Rommel: The Italian Perspective

so what did the italians think about ramen both during the war and after the war now this is a very interesting question for many reasons because one major problem with romney is that the portrayal from the germans the british and also the u.s side was very biased or slanted in various ways and additionally the italians were rather close to romer as well so they had some more direct experience whereas the us and british were far away and the germans had well their own agenda i mean i made a video on the various agendas of all the different sides during the war for germany was a pre-war and after the war so how this everything is complicated and several or many aspects of these don't apply to the italians additionally new sources came up so the british during the war they interrogated of course the italians but they also wired helped them during while they were captured and in recent years many looked at what the german prisoners talked about and but the italians were for mostly ignored so now one italian scholar looked up what they said about roman generally the italians had also their own myth and agenda and their own buyers which we definitely need to address first so for them north africa was basically a glorious defeat so the major importance there was that they blamed everything on fascism but the italians fight valorously so the italian valor versus the bad fascists so this was their basically their national myth about north africa after the second world war and additionally they also had to counter the the myth basically portrayed by both the germans and the british that the italians were the incompetent ally of romer so to a certain degree the the few of the talents is also there to counter a certain degree what the british and also the germans which portrayed romney so you have this yeah as you can see it gets a bit complicated so now first i address very shortly the popular view of rommel basically and it's only slightly mentioned on the side so basically he was seen as born as one the great captain and was arrogant and basically he was the incarnation of the tectonic arrogance what they tell and sometimes feud but let's not look now at the more professional side what the military feud romney is and there we go for the world time fuse and then for the post-war views now for the what-time fuse commando supremo the high command of the italians already in 1941 had various doubts about his leadership this was because he was quite insolvenate and they were not getting it long this seems very valid because rommel is very well known even in the first world war to ignore the chain of command to disregard orders or certain rules for instance recently i was at a conference as a guest and they talked about rommel's actions during the first world war and denoted that he ran into the the area of the neighboring company with his troops which is an absolute no-go and this was rather became more apparent because after the talk one colonel he was all a military historian i would this this is absolutely no go and he was very very vocal about this issue for me it was like okay he broke the rules but this is a major issue because if you random to the area of the other company friendly fire can occur various other problems as well and this continued also into the second worldwide romer as some of you might know was rather close to hitler he was in to certain times in charge of his bodyguards basically and you could i and basically the command he got for the seven panzer division during the battle of france in 1940 was to his closeness to hitler additionally to a certain degree the african core as well and quite often he went directly to hitler and ignored the genuine command of germans as well and he also ignored mostly the commando supremo which officially were his superiors so as you can see he mostly ignored the german chain of command and i think he probably completely ignored the italian chain of commands too so commander supreme might had a point here clearly now for the british recordings it's very important the recordings were taken usually after defeated after a la la mine or after the fall of tunis so one can argue while the italians at this point were rightly in shock or quite in distress because they were shortly after the feed yet the offer notes that they're actually in some cases quite lenient or quite balanced different views and for instance many blamed actually at this point fascism mostly and also many of the interviewed or many of the the higher generals were actually pro-german there were some even argued that directly and said well i'm probably the most pro-german guy here now for junior officers they were mostly positive about rommel so they know that he is an excellent commander he was close to the troops and sharing their hardship but some argued also that he was mainly lucky and he had some mad gamblers and his his success was to certainly because he was lucky one colonel was very negative about him he said yeah it was basically a reckless action to go for suez whereas others even argued that after el alamein robert lu blewed a trap for the british and he would lure them in so he had some still some card in the backhand or something so this this major few points are the magician that can still win and the reckless gambler so these are basically the extreme points on on the more junior and senior officers not the high high level ones now for al alamein some argued well he had no better alternatives others argue well he overstretches supply lines and he focused way too much on tactics and one very important negative point some brought up was that he banned the 10th italian core now this is very interesting because this is one of the myths of the italians that rommel abandoned their attempted core and actually the core commander itself himself stated this is not valid they couldn't be saved to a certain degree and if he tried to save them he would probably lost all his division or way more divisions