After the outbreak of the Western European Campaign in 1940, the Italian dictator Mussolini took advantage of the fire and robbery, declared war on Britain and France when the German victory was already decided, and launched an attack on the British army in the colonial battlefields of North Africa, which quickly collapsed under the British counterattack, and had to ask Germany for help with a thick face. Hitler promoted Major General Rommel, commander of the 7th Panzer Division, who had distinguished himself in the Battle of France, to the rank of lieutenant general of the German "African Army", arrived in North Africa in February 1941 and took over full command of the German-Italian army.
Rommel
Using bold mobile offensive tactics, Rommel repeatedly defeated the British army, winning the reputation of the "Desert Fox", and by October 1942, the German-Italian coalition army had penetrated deep into the Egyptian line of El Alamein, and British rule in Egypt and the Middle East was at stake. However, the "African Panzer Army" led by Rommel was already at the end of the crossbow, and of the total number of more than 100,000 German-Italian coalition troops, the number of German troops and German tanks was only more than 30,000 and more than 100, and as a result, it failed under Montgomery's counterattack and lost the last chance to occupy Egypt and even the Middle East.
So the question arises, why didn't Hitler give Rommel effective reinforcements to help him win this crucial battle? Although Rommel's forces had four German divisions by the time they advanced to El Alamein, namely the 15th Panzer Division, the 21st Panzer Division (upgraded from the 5th Light Division), the 90th Light Rapid Division, and the motorized "African Division" composed of a number of airborne units, after thousands of kilometers of long desert combat, his "African Panzer Army" had been very badly depleted.
Rommel in North Africa
In fact, among the first German troops to arrive in North Africa in early 1941, there was a complete lack of an armored regiment, because the regiment's tanks sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea with the cargo ships. This was one of the important reasons why Hitler was reluctant to increase Rommel's troops: the route from Italy to North Africa was under the control of the Royal Navy and Air Force for most of the time.
Hitler had a fear of the sea, and he himself admitted that the "Sea Lion Project" that invaded Britain was eventually shelved, and there was more or less a reason for this. The presence of British naval and air forces on the island of Malta, and the weakness of the German Navy's surface combat forces, made any reinforcement operation from mainland Germany to North Africa a dangerous voyage. The lack of tanks, troops, and supplies has always plagued Rommel's tactical play, and in Hitler's view, the limited reserve force of the German army, instead of risking across the sea to reinforce North Africa, it is better to transfuse blood through the railway to the more important Soviet-German battlefield, and everyone will think so.
The German Navy had almost no surface power in the Mediterranean Theater, the escort task of the transport fleet was mainly undertaken by the Italian Navy, and before the initiative in the Soviet-German battlefield changed hands, the decisive force that really assisted Rommel's advance was actually the existence of the 10th Air Force of the Luftwaffe. Based on the Italian Airfields, they completely suppressed the Royal Navy and Air Force of Malta, smoothing the Mediterranean route for a while while also covering the rapid advance of Rommel's ground forces.
With the Soviet-German battlefield tightening and the main force of the 10th Air Force transferred out in the second half of 1942, The British fighters and the Mediterranean Fleet in Malta could be described as a resurgence, violently attacking all the past Axis fleets, and Rommel's good days were over. The German armored units, which lacked air cover, also suffered heavy losses under the overwhelming superiority of the Royal Air Force, so Rommel lacked not only reinforcements and tanks, but also the exhaustion of the Luftwaffe was the second important reason.
Monty came
Was Hitler unable to give Rommel some necessary assistance, then? Apparently not, in May 1943, after Rommel was sent back to recuperate, the Tunisian campaign was completely over, and the remnants of the German-Italian army of 250,000 people entered the prisoner-of-war camp, of which the German 5th Panzer Army (renamed the African Panzer Army) under the command of General Arnim alone had seven divisions, including the 10th Panzer Division and the Waffen-SS units, and the number of captured was as high as 125,000. That is, in the final stages of the North African battlefield, Hitler still had the ability to urgently carry out reinforcements, the problem was too late!
History cannot be repeated, but if Rommel had had seven German divisions and enough tanks at the Battle of El Alamein a year earlier, the clumsy Montgomery would almost certainly have been defeated, and the Germans could have rushed to the Nile to completely occupy Egypt, and then swept north through the Oil-producing regions of the Middle East, southward to India to meet the Japanese, and even detoured in the direction of the Caucasus to meet the Soviet-German "Army Group South" division.
Montgomery in North Africa
It would have been a very frightening situation, and the situation that the Joint Committee of Chiefs of Staff of the United States and Britain feared the most, but none of this had happened, for Rommel's Afrika Korps were at the end of their ropes. Ultimately, the third most important reason is that Hitler's global strategic landscape is still insufficient, and Germany's strategic resources are really insufficient. Before Rommel went to the North African theater, Hitler had no intention of opening up a battlefield in Africa, and the original plan was to use these valuable troops in the Balkans.
However, if Mussolini is not helped by this "indisputable ally", then the Axis Group may split or Mussolini's downfall. How to say it? Just as he passively intervened in the Spanish Civil War, Pelommel's conquest of North Africa was Hitler's reluctant choice, an involuntary combat operation.
Admiral Anim
Hitler thought most of all that the presence of the Legion of Rommel would stabilize Mussolini's regime and, once a limited victory in the North African theater, would also be able to strike and contain British power hard, nothing more. As for the strategic goal of going deep into the Middle East and roundabout the Caucasus, he did not even think about it. He did not even expect that Rommel would achieve such great success with such a limited number of troops that the German Army General Staff and the Italian General Staff initially gave Rommel the task of simply defending Libya so as not to let the Italian army collapse, and they even prevented the Afrika Korps from attacking the east indefinitely.
Even in the Tunisian campaign of surprise reinforcements, Hitler's goal was only to prevent the total collapse of the North African battlefield, so that the Allies would inevitably land on Italy in the next step, so the Germans were still a temporary action of "headache and foot pain". As a result, because the sea route was tightly sealed, the seven elite German divisions eventually had no way to retreat and the entire army was destroyed. Wouldn't it have been better if Arnim's 5th Panzer Army had not made such unnecessary sacrifices and simply thrown itself into the Soviet-German battlefield, which was in short supply? In a sense, Hitler's strategic trade-off ability is particularly similar to Captain Chang Kaishen.
Rommel on the Western Front
When Rommel cried out for reinforcements in 1942, Hitler sent only a medal and a field marshal's staff, which could not frighten Montgomery, and the victory or defeat of the war depended on strength.