranean, Turkey would stay neutral and not allow German troops in the country. An invasion would raise more issues and not necessarily resolve the matter of Egypt.


Major difficulties. In OTL, Rommel suggested supplies were the issue while the British suggested air superiority was the issue. Solving one of those should make the plan plausible, while solving both should make it more than promising.

The latter: we already know that most of the Axis ships made it to their destinations (the worst month was 91%) and that the supplies were being delivered faster than they were used due to truck transport. It's therefore clear that had there been more German planes including pilots to fly those planes and had fuel been sent (luckily we now know that the German planes used fuel to fly), that the Germans would have been in much better position to deal with the RAF and therefore the RN. Planes sink ships and shoot down planes. More German planes means fewer British planes, ships, trucks, tanks, supplies.

The former: is something that several people have documented. The ports had capacity remaining and the supplies were building up in the ports. The bottleneck was trucks, not port size, port type, lack of ports, lack of cranes, crane size, roads, railroads or bad weather. New York Harbor could have been sitting there next to Tripoli and a 6-lane concrete highway running from it to Alexandria, and Rommel still would have not had the supplies.



Next:

What would the Germans do if they succeed in taking Egypt?

Rather than potentially waste effort and post that in detail, I'll provide a summary. I really don't want to waste time posting much on what would happen if Germany took Egypt if it's destined to be ignored.

1) Railroads can be built as well as roads once a nation conquers an area. As a reminder, the Germans have roughly from August 1941 to May 1942 to make headway on construction and even if it takes another 6-9 months their overall fuel supply situation would be better than it was OTL by summer 1943.

2) Oil rigs can be damaged and then can be repaired. This will require people who know how to repair things like engineers.

3) Pipelines can be built and trucks can be used to haul oil from oil fields to the Levant coast. Before someone tells us, we should all recall that the trucks will not drive themselves: they'll need drivers. And fuel.

4) Of course the Germans will have troops in the Middle East. How many? As simply a police force, the number would be small. To fight British units hanging on in the region, certainly more. For a tactical attack on Russia at Baku) more.

5) Attacks on the USSR at Baku from the south would have to be from Iran unless Turkey allowed an attack from it's territory. By air, Tabriz is 260 miles and Mosul is 470 miles. By land there are 3 passes that one can use to cross the Caucasus. Taking Baku intact would be the likely plan.

Again, this is May 1942, not June 1941.
 
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http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/JanFeb01/MS610.htm

Here's an interesting article that speaks exactly to this issue.

It's written by a military man and contains many quotes by military men.


Maybe people can read it. As he is writing only OTL, it's interesting on a number of points;

1) the north African ports actual capacity had been reduced due to the RAF

"The other significant ports in the area of operations, Benghazi and Tobruk, had nominal throughput rates of 2,700 and 1,500 tons per day, but administrative difficulties and attacks by the Royal Air Force (RAF) limited their actual capacity to 750 and 600 tons per day, respectively."

2) Rommel was never sent the number of trucks he requested

"British historian D. Braddock adds, "Fuel, water, and ammunition were sources of constant anxiety to the German commander but his greatest problem was the lack of serviceable transport vehicles without which no army could survive for long in the desert."


3) trucks and supplies were often interdicted by the RAF

"Equally disruptive of Rommel's long intra theater lines of communication was their vulnerability to interdiction by British air and ground units. The fluid nature of operations, coupled with the exposed and vulnerable desert flank, made ground interception of supply convoys along the Via Bardia or one of the lesser tracks by British armored car columns a real problem for the Axis. More significant was the aerial threat posed by the RAF. In the flat, relatively treeless North African desert, vehicular columns (and the clouds of dust they inevitably generated) often were visible from a distance of 50 miles or more on clear days. This led one member of the Afrika Korps to lament that his vehicles traveling on the desert floor were like "cherries on a cake" to the RAF pilots flying overhead."

4) north Africa had significant strategic importance. According to Rommel:

"With the entire Mediterranean coastline in our hands, supplies could have been shipped to North Africa unmolested. It would then have been possible to thrust forward into Persia and Irak [sic] in order to cut off the Russians from Basra, take possession of the oilfields and create a base for an attack on southern Russia . . . Our final strategic objective would have been an attack on the southern Caucasian front aimed at the capture of Baku and its oilfields. This would have struck the Russians in a vital spot. A great part of their armor, which was carrying the main burden of the fighting on their side, would have been out of action for lack of petrol. Their air force would have been crippled. They could no longer have expected any further effective American help. Thus the strategic conditions would have been created for us to close in from all sides and shatter the Russian colossus."


