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Tactical victory leading to operational failure: Rommel in North Africa.

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Tactical victory leading to operational failure: Rommel in North Africa.

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Collection	School of Advanced Military Studies Monographs
Title	Tactical victory leading to operational failure: Rommel in North Africa.
Author	LaFace, Jeffrey L.
Abstract	Since the end of the Cold War, the worldview is that the United States is presently the only superpower. The expectation, within the Department of Defense (DOD) and the world's other military institutions, is that this status will exist for the next twenty years or until the year 2020. Even as the world's only superpower, the United States military has adopted a formal approach to joint and coalition warfare as the methodology to fight future military conflicts. This is for two reasons. The first reason is to gain world and national political consensus and legitimacy for any operation requiring the use of US military forces. The second reason is even the military resources of the United States are limited and we must conduct military operations as part of a joint coalition force in order to reach our and the coalition's political endstate. This monograph asks the question: Can tactical victories guarantee the accomplishment of the coalition's operational aim? This monograph will use the example of the German Afrika Korps in North Africa to answer this question. The purpose of the monograph is to show the outcome when a more militarily capable member of a coalition dictates the conduct of military operations. This consideration is relevant to the United States Army due to our superpower status and our military capabilities relative to the rest of the world's military organizations. The monograph will show that Rommel's reliance on the tactical level of war and his lack of an operational understanding of what he was attempting to accomplish lead to their defeat in North Africa. Rommel's conducted tactical operations because he was not trained for or capable of conducting operational art. Because of this, he failed to support the strategic and operational aims of the political and military leadership. He lacked the cognitive creativity and therefore, the tension to support his government. Rommel's opportunism led to many victories on the battlefield but ultimately had an adverse effect on the Axis war effort.
Keyword	Superpower; Multinational force; Coalition warfare; Military operations; military capability; Operational art; Tactical operations; Erwin Rommel; German Afrika Korps; North Africa campaigns; Axis forces; World War II; World War, 1939-1945; WWII; International politics; Leadership; Lessons learned; Alliances; Blitzkrieg; Military strategy; Failure; Organizational effectiveness
Series	Command and General Staff College (CGSC), School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) Monograph
Publisher	Fort Leavenworth, KS : US Army Command and General Staff College,
Date, Original	2001-05-15
Date, Digital	2001-05-15
Resource Type	Textual
Format	PDF; Adobe Acrobat Reader required; 47 p.; 1.99 MB.
Call number	ADA 397473
Release statement	Approved for public release; Distribution is unlimited. The opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the student-authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College or any other governmental agency. (References to these studies should include the foregoing statement.)
Repository	Combined Arms Research Library
Library	Combined Arms Research Library Digital Library
Date created	2005-07-14

Tactical victory leading to operational failure: Rommel in North Africa.

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