this is his argument so but this is a fundamental point the italians brought up against revolution now the retreat uh following after lr mine is by many criticised very strongly although many also point out or generally it's seen as one of a very important and successful retreat now here's a very important point the africa corps retreated out of libya which was the most cherished italian colony and they were italian settlers there so they had a stronger emotional view to this than for us it's oh it's a piece of desert mainly now in march 1943 rome left and then one can see that they actually start to blame the other generals or blame the other channels even more what was very interesting then when rommel was a commander in italy that most of the captured italian generals didn't care about much this anymore and now one interesting point happens at one point a martial in italy takes over the government and the british interrogate the the italian commanders and and the talk of them and they they basically have this view that they hope that rommel would take over the chartered government in germany that this is to certainly would be a wishful thinking or something and one italian general basically noted yeah that's a nice pipe dream you have there guys but rommel maybe a brilliant soldier or something but he's clearly not a politician forget it he's non-politically and he he can't i think he even states he can't survive or something but basically okay not gonna happen this is a very interesting point here that they explicitly point out that he's not a politician or a political in contrast to other german generals for instance like castlevania so this is also goes in hand with what i talked why the wehrmacht was so effective to a certain degree that the germans very much focused the channels on being a political as much as possible or at least the thought could be it's a very interesting aspect in general here now very important here when the italians get interrogated by the british they are more positive about romula and they're more likely to defend him in contrast to when they are just wiretapped and they don't know that they are basically they are speaking and somebody is listening now for the wartime view of the italian military it's basically way more nuanced than that for instance from the british side so they point out the chivalry and the courage but they also have quite some critique like the basic point is they see his tactical brilliance but the contrasted against the italian sovereign staff work which they think is more important so so they're actually not so keen on as tactical achievements yet in contrast to the german side venture when the germans usually criticize rommel they usually critique his lack of ostrand experience in the eastern front and that helens usually don't bring this up now you would argue probably yeah i mean they don't have australian experience neither but actually one of the important commanders there messi was an important command on the ostrom beforehand so actually some of the italian commanders had experience from the eastern front but the this is usually not brought up about rommel and i also see this now sometimes in the comment section that people usually bring up yeah aroma on the eastern front had no chance or something along those lines we can't know we didn't see him fight there we don't know and he he was an experienced commander even during the first world war and uh in india and in the mountain regions so he probably could have adapted to a certain degree to the eastern front as well of course it would probably been a bit more careful but we can't know anyway let's now move to the postable situation now here the point is basically they point out he's a warrior and he's chivalrous and but he had some human effects and he also there were some memoirs brought up by romulo not by him post honestly which were called war without hate and the italians basically to certainly reuse them to to put on their own view like that they blame the italian system and the italian military but it uses this evidence for the italian valor so into a certain degree they also hijacked robert yet on the other side the hijack him similar to the british but they're quite skeptically about him this is the main difference and the official service history is actually quite negative so the official service history of the italian armed forces denote him as arrogant reckless and disoriented um that he blamed his allies so the italians and the tactical merits he brought up were insufficient for an army command so one regular point is brought up against romney's usually that he was a good tactical guy but he was overrated or not qualified for this a high level of command i mean this was also brought up by gerhart ghost the military historian um he wrote about the romney leading his panzer division in france like a company commander and i pointed out like the company of the company comes a battalion then comes the regiment think of the brigade and then it comes to division so to put this in a bit in context we're speaking about 250 150 to 250 men versus 10 000 for a panzer division or not so yeah quite a big difference here they also pointed out that this racism prevented him from utilizing the italian infantry properly and that his verbal orders were confusing so german mission command probably was not very well suited with the italians and that he was rush and stubborn and everything yeah not doesn't sound very positive note that this is not direct quotes from the official service history this is uh in reference of somebody interpreting the service history now the italian commanders in the memoirs were not very favorable from benito so the praise was limited so they know that he lost touch with the slow italian units and a lot of luck of course people can argue with luck this is i also pointed out in my ghost division video that he was quite lucky many times but rommel was consistently lucky and also quite successful first world war in