Erwin Rommel

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel
November 15, 1891 - October 14, 1944
File:AKrommel.jpg Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, 1941

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel November 15, 1891 – October 14, 1944 was one of the most distinguished German field marshals of World War II. He was the commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps and also became 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 in command of the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion at Normandy.

Rommel is often remembered not only for his remarkable military prowess, but also for his reputation for chivalry towards his adversaries - being one of the German commanders who disobeyed the infamous Commando Orderwhich instructed him to kill all enemy infiltrators, armed or not. He is also noted for possibly having taken part in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, for which he was forced to commit suicide before the war's end.

Early life and career

Rommel was born in Heidenheim, Germany, approximately twenty-seven miles from Ulm, in the state of Württemberg. He was baptised on November 17, 1891. He was the second son of a Protestant headmaster of the secondary school at Aalen, Prof. 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. 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 and would throughout his life display extraordinary technical aptitude; however, at 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.

File:Rommel cadet.jpg

A young Rommel as an officer cadet around 1910.

While at Cadet School, early in 1911, Rommel met his future wife, 17-year-old Lucia Maria Mollin (commonly called Lucie). He graduated in November 1911 and was commissioned as a lieutenant in January 1912. Rommel and Lucie married in 1916, and in 1928 they had a son, Manfred, who would later become the mayor of Stuttgart. (1 p. 56).

World War I

During World War I, Rommel fought in France, as well as in Romania and Italy as part of the élite Alpen Korps. While serving with that unit, he gained a reputation for making quick tactical decisions and taking advantage of enemy confusion. He was wounded three times and awarded the Iron Cross; First and Second Class. Rommel also received Prussia's highest medal, the Pour le Mérite - an honor traditionally reserved for generals only - after fighting in the mountains of west Slovenia – Battle of the Isonzo – Soca front. The award came as a result of the Battle of Longarone, and the capture of Mount Matajur, Slovenia, and its defenders, numbering 150 Italian officers, 7,000 men and eighty-one pieces of artillery. His battalion also played a key role in the decisive victory of the Central Powers over the Italian Army at the Battle of Caporetto. Interestingly, Rommel for a time served in the same infantry regiment as Friedrich Paulus, both of whom were to preside over catastrophic defeats for the Third Reich in their own markedly different ways.

Inter-war years

After the war, Rommel held battalion commands and was an instructor at the Dresden Infantry School from 1929 to 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 attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler, who placed him in charge of the War Ministry liaison with the Hitler Jugend’s Headquarters of Military Sports, the Hitler Jugend branch involved with paramilitary activities: terrain exercises and marksmanship. Rommel applied himself energetically to the new task. The army provided instructors to the Hitler Jugend Rifle School in Thuringia, which in turn supplied qualified instructors to the HJ's regional branches.

In 1937, Rommel conducted a tour of HJ meetings and encampments, and delivered lectures on German soldiering while inspecting facilities and exercises. Simultaneously, he was pressuring Baldur von Schirach, the Hitler Jugend leader, to accept an agreement expanding the army's involvement in Hitler Jugend training. Schirach interpreted this as a bid to turn the Hitler Jugend into an army auxiliary, a "junior army" in his words. He refused and Rommel, whom he had come to dislike personally and apparently envy for his "real soldier"'s appeal to the youngsters, was denied access to the Hitler Jugend. An army-Hitler Jugend agreement was concluded, but on a far more limited scope than Rommel had sought; cooperation was restricted to the army providing personnel to the Rifle School, much to the army's chagrin. By 1939, the Hitler Jugend had 20,000 rifle instructors. Simultaneously, Rommel retained his place at Potsdam. In his class Rommel was awarded the highest war ribbons for excellent performance.

In 1938, Rommel, now a colonel, was appointed commandant of the War Academy at Wiener Neustadt (Theresian Military Academy). Here he 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, to take command of Adolf Hitler's personal protection battalion (FührerBegleitbataillon), assigned to protect him in the special railway train (Führersonderzug) used during his visits to occupied Czechoslovakia and Memel. It was at this period that he met and befriended Joseph Göbbels, the Reich's minister of propaganda. Goebbels became a fervent admirer of Rommel, and later ensured that Rommel's exploits were celebrated in the media.

World War II

Poland 1939

Rommel continued as Führerbegleitbataillon commander during the Polish campaign, often moving up close to the front in the Führersonderzug, and seeing much of Hitler. After the Polish defeat, Rommel returned to Berlin to organize the Führer's victory parade, taking part himself as a member of Hitler's entourage.