Of course. The ports were small. No one argues that. The roads weren't great and there were no usable railroads. All true. In Russia, there were marshes, muddy roads, ice and snow. In Normandy there was no port and then lots of hedgerows. In the Pacific there was a lot of ocean to cross. In Italy there were mountains and narrow valleys. War always has logistical problems. They aren't excuses; they're hurdles.


In 1941 the Germans were losing port capacity due to the RFA and losing trucks due to the RAF. Rommel wasn't given more planes to stop that because of Barbarossa. He wasn't given more trucks, fuel, armor or supplies due to Barbarossa. Given more planes, port capacity would have been protected and therefore much larger. Given more port capacity, and then trucks (and air support to protect supply columns), more supplies would have reached the front. Rommel's forces would have been better supplied and probably even more armor added to his forces.

Per Rommel, he could have won with his existing forces if he had been given the supplies he needed. It's therefore difficult to understand how he would have absolutely, unequivocally lost had he not only been given the supplies he needed, but air superiority and more armor.
 
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http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-north-africa-campaign.htm

Another article this one from World War II magazine---not "an anonymous poster on the interweb."

"Auchinleck resisted Churchill's constant pressure for an immediate British counterattack. When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union on June 22, Rommel's force in North Africa became even less a priority for Germany's logistical support. Most of the Luftwaffe units in the Mediterranean were sent to Russia, which gave the British a freer hand in attacking Rommel's supply convoys at sea and from the air. Rommel continued to grow weaker. By November, he had 414 tanks, 320 aircraft and nine divisions (three German), four of which were tied down in the siege of Tobruk. The British had some 700 tanks, 1,000 aircraft and eight divisions."
 
Thanks for the support! My only goal was to post some interesting ideas that would give ideas on how the OP could be correct.

*snip*

Don't think I do not support your right to argue and discuss your points. I really like challenging discussion.

1) The Italians won't let them into north Africa because they are possessive and proud. This can hardly be taken as serious. The Germans conquered Italy in 1943 against almost no resistance and arrested the Italian army. Even if Mussolini was peeved, he wouldn't have gone to war to protect the British from Germany. This was immediately after the Germans had saved their bacon in the Balkans as well. And the scenario does not assume the Germans kill the Italians or force them to leave Africa. It simply assumes that the Germans spearhead a capture of Egypt.

When exactly do the Germans do this? Because if it is before Compass, as it seems, it virtually requires them to occupy French North Africa as I also seem to gather. That means the French Navy will rush to join the British. Further exasperating the trouble (already considerable) that the Axis already have. Besides, why exactly would the German General Staff and Hitler, who were reluctant to even consider going to Africa after Italian position crumbled, suddenly go 'Heia Safari' and embark on full fledged African adventure, instead of long planned and imagined conquest of Eastern lebensraum with their army at peek efficiency? Why would they cram their units against their ally's will and with their quartermaster having a nervous breakdown over the fact of hot tu supply the troops in Africa?

2) There would be insoluble supply problems due to lack of ports or lack of roads. I've already posted this information. There was plenty of supply sitting in the ports that wasn't getting to the axis front. It was due to a lack of transport vehicles not due to port size or road conditions. Of course, more ports placed along the coast would have made the supply conditions better, but the supply needs would have been met OTL with more trucks. These are the trucks that were in Barbarossa.

Granted given access to French North African ports alleviates this to some extent. But it still leaves the transit question unsolved. Especially if, as is very likely, French Navy joins the British.

3) Air superiority in 1939-1945 has little or no effect on naval conditions or ground conditions. This belief is somewhat remarkable enough that there should already be a thread on it. The German Navy and Army were adamant against an invasion of Britain without air superiority as a means of neutralizing the British Navy, the British believed they won the Mediterranean campaign due in part to air superiority, the US lost at Pearl Harbor due to air superiority and the dominant capital ship of 1870-1940 disappeared in significance almost over night due to air superiority (battleship to ACC.) Indeed some 40-45% of all ships were destroyed by planes. The amount of documentation supporting the need for air power is enormous.

It is unquestionable that air superiority has an effect on naval operation. What is disputable is if the Axis has the right kind of airplanes and doctrine to exploit the air superiority they potentially could have attained given no Barbarossa (a problem in its own right). If their planes cannot hurt the British ship sufficiently to make the RN unable to operate in Med at all, it does not help.

