Barcode : 9999999025891 1
Title - Rommel (1955)
Author - Young Desmond
Language - English
Pages - 323
Publication Year - 1955
Barcode EAN.UCC-13
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ROMMEL
Famous books and autR&[s in th*
Fontana Series
47. AUTOBIOGRAPHY
46. AUNT CLARA
43. THE URGENT HANGMAN
44. TURN1NO WHEELS
43. ONE GREEN BOTTLE
42. YOUNG MRS. SAVAGE
40. SHABBY TIGER
39. MALAYAN ROSE
38. THE APPROACH TO PAINTING
37. ANNA
34. DARKNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR
33. THROUGH THE VALLEY
30. WINGED DAGGER
39. THE ROLLING YEARS
26. THE SHIPBUILDERS
23. BRITANNIA MEWS
24. THB DOCTOR DARES
21. THIS SIDE OF INNOCENCE
17. SOUTH RIDING
16. THE BLUB ICE
14* THE WHITE TOWER
13. ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO
11. NORTHWEST PASSAGE
6. ENGLISH SAOA
5. THE SEA CHASE
3. LONDON BELONGS TO MB
2. THE WOODEN HORSE
1. THB CROWTHERS OF BANKDAM
^
Neville Cardus "
Noel S treat feild
Peter Cheyney
Stuart Cloete
Elizabeth Coxhead
D. E. Stevenson
Howard Spring
Mark Derby
Thomas Bodkin
Norman Collins
Nigel Balchin
Robert Henriques
Roy Far ran
Agnes Sligh Turnbi
George Blake
Margery
Eliza ^
Taylor ''(Shell
Winifred Holtby
Hammond Innes
James Ramsey UUman
Rachal Field
Kenneth Roberts
Arthur Bryant
Andrew Geer
Norman Collins
Eric Williams
Thomas Armstrong
A complete list of titles appears at the end of the book
Rommel
i
DESMOND YOUNG
With a Foreword by
FIELD-MARSHAL
SIR CLAUDE AUCIIINLECK
COLLINS
fontana books
First published r&o
First issued in Fontana Books J 953
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
COLLINS CLEAR -TYPE PRESS : LONDON AND GLASGOW
■
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My grateful thanks are due to Field-Marshal Sir Claude
Auchinleck for writing the foreword to the book and for his
unvarying kindness to me during the years I was privileged
to serve him ; to Field-Marshal Earl Wavell, General Sir
Richard O'Connor and Lt.-Gen. Sir Arthur Smith for
giving me their appreciations of Rommel as a commander;
to Brigadier E. J. Shearer, C.B., Brigadier E. T. Williams,
C.B., D.S.O., Brigadier G. D. Quiliiam, C.B.E., and Major
Digby Racburn, D.S.O. for information regarding Rommel's
first appearance in the Western Desert; to Colonel G. H.
Clifton, D.S.O., M.C. for the story of his interviews with
Rommel as a prisoner-of-war, and to Lt.-Col. R. M. P.
Carver, C.B., D.S.O., M.C. for allowing me to quote from
his detailed account of the November-December 1941 batde
(published in the Royal Armoured Corps Journal), and to use
his maps. To Chester Wilmot I am deeply indebted for
invaluable help about " sources," to Major-General J. F. C.
Fuller, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart and Alan Moorehead
for advice and permission to quote from their writings, to
Lt.-Col. P. Findlay for translating Infanterie Greift An, to
Dr. Paul Weber of Berne for procuring material in Switzer-
land, to my friends Mr. and Mrs. Gough of Neuchatel for
driving me about Germany and to Lt.-Col. H. O. Larter
of the U.S. Army Historical Section at Frankfurt for helping
me when I was there. I am also grateful to William
Heinemann Ltd. for permission to quote from General
Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, and to the Trustees of Count
Ciano's Estate for quotations from Ciano's Diaries.
On " the other side of the hill," I received the greatest
5
b
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
possible help from Frau Rommel and her son Manfred,
from Vice-Admiral Ruge, from Generals Bayerlein, von
Esebeck, von Ravenstein and Speidel, from Captains.
Aldinger and Hartmann, from Dr. Karl Strolin of Stuttg?-*»|'
who told me the story of Rommel's association with the jjj^
against Hitler, from Baron von Esebeck, war correspondent,
military historian and friend of Rommel, who served with
him in North Africa and in Normandy, from Wilhelm
Wessels, war artist with the Afrika Korps, and from Herbert
Gtinther, Rommel's batman for nearly four years.
Lastly, I owe a great debt to my wife, who suggested the
idea to me, kept me up to it and, in the intervals of
marketing, cooking and dealing with a litter of puppies,
contrived somehow to type what I wrote — and to improve
it by criticism.
Cottage du Grand Gondin
Valescure. (Var.) D. Y.
CONTENTS
Foreword by Field-Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck Page 9
PRELUDE 13
I. BENGHAZI (RETURN) 16
II. "OUR FRIEND ROMMEL *' 23
III. BETWEEN TWO WARS 46
IV. GHOST DIVISION 69
V. "NONE SO BLIND . . 84
VI. DESERT UPS AND DOWNS 95
I. Rommel v. Wavell 95
II. Operation Crusader 112
VII. TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA 128
VIII. SUCH WAS THE ENEMY 142
1. " Desert-worthy *' 142
n. Nostr'alleati Italian i 153
hi. Civil war 159
IX. THE END IN AFRICA 175
X. THE ATLANTIC WALL 203
XI. "A PITILESS DESTINY" 233
Appendix One: Rommel's Record of Service 273
Appendix Two: The Rommel Papers 273
■
Index 3°9
7
LIST OF MAPS
Western Desert Battle Fields
The El Alamein Position
8
FOREWORD
By Field-marshal Sir Claude J. E. Auchinleck,
G»G*B*} G.C.I.E.j C«B«j G«S«I»j D.S»0.^ 0»B»1£»
In this book is reproduced a letter which I thought
necessary to send to my commanders in the field when the
name of Rommel was acquiring almost magical properties
in the minds of our soldiers. An enemy commander does
not gain a reputation of this sort unless he is out of the
ordinary and Rommel was certainly exceptional. Germany
produces many ruthlessly efficient generals: Rommel stood
out amongst them because he had overcome the innate
rigidity of the German military mind and was a master of
improvisation.
The German junior officers of the Afrika Korps, the
platoon, company and battalion commanders, were, it
always seemed to me, better grounded in tactics than our
own. This was not the fault of our men but of the peculiar
tasks laid on our Army in peace and of the lack of any really
systematic training. As the war went on, our men found
their feet and, more often than not, outmatched the
Germans because their natural tactical instinct was
developed and forced to display itself by stress of circum-
stance. But in the higher ranks Rommel remained pre-
eminent as a leader on the battlefield. I can testify myself
to his resilience, resourcefulness and mental agility and so
long as we are still unhappily obliged to train our youth
to arms and our officers to lead them into battle, there is
much that we can learn from a study of him and his
methods.
9
10
FOREWORD
My own contacts with Rommel were confined to en-
counters with him and the Afrika Korps in the campaigns
of 1941-42 in the Western Desert, but after reading the
story of his earlier and later years I find that my idea of
him, formed in those strenuous days when the battle was
swinging back and forth between Benghazi and Alexandria,
does not differ much from the author's considered apprecia-
tion. In one respect, however, my conception was wrong.
J was surprised to learn how simple and homely he seems
to have been. I think that we who were fighting against
him pictured him as a typical Junker officer, a product of
the Prussian military machine.
That he evidently was not and it may well be that this
accounts for his amazing — and it was amazing — success as
a leader of men in battle.
Rommel gave me and those who served under my com-
mand in the Desert many anxious moments. There could
never be any question of relaxing our efforts to destroy him
for if ever there was a general whose sole preoccupation was
the destruction of the enemy, it was he. He showed no
mercy and expected none. Yet I could never translate my
deep detestation of the regime for which he fought into
personal hatred of him as an opponent. If I say, now that
he is gone, that I salute him as a solclier and a man and
deplore the shameful manner of his death, I may be accused
of belonging to what Mr. Bevin has called the " trade union
of generals." So far as I know, should such a fellowship
exist, membership of it implies no more than recognition in
an enemy of the qualities one would wish to possess oneself,
respect for a brave, able and scrupulous opponent and a
desire to see him treated, when beaten, in the way one
would have wished to be treated had he been the winner
and oneself the loser. This used to be called chivalry:
many will now call it nonsense and say that the days when
such sentiments could survive a war are past. If they are,
then I, for one, am sorry.
FOREWORD
II
The author of this book, Brigadier Desmond Young* has
spared no pains to learn the facts of RommePs life and
death from his family and others and I cannot think of
any one better fitted to record them. A veteran of the first
World War, he was in the thick of the fighting in the
Desert until he had the bad luck to be taken at Gazala
while the battle was still in the balance. He is an old
friend of mine and, after his escape from enemy hands,
became one of my staff officers. In Delhi and on long trips
in aircraft about the world we have talked about most
subjects under the sun. But, lest I be suspected of having
inspired his views of military matters on winch different
opinions may well be held, I should perhaps say that I have
never discussed with him the conduct of the war in North
Africa. His conclusions about that, as about most other
things, are his own, for he is a man of independent mind.
As for his book, I read it only after it had already gone to
the printers. I did so with the greatest interest and enjoy-
ment, and 1 am sure that it will prove as fascinating to
others as it was to me. That apart, I welcome it because
it does justice to a stout-hearted adversary and may help
to show to a new generation of Germans that it is not their
soldierly qualities which we dislike but only the repeated
misuse of diem by their rulers.
PRELUDE
Shambling along in the first, sharp sunshine of a June
morning we had just cleared the minefield west of Bir
Harmat. It was in and around the headquarters of 10th
Indian Infantry Brigade at Bir Harmat that we had been
overrun by German tanks the evening before. Like all
prisoners who have spent a night in the open, we were a
scruffy lot. British and Indian, some shivering in bush-shirts
and shorts, some muffled to the eyes in greatcoats, blankets
and Balaclava helmets, all unshaven, unwashed, tired, hun-
gry and disarranged inside, we were beginning to realise that
what was jocularly known in the Middle East as " going
into the bag " was not much of a joke after all. Our guards
glanced at us from time to time with the dispassionate con-
tempt with which we ourselves had so often surveyed the
endless columns of captive Italians. Terrified, normally, of
mines, I trudged along through the fringe of the minefield
for easier walking. It was only when a young German sol-
dier called me sharply back to the column that I looked
down to see where I was putting my feet — and then I did
not very much care.
On the other side of the minefield we passed in front of a
German battery in action. Our guns and some tanks, hull-
down, were evidently looking for it. Shell from a 25-pounder
battery and tracer from the tanks began to fall round the
column. A young H.L.I. officer near me had his foot blown
off. There were shouts of alarm from up in front. By a
common impulse, everyone broke into a shuffling double. I
ran for a few yards with the rest and then, because it is just
as easy to run into shell-bursts as out of them, dropped back
into a walk. Soon I found myself alongside the blond young
13
14
ROMMEL
representative of the Afrika Korps who was bringing up the
rear. He motioned to me to run. I took off my cap and
showed him my grey hairs. Like a young sheepdog, doubt-
ful whether to pick up a straggler or to keep the rest of
the flock together, he hesitated. Then he doubled off in
pursuit, beckoning to me to follow.
