Erwin Rommel

Erwin Rommel

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel () (November 15 1891–October 14 1944) was one of the most distinguished German Field Marshals, and one of the greatest military leaders of his time. He was the commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps in World War II, and is also known by the nickname The Desert Fox (Wüstenfuchs, ), for the skillful military campaigns he waged on behalf of the German Army in North Africa. He was later put in command of the German forces following the Allied invasion at Normandy in the final effort to defend the Fatherland.

Rommel is often remembered not only for his remarkable military prowess, but also for his chivalry towards his adversaries - being one of the German commanders who disobeyed the commando order. He is also noted for possibly having taken part in a plot to assassinate Hitler, for which he was forced to commit suicide before the war's end.

Early life and career

Rommel was born in Heidenheim, approximately 45 kilometres from Ulm, in the state of Württemberg. He was baptised on the November 17 1891. He was the second son of a Protestant Headmaster of the secondary school at Aalen, Erwin Rommel the elder and Helene von Luz, a daughter of a prominent local dignitary. The couple also had three more children, two sons, Karl and Gerhard, and a daughter, Helene. Later recalling his childhood, Rommel (The Desert Fox) wrote that "my early years passed very happily". At the age of fourteen, Rommel and a friend built a full-scale glider that was able to fly, although not very far. Young Erwin considered becoming an engineer; however, on his father's insistence, he joined the local 124th Württemberg Infantry Regiment as an officer cadet in 1910 and, shortly after, was sent to the Officer Cadet School in Danzig.

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A young Rommel as an officer cadet around 1910

While at Cadet School, early in 1911, Rommel met his future wife, Lucie Maria Mollin. He graduated in November 1911 and was commissioned as a Lieutenant January 1912. Rommel and Lucie married in 1916, and in 1928, they had a son, Manfred, who would later become the mayor of Stuttgart. Scholars Bierman and Smith argue that, during this time, Rommel also had an affair with Walburga Stemmer in 1913 and that relationship produced a daughter named Gertrud. (1 p. 56).

World War I

During World War I, Rommel fought in France,as well as in Romania (see Romanian Campaign (World War I) and Italy (see Italian Campaign (World War I)) as part of the elite Alpen Korps. He was wounded three times and awarded the Iron Cross; First and Second Class. Rommel became the recipient of Prussia's highest medal, the Pour le Mérite, an honour traditionally reserved for generals only and which he received after fighting in the mountains of west Slovenia – Battle of the Isonzo – Soca front. The award came as a result specifically from the Battle of Longarone, and the capture of Mount Matajur, Slovenia, and its defenders, numbering 150 Italian officers, 7000 men and 81 artillery guns. His batallion also played a key role in the decisive victory of the Central Powers over the Italian Army at the Battle of Caporetto.

Inter-war years

After the war Rommel held battalion commands, and was instructor at the Dresden Infantry School from 1929-1933 and the Potsdam War Academy from 1935 to 1938. Rommel's war diaries, Infanterie greift an (Infantry Attacks), published in 1937, became a highly regarded military textbook, and also attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler, who placed him in charge of the training of the Hitler Jugend that same year, all the while retaining his place at Potsdam. Rommel was awarded in his class highest war ribbons for achieving excellent performance. In 1937 it was rumoured that Rommel travelled to the United States where he studied tactics used by Confederate Generals, including the brilliant strategist Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest. In the town of Clifton, Tennessee there is a log book at the Russ Hotel with his and several other German signatures, though this has never been verified. Rommel applied his knowledge of past military leaders in his campaign across North Africa. In 1938, Rommel, now a colonel, was appointed commandant of the War Academy at Wiener Neustadt. Here Rommel started his follow up to Infantry Attacks, Panzer greift an (Tank Attacks sometimes translated as The Tank In Attack ). Rommel was removed after a short time; however, as he was placed in command of Adolf Hitler's personal protection battalion (Führer-Begleitbattalion).

World War II

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Rommel during the French campaign of 1940

Poland 1939

In the autumn of 1938 Hitler selected Rommel to be in charge of the Wehrmacht squad assigned to protect him during his visits to occupied Czechoslovakia. Just prior to the invasion of Poland he was promoted to Major General and made commander of the Führer-Begleitbattalion, responsible for the safety of Adolf Hitler's mobile headquarters during the campaign.

