German Military Leaders/Nazi Era/Rommel

"Field Marshal Erwin Rommel"

No doubt about it, this is the most famous German general of World War Two in western Europe and in the United States. Rommel was born in Württemberg, then a kingdom within the German Empire. As an officer in the Alpine troops in World War One, he served primarily in Italy, a country then allied with Britain and France. Rommel remained in the treaty-limited army after the war, where he developed many ideas about tactics for tanks and infantry, which he set down in writing in a couple of books, which became highly popular in military circles inside and outside of Germany.*

About a year before the invasion of Poland, Rommel was named commander of Hitler's personal escort battalion, an army unit which provided protection for Hitler in his military travels. During the war in Poland, Rommel, recently promoted to major-general (Generalmajor), commanded Hitler's military headquarters. When German forces launched their offensive in western Europe, Rommel was in command of a panzer division (the 7th), which was one of the units that helped break through Belgian and French lines to cut off British forces. What was to become Rommel's famed "lead from the front" style, started in this campaign, as he often personally led hard charging attacks that demoralized enemy troops. His division was dubbed "the Ghost Division," since Rommel pushed it so hard, it seemed to burst upon rear area enemy positions from nowhere. The downside was, he was so often right up front, he was out of communication with his command staff, as well as with his superiors.

By early 1941, the defeat of Mussolini's army in Libya (then an Italian colony) by British and Commonwealth forces, brought a German commitment of military forces to help their struggling ally avoid the entire loss of Libya.** Called the "German Africa Corps" (Deutsches Afrikakorps), the corps would become one of the most famous units of the war on any side. Rommel's take charge attitude and his ability to assess a situation to exploit enemy weaknesses, brought a surprise German-Italian offensive success just weeks after his arrival in Libya. The offensive carried the Axis forces back across Libya, clear to the Egyptian border, trapping some Allied forces in the port city of Tobruk. The Allies then launched an attack of their own which broke the siege of Tobruk and caused Rommel to retreat to his original starting point. This was not the end, however, as Rommel launched a new attack of his own in 1942, throwing the Allies back, capturing Tobruk, driving deep into Egypt, and threatening to capture the Suez Canal. Stiffening Allied resistance, lack of supplies and sheer exhaustion halted Rommel's offensive at the little railway station of El Alamein in Egypt. The capture of Tobruk brought Rommel promotion to field marshal by Hitler.

Rommel had met, and was befriended by, Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels in the late 1930s. The desert war captured the imagination of the German public and Goebbels made Rommel a household name throughout Germany and occupied Europe with many newsreels depicting the combat in North Africa. Rommel, by then dubbed "the Desert Fox" (Der Wüstenfuchs***), became a hero to many a German, and a much feared opponent among Allied troops, although the fear also had a certain admiration to it. One British commander was so alarmed by Rommel's reputation with British troops, that he ordered his commanders to quash Rommel's "bogeyman" image among their soldiers.

By late October of 1942, the Allied forces, now under the command of General Bernhard Montgomery, launched a devastating attack on the German-Italian positions in and around El Alamein. After terrible losses of men and equipment, and in spite of Hitler's order to hold his positions,**** Rommel ordered a retreat. Thousands of Axis prisoners were taken by the Allies. Meanwhile, the Americans and British forces landed troops in the French North African colonies of French Morocco and Algeria, which were far to the rear of Rommel's retreating army. Hitler and Mussolini rushed troops to Tunisia, another French colony sandwiched between Rommel's retreating forces in Libya and the Allied forces which had just landed. French resistance to the landings was relatively light, and the struggle then centered on Tunisia. While Rommel inflicted a punishing defeat on the Americans at a place called "Kasserine Pass" in February 1943, the German and Italian forces surrendered in May 1943. The war in North Africa was over.

Rommel was given command of some forces in Greece and then in northern Italy before being transferred to France to take command of the area seen as the most likely for the anticipated Allied invasion. He found the German fortifications wanting, and he immediately set upon a course to strengthen those defenses, especially along the beach areas, as he believed the Allied landing had to be crushed on the beaches as they attempted to land, not after they had already landed. This idea was not universally accepted among other German generals, including Field Marshal von Rundstedt, the overall commander of German forces in western Europe. Rommel wanted all sorts of mines and obstacles along the water's edge to hamper the landings, so that his forces could then finish off the survivors (he also had obstacles placed further inland to prohibit or hamper paratroop or glider landings). He also wanted German armored forces (the Panzer divisions) stationed close to the beaches so that they could quickly be dispatched to mount attacks on any Allied troops who made it ashore, before they could be reinforced. Other generals argued the armor should be kept further back until a definite location of the landings was determined. Remember, the Germans did not know exactly where the Allies would land in France. In the end, there was sort of a compromise, as one Panzer division, interestingly stationed in Normandy (which came to be the site of the invasion), was moved relatively close to the beaches, but others were kept further back. This was complicated by the fact that these divisions could not be committed to any attack without the direct personal permission of the fanatical, ferocious, furious Führer.

