Erwin Rommel: Enemy

Erwin Rommel was German field marshal of World War II. Explore interesting quotes on enemy.
Erwin Rommel: 48   quotes 162   likes

“No plan survives contact with the enemy”

Erwin Rommel

“It is during the pursuit, when the beaten enemy is still dispirited and disorganised, that most prisoners are made and most booty captured.”

Erwin Rommel

Source: The Rommel Papers (1953), Ch. V : Graziani's Defeat - Cause and Effect, p. 96.
Context: When a commander has won a decisive victory - and Wavell's victory over the Italians was devastating - it is generally wrong for him to be satisfied with too narrow a strategic aim. For that is the time to exploit success. It is during the pursuit, when the beaten enemy is still dispirited and disorganised, that most prisoners are made and most booty captured. Troops who on one day are flying in a wild panic to the rear, may, unless they are continually harried by the pursuer, very soon stand in battle again, freshly organised as fully effective fighting men.

“The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning, before the enemy has time to react, deep into his rear.”

Erwin Rommel

Strategies he promoted which have been called Blitzkrieg (Lightning War), as quoted in Europe Since 1914 (1966) by Gordon Alexander Craig

Art , Time

“Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.”

Erwin Rommel

Ch XIII : Now or Never - Alam Halfa, p. 285.
The Rommel Papers (1953)

Chance , Success , Fight