Since the battery seemed occupied with its own affairs, I
strolled off casually to the flank. Fifty yards or so away I
found what I was looking for, a slit trench. I slid into it and
pulled the soil down on top of me. Capture in the desert
was seldom final. With luck I might lie there until dark and
then have a cut at getting through the minefield. Home, by
now, might not be until El Adem, but plenty of people had
walked much farther than that.
Twenty minutes later I was picked up. A German officer,
standing up in his truck, spotted me as he passed, and
stopped. I was hauled out and driven to the head of the
column, still under sporadic shellfire. Before I could mingle
with the rest of the party a German captain shouted to me
in English : "You are the senior officer here?" Perhaps I
was. Certainly I was the oldest. " You will go in a staff-car
with two German officers under a flag of truce and tell your
battery over there to stop firing. They are only endangering
your own men." That was true enough. One's natural
instinct as a prisoner-of-war is not, however, to do as one is
told. I said that I did not think that I could do that. " Then
you will detail another officer to do it." I said that I did not
think I could give such an order either. (I spent odd
moments during the next sixteen months wondering how
they would have got me back if I had reached the battery
and whether I had not been a fool to refuse.)
At this moment a Volkswagen drove up. Out of it jumped
a short, stocky but wiry figure, correctly dressed, unlike the
rest of us, in jacket and breeches. I noticed that he had a
bright blue eye, a firm jaw and an air of command. One
did not need to understand German to realise that he was
PRELUDE
15
asking " What goes on here?" They talked together for a
few seconds. Then the officer who spoke English turned to
me. " The General rules/' he said sourly, " that if you do
not choose to obey the order I have just given you, you can-
not be compelled to do so." I looked at the general and saw,
as I thought, the ghost of a smile. At any rate his interven-
tion seemed to be worth a salute. I cut him one before I
stepped back into the ranks to be driven off into captivity.
I could hardly have failed to recognise Rommel. But I
could hardly have supposed that, only a few years later, his
widow would be showing me his death-mask and telling me
the story of his murder.
Chapter One
BENGHAZI (RETURN)
In the middle of February, 1941, British stock stood sky-
high in Egypt. Those unfailing barometers of our fortunes,
the barmen of Cairo and Alexandria, became so effusive
that occasionally they could barely restrain themselves from
setting up a round " on the house." Stiff ragis lost something
of their camel-like air of contempt; even Egyptian taxi-
drivers grew approximately polite. In the higher reaches,
fat pashas invited senior British officers to the Mahomed
Ali Club. There were garden-parties in the gardens of the
rich around Gezireh. Cairo society ceased to practise its
Italian. Relations between the Monarch and His Britannic
Majesty's Ambassador were reputed to verge upon the cor-
dial. In a word, the East (and in this there is no difference
between Near and Middle and Far) was making its instinc-
tive salaam to success. Only the shopkeepers of the Kasr-
el-Nil, torn between a patriotic desire to see the last of us
and a deeper-rooted reluctance to see the last of our money,
reflected gloomily that the stream of piastres might soon be
diverted to their opposite numbers in Tripoli.
On our side, the personable young women working as
telephonists in G.H.Q. or as probationers in the hospitals
stared with open admiration as one of the young lions of the
11th Hussars sauntered in his cherry-coloured slacks through
the lounge of Shepheard's or the roof-garden of the
Continental. For these were the most famous of the " desert
rats " of the famous 7th Armoured Division. It was they
who had struck the first blow, crossing the frontier wire the
night after Italy entered the war and returning with a batch
BENGHAZI (RETURN )
17
f>i Italian prisoners. Thereafter, for these past eight months,
they had lived in the enemy's pockets, roaming behind his
lines in their armoured cars, watching his every move, shoot-
ing him up along the coast road until he was afraid to stir
after dark. Only the Long Range Desert Group was later
to equal their reputation for daring. Even the escorts of the
young women had to admit that, though the cavalry might
be a trifle snob, a good British cavalry regiment " had
something."
In the cloakrooms of the hotels the felt caps of the Rifle
Brigade, with their silver Maltese crosses, hung beside those
of the 60th with their red bosses and slung bugles. In the
bar, the officers of these two almost equally famous bat-
talions of the Support Group reluctantly conceded to each
other a common humanity which they were unwilling to
recognise in any one else, except, of course, the cavalry and
the R.H.A.
As for the Australians, strolling through the streets, ob-
livious of senior officers, or driving, according to their
custom, ten up in shabby victorias, they surveyed sardoni-
cally the town which their fathers had " taken apart " at the
end of the first war. From time to time, they broke into
" Waltzing Matilda " or " The Wizard of Oz." The caf6
proprietors, the dragomen, the vendors of fly-whisks and
erotic postcards regarded them with a respect born of
apprehension rather than affection.
Setting an example to Cairo in turn-out and saluting,
" details " left behind by 4th Indian Division, now departed
to fresh victories in Eritrea and Abyssinia, moved inconspi-
cuously among the crowds.
If Egypt had a good opinion of the Army of the Nile, the
Army of the Nile had a good conceit of itself — and with
reason. In the last two months it had advanced 500 miles.
It had beaten and destroyed an Italian army of four corps,
comprising nine divisions and part of a tenth. It had cap-r
tured 130,000 prisoners, 400 tanks and 1290 guns, besides
18
ROMMEL
vast quantities of other material. (Included in "other
material " were clean sheets and comfortable beds, silk
shirts, elaborate toilet-sets in Florentine leather, scent and
scented "hair-muck," becoming blue cavalry-cloaks, vino
and liquor e of all varieties, Pellegrino water in profusion, to
say nothing of a motor-caravan of young women, " officers
for the use of . . /' The Italians went to war in comfort.)
When General Berganzoli ("Electric Whiskers ") surren-
dered unconditionally on February 7th, he was joined in
captivity in Dehra Dun by more general officers than India
had seen together since the 1911 Durbar.
The army of Graziani which, it had seemed the previous
summer, had only to jump into its trucks and drive to Cairo,
under cover of a superior air force, and which, indeed, might
well have done so, had been swept from the map. Graziani
himself, complaining that Mussolini had compelled him to
wage war "as a flea against an elephant," ("a peculiar
flea," commented the Duce, " with more than a thousand
guns "), had posted his will to his wife and retired, first to
a Roman tomb, 70 feet deep, in Cirene and then to Italy.
All this had been achieved at a cost of 500 killed, 1373
wounded and 55 missing, by a force only three divisions
strong, of which only two divisions were employed at one
time in the operations — 7 th Armoured Division and 4th
Indian Division, the latter relieved after the battle of Sidi -
Barrani by 6th Australian Division.
The echoes of General Wavell's offensive were soon
drowned in the thunder of greater battles on the Russian
front. It became the fashion to decry victories won over the
Italians. But in the very decision to attack an enemy so
overwhelmingly superior in numbers, in the plan whereby
our troops were to lie up for a whole day in the open desert
within thirty miles of him, penetrate his line of forts by
night unseen and then turn and attack them from the rear
at dawn, was the first sign of military genius on our side.
Badly-officered and with little heart for the war, the
BENGHAZI (RETURN)
19
Italians crumbled under the shock of surprise, of the dis-
covery that their field-guns could not pierce the armour of
our " I " tanks and of the assault of troops whose standard
of training was as high as their spirit. Better divisions have
done the same before and since. But it is wrong to suppose
that these operations were just a glorified field-day. At
Nibeiwa many of the Italian gunners served their pieces
until the tanks ran over them. General Maletti, already
wounded, was killed firing a machine-gun from his tent. At
Beda Fomm the 2nd Rifle Brigade alone beat off nine tank
attacks, pressed home with determination.
Whether, had he been allowed to try, General Wavell
could have gone on to Tripoli, thus turning what had been
planned as a five-day raid into a major offensive, is another
matter. Would our worn-out tanks and over-taxed transport
have been equal to another five hundred miles? Would not
the still intact Italian divisions in Tripoli, secure from sur-
prise, have fortified the line Homs-Tirhuana, as General
Montgomery expected the Germans to do nearly two years
later? Could Benghazi have been used as a supply port
under intensive bombing? Above all, would not the
Germans have reacted and flown over their reserve airborne
■
divisions from southern Italy? On the whole, it seems that
General O'Connor, commanding Western Desert Force,
would have found himself " out on a limb," even if he had
reached Tripoli. At that time we had not the means to
exploit an operation which had already succeeded beyond
our wildest dreams.
m
Still, Egypt was safe, the Axis power in North Africa
broken and British prestige in the Middle East restored. For
the first time since the Battle of Britain, people at home had
something to celebrate.
Two months later there was consternation in Cairo and
British stock slumped as quickly as it had risen. Gradually
the details of the. disaster filtered through. Benghazi eva-
20
ROMMEL
cuated, that was unfortunate but no doubt " according to
plan"; 2nd Armoured Division, recently arrived from
England, destroyed as a fighting force, its commander,
Major-General Gambier-Parry and his headquarters cap-
tured at Mechili; 3rd Indian Motor Brigade overrun there
in its first action; 9th Australian Division invested in
Tobruk; Lieut-General Sir Richard O'Connor, promoted
and knighted for his recent success, "in the bag" with
Lieut-General Philip Neame, V.C. and Lieut-Colonel John
Combe of the 1 1 th Hussars ; Bard i a, Solium and Capuzzo
gone; the enemy back on the escarpment; the threat to
Egypt greater than ever. Not even " a Cairo spokesman "
could succeed in convincing the world that this was merely
" a propaganda success," not even the honeyed tones of the
B.B.C. commentator, Mr. Richard Dimbleby, gloss over it.
Not, at least, so far as the Egyptians were concerned. A
cynical and realistic race, especially where their own
interests are involved, they saw the red light quickly. The
Italians, they had never thought much of them. But these
Germans, what soldiers ! Real professionals, like our own
Egyptian Army. It was to be hoped that they would respect
property in Cairo and not play tricks with the currency.'
Perhaps it would be as well to keep up one's Italian and even
to learn a little German. . . . Meanwhile, better continue tot
be civil to the British, just in case. . . . But no need to overdo
it. Neither then nor later did they ever entirely desert Mr;
Micawber. There were, however, notable variations in the!
temperature of their affection for him.
Though the fog of war lay rather unnecessarily thick on
our command in the forward areas and there were several
" regrettable incidents," there was no mystery about General
WavelFs defeat. The seeds of it were sown when the Chiefs
of Staff telegraphed to him, immediately after the fall of
Benghazi, telling him to be prepared to send the largest
possible army and air forces from the Middle East to Greece.
When those forces, part of 2nd Armoured-Division, the New
BENGHAZI (RETURN)
21
Zealand Division, the 6th and 7 th Australian Divisions and
the Polish Brigade Group, were duly dispatched, he lost
"practically the whole of the troops which were fully
equipped and fit for operations."
