F72062 DAK COMMAND

Despite their defeat in World War I, the German officer corps in the interwar period still saw the main means of victory in a future war in an offensive operation. Thus, he drew a different experience from the Great War than his French counterpart. Based on the experience of 1914-1918, including the infiltration tactics used by the Stosstruppen troops, but also noticing the intense development of aviation and armored weapons, part of the German officer corps (e.g. Gen. Heinz Guderian) developed theoretical assumptions of the so-called lightning war (German: Blitzkrieg), that is, striving to knock down the enemy with one decisive offensive operation carried out in the shortest possible time and with the maximum intensity of forces and resources. The German officer corps was also trained according to this offensive doctrine of war in the 1930s and during the world war. It is also worth adding that German officers of almost all levels in the course of World War II used the principle of the so-called command by task (Ger. Auftragstaktik), that is, they outlined to their subordinates the task to be achieved and the forces at their disposal, while the execution of the task was entirely up to them. Such a model of command, based on very well and uniformly trained officers, led to the fact that the German army was highly flexible in action and was able to react faster to various levels than its opponents (e.g. the French army during the campaign of 1940 or Soviet army of 1941). This system proved successful (especially at lower levels) throughout World War II. It is also worth adding that many outstanding commanders served in the German officer corps from the Second World War, including: Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel and Walter Model.Erwin Rommel (full name: Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel) was born in 1891 and died probably by forced suicide in 1944. He was one of the most famous German generals of the Second World War - he was nicknamed the Fox of the Desert. Erwin Rommel gained his war experience from the first weeks of the First World War. In its course, as an infantry officer, he was active in Argons in France, Italy and Romania. In the course of this conflict, he often showed personal courage and skillfully led his troops into battle. For his achievements on the Italian front, he was awarded the highest order of imperial Germany - Pour Le Merite. After 1918, he remained in Reichswer. During this period, he also wrote a great and still up-to-date book "Piechota attacks!" (in German "Infanterie greif an!"). At the beginning of World War II, in recognition of his merits, he was the head of Adolf Hitler's Headquarters in Poland. However, already in the summer of 1940, he commanded the German 7th Armored Division with great success during the French campaign. However, in the years 1941-1943 he led the Afrika Korps during his fights in North Africa, often at that time presenting an unconventional, courageous, extremely offensive action, sometimes not taking into account the conditions of logistics. Ultimately, due to the numerical superiority of the Allied forces and its own problems with supplies - the campaign in North Africa was lost by the Axis countries. In the period 1943-1944 he held high command positions in France. Due to the still unclear role of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the attack on Hitler of July 20, 1944, he was most likely forced to commit suicide in October 1944.