the second one but to a certain degree that just putting it to luck is i think a bit of an overstretch but also ignoring the factor is also and so so it was not just total tactic brilliance but it was also not just purely luck now jizyap manchinelli makes a very interesting point he was at one point the military attached to berlin but then was one of the generals he basically knows pre-alamine there was this glorified view of rome from the italians and post-alarming is basically just a scapegoat and this is the both between these two extremes now he also noted that roman was quite dynamic and of course girolos because i don't know this is the the key point i guess and then he was torn between hitler and germany now he defended then him actually on strategy and logistics so this is also a very interesting point um german militarist during peterleep brings out he notes that rommel actually went through a learning period and that he was not so ignorant about logistics and similarly that he changed in various aspects his views on many other topics so there's always this point when the critics when they point out something and when they refer to him and he also points out that for instance that a lot of the german generals were quite envious of romer especially with his closeness to hitler then that he didn't have a general staff education and so there's as many aspects in here again romney is complicated now back to marcinelli and he noted on a critical side that rommel was absent sometimes at critical times which also happened during d-day and that he was very reluctant or never admitted his error and was stubborn and rarely changed this isn't decision and ignored usually the opinions of others this was a very interesting point about rommel that i mentioned earlier he ignored often the chain of command but he was very harsh if his subordinates did this so he took some privilege you could say but didn't grant it to others and one general point marginally makes he he thinks there's a pattern basically the closer to the front somebody was the closer was the mutual understanding between the sides now before i do the summary one important final point rumble unlike montgomery and castle ring was not hated by the italians so you point out okay they might not have really liked him but they didn't hate him which is quite in contrast to these other two channels now to summarize the italians were clearly more critical about rumble than for instance the british or the germans for the most part the praise is very limited and the author of the article i refer mostly notes that the italian view is actually rather close to the scholarly review we have now of robert which i'm not particularly sure if i agree here from what i read in his article it appears more negative than the score review to a certain degree but then again the problem is with rommel and the scholar review is that there's a lot of back and forth so early on basically rommel was uncritical reception then i think was a very critical reception and now to this critical reception comes to certainly get a counter-critical reception again so like peter leap is more more sometimes your points are the positive aspects about rambling again and and this is the main problem i also see for myself because i quite often i change the direction of my videos over the years to a certain degree to counter basically at one point the one side then the other side and now i try to basically counter both sides because i get comments basically from from people like completely unreflected ah so positive and then there are others that are just negative on some topic and it's like you are not right and you are also incorrect it's like guys let's bring him some nuance some reflection and there are some points you can argue and in some points it's like yeah it's just no just black and white yeah and so depending on the exposure from which side you react differently so i had recently talked with some other people it was quite interesting and i pointed them out it seems you only you only get confronted with these myths but you know the myths or oversimplifications on the other side as well and this is actually the real benefit of the channel because i see stupid comments from all sides and it's quite interesting then to see okay so what to bring in now also very interesting was in general to see lately when the professionals talked about romelu as mentioned before i was on a conference about the first volvo and there was a presentation about what romney did in the first world war and afterwards the german military historians who most of it know knew each other as well they were actually quite a heated debate about romero in certain interpretations about his part in the military resistance and how he conducted himself on the battlefield and everything around it was and i also i think to a certain degree was a generational gap as well so and there's the generation divide from from like uncritical very critical to counter critical and at one point we'll probably be far enough and say okay yeah well this was kevin rummel this was the desert vox and our view is more or less this now and yeah he had some technical mirrors he had some problems with logistics this and that and forth and then we can all just mainly agree or if we disagree we don't get very angry or aggravated or something i hope you learned something new big thank you to my patreons especially jack for sending me creek in north africa thank you for watching and see you next [Music] time [Music] you

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Views: 103,169

Rating: 4.927752 out of 5

Keywords: Military History not Visualized, Military History, mhv, Italian Perspective on Rommel, What did the Italians think about Rommel, Erwin Rommel, Wüstenfuchs, Desert Fox, ww2, Afrika Korps, DAK, Wehrmacht, Comando Supremo, Bastian Matteo Scianna, Rommel Almighty?, Italian Assessments of the “Desert Fox”

Id: LRT0PFJg53I

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2019