Fisking Mo Dowd? Wow, you'd think, Stephen, that there'd be better things to do---after all, her so-called columns are but word-association games.

"Hmmm, I need to put in a name of someone that'll sound cool. Not too obvious, like Babe Ruth, although it would be nice to put a girl in. How about some General? Not that icky Patton, w/ all his warmongering. Hmmm. Oooh, ooh, I know! That other general guy, Rommel! He fought on our side (not like that silly Sherman, who fought for the South!)."

I would note, however, that the inability to defend France was not nearly as much Rommel's fault as von Rundstedt's (and Enigma, of course, but that's a separate aspect). Rommel, having fought us and the Brits in the desert, wanted to deploy the armored forces right on the coast, on the assumption that our airpower would cripple any attempt to move a centralized reserve.

In this regard he was overruled by von Rundstedt and OKW, who were used to the German experience on the Eastern Front, where Soviet airpower was far less of a factor. Had Rommel succeeded, 12th SS Panzer, Panzer Lehr, and 21st Panzer would almost certainly have been closer to the Cotentin.

As it is, 21st Panzer, his old unit, was able to make a dash for the beaches on D-day.

Just a thought....

Is it just me or was MoDo saying that Clinton looks like Rommel, not the Bush administration:

"But now the Bush "dream team" is making the impetuous Clinton look like Rommel."

Your points about Rommel being overrated seem apt.

Fisking Dowd? Why even bother paying attention to the NY Times stable of stooges anymore? Dowd has about as much knowledge of WWII as she does of natural-looking hair coloring.

I suppose there are some similarities between Clinton and Rommel though. After all, the military under Clinton was often under-supplied and misused in Africa (ahemSOMAILA).

I'll stand by Bush's policies any day. We've stomped two dictatorships flat and prevented additional terrorist attacks, all with fewer casualties than the first 10 minutes at Normandy. Only a mindless sycophant like Dowd could argue that we're losing the war.

what's weird about this is that the Clinton-approved foray against Saddam that took placed just before the vote on impeachment in the house was named....

operation desert fox

odd.

The real reason to consider Rommel overrated is that he participated in a small way in an inept plot to kill Hitler, and died for it. A really good tactician would have either alerted Hitler and come out on top, or made sure he was killed... and come out on top. WWII offers no shortage of what-ifs, but among the more tantalizing and mindbending is the one in which Rommel, the most popular and famous German general (whatever the reality of his skills), suddenly sues for peace as the head of an Army-led, Nazi-purged German government. But, as noted, it's hard to imagine that because it's so hard to imagine Rommel really having the cojones for that big a move.

Which brings us to 'Wag the Dog', and back once again to Dowd. A dog who thinks she's a wag.

I will guess that Ms. Dowd is saying that Team Bush is making Clinton look like the Desert Fox himself, and is deliberately playing on the name of the 1998 bombing mission.

Those bits of trivia almost surely exhausted her knowledge of Rommel - the notion that he was over-rated, or coined the phrase "The Longest Day", are surely beyond her.

You underrate Rommel drastically.

Yes, Patton pushed Rommel back in Tunisia - but he had all the supplies he needed, while Rommel's supply lines were strangled by Allied aircraft and British submarines. His victories were achieved on a shoestring, except in France, and even there he achieved a lot against a superior enemy. His defeats at El Alamein and Tobruk were consequences of being overextended and on the tail end of the supply chain. As to the West Wall - he made the best he could of a bad situation.

Clinton was even less a Rommel, when you view Rommel in his real context.

I believe Rommel was respected by his own troops, and his enemies as well.

Saying Rommel only had two big wins misses the bigger picture.

Rommel didn't just make it into Egypt. He fought his battles on "British" territory (the Brits were defending Egypt and North Africa--it was the Germans who were the invaders). And he did that with very few troops who were poorly supplied. Montgomery pushed him out with three times the number of troops Rommel had and had secure supply lines (British ships and planes prevented Rommel from getting much in the way of Gas, ammunition, etc. Hard to operate tanks without those items).

With all these strikes against him, he tied up British and American troops for a long time, thereby preventing a Western Front in Europe.

Winning the battles your supposed to win is no great honor. Winning battles when every strike is against you? When your fighting on "foreign" territory with no supplies and outnumbered? Now THAT'S impressive.

And with regard to Normandy--a lot of tanks got blown up on trains (where they don't do much good) because they were held back. If the superior German tanks had been in the French bochage like Rommel wanted? There's a good chance D-Day wouldn't have succeeded on its first attempt.

