{"id":3561,"date":"2013-02-11T08:24:48","date_gmt":"2013-02-11T14:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3561"},"modified":"2013-02-11T09:00:45","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T15:00:45","slug":"week-war-10-16-february-1941-erwin-rommel-arrives-north-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/?p=3561","title":{"rendered":"This week in the War, 10–16 February 1941: Erwin Rommel arrives in North Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Erwin<\/a>

Erwin Rommel in Tripoli, February 1941<\/p><\/div>\n

This week in the war, 11 February 1941, the British War Cabinet made its fateful decision to send an expeditionary force to Greece, where a German invasion was expected by March. Thus O’Connor<\/a> lost the resources and the window of opportunity that would have allowed him to continue his advance and to drive the Italians from North Africa.<\/p>\n

The next day, German general Erwin Rommel arrived in Tripoli. Units of his Afrika Korps<\/em> were arriving by the end of the week.<\/p>\n

Rommel was bold, unorthodox; he was The Desert Fox<\/em>. As his star rose, a series of British generals were to decline and fall: Wavell, Cunningham, Richie, Auchinleck, and, of course, O’Connor, who was captured.<\/p>\n

Rommel would advance, besiege Tobruk<\/a>, take Tobruk, and eventually enter Egypt. It would take two Battles \u00a0of Alamein to stop him. By then, Hitler had opened a whole new front. He was diverting vastly more resources away from Rommel and towards Russia than Churchill had ever diverted away from O’Connor and towards Greece.<\/p>\n

\"Units<\/a>

Units of the Afrika Korps in North Africa, early part of 1941<\/p><\/div>\n

By 1944, with North Africa long since lost to the Axis, Rommel headed Army Group B<\/em> and was charged with the task of repelling the Allied invasion of northern France. He was to die later that year by his own hand, forced to commit suicide as a result of his complicity in the failed 20 July bomb plot against the Fuehrer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week in the war, 11 February 1941, the British War Cabinet made its fateful decision to send an expeditionary force to Greece, where a German invasion was expected by March. Thus O’Connor lost the resources and the window of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[219,381,382,276,328,57,380],"class_list":["post-3561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-war-ii","tag-afrika-korps","tag-alamein","tag-bomb-plot","tag-greece","tag-oconnor","tag-rommel","tag-the-desert-fox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3561"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3612,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3561\/revisions\/3612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondbysecondworldwar.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}