Who were the opposing generals during the desert war in world war 2?

Answer 1

Rommel: for Germany, and Montgomary: from Engeland. There were many, but Rommel and Montgomery were the most famous. Field Marshal Graziani was the theater commander on the Axis side, and Wavell on the Allied side, when the desert war began. After Italy was soundly defeated by General O'Connor at Beda Fomm, Rommel was sent with two German armored divisions (the 15th and 21st, more famously known as the Afrika Korps), and they defeated a succession of British generals and armies thereafter. Only Sir Claude Auchinleck gave the Afrika Korps serious competition, and he fought them to a standstill at First El Alamein which many historians (including this contributor) believe to be the more decisive of the two battles. Churchill was disappointed with Auchinleck's ability to finish Rommel, so he replaced him with General Gott whose plane was shot down in route. Gott survived the crash but was strafed when he ran back to rescue other survors. Churchill replaced him with Bernard Montgomery, an Irishman raised in Australia. At some point, Wavell was replaced by Sir Harold Alexander. [Montgomery was a superb strategic thinker, but he was extremely pro-British and little influenced by political necessity.] Montgomery finished Panzer Army Afrika at Second El Alamein, but Rommel and the Afrika Korps escaped to Tunisia. Despite invasion of North Africa by the Americans, bad weather caused the desert war drag into 1943. Italy became the junior partner in the Tunisian campaign, and Rommel retired because of ill health, leaving General von Arnim to surrender Axis forces in this theater, and he spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp in Canada. Rommel and Montgomery would again face each other in Normandy in 1944, but that is another story. No disrespect intended to our Australian brothers, but the above contributor neglected to mention that General Leslie Morshead commanding the 9th Australian Division successfully defended Tobruk from Rommel in '41, resisting a month-long siege. Operations Brevity and Battleaxe failed to relieve Tobruk, but Operation Crusader drove Rommel back. Pearl Harbor changed this situation, as the three Australian divisions were recalled to defend the homeland against the Japanese. Three days later, Italian Navy frogmen sank two British battleships in Alexandria Harbor, and Axis supplies flowed freely into North Africa. When Rommel returned in '42, the anti-tank ditch had filled in with sand, and Tobrok was defended by green Indians and South Africans. Rommel took the port city in a single day. The capture of Tobruk was of negligible strategic value because Italian convoys preferred to take the safer route to Tripoli or Benghazi, as Malta was never captured by the Axis, due in no small part to Rommel. This contributor regards Rommel as a great general and tactical mind, but he was not the strategic mind that Montgomery was. Of all the actors who portrayed Rommel, the British actor James Mason is regarded as the best. He played Rommel in "The Desert Fox," and reprised the role in "The Desert Rats" which refers to the 7th Armored Division, also present at Tobruk in '41. After a raid on Fort Cappuzo, Mussolini called the 7th despicable desert rats. The 7th Armoured adopted the desert rat on their shoulder patch, and they fought again in Operation Desert Storm, 1991.