I'm just surprised she decided to compare Clinton to a high-ranking Nazi. I thought she was only supposed to use that comparison for the Bush team. Whoops...

Rommel was a good general, but according to his Lieutentants (and sorry, but I researched this 11 years ago, so I can't recall the cite off the top of my head), what he never remembered was supply and such... So his successes were largely due to those generals under him, who made sure that the tanks had fuel, and the guns ammo, when Rommel put his plans into action.

When Rommel was defeated, as someone else noted, it was largely due to the supply issues - we had them, we took his out. I won't fault Rommel with the Normandy invasion - as far as I can tell, he was absolutely correct there. He was of the opinion that the landings must be repulsed the same day, that no bridgehead could be tolerated. The Atlantic wall was there to stop the invasion long enough for the panzers to smash them into the ocean.

Had Rommel been on the scene that day... He might have gotten the panzers and reserves moving immediately.. and at least would have gotten Hitler _awake_.

Had Omaha Beach fallen, leaving the flanks exposed... (And as it was, most of Omaha was taken when the German defenders retreated - out of ammunition...)

So I might not say that Rommel was that overrated, as much as he wasn't good if he didn't have a command staff, and people above him who'd listen. As strange as it sounds, she might be onto something... Not that its a new occurance, but certainly Clinton's political career, and all the "brilliant" moves are because of _someone under him_ steering him that way, keeping him on course, dotting the I's and crossing the T's.........

(But I don't think that's what she meant)

Addison

Rommels 'success' in Normandy was never realized as his concept of the defense was not the one that he had to implement. With the allied air dominance over the battle area and having the reserves away from the landing beaches and unable to close for a variety of reasons, Rommel was pretty much limited to tactical ripostes that at best could only buy a little time.

Whatever his personal faults, Egoman Monty brought a screeching halt to the back and forth in N Africa. His slow but steady style recognized that GB just flat couldn't afford the kind of casualties that they had sustained in WWI although methinks he missed the point of mobile warfare. Pushing back the line keeps casualty rates up, while a breakthrough tends to see the rates drop once you're in their backfield.

I agree; Rommel's not quite as overrated as you make him out to be. But I can't imagine that Maureen Dowd could hold forth for more than thirty seconds on his accomplishments.

So she's no historian. But isn't she supposed to be a writer? How, just how, does something "purr with gravity?" How does an abstract concept like "global stewardship" purr, anyway?

Vacuous thoughts, incompetently worded. Dowd's column is a terrible waste of some of the most valuable column space in the world.

Stephen Ambrose in his book on D Day reverses the honors between Rommel and Von Rundstadt.

Note also that the panzers were under Hitler's personal control-- when Von Rundstadt ordered them moving at 7 am on D day, and requested permission for his move, the High Command refused it -- because Hitler was asleep!

Compare Clinton to Rommel? Rommel was much better (in decisiveness). Maybe a better comparison (FOR DECISIVENESS PURPOSES ONLY -- CLINTON IS NOT GENOCIDAL) would be Rommel's ultimate boss, AH.

Minor historic point: Tobruk was in Libya -- Italian territory at the start of WWII. Rommel *re*captured Tobruk for (and with) his Italian allies, then advanced to his actual high-water mark of El Alamein over the summer of 1942.

As far as your claim of Rommel's prowess goes, I'm with you, Steven. Rommel was made a Field Marshal because of the enormous size of the allied German-Italian force he commanded. Throughout most of the war in the desert his forces outnumbered the British. The fact that he was perpetually short of supply shows that the British used their Navy and Air Force correctly, rather than trying to win the war on the ground alone as Rommel (like most German high officers) thought he could.

Regarding Normandy -- Rommel may have guessed right where the Allied blow was going to land, but there's no reason to believe that the German armor would have fared better moving by rail into the Cotenin Peninsula in May (when the 8th Air Force was already pounding the rail net in France) as opposed to June. And since Eisenhower had daily reconnaisance reports prior to Overlord, it's hard to believe that Rommel could have moved his reserve undeteced -- meaning that SHAEF could and would have developped a counter-move based on their air and sea supremacy in northern France.

Unless you believe the myth of superior German generalship, where Germans get to fix their blunders while the Allies must persist in their own.

