Comments by "Nicholas Conder" (@nicholasconder4703) on "South African Historians TRY to Defend PIENAAR" video.
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I will agree from what I have watched that Pienaar's inaction in not truly defensible. However, his subsequent actions in later battles demonstrates that he was not acting out of cowardice. It is possible that early in the battle he may have felt that splitting the division into its separate brigades, all of which were fighting out of supporting distance, was a bad idea. Facing an armoured division with the force he had may have given him a lot of concern, and a "case of the jitters" (much like Major Schoettel at Tarawa). Later in the battle, following Totensonntag, he would probably have been extremely leery of following the orders of a high command that were obviously incompetent, didn't really know where the enemy was and were flailing around the battlefield. Since Pienaar died in 1942, we will never know his actual mindset or thoughts on the matter. However, from what I have read in Wikipedia about the period following Crusader until his death, he was a competent and well-loved commander. Perhaps, like Stonewall Jackson during the Peninsula campaign, he was having issues of some sort. After all, having bad days seemed to be the norm in this battle from Cunningham and Rommel down through the entire chain of command on both sides.
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