In the last resort, the statesmen must overrule the soldiers,
for they alone see the whole picture. It may be that, for
political reasons, the British Government could not have
refused to send help to Greece, even though the Greeks
showed no great enthusiasm for it. The help was necessarily
insufficient and the dispersion of effort made failure on both
fronts inevitable. Those who find comfort in "second
guessing " may argue that the dispatch of British troops con-
vinced Hitler that there was some secret agreement between
the British and Soviet Governments and postponed the in-
vasion of Russia by several vital weeks. The evidence hardly
seems to support them. What is certain is that the loss of
47,000 trained men led directly to a major defeat in the
Middle East.
General Wavell, or his Intelligence Staff, made one mis-
take for which he was, characteristically, the first to take the
blame. From the information available to him, he calcu-
lated that not before May at the earliest could there be a
German offensive against Cyrenaica, even if it were a fact,
for which there was no direct evidence (indeed, such evi-
dence as there was seemed to contradict it), that German
troops were on their way to Tripoli. When, at the end of
February, they were reported to be already in Libya, he
still considered that no attack was likely before the middle of
April and hoped that it might not materialise before May.
In fact it was launched on March 31st.
Even this error was very far from being entirely his fault.
In 1939 and 1940 the policy of appeasement was still being
actively pursued and, because His Majesty's Government
" wished to do nothing that might impair their existing rela-
tions with Italy " (relations which, on Mussolini's side, were
founded about equally on dislike and contempt for the
ROMMEL
apparently toothless lion), he had not been permitted to set
up an intelligence service in Italian territory. In North
Africa he had no agents at all before Italy came into the
war and it was not possible until long afterwards to " plant "
them. Thus the 5th Light Motorised Division was able to
land in Tripoli without his knowing anything about it.
Like many another British general before him in the early
stages of a war, General Wavell was called upon to shoulder
'* responsibilities for which my resources were completely
inadequate." He shouldered them uncomplainingly and
soon had a revolt in Iraq and a minor war against the Vichy
French in Syria added to them for good measure. Having
dealt successfully with the latter, he was removed from his
command. Such, at any rate, was the impression made upon
the troops in the Middle East and explanations, whether
well founded or not, that he needed a rest or was being
translated to a sphere of even greater responsibility, did not
change their feeling that he had been kicked upstairs for
having failed to do the impossible in Greece. It was not the
last time that, having rendered outstanding services to his
country, he was to find himself treated with barely per-
functory politeness by his country's government.
Such were the circumstances of the disaster in Cyrenaica.
But if, in the early summer of 1941, one had stopped the
first passer-by in the streets of Cairo and asked him the
reason for this astonishing reversal of fortune, it is odds-on
that he would have replied in one word : " Rommel."
Chapter Two
"OUR FRIEND ROMMEL"
To : All Commanders and Chiefs of Staff
From : Headquarters, B.T.E. and M.E.F.
There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel
is becoming a kind of magician or bogey-man to
our troops, who are talking far too much about
him. He is by no means a superman, although he
. is undoubtedly very energetic and able. Even if
he were a superman, it would still be highly
undesirable that our men should credit him with
supernatural powers.
I wish you to dispel by all possible means the idea
that Rommel represents something more than an
ordinary German general. The important thing
now is to see to it that we do not always talk of
Rommel when we mean the enemy in Libya. We
must refer to " the Germans " or " the Axis
powers" or "the enemy" and not always keep
harping on Rommel.
F:iease ensure that this order is put into immediate
effect, and impress upon all Commanders that,
from a psychological point of view, it is a matter
of the highest importance.
(Signed) C. J. Auchinleck,
General,
Commander-in-Chief, M.E.F.*
* Although I remember this order very well, as do most people who served in the
Middle Emu I have been unable to obtain, even from its author, a copy of the original.
I have had, therefore, to rely on a re-translation of the translation preserved amongst
Rommel's papers by his family. There may be slight verbal discrepancies between the
two versions but the sense is the same.
23
24 ROMMEL
■
In any war, the number of generals who succeed in im-
posing their personalities on their own troops, let alone those
of the enemy, is far smaller than generals themselves may
like to -believe. Take World War I, when it was said with
some truth that few British soldiers knew the name of their
Divisional commander. How many of the 4< high brass "
meant anything to the " other ranks " ? Haig, well, they had
heard of him, of course. His " backs to the wall " order in
1918 had a human ring about it. But it was not until the
survivors were demobilised and came to learn how he was
devoting his last years to their welfare that that remote,
solitary and slightly unsympathetic figure made any positive
impression. Plumer and Allenby? Perhaps. But for the
rest, the Byngs, the Rawlinsons, the Homes and so on, all
capable commanders in their way, who even knew when he
was serving in their armies ? Indeed, in the long span from
the Duke of Wellington to Lord Montgomery, the senior
British generals who were heroes in the eyes of the private
soldier could be counted on two hands and would include
such bizarre figures as General Sir Redvcrs Builer.
As for World War II, " Monty " himself, " Bill " Slim
and <f Dickie " Mountbatten all had the common touch in
an uncommon degree. So had " Alex," who, one imagines,
never gave it a thought. So, in some strange fashion, had
Wavell, in spite of his extreme taciturnity. At least the
troops never doubted his competence and sensed his well-
concealed kindness of heart. " The Auk " was an inspira-
tion to every Indian soldier. On lower levels there were the
Freybergs, the " Strafer " Gotts, the u Jock " Campbells and,
presumably, many more like them in other theatres of war.
But the soldier's general remains a rare bird and the general
who is known to the rank-and-file of the enemy a still rarer
one.
Amongst such, Rommel was a phenomenon, a nonpareil.
The instruction quoted at the beginning of this chapter gave
rise to much discussion and some derision when it was issued
"OUR FRIEND ROMMEL "
25
in Cairo. Nevertheless it was necessary and, indeed, overdue.
For Rommel had so identified himself with the Afrika
Korps, had so impressed himself upon his opponents, was
getting such a " build-up " from British and American war
correspondents, as well as from even pro-British newspapers
in Cairo, that he was already the best-known and not far
from the most popular figure in the Middle East Our own
troops referred to him, half-affectionately, as " that b . . .
Rommel," which, as I learnt not long ago, was precisely
how he was referred to by the Afrika Korps itself. When
they added, as they often did, " YouVe got to hand it to
the b . . ."it needed no psychologist to sec that the sport-
ing spirit of the British soldier could easily produce a mild
inferiority complex. That did, in fact, occur. Newcomers
to the Desert and even a minority of the old " desert rats "
were inclined to explain : " We bumped into Germans," as
though that in itself was a sufficient excuse for failure. To
the tew who remembered the quite unwarranted accents of
pity and contempt with which we used to speak of " poor
old Fritz " in the first war, it seemed that there was a real
danger of Rommel and the Afrika Korps securing a moral
ascendancy. Perhaps those rather too easy victories over
the Italians had not been very good for us after all.
Granted the build-up, it is still hard to see why Rommel
so quickly became " un type dans le genre de Napotton"
a bogey to the back-areas and to civilians in Cairo, as well
as a r^iore personal and proximate menace to those farther
forward.
Though he emerged like the Demon King from a trap,
unfortunately anticipating his cue, even our Intelligence
Staff knew very little about him, either as a soldier or as a
man. This was because the British had largely relied upon
their French allies for " profiles " of German generals and
for those personal details which enable a commander to
estimate his opponent. The sudden collapse of France cut
them off from this contact and the dossiers doubtless re-
26
ROMMEL
mained in the French Ministry of War, to be read by the
subjects of them. Thus the War Office was able to supply
General Wavell and his staff with only a meagre report
about Rommel. From this it appeared that he was a rather
impetuous individual who had done well in the first war and
as a divisional commander in the invasion of France but was
by no means in the top flight of German generals. It was
suggested that he was a keen Nazi and that his selection for
North Africa was due to party favouritism.
The background was both sketchy and incorrect. Indeed,
me most fantastic stories about Rommel's origin and early
career are still afloat. For example, in that otherwise well-
documented book, Defeat in the West, we are told that he
was a member, with Goering, Hess, Roehm, Bormann, and
more of the sort, of the Free Corps, a group of " irrespon-
sible, swashbuckling men " who grew " increasingly more
aggressive and brutal in their suppression of disorders " in
Germany after the Armistice in 1918, and supplied " the
most promising leaders of the bullying gangs of latter-day
Hitlerite S.A. and S.S." Other reports say that he was the
son of a labourer and one of the first of the Nazi storm-
troopers; others that he was an N.G.O. who rose from the
ranks during the first war; others that he was a policeman
between the two wars.
The truth is less highly coloured. Rommel was, from first
to last, a regular officer and, as is shown by the extract from
h„is Wehrpass or record of service, printed at the end of this
book, from the day he joined his regiment to the day he
died, he was never off the strength of the German Army.
He never belonged to the Free Corps, he was never a police-
man, he was never a member of the Nazi Party, still less a
storm-trooper, and his connection with Hitler came about
quite fortuitously.
The source of some at least of the legends is not difficult
to discover. In the summer of 1941 an anonymous article
about Rommel appeared in Goebbels' paper, Das Reich,
"OUR FRIEND ROMMEL "
27
This article, which was commended to the attention of the
foreign correspondents in Berlin, announced that Rommel
was the son of a working-man, mat he left the army after
the first war to study at Tubingen University, that he was
one of the first storm-troop leaders and became a close friend
of Hitler and so on and so on.
Rommel saw the cutting in North Africa and reacted
violently. What did they ritean, he wrote to the Propaganda
Ministry, by circulating fabricated stories about him ? The
Propaganda Ministry tried to get out of it by saying that
perhaps Obcrleutenant Tschimpke, author of a book about
the 7th Panzer Division, which Rommel commanded in
France, had supplied the information. Rommel then found
time, the battle of Halfaya Pass being over, to turn on the
unfortunate Tschimpke. Had he in fact given this infor-
mation and if so what did he mean by it? Tschimpke re-
plied to Rommel denying that he had done anything of the
sort. He also wrote to the Propaganda Ministry to ask why
they had got him into trouble with the general. The answer,
from Presseabteilung der Reichsregierung, Abt. Auslands-
presse, Gruppe: Information , Wilhelmplatz 8-9, dated
October 10th, 1941, and signed " Ileil Hitler, Dr. Meissner,"
was one of those comic masterpieces which explain why, in
the long run, German propaganda could never be effective.
What had been written about General Rommel in the
article, said the doctor, could do no harm to the reputation
of that excellent man. Indeed, it could only do good, by
making him a more familiar and sympathetic figure to the
foreign war correspondents. Perhaps, he concluded, it
would have been a good thing, from the propaganda point
of view, if the statements, though admittedly incorrect, had,
in fact, been true.
Tschimpke sent the letter to Rommel, who preserved it
amongst his papers. He also preserved a strong dislike and
suspicion of any one having anything to do with propaganda
or " public relations." The first victim was an unfortunate
28 ROMMEL
■
young officer named Berndt, who came out to join the
Afrika Korps after service in the Propaganda Ministry.