Another thing to consider about Rommel's successes in North Africa was that he had good intelligence on the British, courtesy of Colonel Bonner Fellers (I think that was his name). Col. Fellers was the US military liaison to the British Army in Alexandria. He would regularly send detailed reports on what the British Army had, and what it was planning, back to Washington. In code of course. Thing is, the Germans had cracked that particular code. So, often Rommel was reading Col. Fellers reports in North Africa before the War Department was. Once this was discovered, we of course changed the code. That dried up a major source of intelligence for Rommel. I think Col. Fellers actually got a commendation for his work with the British. Don't know if he got one from the Germans ;-)

Signals Intelligence is an often overlooked part of the equation. I know, I used to be in that business (but VERY post-WWII).

Dowd wasn't comparing Team Bush team to Rommel. She was saying that they make Clinton look like Rommel, i.e. a great military commander. Not that I'm defending Dowd. This is just more of her usual petulant twaddle.

Overrated?
Rommel?
Fortunately, those above me have pointed out that he did more with less than pretty much any other general on any army during the war.
Crack open just about any of B.H. Liddell Hart's books on WW2 and Rommel pops out as a great general.

Rommel's rep in the West is overrated. He was one of the best Division commanders in history, but foundered when commanding anything larger. In the Desert, his opponents(Brits) were tactically and opperationially ham-fisted and inflexible.

When just ranking the Generals in the German Army in WWII, he wasn't even in the top 50, in terms of skill.

Morse Boy- The double agent that was in Britian working on D-Day (codenamed GARBO) did get decorated by both sides. He had an OBE and an Iron Cross.

Rommel was a great tactical commander, but I think he was promoted past his strength. He never did pay enough attention to supply, and spent his time roaming around the front instead of where his staff could reach him.

The problem with putting all the reserves at the beach was the US Navy. Naval gunfire doesn't get grounded by bad weather. I think the Hermann Goering Division got it's collective a** handed to it by the USN at Sicily and another panzer division was put out of action on the Cotetain.

"When you set out to remake the middle east the last thing you want to do is make it up as you go along"

Dowd abviously doesn't know a damned thing about Rommel - who led from the front and by the seat of his pants.

"Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!"

I love that line.

Oh PuG,

As I pointed out, Rommel outnumbered the British throughout most of the desert campaign. The bulk of his troops were Italian, true. But the bulk of the 8th Army's troops were colonials, Commonwealth troops, and so on. The fact that the Brits got decent use of their allied troops and the guru genius Rommel only got supply problems from his allied troops tells quite a bit about Rommel's vastly overstated reputation as a guru genius. He managed to do less with more than the British had.

You know the blogosphere's getting vicious when ROMMEL gets fisked.

Rommel's chief handicap was not supply. it was Hitler.

The defeat at Kasserine would have been greater had Rommel been given the chance to carry out his entire plan instead of just part of it.

Normandy: Rommel understood Allied air superiority in a way that no other German General on the General Staff did. He already had to deal with it in Africa. His plan to combat the allies on the beach within hours was correct given allied air superiority. Again Hitler dithered.

==============================

Now I am a bit of a current day revisionist. Clinton did the best he could re: the Islamics situation given the American people's mood. We are after all (don't forget it) a government of the people. The best part of what Clinton did for the war effort was to strengthen the American economy. The armed services have been greatly strengthened by the high tech boom.

I think Bush is doing a pretty good job too. Other than the lanslide of government spending.

This post is ridiculous as is the discussion that follows. I came to this post via instapundit, and I'm shocked that he linked to such an incompetent discussion. As far as I can tell the post starts out by completely misreading a fairly simple sentence by misinterpreting the comparison Dowd makes as comparing bush to rommel instead of clinton to rommel. The post then proceeds to go on a diatribe about what a bad general Rommel was. First off, it doesnt appear from the comments on the board there is any level of historical agreement on whether Rommel was overrated or not. Finally commenters on the post appear determined to tell us that Dowd knows nothing about Rommel, themselves having no idea what Dowd does or doesnt know. It seems pretty damn simple to me that dowd is pushing hte position that Rommel was a "good" general and that the bush team is acting so incompetently that it makes Clinton look "good". I'm amazed instapundit would link to such a pathetic waste of people's time. I think the poster should recognize it's a stupid post, say so and close the discussion.

She's just another typical NY Times columnist. They all think they're wits, but they're only half right.

I find the discussion fascinating. Leaving Dowd out of the discussion and talking about Rommel only makes it better. Maybe if your head was filled with some actual historical curiosity instead of blather you could apreciate it. Shame on Stanford for admitting such a childish prig!