On June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Normandy during a brief lull in a period of bad weather (rain, wind, choppy seas). Rommel was away in Germany for his wife's birthday, having been convinced the Allies would not dare to cross the English Channel under such weather conditions. While some German forces, especially in the area known as "Omaha Beach," put up stout resistance, with Rommel away, the German reaction to the invasion was (thankfully) slow to develop. Hitler and others believed the Normandy landings were a ruse to draw German forces there, to allow an easier major landing somewhat further north. With the Allies having gained a foothold in France, the battle became a slogging match for almost two months; the Germans trying to contain the Allies in Normandy. In mid July, Rommel's car was strafed by Allied aircraft, the car crashed and the field marshal was severely injured. This was the end of Rommel's days of command, as he was hospitalized for quite some time and then sent home to recuperate. Just three days after the strafing of Rommel's car, a bomb, planted by an army officer, Klaus von Stauffenberg, exploded in Hitler's military headquarters in northeastern Germany (Rastenburg, East Prussia). The fanatical, ferocious, furious Führer, now VERY furious, survived the attack, and the Gestapo sought out anyone involved in the slightest way in the plot. Under interrogation and torture, Rommel's name was mentioned a few times by officers in custody, and by October 1944, Hitler dispatched some army officers to Rommel's home in southwestern Germany, where the field marshal was convalescing. Rommel was given the choice of taking his own life, with protections for his wife and son, or of being arrested, put on trial, and then executed, with no protection for his family. He chose to die, and after just a short time to say goodbye to his wife and son, Rommel got into a car accompanied by the other officers. The car traveled a short distance and Rommel took poison. Hitler and the Nazis could ill afford the true story to come out about such a prominent general, so it was announced by the Nazi press that Rommel had died of his wounds. He was given full military honors, and Hitler did keep his word about Rommel's family.*****

After the war, Rommel was held in high regard, even by his former enemies. His eventual opposition to Hitler, which only came out after the war, only enhanced his stature. He is best remembered as "the Desert Fox," during the war in North Africa, a war, that while brutal like all war, was not consumed by hatred, ideology or racism, such as happened in the Soviet Union, especially. Rommel forbade the execution of any captured troops of Jewish heritage or of legitimate Allied commandos, which ran counter to Hitler's orders.

* If you've seen the movie "Patton," you may recall General Patton shouting, upon defeating Rommel's forces in one battle, "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!!!" While this was only a scene in a movie, it has much truth in it, because many of the successful commanders of the war read the works of military men from other countries in an effort to learn anything and everything they could about strategy and tactics.

** Rommel and the German forces were actually under the overall command of the Italians, which caused some friction, especially due to Rommel's independent personality. In late 1941, a German command structure was implemented for southern Europe and North Africa under the command of Albert Kesselring, but North Africa remained under overall Italian command.

*** German "Wüste," meaning "desert, wasteland," is closely related to English "waste," which we also use in the context of "barren, desert" land in the compound "wasteland." For those studying German, the noun is feminine; thus, "die Wüste," but when combined with the masculine noun "Fuchs" (fox), it becomes "der Wüstenfuchs," as German compounds take the grammatical gender of the last word in compounds. Aren't you glad English gave up using gender a long time ago?

**** In typical Hitlerian nonsense, the fanatical, ferocious, furious Führer ended his order to Rommel to hold fast with, "Ihrer Truppe aber können Sie keinen anderen Weg zeigen als den zum Siege oder zum Tod." (You can but show your troops no other path than the one to victory or death.")

***** Rommel was never all that involved in the plot to actually kill Hitler. He wanted Hitler arrested and put on trial for Germans to see the criminality of the nutcase-in-chief, and so as not to make the fanatical, ferocious, furious Führer a martyr. The major plotters decided that a live Hitler, even one under arrest, would be too much of a threat to German unity, as fanatical Nazis would resist, possibly bringing about a civil war. They wanted and needed someone of Rommel's stature to aid them with the German public, once Hitler, and hopefully SS Chief Himmler, and or Hitler's designated successor, Hermann Göring, had been killed.

WORD HISTORY:
Arm (2)-This is the noun meaning "weapon," which is more commonly used in the plural, "arms." This goes back to Indo European "ar," which had the notion of "fit or join together." This gave its Latin offspring^ "arma," which meant "tools, tools of war; thus, 'weapons.' " Old French, a Latin-based language, had "armes," which was then borrowed into English with the same spelling during the early 1200s. It was a couple of hundred years before the English spelling "arms" developed. The verb form, meaning "to supply or equip with weapons," was borrowed in the 1200s from French "armer," which traces back to Latin "armare," a derived form of "arma," mentioned above. In English the verb was initially spelled "armen," before the modern spelling.

^ Latin is an Indo European language related to English, but further down the family tree, although English and many other non Latin-based languages have borrowed much vocabulary either directly from Latin or from one of the Latin-based languages; in the case of English, from French.