4) German planes need fuel. This enlightening discovery is meant to imply that planes without fuel can't fly. But....the German planes in Barbarossa were flying all over. So we can dispel this concern by remembering that the Germans were bringing a lot of planes and their fuel to Sicily and north Africa in order to complete this scenario.

Undoubtedly correct. Germans had fuel for their planes in Russia. Because they had land connection there and didn't have to transport the fuel on ships to ports in North Africa under constant danger of them being sunk.

5) The Russians would conquer Germany in 1941 if Barbarossa wasn't done as in OTL. The scenario does not suggest that 3.2 million Germans are going to north Africa. It suggest 5-7 armored divisions plus supply personnel, 750-1,000 planes plus those personnel. The Germans still will have at least 2.2-2.5 million (or more) military on their border to fight a defensive war if needed. Keep in mind that Stalin had no plans to attack Germany in 1941. And keep in mind that the front for Germany in 1941 before Barbarossa was significantly shorter than afterwards. It's therefore implausible that 2.5 million men can't defend a smaller front against the USSR when 3.2 million destroyed millions of Russians on offense on a much longer front.

It is not only a matter of the Red Army attacking. Additionaly, Germany owes USSR a lot of money and first installments, according to M-R pact and its economic annexes were due in July. And Germany actually would default on these payments, making the Soviet Union reluctant to supply them further.

6) The British positions in Egypt were impregnable to attack due to the desert to the south. This is an incomplete statement. The British fought with air and naval superiority and therefore their position was very strong. Take that away and their positions are no longer impregnable. Armor can't stand up in fixed positions against aircraft, supplies can't be sent when trucks are under air attack, etc. Rommel believed he could have taken Egypt with more supply alone and the British believed he could have taken Egypt with air superiority alone. It's hard to argue that giving the Germans BOTH plus 5-7 more divisions leaves them as unable to take Egypt.

How do you take that away???

5 to 7 more divisions doubles all the logistics necessary.

7) The British didn't need Alexandria since they had Malta, Cyprus and Palestine. The British primarily based their forces at Alexandria for a reason and I've already posted the British view that loss of Alexandria meant loss of the Mediterranean. Taking Alexandria provides virtual control of the Suez and closing the Suez means no supply for most of the ships, troops or planes in the Mediterranean (barring traversing hundreds of miles by sea across enemy territory patrolled by aircraft and subs.) Crossing the Suez which is an obvious next step leaves the entire Levant open as well as exposes the Euphrates Valley. Again, the British had that view strategically from 1880-1950.

Without Alexandria, British have no naval superiority. Without British naval superiority Axis capture Alexandria. Catch 22.

8) British forces between Suez and the Persian Gulf would pose a risk to German conquests of the region east of Suez. There is no doubt the British would try to mount some resistance in the area. However, the Germans seemed more popular in the region and would (from dint of controlling the Mediterranean and Alexandria), have access to more supply (by ship) than British forces which would likely have to rely on Persian Gulf ports.

Undoubtedly. Well at least the Germans were more popular while the British were there. Remove the British and put the Germans instead, and this popularity would plummet precipitously.

9) There are no real ports in north Africa along the 3,000 miles between Gibraltar and Turkey. Well if this was true it would be a problem. Naturally, one would assume that Algiers, Oran, Tripoli, Tobruk, Tunis among others qualify as ports, but we do know that at least Alexandria is a port. So taking that would solve a lot of supply problems. As was pointed out and documented earlier there was already adequate port capacity for more forces than the Axis had in north Africa excluding the ports east of Libya.

Naturally, capturing these ports means goodbye Vichy neutrality.

10) There are no roads along the 3,000 miles of north African coast from Gibraltar to Turkey. Here we can remind those of the OP. The scenario does not restrict us to May, 1941 or June, 1941. Even if we assume there are no roads or that the roads are inadequate (neither of which is true) the Germans can with a plan to initiate Barbarossa in May 1942, spend a full YEAR building roads if they want them. Indeed, they can expand a port or two or even begin laying some track. Again, this is a 1 year diversion. The British built a road in the dead of winter in the Crimea in 1854. Surely the Germans can build or add roads.

Building roads and railways and bringing in the train sets for those railways further impacts limited logistical capacity. Besides, the Germans are better off doing something about deplorable state of Reichsbahn before going to whole other continent to build railways.