I think she means Stu Rommel, the star quarterback at MoDo's high school. Not only was Stu a brilliant field general, he was the first in a long line of men to jilt the spinster Dowd, turning down her pleas to attend the 1953 Spring Sadie Hawkins sock hop.

Yes, it was painful episode, but it made Maureen what she is today: a bitter, high school-metaphor obsessed, man-stalking harridan.

And now you know.... the rest of the story.

M Simon, you are utterly wrong about Clinton. He was offered OBL's head on a platter, and turned it down. His Democrat Party base would have hated effective military action against hte terrorists. OTOH, they hated Welfare Reform, but that didn't stop Clinton.

The simple fact of the matter was that Clinton didn't care. Stopping the terrorists wasn't important to him. And so we got 9/11.

I think MoDo is entitled to some literary slack here; she is comparing El Clintonista to the popular image of Rommel, which is he was a genius. In fact he WAS a Nazi in all but joining the party, making friends, and I mean good friends, with Hitler in 1939. He was Hitler's boy. I always thought that the Allies built up Rommel as a propaganda tool for our side so people would think we were up against Napoleon himself and then gloriously whipped his ass. Rommel was like Robert E. Lee, a loser who lost hundreds of thousands of men fighting battles that should not have been fought, although Hitler "made him fight" in North Africa with no supplies.

MoDo is hitting Bush. And I think Bush needs a punch or two in the mouth. The planning for the occupation of Iraq is his albatross and men are dying because of his shitty planning.

To heck with MoDo. Great discussion about Rommel.
Rommel's problems with Italian troops were in quality and mobility. Italian infantry, while numerous, was not motorized, a critical defect in mechanized warfare (Think pawns instead of knights, bishops and rooks). They also were poorly led and equipped, and knew it. Italians referred to their tanks as 'motorized coffins', but officers and men in those formations were, in general, higher quality than the infantry.
Non-British Commonwealth troops were usually the best such countries had to offer-ANZAC, South African and Indian.
Rommel's innovations in tank recovery and versatility (he was the first to use the AA 88mm gun in an anti-tank role) speak well to his intellectual abilities.
Rommel swore the oath of allegiance to Hitler, as did all other Wehrmacht officers. If Rommel had a fault re Hitler, it was in honoring an oath to a dishonorable man.
Better had he ignored Hitler's 'no retreat' order at Alamein, and made some sort of sub rosa provision for getting armor to the beach on D-Day and relied on success and his popularity to weather Hitler's wrath.
But he was ill with a chronic gastro-intestinal disorder, and no doubt troubled in 1944 by his knowledge of the Bomb Plot, and the conflicts it caused re the oath of allegiance. Not the man he was in 40-41.
Read Rommel's 'Infantry Attacks', his memoir of WWI, to gain insight into his genius.

At what point will all of you Junior College Tom Clancys take up the point of Dowd's column or are you just going to keep coloring in the margins?

Mistake above: I once did research on Rommel for a film. Rommel first met Hitler in 1934 at a Harvest Festival and impressed Hitler. At the Nurenberg Party Rally of 1936 Rommel forever fixed himself in Hitler's memory bank. Assigned by the Great One to have only six cars follow him Rommel blocked the entire road with tanks. Hitler really dug that. Rommel was by Hitler's side in 1938 when they marched into the Sudeten Land. He was the guy in charge of Adolph's train and had dinner with him daily, spoke with him for hours on end and wrote to his wife: "Today I had lunch with the Führer again and I had some very interesting discussions with him about tactics." Rommel had written a famous military book about infantry tactics. In the movie "Patton" the reference to "I read your book" refers to tank tactics and the famous book on same written by German general Guderian. Incidentally Rommel was Hitler's butt buddy til AFTER Poland, when Rommel asked for and got from his buddy Hitler the command of a Panzer division. Rommel then kicked the shit out of France.

Rommel was the great kiss ass of the German General staff. So maybe the connection to Clinton isn't so far off.

What point would that be tbogg? That Dowd hates Bush & will never pass up an opportunity to take a cheap shot?

To take Dowd seriously gives her far more respect than she deserves.

Why anyone worries about what the ditz writes anymore is the greater mystery.

So, Rommel's final scorecard:

-Beat the French (heck, even the Italians did that)
-Lost to the British (eventually)
-Beat Second-Rate American leadership (Kassarine pass)
-Lost to First-Rate American leadership (Patton)
-Wasn't around when most needed on D-Day

Looks like maybe half a plus (zero for beating the French - that's like a batting practice home run, doesn't count - and half a point for beating the green II Corps) and three minuses.

