Rommel — Master of Efficiency and Resource Management
One of the great military leaders of modern times.
Erwin Rommel was a German WWII general who is still studied in military schools today and is considered one of the great modern strategists of battlefield tactics. In the North Africa theater, he marshaled the German and Italian soldiers who had been beaten back to Tunisia. In a series of lightning battles, he beat back the allies all the way within miles of Cairo. Losing Egypt would have threatened the entire Allied supply and communication channel through to the colonies and could very well have turned the tide of the entire war. He was eventually overwhelmed by insurmountable odds, but even in full retreat, he managed to extract the bulk of his army without being captured by the Allies.
On a darker note, Rommel was a German general under whose leadership some have argued that war crimes occurred. That said, he also opposed the Nazi party when he could and collaborated with the last plot to remove Hitler from power. We may never know the full extent of his involvement in the crimes of the war, but we do know quite a bit about how he led on the battlefield, both from his own troops and from his prisoners, who by and large praised his leadership. One area that Rommel also excelled at was working with very limited and dwindling resources.
