ABSTRACT
Eisenhower desired a truly Allied command, with a real unity of direction and a centralized administrative responsibility. Rommel was well aware of the difficulties of coalition warfare and, drawing from his own experience, he shrewdly guessed that the several nationalities bred dissension — the Army, he noted, “probably lacks cohesion and suffers from the inherent weakness of an Allied command.” Troops had on occasion been employed piecemeal, without respect for unit integrity, and intermixed with British elements, and some American commanders believed that the British were being favored in the choice of missions, equipment, and supplies. Judging the distances too large to rely on radio messages, ordinary telegraph, or the telephone, hampered by the bad weather that made air travel erratic, and feeling that coordination required personal discussion and compromise, he motored more than one thousand miles in the course of several days, a fatiguing journey on the Tunisian roads.