Reporting to Rommel, to whom he had been personally
commended, he was promptly told to go out that evening,
his first in the desert, and make a "recce" behind the
British lines. Berndt was a brave and intelligent young man
and returned from this unpromising assignment with some
British prisoners and valuable information. Thereafter
Rommel made an exception of him and later used to send
him back to Berlin with reports which he did not wish to go
through staff channels. But visiting publicists were always
suspect.
What weie the facts, which Dr. Goebbels* young men
could easily have ascertained from the Ministry of War or
from Rommel's family, if they did not already know them?
Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel was born at noon on
Sunday, November 15th 1891, at Heidenheim, a small town
in Wiirttcmberg, near Ulm. His father, also Erwin Rommel,
was a schoolmaster and the son of a schoolmaster. Both
father and grandfather were mathematicians of some dis-
traction. Since those were the days when learning was still
more highly regarded in Germany than loyalty to a political
party, Herr Professor Rommel was much respected in
Heidenheim. In 1886 he married Helena, eldest daughter
of Karl von Luz, President of the Government of Wiirttem- *
berg and thus a prominent person in those parts. There
were five children of the marriage, a son, Manfred, who
died young, a daughter, Helena, unmarried and now teach-
ing at the well-known Waldorfsckule at Stuttgart, Erwin
Rommel himself and his younger brothers, Karl and
Gcrhardt. Karl is almost completely crippled from malaria,
caught while serving as a pilot in Turkey and Mesopotamia
during the 1914-18 war. Gerhardt supplied the only touch
of exotic colour to the otherwise conventional Rommel
family by abandoning agriculture to become an opera*
* c OUR* FRIEND ROMMEL "
29
singer. This profession he still pursues, without any great
success arid to the mild embarrassment of his relations, at
Ulm.
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
In 1898, Rommel's father became Director of the Real-
gymnasium at Aalen, in other words headmaster of a school
in which " Modern Side " subjects rather than classics are
taught. In 1913 he died suddenly after an operation. His
wife outlived him by twenty-seven years and died only in
1940, when her second son was already a Major-Gencral.
" Tough " is the adjective most obviously appropriate to
Rommel of the Afrika Korps but as a small boy Erwin Rom-
mel was the reverse of tough. " He was a very gentle and
docile child," says his sister, "who took after his mother.
Small for his age, he had a white skin and hair so pale that
we called him the * white bear.' He spoke very slowly and
only after reflecting for a long time. He was very good-
tempered and amiable and not afraid of any one. When
other children used to run away from the chimney-sweeps,
with their black faces and top hats, he would go up
solemnly and shake hands with them. We had a very sunny
childhood, brought up by kind and affectionate parents who
taught us their own love of nature. Before we went to
school we used to play all day in the garden or in the fields
and woods."
■
School at Aalen did not agree with young Rommel after
the freedom of Heidenheim. Finding himself behind the
others %jf his age, he became even paler in the attempt to
catch up, lost his appetite and could not sleep. Then he
grew lazy and inattentive and made no effort. He was so
careless that he became the butt of his class. *' If Rommel
ever shows up a dictation without a mistake," said the
schoolmaster, " we will hire a band and go off for a day in
the country." Rommel sat up and promptly turned in a
dictation without even a comma out of place. When the
promised excursion did not come off, he relapsed into his
usual indifference. For several years he remained a dreamy
30
ROMMEL
little boy, taking no interest in books or games and showing
no sign of that intense physical energy which he afterwards
developed.
Then, when he was in his 'teens, he suddenly woke up.
Mentally, lie began to give evidence of having inherited the
mathematical talent of his father and grandfather. Physi-
cally, he started to spend every spare moment in summer
on his bicycle and in winter on skis. He passed his examina-
tions with credit. He lost his dreamy # abstracted, air and
reverted to the type of Wurttemberg, " the home of com-
mon sense in Germany." He became hard-headed and prac-
tical — and very careful of his money, another Wurttem-
berger characteristic. With his great friend Keitel (no rela-
tion of the Field-Marshal who subsequently became one of
his bitterest enemies), he applied himself to the study of air-
craft. Together the two boys built model aeroplanes and
then a full-scale glider in which they made repeated but
unsuccessful attempts to leave the ground. They began to
think about their future careers. Keitel had already made
up his mind to become an engineer and find employment at
the Zeppelin works at Friedrichshafen. He did so and Rom-
mel would probably have gone with him had his father
agreed.
His father opposed the idea and it was then that Rommel
decided to join the army. The family had no military tradi-
tion, except that Rommel senior had served for a time as a
lieutenant in the artillery, before retiring to become a
schoolmaster. Nor had the Rommels any influential friends
in military circles : they were a respectable Swabian family
of moderate means, far removed in education and environ-
ment from the Prussian officer class. Rommel was after-
wards to have serving under him in Africa generals of aris-
tocractic family, large fortune and military connections
which destined them to life in a good regiment from birth,
and, given ordinary ability, almost assured them of
accelerated promotion. Such career as he might have in the
(< OUR FRIEND ROMMEL "
31
army would have to be carved out by himself and there
seemed no reason to suppose that he wouldl end up as more
than an elderly major, living in retirement on a modest
pension in some small town like Heidenheim itself.
On July 19th, 1910, he joined the 124th Infantry Regi-
ment (Koenig Wilhelm I, 6th Wurttemberg), at Weingarten
as an "aspirant" or, approximately, officer cadet, which
meant that he had first to serve in the ranks before going to
a Kriegsschule or War Academy. He was promoted corporal
in October and sergeant at the end of December. In March,
1911, he was posted to the Kriegsschule at Danzig.
Rommel's time at Danzig was important to him in more
ways than one. It was there that he met, through a friend
in the War Academy who had a cousin in the same
boarding-school, the girl whom he was afterwards to marry
and who was the only woman in his life. Lucie Maria
Mollin was the daughter of a landowner in West Prussia
where the family, Italian in origin, had been settled since
the thirteenth century. Her father died when she was a
child and she was now in Danzig, studying to be a teacher
of languages. Rommel fell in love with her at once and she
with him and although they did not become formally en-
gaged for another four years there was never any doubt in
either of their minds. According to his widow, Rommel at
this time was already a serious-minded young man, intensely
preoccupied with doing well in his profession. Examinations
still did not come as easily to him as the practical side of
soldiering and he had to work hard at his books. However,
Danzig was a pleasant city in which to be young and in love
and, as they both enjoyed outdoor life and dancing, they
spent a happy summer whenever, chaperoned by the cousin,
they could escape from school.
Rommel duly passed his examinations, if not with great
distinction at any rate with marks above the average, and,
at the end of January, 1912, received his commission as a
32 ROMMEL
2nd Lieutenant and returned to his regiment. He and
Fraulein Moliin wrote to each other every day.
In Weingarten, where the regimental barracks were in the
massive old monastery, Rommel was turned on for two years
to the training of recruits. He was good at drill and good
with men and, like the young Montgomery when he first
joined a battalion, was observed to be unusually interested
in the minutia; of military organisation. Otherwise there
was nothing to suggest tliat he was anything out of the
ordinary. Physically he was still undersized, though wiry
and strong, mentally he was in no way distinguished. Un-
like Montgomery, he was not argumentative and preferred
to listen rather than to talk, as he did throughout his life.
Since he neither smoked nor drank and was already, in his
own eyes, engaged, the after-dark amusements of a small
garrison town did not appeal to him. The other subalterns
found him quiet and too serious for his age but good-
tempered and agreeable, always ready to exchange duties to
allow the more social to get off, though not prepared to be
put upon. One or two of them recognised that he had an
independent mind, a strong will and a sense of humour and
the N.C.O.s quickly discovered that he would not tolerate
anything slipshod. He was thus cut out to be a good regi-
mental officer and, in due course, a good hard-driving
adjutant. As an adjutant he would, very properly, be un-
popular with the inefficient but it was already clear that he
cared less than most young men about popularity. On the
whole he seemed a fairly typical Wurttemberger, shrewd,
business-like, careful, with a hard streak in him.
At the beginning of March, 1914, he was attached to a
Field Artillery regiment in Ulm and remained with it, en-
joying the riding and taking pride in the smart turnout of
his battery, until, on the afternoon of July 3 1st, he returned
to barracks to find horses being bought in the barrack-square
and orders awaiting him to rejoin his own regiment at once.
Next day his company was fitting field equipment. In the
"OUR FRIEND ROM M EL"
33
evening the colonel inspected the regiment in field-grey,
made a stirring speech and, before dismissing them,
announced the order for mobilisation. " A jubilant shout of
German warrior youth echoes through the ancient grey wails
of the monastery," says Infantcrie Greijt An, Rommel's
book on tactics, but this and other such comments sound
less like Rommel than a gloss by a Nazi propagandist, pre-
paring the 1937 edition for popular consumption. Had the
" warrior youth " been able to see the memorial panels to
the tens of thousands of officers and men of the Wiirttem-
berg regiments which still hang in Ulm Cathedral, they
might have been less jubilant. Next day the 124th went off
to war.
In all armies there is a small minority of professional
soldiers (and a few amateurs) who find in war the one occu-
pation to which they are perfectly adapted. Year by year,
in the In Memoriam column of The Times, my eye catches
the name of Brigadier-General ** Boy " Bradford, V.G.,
D.S.O., M.G., killed in the Gambrai battle in 1917 at the age
of 24, and I remember riding over, unduly conspicuous, I
felt, on a white horse, to his brigade headquarters in front
of Bourlon Wood and thinking, as I talked to him, that here
was someone at last who knew his trade and was equal to
any demands that war might make. I remember, too,
A. N. S. Jackson, the Olympic runner, my contemporary at
Oxford and in the regiment, whom I saw married in 1918
on Pai&ieave, wearing one ribbon only, the D.S.O. with
three bars. There were others like them but not many.
Of this small company of exceptional young men was
Rommel, on the wrong side. From the moment that he first
came under fire he stood out as the perfect fighting animal,
cofd, cunning, ruthless, untiring, quick of decision, in-
credibly brave* At 5 a.m. on the morning of August 22nd,
1914, he went into action against the French in the village
of Bleid, near Longwy. He had been patrolling for twenty-
four hours, was suffering from food poisoning and was so
R. B
34
ROMMEL
tired that he could hardly sit in the saddle when he was sent
forward to reconnoitre, in thick fog. Having located the
village he brought up his platoon. When they were fired
upon, he halted them and went on with an N.C.O. and two
men. Out of the fog loomed up a high hedge, surrounding
a farmhouse. A footpath led past it to another farm. Rom*
mel followed it. As he came round the corner, he saw fifteen
or twenty of the enemy standing about in the road. Should
he go back and bring up the platoon? That first decision
is not an easy one to make. Much of a man's future conduct
hangs on it. Rommel did what he was to do again and
again. Counting on the value of surprise, he collected his
three men and attacked, firing from the standing position.