France 1940

In 1940, only three months before the invasion, Rommel was given command of the 7th Panzer Division, later nicknamed Gespenster-Division (the "Ghost Division", due to the speed and surprise it was consistently able to achieve, to the point that even the German High Command lost track of where it was), for Fall Gelb ("Case Yellow"), the invasion of France and the Low Countries. Remarkably, this was Rommel's first command of a Panzer unit. He showed considerable skill in this operation, repulsing a counter-attack by the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) at Arras. 7th Panzer was one of the first German units to reach the English Channel (on 10 June) and would capture the vital port of Cherbourg (19 June). As a reward Rommel was promoted and appointed commander of the 5th Light Division (later reorganized and redesignated as the 21st Panzer) and of the 15th Panzer Division, which were sent to Libya in early 1941 to aid the defeated and demoralized Italian troops, forming the Deutsches Afrika Korps (). It was in Africa where Rommel achieved his greatest fame as a commander.

Africa 1941-43

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Erwin Rommel, 1941

Rommel spent most of 1941 building up his forces, which had suffered a string of defeats at the hands of British Commonwealth forces under Major General Richard O'Connor. An offensive pushed the Allied forces back out of Libya, but it stalled a relatively short way into Egypt, and the important port of Tobruk, although surrounded, was still held by Allied forces under an Australian General, Leslie Morshead. The Allied Commander-in-Chief, General Archibald Wavell made two unsuccessful attempts to relieve Tobruk (Operation Brevity and Operation Battleaxe).

Following the costly failure of Battleaxe, Wavell was relieved by Commander-in-Chief India, General Claude Auchinleck. Auchinleck launched a major offensive to relieve Tobruk (Operation Crusader) which eventually succeeded. During the confusion caused by the Crusader operation, Rommel and his staff ended up behind Allied lines several times. On one occasion he visited a New Zealand Army field hospital, which was still under Allied control. "[Rommel] inquired if anything was needed, promised the British [sic] medical supplies and drove off unhindered." (General Fritz Bayerlein, The Rommel Papers, chapter 8.)

Crusader was a defeat for Rommel. After several weeks of fighting Rommel ordered the withdrawal of all his forces from the area around Tobruk (December 7 1941) and retreated back towards El Agheila. The Allies followed, attempting to cut off the retreating troops as they had done in 1940 but Rommel launched a counter-attack on January 20 1942 and mauled the Allied forces. The Afrika Korps retook Benghazi and the Allies pulled back to the Tobruk area and commenced building defensive positions.

In the early summer of 1942 (May 24 1942) Rommel's army attacked. In a classic blitzkrieg, Rommel outflanked the Allies at Gazala, surrounded and reduced the strongpoint at Bir Hakeim and forced the Allies to quickly retreat, in the so-called "Gazala Gallop", to avoid being completely cut off. Tobruk, isolated and alone, was now all that stood between the Afrika Korps and Egypt. On 21 June 1942, after a swift, coordinated and fierce combined arms assault, the city surrendered along with its 33,000 defenders. Only at the fall of Singapore, earlier that year, had more British Commonwealth troops been captured. Allied forces were comprehensively beaten. Within weeks they had been pushed back far into Egypt.

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Rommel in Africa - Summer 1941

Rommel's 21st Panzer Division was eventually stopped at the small railway town of El Alamein, just sixty miles from Alexandria.

With Allied forces from Malta interdicting his supplies at sea, and the massive distances they had to cover in the desert, Rommel could not hold the El Alamein position forever. Still, it took a large set piece battle, the Second Battle of El Alamein, to force his troops back. After the defeat at El Alamein, despite urgings from Hitler and Mussolini, Rommel's forces did not again stand and fight until they had entered Tunisia. Even then, their first battle was not against the British Eighth Army, but against the U.S. II Corps. Rommel inflicted a sharp reversal on the American forces at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass.

Turning once again to face the British Commonwealth forces in the old French border defences of the Mareth Line, Rommel could only delay the inevitable. Ultra was a major factor that led to the defeat of his forces. He left Africa after falling ill, and the men of his former command eventually became prisoners of war.

Some historians contrast Rommel's withdrawal of his army back to Tunisia against Hitler's dreams of much greater success than even his capture of Tobruk (in sharp contrast to the fate suffered by the German 6th Army at the Battle of Stalingrad under the command of Friedrich Paulus which stood its ground and was annihilated).

Some sources state that during this period, there was a failed Allied attempt to capture Rommel from his headquarters, 250 miles behind enemy lines. [1]

France 1943-1944

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Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (center) discusses the upcoming Allied invasion of France with Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz and Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt.

