patton

[bigmac]

I watched a movie called patton awhile ago and it gave total credit for rommels defeat in africa is this factural or hollywood

[Jon G.]

bigmac, can you offer us your own position on this matter? Fictional movies a rarely the best sources for passing judgment on events of the past.

[bigmac]

I was not judging anything the movie was about general george s patton some was fiction major battles and events were not Ijust wanted to know if the americans could take credit for their general defeating rommel in africa

[Tom Houlihan]

bigmac, your best bet is to grab a book on the North African campaign, and judge for yourself. Otherwise, you're relying on our opinions, which may not be as valuable as some of think!

[alf]

I watched a movie called patton awhile ago and it gave total credit for rommels defeat in africa is this factural or hollywood

The movie did get some things right, there was a big war and it was called WW2 and lots of people got dressed up to attend it. The rest is Hollywood.

[Full Monty]

I was not judging anything the movie was about general george s patton some was fiction major battles and events were not Ijust wanted to know if the americans could take credit for their general defeating rommel in africa

No

http://www.army.mil/cmh/online/Bookshelves/Books3.htm will take you to a US army publications site that has plenty of reading materiel and not just on WW2. It's not heavyweight stuff but it's an excellent resource to have bookmarked.

[Michael Emrys]

bigmac, I will take pity on you this time and give you the short answer...although the advice others have given to grab some books and try doing some reading is the best you will ever receive.

The answer is no, Patton was not the primary cause of Rommel's defeat in North Africa. Rommel had been soundly defeated at el Alamein by Montgomery (over six months before Patton even encountered German forces) and had been chased back all the way from Egypt to Tunisia. In fact, I don't think Patton ever met Rommel in battle. After the failure of Fall Frühlingswind, Rommel was evacuated back to Germany (his health had been very bad for months). By the time Patton took II Corps into battle, Rommel was gone.

Now please do us a favor in return and punctuate your posts so that reading them is not so much work.

Michael

[Virgil Hiltz]

Try Rick Atkinson's An Army At Dawn.