The enemy broke and the survivors took cover and opened
fire. Rommel found his platoon moving up. Half he armed
with bundles of straw, the other half he posted to give cover-
ing fire. Then he advanced again. Doors were beaten in
and lighted bundles of straw thrown into the houses and
barns. House by house the village was cleared. It was a
minor action and of no importance except that it was his
first and a pattern of the boldness and independence which
he showed throughout his service.
Despite his illness and the colossal exertions of the moving
warfare of that period, he carried on, sometimes fainting
but never reporting sick, until on September 24th he was
wounded in the thigh when attacking three Frenchmen in
a wood near Varennes, alone and with an empty rifle. By
this time his battalion commander had come to rely on him
for any particularly tough job and he already had been
recommended for the Iron Cross, Class II. Three months
later, as soon as his wound was healed, he rejoined the batta-
lion. He came up with it in the middle of January in the
Argonne. On January 29th, 1915, he won his Iron Cross,
Class I, by crawling with his platoon through a gap in a belt
of wire nearly a hundred yards deep, into the main French
position, capturing four blockhouses, beating off an enemy
" O U R FRIEND ROM MEL " 35
attack in battalion strength, retaking one of the blockhouses
from which he had been driven out and then withdrawing
to his own lines with the loss of less than a dozen men,
before a new attack could be launched.
This, again, was only a minor action but it showed Rom-
mel's readiness to exploit a situation to the limit, regardless
of the risk involved. It led him time and again into positions
of fantastic danger and yet enabled him to win every ounce
of advantage, especially against an irresolute enemy.
It was doubtless this willingness to take risks and capacity
for individual action which led to his posting, after promo-
tion to Oberleiitnant (1st Lieutenant) and a second wound in
the leg, to a newly-formed mountain battalion, the Wurtt-
embergischc Gebirgsbataillan (W.G.B.). This was a unit
larger than the normal battalion, consisting of six rifle com-
panies and six mountain machine-gun platoons. It never
fought as a unit but rather as a formation, splitting up into
two or more Battle Groups (Abteilungen) whose constitution
varied according to the job in hand. Each battle group was
given its task and fought under its own commander, who was
allowed wide freedom of action and had merely to report
back once a day to the battalion commander. When, after
intensive training in mountain warfare in Austria and a
peaceful period of nearly a year in a quiet sector in the
Vosges, the battalion joined the famous Alpenkorps on the
Rumanian front, Rommel was quickly entrusted with the
commft'id of one of these battle groups, which varied in size
for different actions from one company to the whole batta-
lion. Meanwhile he had slipped off on leave to Danzig and
there, on November 27th, 1916, married Lucie Maria
Mollin. Her photograph, taken at this time, shows her to
have been a handsome girl, markedly Italian in type, with
beautifully modelled features. What it does not show, since
the expression is serious, is that she had a great sense of fun,
as she still has. Studiousness, courage and strength of
character are obvious. She was a good wife for a soldier.
36 ROMMEL
Some of Rommel's subsequent feats in Rumania and Italy
would be almost incredible had it not been possible to check
them by the statements of others who witnessed and took
part in them. In brief, his method was to infiltrate through
the enemy lines with a few men, usually laying a telephone
line as he went. In mountainous country, where the peaks
and the valleys were likely to be held, he worked round the
upper slopes, often as steep as the roof of a house and prac-
ticable only to skilled mountaineers. Whether in icy fog and
deep snow or in the blazing heat of summer he would keep
moving at speed by day or night. He had a remarkable eye
for country and was proof against heat, cold, fatigue and
lack of food and sleep. Once behind the enemy lines he
never hesitated to attack, however small his force, for he
rightly assumed that the sudden appearance of his men in
rear of their positions and the first devastating burst of
machine-gun fire from the back areas would shake all but
the best of troops, which the Rumanians and Italians were
not. When he took the strongly-fortified Rumanian position
of Mount Gosna in August, 1917, he led four companies in
single file through the woods between two enemy posts, 150
yards apart, without being detected, and laid a telephone
wire at the same time. By the time he reached the summit
he had been without sleep for nearly a week and had also
been severely wounded in the arm several days before by a
bullet fired from far in his rear.
When he took the village of Gagesti in January of the
same year, he lay out until ten o'clock at night within the
Rumanian outpost line in a temperature ten degrees, below
freezing. Then, when he judged, correctly, that the
Rumanians would be asleep in their billets, he opened up on
the village with his machine-guns and half his rifles and led
the rest of his troops, cheering, to the attack. As the enemy
tumbled sleepily out of the houses he collected . them ana
soon had four, hundred of them locked up in the church.
His own casualties were negligible. ., . V
"OUR FRIEND ROMMEL "
37
If he were compelled to make a frontal attack, his prac-
tice was to open intense machine-gun fire over the whole
sector, with the heaviest concentration at the point where
the attack was to be made. Then came an assault with strong
forces on a very small front. The attacking troops carried
machine-guns which, as soon as a breach was made, were
sited for enfilade fire to the flanks. The remainder of the
assault force pressed on, regardless of what was happening
in their rear. In other words, he adopted precisely the tac-
tics of penetration in depth which were employed by the
German panzer divisions in 1939.
All this time, it has to be remembered, while Rommel was
commanding anything up to a battalion, conducting inde-
pendent operations against the enemy, having his advice
sought and taken by senior officers on direction and methods
of attack, he was a young man of twenty-five, looking even
younger than his age, and in rank only an Oberleutnant
from a not particularly distinguished line regiment. This in
the German army, where seniority counted for more than
in our own, where young men were not normally en-
couraged to air their opinions and where the standard of
training was high. That he established an almost unique
reputation and was known throughout his division, even be-
fore he went to the mountain battalion, is on record. Yet he
was not one of those queer personalities who crop up in wars
and make an impression by being unusual. He merely had
the qualities of courage, boldness, determination and initia-
tive in so exceptional a degree that they could not fail to
attract attention. He was a Freyberg rather than an Orde
Wingate.
The climax of his career in World War I was reached
with the capture of Monte Matajur, south-west of Capo-
retto, on October 26th, 1917. The Austrians had suffered
a series of setbacks at the hands of the Italians and had
appealed for German help. - In spite of their commitments
elsewhere, the German High Command sent the 14th Army,
38
ROMMEL
consisting of seven veteran divisions, to take part in an off en*
sive against the Italian positions in the Isonzo valley. The
Wiirttemberg Mountain Battalion was again assigned to the
Alpenkorps, which was due to attack in the centre, towards
Matajur. On the first day the battalion had the task of
protecting the right flank of a Bavarian regiment which was
to lead the attack. Thereafter it was to follow on after the
Bavarians.
To summarise a long and complicated operation, Rommel
was not interested in following the Bavarians and persuaded
his battalion commander, one Major Sprosser, to allow him
to move off to the right of them and attack the Italian posi-
tions independently. While the Bavarians were held up, he
led his troops before dawn, across the Italian front without
being detected and an advance party succeeded in pene-
trating the Italian front line at first light and capturing an
Italian battery position with the bayonet, without a shot
being fired at them. Rommel left one company to hold and
widen the gap and pushed on with another into the Italian
hinterland. He had to return to the help of his first com-
pany, which was attacked by an entire Italian battalion.
When he took the Italians in the rear they quickly surren-
dered. He sent back a message to his battalion commander
and with it more than a thousand Italian prisoners. On this
Major Sprosser came up with four more companies. With
six companies under command, Rommel was permitted to :
proceed with his break-through into the back areas. Finding
a road masked from view, he led his whole force along it in
single file for nearly two miles while the Italians were stilt
preoccupied with the main battle and bombardment in pro-
gress on their front. In open country behind the enemy lines,
he sat on the main road leading towards Monte Matajur
and captured a ration column, a staff car, 50 officers and •
2000 men of the 4th Bersaglieri Brigade which was moving
up. Taking the staff car, he did a preliminary u recce " and
"OUR FRIEND ROMMEL."
39
decided to cut straight across country to Monte Matajur,
the key to the enemy position. Throughout the rest of that
day and the whole of the night he drove on his now ex-
hausted troops. At dawn he came upon a camp of the
Salerno Brigade. With two other officers and a few riflemen
he walked straight into a mass of armed men and ordered
them to surrender. After a moment's hesitation, 43 officers
and 1500 men laid down their arms, mainly, it would
appear, from sheer surprise and the power of the human
eye.
When Rommel eventually scaled Monte Matajur from
the rear and fired his success rockets from the summit, he
had been continuously on the move for fifty hours, had
covered twelve miles as the crow flies in mountainous coun-
try, had climbed up to 7000 feet and had captured 150
officers, 9000 men and 81 guns. He himself found the lack
of fighting spirit in the Italians quite incomprehensible. In
the 1937 edition of Infanterie Greift An he is made to say
that "to-day the Italian Army is one of the best in the
world " but here again one suspects a little sub-editing by
the army propaganda department.
At any rate, though Rommel could hardly have tried
such tricks with success against Lord Cavan's British divi-
sions, it Was a remarkably bold operation. For it he was
awarded the Pour le Merite, a decoration usually reserved
for senior generals and, when awarded to junior officers, as
it was* in only two or three cases, corresponding to the*
Victoria Gross. He was also promoted Hauptmann or
Captain. Shortly afterwards, having swum the icy waters
of the Piave at night with six men roped together, he
attacked the village of Longarone and captured it, with the
whole of its considerable garrison, by firing upon it from
different points in the darkness and, at dawn, walking in
alone, informing the Italians that they were surrounded and
ordering them to surrender. He was then sent on leave and,
40
ROMMEL
to his disgust, given a staff" appointment. This he held until
the end of the war.
Leadership in war is not, perhaps, amongst the highest
forms of human activity. Yet, whereas a champion of the
prize-ring, even a world champion, need be no more than
an exceptionally aggressive animal with adequate physique
and superlative technical skill, a man to whom other men
will unhesitatingly confide their lives in battle must have
more to him than that. Thus, soon after I started out on
the trail of Rommel, I naturally began to ask myself and
others what sort of a person he was, apart from his exploits
in action.
From the beginning I ran up against a fundamental
difference between the German attitude towards war and
our own. For this I was not altogether unprepared. Soon
after the first war, I happened to read in translation a book
called Storm of Steel by one Ernst J linger and an incident '
in it had always stuck in my memory, partly because the
scene of it was familiar to me. Just after the battle of
Cambrai and the successful German counter-attack which
followed it, the battalion to which Ernst Jiinger belonged
was holding the line near Moeuvres, in the neighbourhood
of the Hermes Canal. It was a fine, sunny, Sunday after-
noon and the officers of his company, having lunched well,
were smoking their cigars and drinking their brandy in a
dug-out in the front line. " Why not let's go over and raid
the English?" someone suggested. It was not a suggestion
which one can imagine being made in a British company
mess in those days. We were ready enough, if not anxious,
to take part in a full-dress attack or an organised raid if we
were ordered to do so. A good battalion prided itself on
aggressive patrolling and on being in command of No Man's
' Land at night. But, apart from that, most people were dis-
posed to live and let live and to appreciate a quiet after-
noon, with only the odd shell droning over to burst in the
"OUR FRIEND ROM M EL"
41
back areas, as a Heaven-sent opportunity to read a book or
write a letter. Had any one proposed an impromptu raid,
" officers only," in such circumstances, he would have been
suspected of punishing the brandy too freely and advised
to lie down'.