Back in Germany, Rommel was for some time virtually "unemployed". However, when the tide of war shifted against Germany, Hitler made Rommel the commander of Army Group B, responsible for defending the French coast against a possible Allied invasion. Dismayed with the situation he found, the slow building pace and realizing he had just months before an invasion, Rommel invigorated the whole fortification effort along the Atlantic coast, under his direction work was significantly sped up, millions of mines laid, and thousands of tank traps and obstacles were set up on beaches and throughout the countryside.

After his battles in Africa, Rommel concluded that any offensive movements would be impossible due to the overwhelming Allied air superiority. He argued that the tank forces should be dispersed in small units and kept in heavily fortified positions located as close to the front as possible, so they wouldn't have to move far and en masse when the invasion started. He wanted the invasion stopped right on the beaches. However his commander, Gerd von Rundstedt, felt that there was no way to stop the invasion near the beaches due to the equally overwhelming firepower of the Royal Navy. He felt the tanks should be formed into large units well inland near Paris, where they could allow the Allies to extend into France and then be cut off. When asked to pick a plan, Hitler then vacillated and placed them in the middle, far enough to be useless to Rommel, not far enough to watch the fight for von Rundstedt. Rommel's plan nearly came to fruition anyway.

During D-Day several tank units, notably the 12th SS Panzer Division, were close enough to the beaches to potentially create serious havoc. Hitler refused however to release the panzer reserves as he believed the Normandy landings were a diversion. Hitler and the German High Command expected the main allied assault in the Pas de Calais, thanks to the success of a secret allied deception campaign (Operation Fortitude). Facing only small scale German attacks, the allies quickly secured the beachhead.

The plot against Hitler

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May 1944, Rommel with his closest staff members, his chief of staff General Hans Speidel, chief naval aide Admiral Friedrich Ruge and his personal aide Captain Hellmuth Lang, all of whom were heavily involved in the anti-Nazi conspiracy within the Wehrmacht.

A memorial at the site of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's suicide outside of the town of Herrlingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (west of Ulm).

On July 17, 1944 Rommel's staff car was strafed by an RCAF Spitfire, and he was hospitalized with major head injuries. In the meantime, after the failed July 20 Plot against Adolf Hitler a major crackdown was conducted throughout the Wehrmacht. As the investigation proceeded, numerous connections started appearing that tied Rommel with the conspiracy, in which many of his closest aides were deeply involved. At the same time, local Nazi party officials reported on Rommel's extensive and scornful criticism of Nazi leadership during the time he was hospitalized. Bormann was certain of Rommel's involvement, Goebbels was not.

The true extent of Rommel's knowledge of, or involvement with, the plot is still unclear. After the war, however, his wife maintained that Rommel had been against the plot as it was carried out. It has been stated that Rommel wanted to avoid giving future generations of Germans the perception that the war was lost because of a backstab, the infamous Dolchstoßlegende, as it was commonly believed by some Germans following WWI. Instead, he favored a coup where Hitler would be taken alive and made to stand trial before the public.

Recent evidence however, seems to indicate that Rommel was aware of the July 20 plot and the intentions of Claus von Stauffenberg but was cautious to avoid participation not merely because of the chance of repeating the 'November Criminals' fable. He was all too aware of the crudity and poorly organised nature of the plot, and the slim chance of the Western Allies accepting a separate peace. He thus, took an objective and realistic attitude towards the planned coup against Hitler and his cabinet, though for all his forbearance and cautious nature he still fell foul of Hitler's growing paranoia and petty hatred towards the Prussian officer caste.

Because of Rommel's popularity with the German people, Hitler gave him an option to commit suicide with cyanide or face a humiliating sham trial before Roland Freisler's "People's Court" and the murder of his family and staff. Rommel ended his own life on October 14, 1944, and was buried with full military honours. After the war his diary was published as The Rommel Papers. He is the only member of the Third Reich establishment to have a museum dedicated to his person and his career. His grave can be found in Herrlingen, a short distance west of Ulm.

Battles

• Battle of Arras (1940)
• Siege of Tobruk (1941)
• Battle of Gazala (1942)
• Battle of Bir Hakeim (1942)
• First Battle of El Alamein (1942)
• Battle of Alam Halfa (1942)
• Second Battle of El Alamein (1942)
• Battle of the Kasserine Pass (1943)
• Battle of Normandy (1944)

In fiction

He was portrayed by Erich von Stroheim in the 1943 film Five Graves to Cairo, by James Mason in the 1951 film The Desert Fox (directed by Henry Hathaway), and in the 1953 film The Desert Rats, by Karl Michael Vogler in the 1970 biographical film Patton, starring George C. Scott, and by Hardy Kruger in the 1988 television miniseries War and Remembrance.

