Customer Reviews

Rommel: Battles And Campaigns

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In Rommel: Battles and Campaigns, Macksey (a British officer in WWII) continues his efforts to atone for British defeats in France and North Africa by painting the German military leadership as incompetent. This book is less of an objective review of Rommel's campaigns, but rather a poorly masked attempt to completly discredit any and all actions taken by Rommel in WWII. The strong bias in this account is evident within the books first few pages and continues throughout the volume. I have tried to read this book twice without success. The unbalanced nature of the account is so annoying that after my second attempt the book found it's rightful place in my circular file. Hence this review.

Avoid this one like the plague! There are too many numerous and well written accounts of Rommel's war record to waste time on this one.

The reader should don a pair of waders before opening this book because of the amount of mud that it slings. This book has little to do with examining battles or campaigns, rather it is an exercise in character assassination. It is another entery in the author's ham-fisted attempts to convince the reader that Rommel was a sham, and a mendacious simpleton.

Kenneth Macksey, in his biography Rommel: Battles and Campaigns, is highly critical or Rommel. Macksey sees Rommel as a leader who changed little about his tactics from the First World War, despite massive technological changes. Macksey believed Rommel had a huge amount of luck in his battles. This differs from most historians' views, with David Frazer (Knight's Cross; HarperCollins) pointing out that war relies to a large extent on luck. There is also the cliché that `you make your own luck'. Macksey views Rommel's advance through France in 1940 critically, and is quick to move acclaim from Rommel to his superiors, fellow generals, and troops. Although Macksey does have examples to support this view, they are highly specific, and are lost in a general evaluation of Rommel's successes. Macksey sees Rommel's success in North Africa as due to the poor leadership of the Allied forces, not the skill of the `Desert Fox'. Frazer again has a different view, and states that in almost every single battle of his African campaign, Rommel was hugely outnumbered, but won some marvelous victories against vastly superior opposition. This was an interesting account, obviously from an anti-Rommel perspective, but giving excellent details on all of Rommel's battles, great maps and visuals as well.

Kenneth Macksey is not the kind of writer who will produce a repetition of existing arguments and bore the reader. It is true that he looks at Rommel with a very critical view but that is what I expect from an expert on World War II who is very accurate and does extensive research for his books. Don't let bad critics to keep you away from this book, because it's a terrific factual short account of Rommel's meteoric carreer and not an hagiography of the man. The photo captions are very informative and the maps are numerous and very good.

Anglo accounts of World War Two frequently sing the praises of Rommel and his victories. Reality? Rommel was second rate for the Germans, and got his job, and promotions largely due to propaganda reasons and friendship with Hitler.

While a tactical genius, and excellent at operations, his stratgic level decision making was poor at best... ignoring logistical realities and the larger strategic picture.

Rommel's job in the sand was to hold off the British- not conquor the Middle East. He failed, largely due to ignore logistics.

Macksey does an excellent job reviewing Rommel's life and accurately pointing out his strenghs and weaknesses.

If you are looking for a honest appraisal of Rommel, buy this book. If you a Rommel fan-boy, don't.