In this case the raid was carried out across the fifty or
sixty yards which separated the two front lines. Because
there was no warning in the way of artillery preparation and
because the early afternoon was not the recognised time for
raids, it was successful and the company officers returned
ten minutes later in triumph, bringing with them two or
three prisoners and leaving behind them two or three dead.
The sequel is even more surprising. When the battalion
was next out of the line, the officers who took part in the
raid presented to the company commander, who had led it,
a large silver cup, inscribed " To the victor of Moeuvres."
The German professional soldier has always taken war
with a seriousness with which only sport is treated by the
British and sport and business by the Americans. It is just
possible to imagine, though with difficulty, the rest of the
side presenting a silver cup to someone who has won the
University Rugby match in the last minute by a run from
his own 25-yard line. Such presentations are not uncommon
in the United States and extend even to the member of the
sales-force who has brought in the most orders for Fuller
brushes. But the cup for " the victor of Moeuvres/* solemnly
■
produced with appropriate speeches and filled for a toast
to the hero himself, if any one can see that ceremony occur-
ring in a British battalion he must have soldiered in strange
company.
This story kept running through my head while I talked
in Heidenheim to Hauptmann Hartmann, the first person I
met who had served with Rommel in World War I. The
Hartmann factory, which makes bandages by the million,
had the rather bleak air of extreme impersonal efficiency
and almost sterilised cleanliness that only Gennan and Swiss
42
ROMMEL
factories seem to attain. Captain Hartmann's office was the
typical office of the Herr Direktor, gloomy, with its dark
panelling, its heavy furniture and its large photographs of
former Hartmanns round the walls, not a room in which a
file would dare to go adrift or a paper escape from its
appropriate tray. Captain Hartmann was, however, by no
means so sombre as his surroundings. A dark, good-looking,
slightly-built German, he seemed much too young to be
Rommel's contemporary (and mine). As he got up from
his desk and came across the room to greet me, I saw that
he had lost one leg at the hip. Was that in the first war?
No, in this, in a glider accident, when he was attached to
the Luftiuaffe. Gliding had been and still was his passion;
the first day he came out of hospital after losing his leg he
had gone up again. When he spoke of gliding, his face lit
up. He was an attractive and sympathetic person with an
easy manner.
Then we got on to Rommel. Yes, they had been great
friends, ever since the first war and until Rommel's death.
They served together in the same battalion. He had been
with him when he won his Pour le Merite. He described
how Rommel swum the Piave on that December night with
his six men and took Longarone. What a soldier ! " Where
Rommel is, the front is," they used to say in the division. He
was always attempting and bringing off things that no one
else would have thought of trying. He seemed to have
Fingers pitzengefu hi, a sort of sixth sense, an intuition in his
fingers. (It was a word which I was to hear from every
soldier I met who had known Rommel.) Hard, yes, though
he never asked any one to do more than he would do him-
self, or as much, and he was always trying to minimise losses
by tactics. He was a tactical genius. Perhaps officers did not
like him as much as the men because he always expected
more of them and there were very few who could go his
pace. But he was " the best of comrades."
" Best of comrades " sounded more promising. After all,
"OUR FRIEND ROMMEt"
43
they had been young men together and battalions do not
spend all their time in the line. Presumably even in Rumania
they had their local Amiens to make for when they came
out to rest, some equivalent to Godbert or the Cathedralc,
where they could settle down in a corner to dine well and
forget the war. Such evenings, when one had ridden in
along the pave and booked a room and bathed, with bath-
salts, and shopped and had a drink with other people from
the division, are part of everybody's first war memories, the
memories that make one reflect: "Oh, it wasn't too bad
after all." (Was it not in the Cathedralc that "Kid"
Kennedy, my Brigadier, eyeing the attractive young person
who served us, paid her a compliment in terms which I had
never heard before, have never heard since and have never
forgotten? " By God, Desmond, isn't that lovely?" he said.
" You could cat a poached egg off her stomach.")
But when I tried tactfully to switch the conversation
from the front line to relaxation at rest and to get some
idea of Rommel as a human being as well as a soldier, I
came up against a blank wall. Interests? No, Captain Hart-
mann did not think he had any other interests. When he
was not putting his genius for minor tactics into practice,
he was working out new plans for embarrassing the enemy.
Certainly he never wanted to " beat it up " in the back
areas, nor, apparently, to visit them. Was there any change
in him, I asked, when he returned to the battalion in 1916
after bang married? No, he was just the same, just as
tough, just as regardless of danger, just as preoccupied with
winning the war on his particular sector. " He was one hun-
dred per cent soldier," said Captain Hartmann, a slightly
rapt expression coming over his handsome face, " he was
body and soul in the war."
A few days later I tried again, with Hauptmann Aldinger,
who had, not only served in the same battalion with Hart-
mann and Rommel during the first war but was Rommel's
Ordonnam-offizier, a combination of personal assistant,
44
ROMMEL
camp commandant; A.D.G. and private secretary, in France
in 1940, in North Africa, and in Normandy in 1944, and
was almost the last person to see him alive. Captain
Aldinger is a precise little man who might very well be the
chief accountant of some large business like Hartmann's
bandage factory, in which case the auditors would have an
easy job. But in private life he is a designer of gardens, with
a considerable reputation in Stuttgart, and an architect of
obvious good taste. Perhaps he would see what I was trying
to get at and give me a line on Rommel. Here again I made
no progress. Fingerspitzengefuhl came up once more and
all the military virtues. A hard man, too hard for many
people, particularly officers. " But if Rommel was on your
flank you knew you had nothing to worry about on one side
at any rate. ... In those days he believed that every order
must be exacdy carried out. . . . He had more trust in the
Higher Command and in the Staff in the first war than he
had in the second. . . ." Other interests? Well, he liked a
day's shooting or fishing when he could get it. Reading?
Military works mostly. Music or the theatre ? No. Food and
wine? They meant nothing to him. Was he then entirely
serious ? Oh, no, he liked to joke with the troops and to talk
in the Swabian dialect to people from his part of the
country.
It seemed that I was on the trail of that rare and rather
colourless creature, the specialist with the single-track mind.
The young Montgomery, as he appears in Alan Moore-
head's biography, was the nearest parallel to this regular
officer with no interests outside his profession. But at least
Montgomery had been a notable athlete at St, Paul's, the
best-known boy in the school. At Sandhurst he had so
annoyed his instructors that he had been told that he was
quite useless and would get nowhere in the Army. Rommel
had not even that negative distinction.
Life in any army is narrow and limited and nowhere
more so than in the old German anny, with its class-
"OUR FRIEND ROMMEL*'
45
consciousness and rigid traditions. Thus the outsider, or the
man coming into it temporarily from a different world, is
inclined to think that the professional who, even in war-
time thinks of nothing but soldiering, must necessarily be
narrow and limited also. When General Speidel, Rommel's
extremely acute and intelligent Chief of Staff in Normandy,
remarked to me that he did not suppose that Rommel had
ever read a book in his life that had not to do with war, it
was in this mood that I asked whether he was not, then,
" un peu bete/' General Speidel stared at me in astonish-
ment. " Stupid? Good God, no I" he said. " That's the last
thing he was*"
Eventually I sorted out Rommel to my own satisfaction
and related him to my previous experience. But I propose
to let the reader form his own impressions and leave mine
until later.
Chapter Three
BETWEEN TWO WARS
The taste of defeat is always bitter. But the collapse of
Germany in 1918 surprised and shook the German profes-
sional soldier much more than the capitulation of May,
1945, which all but the fanatics of the S.S. had long seen to
be inevitable. Ludendorff, indeed, knew that the great
offensive of March was his final throw. But when the tide
of success was checked and began to turn the other way in
the summer, the old type of German regimental officer as
yet had no thought of surrender. The German armies still
stood on* foreign soil; since the Russian advances in 1914 no
enemy had yet set foot in Germany except as a prisoner.
The line might have to be shortened, as after the battles of
the Somme. The whole of Northern France and Belgium
might have to be given up; a compromise peace might have
to be made which would leave Germany no better off in the
West than she was on August 4, 1914. But, outside the
General Staff and the Army Commanders, few realised until
the last fortnight that there was now no choice between
capitulation and complete disaster. Even the Allies were
preparing to face another winter of trench warfare and
planning their ultimate offensives for the spring of 1919.
In fact, the German armies were squarely beaten in the
field and the blockade had broken the will-to-resist of the
German people at home. Defeat might have been delayed;
it could not have been averted.
Nevertheless, since we all like to attribute our failures to
anything except our own shortcomings, it was natural'
enough that the legend of the " stab in the back " should
46
BETWEEN TWO WARS
47
have been seized upon and swallowed by the returned sol-
diers. The Allies, with a strangely faulty appreciation of
German psychology, helped to promote and perpetuate it
by permitting them to march back armed across the Rhine
bridges, their bands and colour-parties leading.
They then proceeded to give the Germans a solid, per-
manent and perfectly legitimate grievance by completely
ignoring the conditions under which the armistice had been
arranged. These, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out at
the time, were plain and unequivocal. The Allies had
declared their willingness to make peace with Germany on
the basis of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, as amplified
in his addresses to Congress, and the object of the Peace
Conference was to ** discuss the details of their application."
In fact, they were never discussed and the peace was dic-
tated without the Germans being heard. Moreover, of the
Fourteen Points, Four Principles and Five Particulars,
"only four,'* says Mr. Harold Nicolson in Peacemaking,
" can with any accuracy be said to have been incorporated
in the treaties of peace." The result was that, although the
Treaty of Versailles was certainly not as severe as the sort
of peace which the Gennans themselves would have devised,
no German felt himself bound by it. In particular, no
German was prepared to accept the cession of a large slice
6f West Prussia to Poland, the loss of the city of Danzig and
the subjection of some two million Germans permanently
to Folish rule. It is against this background that the sub-
sequent behaviour of every German officer has to be
regarded. The officer class considered that it had been
tricked into surrender and it was of no use to argue that, had
it continued to fight into 1919, it would have had to accept
any terms, however outrageous, which the Allies might have
decided to impose.
In 1945 we saw the Germans pulverised and disintegrated
like the rubble of their ruined cities, too apathetic in their
sullen misery even to hate. In 1918 they still had the spirit
48
ROMMEL
to turn upon each other, since the day for turning upon
their conquerors was as yet far distant. (That it would dawn,
they had no doubt. u Clear out of here and we will hunt
the French home with sticks/' said a German industrialist
to me in Diisseldorf in 1919 — and that was four years before
the French occupation of the Ruhr.) At the time we were
too busy licking our wounds, celebrating our victory, spend-
ing our war gratuities and enjoying the beginnings of the
short-lived post-war boom to know or care much about what
was happening in Germany. Yet the sight of returning
officers being seized upon in the streets or dragged from
trains, stripped of their rank badges and, often, butchered
was one of the spectacles which impressed the Germans and
did much to assure Hitler a welcome in due course. It did
much to explain the rise of the Free Corps, its brutalities
and the emergence of the Goering, Roehm, Sepp Dietrich
type. It also explained why the Socialist Minister of
Defence, the ex-basket-maker, Herr Noske, who was also
an ex-N.C.O., turned to the officer class as the only Germans
now capable of respecting and restoring order.
