This is a mode of WW2 analysis that I found annoying/stupid. Citino opens an inquiry at the strategic/operational level but then pivots to a discussion of whether strategic/operational alternatives were feasible, given Rommel's personality. That's a different topic.Von Bock wrote: (quoting Citino)
Pause? Halt? Wait? Anyone who expected Rommel to ease up on the throttle clearly hadn’t been paying attention.
A lot of WW2 commentators do this: make basic intellectual errors that are assumed to be excused - and usually are - in service of debunking some notion of German superiority put to rest in the '70's/'80's (when Citino and many of his ilk were forming their basic gut feelings about WW2).
This is another platitudinous Citinoism that, in the Anglosphere at least, receives little pushback. An "overseas campaign" across a ~500km LoC is being compared to an actual overseas campaign that, for the British, extended on a ~20,000km LoC (google "beef or Bardia").Von Bock wrote:While it would be easy to view all these illnesses as simple bad luck, they were, in fact, the price Rommel and all the rest of them were paying for fighting an overseas expeditionary campaign with inadequate resources.
Rommel and a few Italians held off the 500mil-strong British Empire for 2 years in the desert. Not because Rommel was a genius (he was meh, flawed) but because the logistical handicap of fighting 20k km from home is at least as great as fighting with Malta astride one's much shorter LoC.