France 1940

Rommel asked Hitler for command of a panzer division and, on February 6, 1940 only three months before the invasion, Rommel was given command of the 7.Panzer-Division for Fall Gelb ("Case Yellow"), the invasion of France and the Low Countries. This string-pulling provoked resentment among fellow officers, the more so as Rommel, remarkably, had no experience with armor. He showed considerable skill in this operation, repulsing a counterattack by the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Arras. 7.Panzer-Division was later nicknamed Gespenster-Divisionen (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. He also set the record for the longest thrust in one day by Panzers up to that point, covering nearly 150 miles. 7.Panzer-Division was one of the first German units to reach the English Channel (on June 10) and captured the vital port of Cherbourg on June 19. Rommel's success owed partially to his misappropriating supplies and bridging tackle belonging to the neighboring divisions. This gravely hampered their operations. His commander Hermann Hoth considered court-martialing him for this, but was dissuaded by his own commander, Hans von Kluge. The fame gained by Rommel during the campaign made a court-martial, or even a reprimand, impractical. Rommel's reward for his success was to be promoted and appointed commander of the 5th Light Division (later reorganized and redesignated 21.Panzer-Division) and of the 15.Panzer-Division, which were sent to Libya in early 1941 to aid the hapless 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

File:AKrommel.jpg

Erwin Rommel, 1941

His campaign in Africa earned Rommel the nickname “The Desert Fox.” He spent most of 1941 building up his forces, the Italian component of 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 out of Libya. Though ordered not to advance beyond the oasis of Maradah, Rommel disobeyed and was shortly stalled exactly on the Egyptian border at Helfaya pass, after he, disregarding the objections of his staff and divisional commanders, ordered that the important port of Tobruk be outflanked, hoping thus to trap the bulk of the enemy force in Tobruk. This outflanking could not be carried out as rapidly as was necessary due to logistical overstretch— the road parallel to the coastal road not reconnecting to the coastal road, spoiling flank attacks from Tobruk. Before long, a sand storm further complicated the advance. Although surrounded, Tobruk was still held by Allied forces under the Australian General, Leslie Morshead. The Allied Commander-in-Chief, General Archibald Wavell made two unsuccessful attempts to relieve Tobruk (Operation Brevity and Operation Battleaxe). Both operations were easily defeated as they were hastily prepared due to Churchill's impatience for speedy action.

The assault on Tobruk, whose capture was logistically imperative, was a failure that imperiled Rommel's career. Impatient to secure success, Rommel ordered repeated, barely prepared, small-scale attacks which were easily gobbled up by the defenders. Before long, his logistically strapped forces became so weak that a break-out from Tobruk could most likely have reached El Adem, sever the Afrika Korps’s communications, and topple it. Luckily, Morshead was misled by intelligence overestimates of the German forces opposing Tobruk, thus Rommel was saved. Reflecting on this period, Kircheim, then commander of the 5th Light Division, said: "I do not like to be reminded of that time because so much blood was needlessly shed."

At this time, Rommel also began clamoring for reinforcements that the High Command, then completing the preparations for Operation Barbarossa, could not spare and which could not be logistically sustained. Angry that his order, not to advance beyond Maradah, had been disobeyed and alarmed at mounting losses, Chief of the General Staff of the Army (Oberkommando des Heeres), Franz Halder, never an admirer of Rommel, dispatched Friedrich Paulus to "head off this soldier gone stark mad," in Halder's words. Upon arrival Paulus soon forbade Rommel from undertaking any more small-scale assaults, but to plan a systematic, all-out attack. His composure restored, Rommel complied. His elaborately prepared, great assault scheduled for November 21 was not to take place.

Following the costly failure of Battleaxe, Wavell was replaced by the Commander-in-Chief of India, General Claude Auchinleck. Auchinleck launched a major offensive to relieve Tobruk (Operation Crusader). Initially Crusader appeared as doomed as Brevity and Battleaxe. The British (including Commonwealth troops) deeply outflanked the German defenses along the Egyptian frontier with a left hook through the desert, and reached a position whence they could strike at both Tobruk and the coastal road, "Via Balbia." The Germans were then supposed to counter-attack so as to drive the British back. This, as a result of British numerical superiority in both planes and tanks, would result in the Germans' annihilation. The Germans, confident in the strength of the defenses covering the Via Balbia did not oblige but stayed, waiting on the Allies’ next move.

The baffled British, whose plan did not provide for this eventuality, felt compelled to attack and try to relieve Tobruk and sever the Via Balbia. They were cut to pieces in an effort for which they had neglected to bring the necessary heavy artillery and because British breakthrough tactics comprised a headlong charge with the tanks in the lead, paying little or no attention to mine fields and anti-tank guns. Rommel tried to over-exploit this success and, against the advice of his officers, resolved to drive the British further than their start line and, himself, outflank the border positions through the desert.

