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.But General Fehn, their commander, ordered the tanks of theTwenty-first Panzer Division to empty all their remaining gaso-line into the tanks of the Fifteenth Panzer, so that at least one di-347 david irvingvision s tanks could fight on during the night and protect theother until more gasoline could be trucked forward.Thus theGermans managed once more to extricate themselves from theenemy s jaws of encirclement before they fully closed; they scat-tered Shermans, armored cars and enemy troops in all directionsas they burst through to the west again.That evening the enemy s Radio Cairo and the BBC wereheard crowing that Rommel and his army had at last been bot-tled up at Nofilia Þö a town on the coastal highway that Rommelhad in fact slipped through already Þö and that at that very mo-ment Montgomery was hammering home the cork. Rommelburst out laughing: Provided we get some gasoline tonight,they re going to find the bottle empty. Radio Cairo now an-nounced that Nazi troops trapped at Nofilia were fighting des-perately to break out.The Rommel diary noted with some glee: In reality, just one platoon of the 115th Regiment got cut off.And they have managed to escape, too, leaving only their trans-port behind. German aircraft observed that even the road fromMersa Brega to Nofilia was deserted, so evidently Buelowius s le-thal handiwork and booby traps were forcing the enemy to maketortuous detours instead.And there was proof that Montgomerywas also encountering logistical problems: eight American bomb-ers landed in error at Tamet airfield Þö still in German hands Þöand were found to be airlifting gasoline from Tobruk to Mont-gomery s leading units.The Germans did not let the gasoline goto waste.Rommel had driven off along the desert road to Buerat earlyon December 17.The landscape here was very different. It s al-ready spring where we are now, he wrote home. The air isspiced with the fragrance of a thousand flowers. His staff wereimpressed by the Buerat defenses and the deep antitank ditch,but Rommel s eyes were Þö inevitably Þö already cast much farther348 the trail of the foxwest: to the Mareth line, on Libya s frontier with Tunisia.Heclaimed that this Buerat line was, like all the others, vulnerable tooutflanking in the south.Most of its gun sites were empty, sincehe had only 160 antitank guns left.He had virtually no mines,ammunition or supplies at Buerat.Most of his troops had onlyrifles or machine guns Þö better suited to the defense of a moun-tain position like Mareth.The more he flew and drove up anddown the Buerat line, the less he liked it.Nor did he see any tacti-cal reason to defend Tripoli any longer.The big port was alreadyunder heavy air attack.And what good was it as a port if no shipscould reach it? Of eight more big ships recently bound for Trip-oli, all but one had been sunk.So the arguments began all overagain.He made his pessimistic views plain to Marshal Bastico onthe first morning of his arrival at Buerat.It all hinged on thegasoline supply. I have sixty tanks left, with twelve more atBuerat and ten stranded with no fuel at Tripoli, said Rommel. Many of them are the new long-gunned Panzer Specials.Theycan pack quite a punch, provided I get the gasoline. Armbrustersummarized: Conference at Buerat with Bastico.He too holdsthe view that the Buerat line cannot be held, as no ammunition orgasoline has been arriving.We ll need to fall back on theHoms Garian line [just east of Tripoli].He also is seemingly for alinkup between the two command theaters Þö meaning Libya andTunisia.Bastico s report on this to Rome brought an avalanche downupon Rommel.Mussolini himself signaled him: Resistance to theutmost, I repeat, resistance to the utmost will be offered by alltroops of the German Italian Panzer Army in the Buerat line. The Italian High Command followed this message with an evenharsher directive: on no account were the 30,000 Italian infan-349 david irvingtrymen under Rommel s command to be sacrificed like the firstbunch. The implied criticism of Rommel s actions after El Alameininfuriated the field marshal.The Rommel diary laid bare his rage. C in C is absolutely furious at this.He is being ordered to defendthe Buerat line to the utmost, though it s by no means clear whatthe Italians understand by utmost. If he is supposed to evacuatethe Italian troops from the front line, then he won t be defendingit to the last man but to the last German.It will be all over for theItalian soldiers too, then.And what is he supposed to do if theenemy does not give him the chance to defend the Buerat linebut just marches around it, outflanks it? There is no doubt that all this pressure was eroding Rom-mel s mental stability.He clearly considered defeat, and even ca-pitulation to Montgomery, as likely and perhaps inevitable, be-cause on December 21 he again urgently appealed in a secret letterto Lucie: Haven t you sent off