North Africa front

Did dealing with Rommel's exploits push back the timetable by months/years for successful Allied landings in France?

Did the Axis ultimately come out "ahead" by a little even though Army Africa was lost?

 

Had they pulled out afer El Alamein/Torch the axis as a whole probably would be ahead in the game, part of the Japanese early success was due to the best ANZAC troops being in the desert. But the attempt to hold Tunisia was a huge waste of troops.
The allies could not invade in France with a good chance of success before mid/late 1943, the Lufwaffe and German army were still too strong to fight under unfavorable logistc conditions. Even Sicily would be a very tough nut to crack in late 1942/early 43 with the axis having the forces lost in Tunisia available, probably the best option for a 1943 invasion would be Norway where both sides would have problems reinforcing but loosing Norway would not be a knockout blow.

 

Wolfy, Two Things:

1. Post in the Correct Forum
2. Add a little 'Meat' to your posts.

Thread Moved.

 

Don´t know if it really slowed down the Overlord "project". The main matter was that the US decided that it is "Europe first". They had to ship tanks, troops etc to Europe and Britain, develope and produce in numbers proper landing ships,and since this happened after Dec 1941, even without the Africa battles don´t know if earlier than summer 1944 would have been possible anyway. And Stalin was pushing the whole time for the earliest possible landing time ( remember Dieppe 1942 as an "example" to Stalin,perhaps?)

I recall reading the US wanted to make an invasion already in 1943 ( instead of Torch), but i fear that would have been a sad massacre because the US troops had not been in battle before. So the Africa and Italy battles probably helped in making a successful Overlord, I think.

Just my two cents...

 

Didn,t Hitler rely on Norway for his Iron Ore.?

 

No, he relied on iron ore from the swedish mine in Kiruna, but he wanted to secure the port of Narvik in Norway for shipping because the Sea of Baltic was frozen during the winter months.

 

When it comes to casualty numbers in North Africa, the Allies tend to inflate the numbers. In his book "Das Deutsches Afrika Korps", page 188, Hanns-Gert von Esebeck states:

”Vom begin der Alameinslacht bis zum 30. November verlor die Armee 13054 Deutsche und 17904 Italiener. Young, der englische Militärchriftsteller gibt demgegenüber allein für die Alameinschlacht die Zahl der Verluste mit 59000
Mann an, unter denen 34000 Deutsche zählt. Da nur 24000 Deutsche an der Front standen, ergibt sich die unricthigkeit dieser Angaber von selber. Die englische Verluste in Alamein beziffert er auf 13500; trotz der materiellen Überlegenheit waren sie also höher als die deutschen Verluste"

What he says is that the British claimed more German casualities on the El Alamein front than there were German troops, actually ten thousands more casualties than the germans had troops alltogether.

Note: Hanns-Gert von Esebeck was one of Rommel's staff officers.

RAM

 

With 'Overlord' planning they really only had a 'window of opportunity' once every year.

That 'window' is in the 6 to 8 weeks from mid May to mid July.

Outside that the weather and tides are too unpredictable to bet the farm on, so any variation forward or back would have been a full year near enough.


John