If so, Rommel's contempt for the enemy proved excessive and the gamble failed. His forces suffered heavy losses from British antitank guns and, as they dispersed over the desert, from the RAF, which was unscathed by the earlier fighting. Losses which, unlike the British, they could not replace, and soon were unable even to hold their initial positions. During the confusion caused by the Crusader operation, Rommel and his staff found themselves behind Allied lines several times. On one occasion, he visited a New Zealand Army field hospital that 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) towards El Agheila. The Allies followed, attempting to cut off the retreating troops as they had done in 1940, but Rommel's counterattack on January 20, 1942 mauled the Allied forces. The Afrika Korps retook Benghazi and the Allies pulled back to the Tobruk area and commenced building defensive positions.

On May 26, 1942 Rommel's army attacked. In a classic Blitzkrieg, he 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 June 21, 1942, after a swift, coordinated and fierce combined arms assault, the city surrendered along with its 33,000 defenders. By then, the able troops who had defended Tobruk in 1941 had been dispatched to the Pacific, at the insistence of the Australian Government. Only at the fall of Singapore, earlier that year, had more British Commonwealth troops been captured. Hitler made Rommel a field marshal. (Rommel later told his confidante, Hans von Luck, that he would have preferred the Führer gave him another division.) Within weeks, the Allies were pushed back far into Egypt.

File:Rommel in Africa1941.jpg

Rommel in Africa - Summer 1941.

Rommel's 21.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 enormous distances supplies had to travel to reach his forward troops, Rommel could not hold the El Alamein position forever. Still, it took a large, set-piece battle, the Second Battle of El Alamein, to dislodge his forces and even this British attack would not have pushed the Germans further than Fuka had Hitler not forbidden a retreat, during a lull in the battle, that was already in progress with his infamous "victory or death," stand-fast order.

In September, Rommel took sick leave in Italy and Germany, but immediately returned when news of the battle reached him. After the defeat at El Alamein, Rommel's forces managed to escape by using all the Italian transports. 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 defeat on the American forces at 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. At the end of January 1943, the Italian General Giovanni Messe was appointed the new commander of Rommel’s Panzer Army Africa, which was now renamed the 1st Italo-German Panzer Army (in recognition of the fact that it consisted of one German and three Italian corps). Though Messe was to replace Rommel, he diplomatically deferred to the German, and the two coexisted in what was theoretically the same command until 9 March, when Rommel finally departed Africa. Rommel's departure was kept secret on Hitler's explicit orders, so that the morale of the Axis troops could be maintained and respectful fear by their enemies retained. The last Rommel offensive in North Africa occurred on 6 March 1943, when he attacked Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army at the Battle of Medenine with three Panzer divisions (10, 15, and 21). Decoded Ultra intercepts allowed Montgomery to deploy large numbers of anti-tank guns in the path of the offensive. After losing 52 tanks, Rommel was forced to call off the assault. On 9 March he handed over command of Armeegruppe Afrika to General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim and left Africa, because of health reasons, never to return. On 13 May 1943, after the collapse of the German 5th Army, the fall of Tunis and the surrounding of the Italian 1st Army, still holding the line at Enfidaville, General Messe formally surrendered the remnants of Armeegruppe Afrika to the Allies. On 12 May, one day before the surrender, Messe was promoted to the rank of field marshal.

France 1943-1944

File:Blaskowitz, Rommel, Rundstedt2.jpg

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (centre) discusses the expected Allied invasion of France with Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt.

Back in Germany, Rommel was for some time virtually "unemployed". On 23 July 1943 he moved to Greece as commander of Army Group E, to defend the Greek coast against a possible allied landing that never happened, only to return to Germany two days later, upon the overthrow of Mussolini. On 17 August 1943, Rommel moved his headquarters from Munich to Lake Garda, as commander of a new Army Group B, created to defend the north of Italy. After Hitler gave General Albert Kesselring sole Italian command, on 21 November, Rommel moved Army Group B to Normandy, France, with responsibility for defending the French coast against the long anticipated Allied invasion. Dismayed by the situation he found, the slow building pace, and fearing he had just months before an invasion, Rommel reinvigorated 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 set up on beaches and throughout the countryside. Rommel, like all other commanders in Wehrmacht, was sure that landings were to occur in Pas-de-Calais. After his battles in Africa, Rommel concluded that any offensive movement would be nearly impossible due to overwhelming Allied air superiority. He argued that the tank forces should be dispersed in small units and kept in heavily fortified positions as close to the front as possible, so they would not 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 cut off the Allied troops. When asked to pick a plan, Hitler vacillated and placed them in the middle, far enough to be useless to Rommel, not far enough to watch the fight for von Rundstedt.

