Salut les gars,
my poor French doesn't allow me to join the next 29 Nov. 2009 evening debate, but let me try anyway to avoid you begin on the wrong foot.
Rommel had the fuel for that late August offensive: both the numbers and Bayerlein and Westphal's memoirs coincide. The problem was not fuel, but the fact Rommel was by now a worn out man after one year and half of war in the desert who give up very soon that attack.
You could read, for example, the recent Vincent P.O' Hara' Struggle for the Middle Sea for plenty of datas about this matter (By the way it's quite curious that such a favourable and well documented book about the Marine Nationale too had almost no echo in France; it seems you guys loves the studies about the débacle, but fear anything positive about your enterprises except for the Free French 7.000 men and women * well known facts. Considering that De Gaulle was fighting for democracy such an attitude towards the history of more than 40 millions of French citizens if quite far from that ideal).
Hoping some pepper could aid the next debate
A bientot
EC
* Including, of course, in that big total, Spaniards, Polish, a full Foreign Legion regiment, natives from the Empire and abroad ect.