Secondary issues. We discussed peripheral routes to attack Egypt through Turkey. The argument against this was that the Germans could not take 30 divisions across Turkey due to supply problems. I won't debate that because after looking at it, the better approach would have been the one the Germans looked to take after all. Besides, it's clear that unless the British had been expelled from the Mediterranean, Turkey would stay neutral and not allow German troops in the country. An invasion would raise more issues and not necessarily resolve the matter of Egypt.

Well, at least that is obvious.

Major difficulties. In OTL, Rommel suggested supplies were the issue while the British suggested air superiority was the issue. Solving one of those should make the plan plausible, while solving both should make it more than promising.

Definitely. Though if we go by OTL example, not even when Fliegerkorps X was in Sicily did the Germans manage to attain sufficent force to absolutely inhibit British naval operations in the Med.

The latter: we already know that most of the Axis ships made it to their destinations (the worst month was 91%) and that the supplies were being delivered faster than they were used due to truck transport.

In which period is this??? I am not aware of this statistics. I thought a whole lot of them were sunk on the way.

The former: is something that several people have documented. The ports had capacity remaining and the supplies were building up in the ports. The bottleneck was trucks, not port size, port type, lack of ports, lack of cranes, crane size, roads, railroads or bad weather. New York Harbor could have been sitting there next to Tripoli and a 6-lane concrete highway running from it to Alexandria, and Rommel still would have not had the supplies.

The bottleneck was trucks because no matter how many trucks they throw in there, it only exacerbates the logistical issues. The trucks themselves need fuel, need spare parts and people to drive them and service them. The trucks were good enough for distances of up to 600 km. After that... No matter how much they have, the transport becomes uneconomical. Transport alone eats up more stuff than what is being transported in the first place.


What would the Germans do if they succeed in taking Egypt?

Rather than potentially waste effort and post that in detail, I'll provide a summary. I really don't want to waste time posting much on what would happen if Germany took Egypt if it's destined to be ignored.

1) Railroads can be built as well as roads once a nation conquers an area. As a reminder, the Germans have roughly from August 1941 to May 1942 to make headway on construction and even if it takes another 6-9 months their overall fuel supply situation would be better than it was OTL by summer 1943.

There is really big question of what to do after the virtually impossible has been accomplished. Do they cross the Sinai? How? Advance across some of the more inhospitable areas to reach Iraq? It would take literally years before anything useful came out of this endeavour.

2) Oil rigs can be damaged and then can be repaired. This will require people who know how to repair things like engineers.

Oh sure enough.

3) Pipelines can be built and trucks can be used to haul oil from oil fields to the Levant coast. Before someone tells us, we should all recall that the trucks will not drive themselves: they'll need drivers. And fuel.

Transcontintal pipelines???? Years.

4) Of course the Germans will have troops in the Middle East. How many? As simply a police force, the number would be small. To fight British units hanging on in the region, certainly more. For a tactical attack on Russia at Baku) more.

I leave this as it is...

5) Attacks on the USSR at Baku from the south would have to be from Iran unless Turkey allowed an attack from it's territory. By air, Tabriz is 260 miles and Mosul is 470 miles. By land there are 3 passes that one can use to cross the Caucasus. Taking Baku intact would be the likely plan.

To attack USSR from the south??? The Americans took two years to build a railway through that area. No. It is impossible for Germans to seriously consider this approach.

http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/JanFeb01/MS610.htm

Here's an interesting article that speaks exactly to this issue.

It's written by a military man and contains many quotes by military men.


Maybe people can read it. As he is writing only OTL, it's interesting on a number of points;

1) the north African ports actual capacity had been reduced due to the RAF

"The other significant ports in the area of operations, Benghazi and Tobruk, had nominal throughput rates of 2,700 and 1,500 tons per day, but administrative difficulties and attacks by the Royal Air Force (RAF) limited their actual capacity to 750 and 600 tons per day, respectively."

And German division needs 100 tons delivered to frontline per day to actually fight. And you are proposing 7 German division, airforce of a 1000 airplanes, trucks (thousands of them)...

2) Rommel was never sent the number of trucks he requested

"British historian D. Braddock adds, "Fuel, water, and ammunition were sources of constant anxiety to the German commander but his greatest problem was the lack of serviceable transport vehicles without which no army could survive for long in the desert."

Probably because there were none to spare. You will say Barbarossa. Yes to some extent. Logistics to the other.