During D-Day, several tank units, notably the 12th SS Panzer Division, were close enough to the beaches to 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 assault in the Pas de Calais area, thanks to the success of a secret Allied deception campaign (Operation Fortitude). Facing only small-scale German attacks, the Allies quickly secured a beachhead.

The plot against Hitler

File:LangRugeSpeidelRommel May1944.jpg

May 1944, Rommel (right) with his closest staff members: (L to R), his personal aide Captain Hellmuth Lang, his chief naval aide Admiral Friedrich Ruge, and his chief of staff General Hans Speidel. Speidel was heavily involved in the anti-Nazi conspiracy within the Wehrmacht.

File:Erwin rommel death.jpg

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 17 July 1944, Rommel's staff car was strafed by an RCAF Spitfire piloted by Charley Fox; he was hospitalized with major head injuries. (Although the Americans claimed to have hit the vehicle as well, many German reports specifically mentioned a Canadian Spitfire as the sole attacker). In the meantime, after the failed July 20 Plot against Adolf Hitler a widespread investigation was conducted to identify possible participants in the plot. Rommel was identified in some of the coup ringleaders’ documentation as a potential supporter and an acceptable military leader to be placed in a position of responsibility should their coup succeed. No evidence was found that directly linked Rommel to the plot, nor that he had been contacted by any of the plot ringleaders. At the same time, local Nazi party officials reported on Rommel's extensive and scornful criticism of Nazi incompetent leadership during the time he was hospitalized. Bormann was certain of Rommel's involvement, Goebbels was not. The only serious evidence against him was provided by his chief of staff Speidel who scapegoated Rommel for his own actions, claiming that the rebellious orders were issued by Rommel, not him, and that he, Speidel, tried to report this criminal acts to Berlin, but was prevented from so doing (See Reuth 2006). This was clearly self-serving testimony. Unfortunately for Rommel, the 'Court of Military Honour' that was to decide whether or not to hand him over to Roland Freisler's people's court included two men with whom Rommel had crossed swords before, Heinz Guderian and Gerd von Rundstedt. The Court decided that Rommel should be handed over to the People's Court.

Erwin Rommel's Grave.

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. It has been stated that Rommel wanted to avoid giving future generations of Germans the perception that the war was lost because of backstabbing, the infamous Dolchstoßlegende, as was commonly believed by some Germans of World War I.

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

Battles

• Battle of Caporetto (1917)
• 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 Medenine (1943)
• Battle of the Kasserine Pass (1943)
• Battle of Normandy (1944)

Quotations

• "Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, and brains save both."
• "Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas."
• "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."
• "Training errors are recorded on paper. Tactical errors are etched in stone."
• "There is one unalterable difference between a soldier and a civilian: the civilian never does more than he is paid to do."
• "Men are basically smart or dumb and lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are dangerous and I get rid of them."
• "Be an example to your men, in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don't in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered and teach your subordinates to do the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide."
• "I know I haven't offered you much; sand, heat, scorpions ... but we've shared them together. One more last push, and it is Cairo. And if we fail, ... well, we tried, ... together"*

References and further reading

• John Bierman and Colin Smith. The Battle of Alamein: Turning Point, World War II, (2002). ISBN 0-670-03040-6
• George Forty. The Armies of Rommel, (Arms and Armour Press, London 1997) ISBN 1-85409-379-7
• David Fraser. Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, ISBN 0-06-092597-3
• Jack Greene. Rommel's North Africa Campaign: September 1940 - November 1942, . ISBN 1-58097-018-4
  • Jon Latimer. Alamein, . ISBN 0-674-01016-7
• Jon Latimer. Tobruk 1941: Rommel's Opening Move ISBN 1-84176-092-7
• Ronald Lewin. Rommel as military commander B&N Books: ISBN 0-7607-0861-4
• Samuel W. Mitcham. Rommel's Greatest Victory, ISBN 0-89141-730-3
• Reuth, Ralf Georg. Rommel: The End of a Legend. London: Haus Books, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 1904950205).
• Dennis Showalter. Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century. 2005. 441 pp. ISBN 978-0-425-20663-8.
• Desmond Young. Rommel The Desert Fox
• 21st Panzer Division: Rommel's Africa Korps Spearhead (Spearhead Series), by Chris Ellis. ISBN 0-7110-2853-2
• With Rommel's Army in Libya, by Almasy, Gabriel Francis Horchler, Janos Kubassek. ISBN 0-7596-1608-6
• Germany and the Second World War. Vol 3, part 4 Clarendon Press • Oxford 1995
• Inside the Afrika Korps: The Crusader Battles, 1941-1942. ISBN 1-85367-322-6

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!
• A history of Rommel in headquarters of La Roche Guyon (French)
• Erwin Rommel's Gravesite
• Essay: The Success of the Deutches Afrika Korps was Based on Rommel's Leadership

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