In Philip K. Dick's alternative history novel The Man in the High Castle, it is mentioned that Rommel is currently the Nazi-appointed president of the United States of America in the early 1960s.

In Douglas Niles's and Michael Dobson's alternative history novel Fox on the Rhine (ISBN 0812574664), Hitler was killed by the bomb plot of July 20 1944. This led to Rommel's survival, and a different quick offensive strike. This was repelled and the book ended with his surrender to the Americans and British, believing that the Germans would be better off with the western powers than with the Soviets. Fox on the Rhine was followed by a sequel, Fox at the Front (ISBN 0641676964).

In Donna Barr's novel Bread and Swans the historical Rommel shares his concerns and career with a fictitious younger brother, Pfirsich, also known as The Desert Peach. Both Rommels also appear as focal characters of Barr's long-running comic strip series about "The Peach".

Quotations about Rommel

• The British Parliament considered a censure vote against Winston Churchill following the surrender of Tobruk. The vote failed, but in the course of the debate, Churchill would say:
  • "We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great General."
• Churchill again, on hearing of Rommel's death:
  • "He also deserves our respect, because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this, he paid the forfeit of his life. In the sombre wars of modern democracy, there is little place for chivalry”
• Theodor Werner was an officer who, during World War I, served under Rommel.
  • "Anybody who came under the spell of his personality turned into a real soldier. He seemed to know what the enemy were like and how they would react."
• Attributed to General George S. Patton in North Africa (referring to "Infantry Attacks")
  • "Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!"

Quotations

• "Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, and brains saves both."
• "Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas."
• "The best form of welfare for the troops is first-rate training."
• "Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning."
• "In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine."
• "Courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility."
• "In the absence of orders, find something and kill it."
• Referring to Italians: "Good troops, bad officers. But remember that without them we wouldn't have civilization."

References

• The Battle of Alamein: Turning Point, World War II, by Bierman and Smith (2002). ISBN 0670030406
• Rommel's Greatest Victory, by Samuel W. Mitcham, Samuel Mitcham. ISBN 0891417303
• Meeting the Fox: The Allied Invasion of Africa, from Operation Torch to Kasserine Pass to Victory in Tunisia, by Orr Kelly. ISBN 0471414298
• INSIDE THE AFRIKA KORPS: The Crusader Battles, 1941-1942. ISBN 1853673226
• Alamein, by Jon Latimer. ISBN 0674010167
• Tank Combat in North Africa: The Opening Rounds : Operations Sonnenblume, Brevity, Skorpion and Battleaxe February 1941-June 1941 (Schiffer Military History), by Thomas L. Jentz. ISBN 0764302264
• Rommel's North Africa Campaign: September 1940 - November 1942, by Jack Greene. ISBN 1580970184
• Tobruk 1941: Rommel's Opening Move (Campaign, 80) by Jon Latimer. ISBN 1841760927
• 21st Panzer Division: Rommel's Africa Korps Spearhead (Spearhead Series), by Chris Ellis. ISBN 0711028532
• Afrikakorps, 1941-1943: The Libya Egypt Campaign, by Francois De Lannoy. ISBN 2840481529
• With Rommel's Army in Libya by Almasy, Gabriel Francis Horchler, Janos Kubassek. ISBN 0759616086
• Generalfeldmarschall Rommel : opperbevelhebber van Heeresgruppe B bij de voorbereiding van de verdediging van West-Europa, 5 November 1943 tot 6 juni 1944 by Hans Sakkers (1993). ISBN 90-800900-2-6 [text/photobook in Dutch about Rommel at the Atlantic Wall 1943/44]
• Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel by David Fraser. ISBN 0060925973
• Rommel The Desert Fox by Desmond Young, Foreword by Sir Claude Auchinleck.

External links

• Rommel Chronology World History Database
• The Forced Suicide of Field Marshall Rommel, 1944
• Excerpts from Rommel's account of the blitzkrieg, 1940
• Prominent People - Erwin Rommel
• Erwin (Johannes Eugen) Rommel, The Desert Fox / Der Wüstenfuchs at Achtung Panzer!