Vodka Pundit rather under-rates Montgomery, let alone Rommel. Monty may not have been the most dashing General of the war but the British victory at el-alamein was important, both tactically and, more importantly, pyschologically. This was the first time the Axis forces had been decisively defeated on land.
No-one would claim that el-alamein was as decisive a turning point as Stalingrad, but it did matter and it was an important victory that restored morale amongtst the allies and helped pave the way for the eventual invasion of Italy.
Equally, post D-Day Monty is remembered for the Arnhem action, famously filmed as "A Bridge Too Far" which is what it ultimately was. However it came very close to success and its very audacity ought to remind monty;s American critics that he wasn't quite the stick in the mud he's often portrayed as.
As for Rommel - the failure of the Atlantic Wall wasn't his fault. He was the German's best general which is not a small compliment.
And yes, dowd, in her fatuous fashion, wasn't comparing Bush to Rommel.

I thought the point of the post was that Dowd doesn't matter (see title and conclusion) and shouldn't be discussed and to start a discussion on Rommel.

Well done.

So, braddad, I assume that you think that the Commander in Chief is doing a smashing job regardless of what Dowd has to say and that you just happened to stumble upon this thread by accident, not knowing that she was involved.

Must be kismet....

Aaron, I agree. Komal (above) sounds like one of those kids in school who, when the teacher would go off on a fascinating tangent, would kill off the discussion by saying "this isn't on the test, why are we talking about it?"

Meanwhile, I never cease to be amused at how folks like tbogg will go to other people's sites and basically wail:

Why are YOU writing about this?

Or even more amusingly, in comments:

Why are ALL YOU PEOPLE commenting about this??

Ah, glad to see that there'll always be folks like tbogg around to outline the limits of discourse.

Thanks, tbogg!

The factoid that makes this slap at Bush work is that Bill Clinton, on his own, is supposed to be extremely indecisive. One of Hillary's jobs in the Clinton White House was supposed to be making up Bill's mind for him.

I was tempted to Fisk the entire column, but got irritated at her sophomoric style. Look at the bullet points; first one talks about yuppies climbing Mount Everest, second employs "Bushies" (the second most overused shorthand in Slow-Mo's lexicon), the third Rummy (first most), and the fourth starts off with "The neocons", which by Brooks' law means that the rest of the sentence is a lie.

As for Rommel, I agree with the original post--overrated and defeated by Montgomery, who was similarly overrated.

Starshatterer, one big difference supply-wise was that the Commonwealth troops all used the same rifles, machineguns, tanks, & artillery that the Brits used, while the Italians (as far as I can recall) had nothing in common parts or ammunition-wise with the Germans. German rifles shot 7.92mm, while the Italians shot 6.5mm. Germans had 9mm parabellum handguns, while Italy issued everything from a 10.35mm black power revolver to .32 ACP and two 9mm rounds that were NOT 9mm Para. The same story with machineguns. 7.92mm for the Germans, and 7 different machinegun calibers for the Italians. Three of which had the same diameter bore... (8mm Lebel, Breda, & Austrian M1893 ) Enough to make your logistics officer need thorazine

I too am disappointed that you got so lost trying to look for attacks on the president that you completely missed the fact that Dowd was comparing Clinton and Rommel, not Bush and Rommel.

The only thing Monty was good at was self-promotion. He was late to Tunisia, late to Syracuse, late to Messina, late to Caen, late to close the Falaise Gap, late to capturing the V-2 sites, late to capturing the Low Countries, and late to Nijmegan(Sp?) Bridge. He made Bradley look like Patton.

Rommel achieved most of his victories in the Desert by acting inside the Brits decision loop. His recklessness almost cost him everything a number of times, but the Brits couldn't capitalize on his mistakes. I'll admit, he did learn his lesson and his command in France 1943/1944 was as good as could be expected considering the capabilites of both sides.

Who can take seriously anyone with such a large intake of the classic "Molly Ivans", which consists of a fistful of Oxycontin washed down with a couple liters of cheap french red?

MonkeyPants
Imperial Falconer

No, tbogg.

If you haven't noticed a certain "formula" for Dowd's columns in which any Republican is mentioned, then you should be a bit more concerned about your own powers of observation.

Dowd is an unserious person & this is now a very serious world.