Book Review - Rommel’s Desert Commanders—The Men Who Served the Desert Fox, North Africa, 1941-42
Rommel’s Desert Commanders—The Men Who Served the Desert Fox, North Africa, 1941-42
Written by: Samuel W Mitcham Jr.,
Praeger Security International, London, 2007,
ISBN: 9780811735100, 214 pp.
Reviewed by: Antony Trentini
While many English-language military biographies are concerned with Allied leaders from the Second World War, there is a market for exploration of the lives of great commanders on the other side of the conflict. Samuel Mitcham Jr.’s book, while focused broadly on the immensely popular ‘Desert Fox’—Field Marshall Erwin Rommel—does not concentrate solely on a portrayal of the famous general. Instead, Mitcham examines the lives and exploits of the many excellent commanders who served Rommel during his famous North African campaign, who deserve at least equal credit for the legendary performance of the Deutsche Afrika Korps. He examines Rommel’s commanders in some depth, grouping his miniature biographies of the various subordinates into the campaigns in which they played their greatest roles. The biographies cover the entire lives of the soldiers in question, many of whom served in North Africa under Rommel for only a small part of their careers.
While each biography, taken alone, is interesting, thoroughly researched and generally well–written (a few niggling errors aside), they are monotonously similar when the book is taken as a whole. The few biographies that stand out from the rest are those where Mitcham offers his own opinion on the soldier, such as his refutation of the usual portrayal of Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein as a brilliant commander, or his argument that, despite anonymity, General der Panzertruppen Walter Nehring was the most brilliant German panzer commander of the Second World War. Arguments such as these were welcome and interesting when the author bothered, but were unfortunately far too few, and certainly insufficient to break up the work’s tiring uniformity. In this light, therefore, readers will most likely enjoy Rommel’s Desert Commanders more if it is read in parts or treated as a reference volume.
Another deficiency in Mitcham’s work is the lack of historical context. While he does offer brief campaign sketches, they appear seemingly at random throughout the chapters, with no systematic attempt to present a synopsis of each operation. Instead, only those aspects of campaigns relevant to each biography are described, with the unfortunate result that some elements are repeatedly covered. The appearance of a brief campaign synopsis at the start of each chapter would have been better, allowing the reader to familiarise themselves with the campaign as a whole, and the role that each of Rommel’s units and formations played, so as to better ‘locate’ the biographies of the soldiers that follow.
The book’s maps are one of its highlights. They successfully show critical information, such as unit locations, axes of advance and major lines of communication, without bogging the reader down in the unnecessary minutia. However, while the maps of the North African campaign are excellent, given the volume of information included in each commander’s biography regarding their service on the Eastern, Mediterranean and/or Western theatres, similarly detailed maps of these other fronts would also have been of use.
Overall, Mitcham’s book is a good account of the lives and careers of the officers who served with Rommel during the North African campaign. While covering in some detail dozens of German officers, Mitcham manages to avoid glossing over their lives or, conversely, giving too much detail. If the author had structured his book better, and broken up the pattern of work more effectively, it would have been excellent. As it stands, however, it is still a solid work and definitely worthy of a place in the specialist’s or generalist’s library.