There was, however, another side to all this. Through
the clouds of economic chaos and confusion of spirit arising
from defeat, occupation and civil war, it is hard for any
one who was not in Germany at the time to picture German
middle-class families living their normal lives, the husbands
going down to their bleakly efficient factories and offices, the
wives superintending the unceasing scrubbing and polishing,
hunting their unfortunate maidservants and preoccupied
mainly with the price of food and the difficulties of pro-
curing it. It is harder still to think of a German regular
officer relapsing at once into peace-time soldiering, as
though he had merely been away on some abnormally
lengthy manoeuvres.
Yet that, or almost that, is what happened to Captain
Erwin Rommel. On December 21st, 1918, he was re-posted
BETWEEN TWO WARS
49
to his original regiment, the 124th Infantry at Weingarten,
which he had joined in 1910 when he joined the army. On
the whole he saw very little of the ** troubles." He had to
travel through revolutionary Germany in the same month
to retrieve his wife from Danzig, where she was seriously ill
in her grandmother's house. He was questioned, mildly
insulted, since he travelled in uniform, and once nearly
arrested, but he brought her safely back to his mother'*
lodging in Weingartcn. (The two women were always the
best of friends.) In the summer of 1919 he went for a time
to command an internal security company in Friedrichs-
hafen where he had his first experience of handling Germans'
who were not prepared to obey orders. He was given &
draft of " red " naval ratings to lick into shape as soldiers.
They were a little wild at first, booed Rommel because he
wore his Pour le Merite, demanded to be allowed to appoint
a commissar, refused to do the goose-step and held a revolu-
tionary meeting. Rommel attended it, stood on a desk and
announced that he proposed to command soldiers, not
criminals. Next day fie marched them behind a band to the
parade-ground. When they refused to drill, he got on his
horse and left them. They followed him back to barracks
meekly enough and in a few days were so tame that Inspec-
tor Hahn, the head of the police at Stuttgart, asked Rommel
to select some of them for enlistment in the police, for which
they would be paid a special bonus on joining. He also
invited Rommel to join with them, which perhaps explains
the legend : that he was once a policeman. Rommel said that
he was going back to his regiment. Most of the men were
ready to sacrifice their bonus and go with him. Except
when they had to provide a guard over a blackmarket
Schnapps factory, perhaps an unfair test of their new-found
discipline, he had no further trouble with them. Later he
took his company to the Ruhr for internal security duties but
had no very exciting experiences there. By January lst^
50
ROMMEL
f
1921 , after a tour of duty at Schwabischgemund, he was in
Stuttgart, commanding a company in the 13th Infantry
Regiment, the 1 24th having disappeared in the reduction —
or renumbering — of the German Army. There he was to
remain as a captain for nearly nine years.
How was it that Rommel could thus resume his career
and was not driven into joining the Free Corps, that refuge
of so many unemployed, disgruntled and truculent ex-
regular officers, who knew no other trade but war and did
not much care against whom they fought? It was because,
in spite of the debacle of November, 1918, and the civil war
which followed it, the German army never ceased to exist,
nor was the intention of expanding it at the earliest possible
opportunity ever for a moment abandoned. Article 160 of
the Versailles Treaty laid down that " by a date which must
not be later than March 31, 1920, the German Army must
not comprise more than seven divisions of infantry and three
divisions of cavalry. After that date the total number of
effectives . . . must not exceed 100,000 men, including
officers and establishment of depots. . . . 7'he total effective
strength of officers . . . must not exceed 4000."
The intention was to allow Germany a sufficient force for
the maintenance of internal order. The effect was to pro-
vide the Commander-in-Chief, General Hans von Seeckt,
"the man who made the next war," with a hard core of
professionals round which he could lay the foundations of
the army of the future. They were the reinforcement, the
steel frame, on to which the concrete of conscripts could
quickly be poured, if and when it became possible to rein-
troduce conscription, as was done by Hitler in March, 1 935.
For such employment Rommel, with his Pour le Merite
and his reputation as a regimental officer, was a " natural."
Though he did not know General von Seeckt personally and,
indeed, never met him except once or twice on parade, he
was exactly the type of man that von Seeckt wanted, a
■ I
BETWEEN TWO WARS 51
serious-minded young soldier (he was still four days short
of twenty-seven at the armistice), and not of the swash-
buckling sort which may be effective in war but does not
take kindly either to discipline or to the dull grind of train-
ing in peace.
For Rommel himself there was really no other choice,
even if he had wished for one. The Army was his career
and, since he was married and had little or no private
means, he was lucky to be able to pursue it. Moreover, he
did not find it dull. He was a thinking soldier and liked to
fight his battles over again, not in any spirit of nostalgia for
war, but to draw from them the correct tactical lessons. He
also enjoyed drill and training, as did Montgomery.
That he was perfectiy well acquainted with the details
and purpose of the vast conspiracy which General von
Secckt set on foot to enlarge and conceal the strength of the
army, there is not the slightest reason to doubt. Every one
of the four thousand selected officers must have known that
his mission was not merely the maintenance of internal
security but the creation and training of a new and more
formidable force out of the debris of the old. They must all
have taken a great deal of pleasure, as we should have done
in their place, in the extraordinary ingenuity and persistence
with which the object was pursued. I remember reading, in
the library of die Rand Club in Johannesburg, the article in
the Quarterly Review for October, 1924, in which
Br^adier-General J. H. Morgan, a member of the Disarma-
ment Commission, described the innumerable subterfuges
by which its efforts were being defeated and the whole
machinery of mobilisation kept as nearly as possible intact
under cover of Demobilisation, Welfare, Pensions Centres
and so on. It was as exciting as an Agatha Christie novel
and a good deal more alarming. It was a pity that it did not
have as large a circulation. For those who were taking an
active part in the deception it must have been as thrilling a
52
ROMMEL
game as it was possible to play. " If I were a German and a
patriotic one," said Morgan himself, " 1 should bow my
head before General von Seeckt as * the greatest Roman of
them all* Scharnhorst, who turned the disarmament clauses
of the Treaty of Tilsit to the discomfiture of Napoleon (and
incidentally enabled us to win the battle of Waterloo), was
a small man in comparison, for the corresponding clauses
of the Treaty of Versailles were drawn with much more
care." Regimental soldiering in Germany in the years im-
mediately following the 1914-18 war was not so barren and
unprofitable an occupation for a German officer as might
have been supposed.
To be stationed in Stuttgart, an agreeable city in his own
part of the country, where his family lived, was another
piece of luck for Rommel. Thus, although he had to wait
until 1933 for his promotion to major, he was far from
unhappy. In 1927 he went on leave with his wife to Italy
and revisited the scene of his exploits at Longarone, where
Frau Rommel discovered in the local cemetery the graves
of the Molino family, from which her own family of Mollin
was reputed to be descended. (Their exploration of the
battlefield was cut short because the Italians of Longarone
resented an obvious German officer prowling about a spot
which seemed to have agreeable associations for him.)
On another leave, he and Frau Rommel took canoes
down the Rhine to Lake Constance. Both expert skiers^
mountaineers and swimmers, both good riders, fond of
horses and dogs and much preferring country to town life,
they got out of Stuttgart whenever they could. They both
liked to dance, indeed, but neither was much interested in
the theatre or the cinema nor did they care for " parties."
At home, Rommel played the violin in an amateurish
fashion but was otherwise easy to live with. He drank very
little* never more than a couple of glasses of wine, did not
smoke and was not particular about his food. He was extra*
ordinarily handy about the house, could make or mend any-
BETWEEN TWO WARS
53
thing and, when he bought a motor-cycle, started by taking
it entirely to pieces and putting it together again, without,
as he said with satisfaction, a nut or a screw left over.
While at Stuttgart, Rommel formed, with Hartmann and
Aldinger, an Old Comrades Association of the Wiirttemberg
battalion to which they had all belonged. In it there was no
distinction of rank. This was one of Rommel's main interests
and he spent much of his spare time getting in touch by
personal letters with all who had served in the battalion and
trying to help those who were having a hard time in post-
war Germany. An annual meeting and parade was organised
and in 1935, when Rommel was a Lieut-Colonel command-
ing a battalion at Goslar, he returned to Stuttgart for it.
General von Sodcn came to take the salute and invited
Rommel to join him at the saiuting-base. It was typical of
Rommel that he said that he would prefer to march past
with his old company.
Thus the years passed pleasantly and uneventfully enough
for the Rommels, the main incident being the birth of their
only child, Manfred, on Christmas Eve, 1928, after twelve
years of marriage.
Except for the scars of his wounds, war, says his widow,
seined to have left no trace upon Rommel. When he re-
ferred to it, which he seldom did at home, it was as a stupid
and brutal business, which no sane man would wish to see
repeated. But he did not dream at nights, nor did he appear
toT&t, as did so many young soldiers of all armies after
1918, either that those four years were some strange and
bloody hallucination or, conversely, that they alone were
real. He remained a serious-minded but jolly and good-
tempered man of simple tastes, who enjojed a quiet life and,
for the rest, was wrapped up in his profession. That his
profession was preparation for war is a seeming contradic-
tion which professional soldiers will more readily resolve
than civilians.
On October 1st, 1929, Rommel was posted as an ins true-
54
ROMMEL
tor to the Infantry School at Dresden where he remained for
exactly four years. His lectures at the school resulted in the
publication of his hook, Infanterie Greift An (" Infantry
Attacks"), based on personal experiences in Belgium, the
Argonne, the Vosges, the Carpathians and Italy during the
war. It is an excellent little manual of infantry tactics, in
which minor operations are vividly described with good
sketch-maps and the tactical lessons clearly drawn. It be-
came a textbook in the Swiss Army, whose officers presented
^Rommel with a gold watch, suitably inscribed. But it also
caught the attention of another reader nearer home, with
far-reaching elTects upon his fortunes.
On October 10th, 1933, Rommel, now a major, was given
command of the 3rd Battalion of Infantry Regiment 17, a
Jaeger or mountain battalion, in which all ranks were, or
were supposed to be, expert skiers. The battalion was at
Goslar, there was good snow near-by and, on the day after
he took over, the officers suggested that they should all go
out together. No doubt they wished to sec whether their
middle-aged CO. was up to commanding a battalion of
athletes. There was no ski-lift and they toiled up to the
highest point. Here they were about to settle down for a
drink, a smoke and a rest when Rommel remarked : " I
think, gentlemen, that we should be starting down." The
descent was made at speed. At the bottom it was acknow-
ledged that the CO. could ski. "That was very nice,
gentlemen," said Rommel, " let's try it again." This was
regarded as a sporting effort. But there was very little
enthusiasm when he proposed yet a third ascent. By the
time they reached the foot of the slope for the third time
everyone had had rather more than enough — except Rom-
mel* who observed that the slalom slopes looked good and
that they might spend another half-hour or so there. In a
British battalion one can often notice officers sliding unob-
trusively out of the anteroom when it is a question of making
tip a four at bridge with the colonel. In the Jaeger battalion.