that English dictionary to meyet? Not surprisingly, Rommel s attitude aroused fresh distrustin Rome. When Rommel wants to withdraw, Marshal Cavallerowanly recorded in his private diary, he just withdraws. Cava-llero also detected in Rommel a distinct tendency to exaggeratehis own difficulties: Every day he has a desperate battle, whichjust is not true. He told Kesselring: In my opinion, Rommel isjust looking for an excuse to retreat.No matter where he was, eversince Sollum/Halfaya Rommel has talked nonstop about with-drawing. Kesselring had to agree: Rommel doesn t realize that he stillhas quite a good hand of cards, if only he would play them. Rommel refused to listen to Kesselring now.He blamed theLuftwaffe, equally with the Italians, for reducing him to thisplight. Relations with Kesselring are strained, he admitted to350 the trail of the foxLucie. He fails to appreciate just how grim our position is. Heaccused Kesselring of milking the supply ships now beginningto dock at Tunis and of giving the new Fifth Panzer Army nowbeing raised in Tunisia the tanks, ammunition and gasoline thatrightly belonged to Rommel.There is some evidence that this wasso; but it would be wrong to blame Kesselring alone for it.GeneralHans-Jürgen von Arnim, commanding the new army, was ag-gressive and optimistic, as Rommel had himself been in February1941.And what profit was there in trucking the Tiger tanks, high-velocity guns and other supplies all the way down the coast toLibya if Rommel was intent only on retreating?Rommel s lugubrious radio signals to Rome and Berlin as-tonished even the enemy, who were regularly intercepting anddecoding them.Perplexed, the joint Intelligence Committee dis-patched from London to their Middle East commanders this topsecret assessment: Ever since the battle at El Alamein, Rommelhas had the tendency to look over his shoulder.Rommel isagain showing signs of nervousness at the danger of a British out-flanking movement, and appears to overestimate the Britishreadiness to attack. Rommel s reluctance to hold on to the Buerat positionbrought the conflict with Rome out into the open.His Italiansubordinates sided with him, particularly Navarini and GeneralGervasio Bitossi, the Littorio Division s commander.Theypleaded with him to start transporting the 45,000 nonmotorizedGerman and Italian infantry farther westward while there was stilltime.Still the Italian High Command refused to see things Rom-mel s way [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.But General Fehn, their commander, ordered the tanks of theTwenty-first Panzer Division to empty all their remaining gaso-line into the tanks of the Fifteenth Panzer, so that at least one di-347 david irvingvision s tanks could fight on during the night and protect theother until more gasoline could be trucked forward.Thus theGermans managed once more to extricate themselves from theenemy s jaws of encirclement before they fully closed; they scat-tered Shermans, armored cars and enemy troops in all directionsas they burst through to the west again.That evening the enemy s Radio Cairo and the BBC wereheard crowing that Rommel and his army had at last been bot-tled up at Nofilia Þö a town on the coastal highway that Rommelhad in fact slipped through already Þö and that at that very mo-ment Montgomery was hammering home the cork. Rommelburst out laughing: Provided we get some gasoline tonight,they re going to find the bottle empty. Radio Cairo now an-nounced that Nazi troops trapped at Nofilia were fighting des-perately to break out.The Rommel diary noted with some glee: In reality, just one platoon of the 115th Regiment got cut off.And they have managed to escape, too, leaving only their trans-port behind. German aircraft observed that even the road fromMersa Brega to Nofilia was deserted, so evidently Buelowius s le-thal handiwork and booby traps were forcing the enemy to maketortuous detours instead.And there was proof that Montgomerywas also encountering logistical problems: eight American bomb-ers landed in error at Tamet airfield Þö still in German hands Þöand were found to be airlifting gasoline from Tobruk to Mont-gomery s leading units.The Germans did not let the gasoline goto waste.Rommel had driven off along the desert road to Buerat earlyon December 17.The landscape here was very different. It s al-ready spring where we are now, he wrote home. The air isspiced with the fragrance of a thousand flowers. His staff wereimpressed by the Buerat defenses and the deep antitank ditch,but Rommel s eyes were Þö inevitably Þö already cast much farther348 the trail of the foxwest: to the Mareth line, on Libya s frontier with Tunisia.Heclaimed that this Buerat line was, like all the others, vulnerable tooutflanking in the south.Most of its gun sites were empty, sincehe had only 160 antitank guns left.He had virtually no mines,ammunition or supplies at Buerat.Most of his troops had onlyrifles or machine guns Þö better