3) trucks and supplies were often interdicted by the RAF

"Equally disruptive of Rommel's long intra theater lines of communication was their vulnerability to interdiction by British air and ground units. The fluid nature of operations, coupled with the exposed and vulnerable desert flank, made ground interception of supply convoys along the Via Bardia or one of the lesser tracks by British armored car columns a real problem for the Axis. More significant was the aerial threat posed by the RAF. In the flat, relatively treeless North African desert, vehicular columns (and the clouds of dust they inevitably generated) often were visible from a distance of 50 miles or more on clear days. This led one member of the Afrika Korps to lament that his vehicles traveling on the desert floor were like "cherries on a cake" to the RAF pilots flying overhead."

And LRDG.

4) north Africa had significant strategic importance. According to Rommel:

"With the entire Mediterranean coastline in our hands, supplies could have been shipped to North Africa unmolested. It would then have been possible to thrust forward into Persia and Irak [sic] in order to cut off the Russians from Basra, take possession of the oilfields and create a base for an attack on southern Russia . . . Our final strategic objective would have been an attack on the southern Caucasian front aimed at the capture of Baku and its oilfields. This would have struck the Russians in a vital spot. A great part of their armor, which was carrying the main burden of the fighting on their side, would have been out of action for lack of petrol. Their air force would have been crippled. They could no longer have expected any further effective American help. Thus the strategic conditions would have been created for us to close in from all sides and shatter the Russian colossus."

To Rommel this is obvious. To Hitler, not so much. What had strategic importance for Germany was the lebensraum in the East...

Of course. The ports were small. No one argues that. The roads weren't great and there were no usable railroads. All true. In Russia, there were marshes, muddy roads, ice and snow. In Normandy there was no port and then lots of hedgerows. In the Pacific there was a lot of ocean to cross. In Italy there were mountains and narrow valleys. War always has logistical problems. They aren't excuses; they're hurdles.

Hurdles Germany has no ability nor will to attempt to find the ability to overcome. They had both the will and ability to overcome it in Russia. Allies had to fight in Normandy and overcome the hurdles. The Germans felt they did not need to fight in Africa. So the hurdles were not surpassed.

In 1941 the Germans were losing port capacity due to the RFA and losing trucks due to the RAF. Rommel wasn't given more planes to stop that because of Barbarossa. He wasn't given more trucks, fuel, armor or supplies due to Barbarossa. Given more planes, port capacity would have been protected and therefore much larger. Given more port capacity, and then trucks (and air support to protect supply columns), more supplies would have reached the front. Rommel's forces would have been better supplied and probably even more armor added to his forces.

Given more port capacity there would be more planes to protect them. Given more planes there would be more port capacity to supply them. Chicken or egg?

Per Rommel, he could have won with his existing forces if he had been given the supplies he needed. It's therefore difficult to understand how he would have absolutely, unequivocally lost had he not only been given the supplies he needed, but air superiority and more armor.

North Africa was war of attrition. The Germans lost.
 
I think this must be the first thread where i'm actually skipping entire posts cos its just so much drivel - yes Dr Strangelove I'm looking at you

at least with a Gudestein thread people still read his posts

(i think it must be the wall of text approach that the good Dr uses that is so off-putting)
 
It's always the same stuff. What if they did this, this and this. The problem is 99 percent want their opponents to ignore these disturbing developments and do nothing. One thing the British had was ample sea transport capacity to reinforce Egypt if, let's say, Germany built up its own forces.
 
Tripoli everywhere :)

Well Tripoli litetally means triple city in greek, it was a common name in the ancient era, in fact both tripoli in Libya and Lebanon were created by phoiniceans , of course the Greek name stuck after some time.......

Tripoli in Arcadia,greece is a much newer city, though the meaning is the same.....
 
It's always the same stuff. What if they did this, this and this. The problem is 99 percent want their opponents to ignore these disturbing developments and do nothing. One thing the British had was ample sea transport capacity to reinforce Egypt if, let's say, Germany built up its own forces.

I haven't even mentioned that as it seemed superflous to the argument, but yes. The British maintaned a reserve to intervene in French NA should the Germans attempt to occupy it. And if the Germans decide to do it, they would probably do it on Algerian or Tunisian coast. And the British will be then welcomed in Morroco. And thus keep Gibraltar. Even if Spain intervened, it would be some time before Gibraltar was taken and entrance into Med locked. And the British would immediately occupy Canary Islands. IIRC from Chruchill's memoirs, they maintaned a reserve for this operation well into 1941.
 
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