suited to the defense of a moun-tain position like Mareth.The more he flew and drove up anddown the Buerat line, the less he liked it.Nor did he see any tacti-cal reason to defend Tripoli any longer.The big port was alreadyunder heavy air attack.And what good was it as a port if no shipscould reach it? Of eight more big ships recently bound for Trip-oli, all but one had been sunk.So the arguments began all overagain.He made his pessimistic views plain to Marshal Bastico onthe first morning of his arrival at Buerat.It all hinged on thegasoline supply. I have sixty tanks left, with twelve more atBuerat and ten stranded with no fuel at Tripoli, said Rommel. Many of them are the new long-gunned Panzer Specials.Theycan pack quite a punch, provided I get the gasoline. Armbrustersummarized: Conference at Buerat with Bastico.He too holdsthe view that the Buerat line cannot be held, as no ammunition orgasoline has been arriving.We ll need to fall back on theHoms Garian line [just east of Tripoli].He also is seemingly for alinkup between the two command theaters Þö meaning Libya andTunisia.Bastico s report on this to Rome brought an avalanche downupon Rommel.Mussolini himself signaled him: Resistance to theutmost, I repeat, resistance to the utmost will be offered by alltroops of the German Italian Panzer Army in the Buerat line. The Italian High Command followed this message with an evenharsher directive: on no account were the 30,000 Italian infan-349 david irvingtrymen under Rommel s command to be sacrificed like the firstbunch. The implied criticism of Rommel s actions after El Alameininfuriated the field marshal.The Rommel diary laid bare his rage. C in C is absolutely furious at this.He is being ordered to defendthe Buerat line to the utmost, though it s by no means clear whatthe Italians understand by utmost. If he is supposed to evacuatethe Italian troops from the front line, then he won t be defendingit to the last man but to the last German.It will be all over for theItalian soldiers too, then.And what is he supposed to do if theenemy does not give him the chance to defend the Buerat linebut just marches around it, outflanks it? There is no doubt that all this pressure was eroding Rom-mel s mental stability.He clearly considered defeat, and even ca-pitulation to Montgomery, as likely and perhaps inevitable, be-cause on December 21 he again urgently appealed in a secret letterto Lucie: Haven t you sent off that English dictionary to meyet? Not surprisingly, Rommel s attitude aroused fresh distrustin Rome. When Rommel wants to withdraw, Marshal Cavallerowanly recorded in his private diary, he just withdraws. Cava-llero also detected in Rommel a distinct tendency to exaggeratehis own difficulties: Every day he has a desperate battle, whichjust is not true. He told Kesselring: In my opinion, Rommel isjust looking for an excuse to retreat.No matter where he was, eversince Sollum/Halfaya Rommel has talked nonstop about with-drawing. Kesselring had to agree: Rommel doesn t realize that he stillhas quite a good hand of cards, if only he would play them. Rommel refused to listen to Kesselring now.He blamed theLuftwaffe, equally with the Italians, for reducing him to thisplight. Relations with Kesselring are strained, he admitted to350 the trail of the foxLucie. He fails to appreciate just how grim our position is. Heaccused Kesselring of milking the supply ships now beginningto dock at Tunis and of giving the new Fifth Panzer Army nowbeing raised in Tunisia the tanks, ammunition and gasoline thatrightly belonged to Rommel.There is some evidence that this wasso; but it would be wrong to blame Kesselring alone for it.GeneralHans-Jürgen von Arnim, commanding the new army, was ag-gressive and optimistic, as Rommel had himself been in February1941.And what profit was there in trucking the Tiger tanks, high-velocity guns and other supplies all the way down the coast toLibya if Rommel was intent only on retreating?Rommel s lugubrious radio signals to Rome and Berlin as-tonished even the enemy, who were regularly intercepting anddecoding them.Perplexed, the joint Intelligence Committee dis-patched from London to their Middle East commanders this topsecret assessment: Ever since the battle at El Alamein, Rommelhas had the tendency to look over his shoulder.Rommel isagain showing signs of nervousness at the danger of a British out-flanking movement, and appears to overestimate the Britishreadiness to attack. Rommel s reluctance to hold on to the Buerat positionbrought the conflict with Rome out into the open.His Italiansubordinates sided with him, particularly Navarini and GeneralGervasio Bitossi, the Littorio Division s commander.Theypleaded with him to start transporting the 45,000 nonmotorizedGerman and Italian infantry farther westward while there was stilltime.Still the Italian High Command refused to see things Rom-mel s way [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]