BETWEEN TWO WARS
55
I was told, volunteers for ski-ing expeditions with the C.( >.
had to be detailed.
■
Until Hider became Chancellor on January 31st, 1933,
RommeJ had taken litde interest in politics. To remain aloof
from the sordid worlds of politics and commerce had always
been the tradition of the German officer class. In the years
immediately following the armistice, General von Seeckt set
out deliberately to foster it, at the same time that he set out
to break down the traditional barriers between officers and
men. His purpose was to create a New Model army, but he
had no intention of handing it over to the politicians of the
Weimar Republic. It would be for the General Staff to
decide when the time had come to use it. Meanwhile its
allegiance must be only to its own cloth. Thus his orders
prohibiting the anny from taking any part in politics and
even from voting, whilst doubtless reassuring to the Allies,
were, in fact, part of a long-range plan which would cer-
tainly have alarmed them had they been fully aware of it.
No prohibition was necessary in Rommel's case. He had
been brought up in a non-political society in a small German
provincial town ; he had been educated as a soldier ; he had
left for the wars when not yet twenty-three. He had been
only too glad, when he returned, to escape from the dissen-
sions of post-war Germany to the one world in which he felt
at home. " Coffee-housing " was not among his amusements,
he read little and he was not in the least politically minded.
The only comment which Frau Rommel remembers him
making on the Nazis in the early days was that they
" seemed to be a set of scallywags " and that it was a pity
that Hitler surrounded himself with such people. For, like
ninety per cent of Germans who had no direct contact with
Hider or his movement, he regarded him as an idealist, a
patriot with some sound ideas who might pull Germany
together and save her from Communism. This may seem a
naive estimate; it was not more naive than that of many
56
ROMMEL
people in England who saw him only as a ridiculous little
man with a silly moustache. Both views were founded in
wishful thinking. But the Germans, having had a bellyful
of defeat and a good taste of Communism, at least had some
excuse for believing what they wished to believe. Those
who refused to see any danger in that absurd figure, until it
was already too late, would not believe what they did not
wish to believe, merely because the alternative was too un-
pleasant to accept.
Moreover, Rommel, though he was a regular officer, was
no hochwohlgcborev , snobbish Prussian. The idea that an
Austrian corporal might prove the salvation of Germany
was not as fantastic to him as it was to many senior officers
of the Reichsivehr : he liked corporals. What he did not
like were the Brownshirt bullies of the type of Rochm. He
had never met Rochm" or anv of his associates but lie sus-
pected, as did most of the army, that they were trying to
set up a rival organisation. Moreover, he had seen the
Brownshirts about and their hysteria and lack of discipline
disgusted him. He was not, therefore, horrified when he
heard that Roehin and the rest had been liquidated on the
Night of the Long Knives, June 30th, 1934. He believed
the story that they had been plotting to overthrow Hitler
and seize power for themselves and thought that they had
got their deserts. Frau Rommel and others have also assured
me that the whole affair caused less stir, at least in provin-
cial Germany, than it did abroad and that details of the
killings only gradually leaked out.
Rommel's first encounter with National Socialism in
operation certainly does not suggest that he had any great
sympathy with Nazis. He was commanding his Jaeger
battalion at Goslar in 1935 when Goslar was chosen as the
scene of a thanksgiving ceremony, to be attended by the
Fiihrer in person. Everything was to be laid on in style, with
bands and banners and peasants from the surrounding dis-
BETWEEN TWO WARS
57
tricts in their national costumes. Naturally, the battalion
would parade. When the details of the parade were being
worked out, Rommel was told by a representative of the S.S.
that in front of his troops would be a single file of S.S, men,
who would be responsible for Hitler's safety. To this he
replied that in that case the battalion would not turn out.
He was asked to go and see Himinlcr and Goebbels at the
local hotel. They were both exceedingly civil to him and
invited him to stay for luncheon. When he explained that
he considered die proposed arrangements an insult to him-
self and his battalion, they agreed that he was quite right.
It was just the mistake of an over-careful subordinate. Of
course the orders would be cancelled at once. Rommel
returned home, having carried his point, to report to his
wife that he did not much like the look of Himmler but that
Dr. Goebbels was really a very agreeable and interesting
man. That impression remained. Whenever they met in
later years, which was not often, Goebbels went out of his
way to be pleasant and to turn on the charm which he
undoubtedly had. Rommel was worth winning over; if that
were impossible, he was worth keeping sweet. With Hitler,
Rommel's first meeting was purely formal. He saluted; he
was introduced; he shook hands; his Pour le Merite was
observed; he was congratulated on the turn-out of his
battalion.
On October 15th, 1935, Rommel, now a Licut.-Colonel,
posted as an instructor to the War Academy at Pots-
dam. It was the first time diat he had been near the centre
of things. Earlier on he had had the chance of taking his
Staff College examinations and joining the elect. But he
was advised that, with his record and his Pour le Merite, he
stood a better chance of promotion and preferment if he
remained with troops. Since he was by temperament a regi-
mental officer, the advice tallied with his own inclination.
In Potsdam he and his wife and small son lived quietly near
58
ROMMEL
the Academy, mixed very little in Berlin society and had no
friends or even acquaintances amongst the top Nazis. Nor
did they even meet socially the senior officers of the
Wehrmacht. As in Stuttgart, their friends were mainly
regular officers and their wives of about their own seniority.
Naturally, however, they knew more of what was going
on in high places than they had ever known before. They
knew, for example, of the growing rivalry between the Nazis
and the General Staff. Relying on the fact that Hitler, on
the death of Hindenburg, had become Supreme Comman-
der of all the German armed forces and that the officer corps
had taken the oath of allegiance to him, the party bosses
were bent upon making good Nazis of them and incor-
porating the Wehrmacht in the "new order." They saw
clearly enough that an independent organisation, with tradi-
tions rooted in the past, commanding the instinctive loyalty
of all Germans except the very young, might one day turn
upon them and take over. Hitler, who saw it much more
clearly, played off the two sides against each other with
supreme cunning.
For its part, the Army, preoccupied though it was from
March, 1935, with its enormous expansion and grateful to
Hitler for giving it the opportunity to expand beyond its
wildest dreams, had no thought of subordinating itself to his
henchmen. A very few officers of the highest character and •
ability, like Colonel-General Ludwig Beck, the Chief of
Staff, made no distinction between the Fuhrer and his fol-
lowers and, on moral grounds, regarded both National
Socialism and its creator as a national calamity. Beck,
though he resigned only in 1 938, in protest against the pro*
posat to invade Czechoslovakia, had no illusions from the
first. Others, like Colonel-General Werner von Fritsch, the
Commander-in-Chief, also disliked and despised both the
Nazis and their leader, but mainly, it would seem, because
they threatened the supremacy of the Army and because
BETWEEN TWO WARS
59
they were the kind of people with whom a German officer
really could not associate. Others, again, the Keitels and
Jodls, were prepared to sacrifice their professional integrity
for promotion, though even they might have hesitated if
they had known that the day would soon come when Hitler
would treat them as uniformed office-boys.
The attitude of the bulk of the General Staff has been
■
described by General Walter Warlimont : " Gradually the
General Staff officer found it necessary to acquire some sort
of a stabilising influence and he began to look to Hitler, in
contrast to his followers, as the new hope for Germany. In
addition to the rearmament programme, the peaceful re-
occupation of the Rhineland enhanced Hitler's personal
reputation within the officer corps, since this move corres-
ponded to the fundamental policy of the Army." This was
out of the frying-pan into the fire, had they but known it.
But it did not seem so stupid then as it sounds now. Was
not Hitler some sort of a soldier himself, intensely proud of
his service in the war? Had he not backed them against the
ambitions of Roehm? Did he not know that it v/as the
Army and the Army alone which had kept the military
flame alive during the long years of subjection? His Nazi
hooligans had helped him to power but could any one sup-
pose that he really preferred them to German officers of the
old school? Was he not biding his time until he could afford
to get rid of them and rely upon the real protectors of
Germany?
Such w the view of the General Staff. It percolated
down to regimental officers and Rommel, for one, accepted
it, in so far as he thought about such matters at all. There
was a clear differentiation in his mind between the Fuhrer
and his followers. Until his own bitter experiences opened
his eyes, and that was not until after £1 Alamein, he admired
and respected Hitler but had no use for Nazis.
Thus it was with no great enthusiasm that he heard, in
60
ROMMEL
1935, that the Army proposed to take over the S.A. and that
he was to be given command of them. He admitted that he
would have enjoyed " smartening them up " but he realised
that the job would be neither easy nor agreeable. The
attempt failed. It is unlikely that there was ever any chance
of it succeeding.
Rommel, however, was not to escape contact with the
Nazis. While still an instructor at the War Academy he was
given a special assignment. He was to be attached to the
Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth) with the object of improving
their discipline. This suited him. He was always fond of
boys and at his best with them. Most boys, with their
natural instinct for hero-worship, adored him. He was a
famous soldier who would stand no nonsense but he talked
to them as equals. Here the material was, on the whole,
good; physically it was magnificent.
It is interesting to speculate what might have happened
to the Hitler Youth had Rommel been given a free hand.
They would have been tough and brave, as, indeed, most
of them were. In the last days of defeat they would have
fought and died gamely, as many of them did, under S.S.
Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer of the 12th S.S. Panzer (Hitler
Jugend) Division, at Caen. They might have sprung at our
tanks like wolves until as a British tank commander said,
" We were forced to kill them against our will." They would
not, it is safe to say, have been the intolerant and fanatical
young bullies they became. Certainly they would hot have
killed prisoners-of-war, as they did under Kurt Meyer's
orders. Nor would the survivors now form that hard core
of sullen, resentful and dangerous young Germans whom no
man in his senses can suppose it possible to convert to our
ideas. The Afrika Korps was formed of much the same
material, the boys who served in it were tough and brave
and confident. They, too, had a good conceit of themselves.
But one has only to meet the survivors of -the Afrika Korps
and of the S.S. to see the difference.
BETWEEN TWO WARS
61
Rommel never had a chance with them, for he quickly
ran up against their leader, Baldur von Schirach. The latter,
young, handsome, a good speaker, more cultured than most
of the Nazis, for he was the son of the Director of the
Weimar Theatre and a poet of sorts, has been represented
as one of the few idealists of the Party. On the other hand
he struck von Hassell as no more than " a bombastic Party
ruffian . . . whose countenance reflects baseness." What is
certain is that he was of the type to appeal to emotional
German youth and that he was slavishly and apparently
genuinely devoted to the Fiihrer, to whom he used to send
adulatory poems. Not unnaturally he resented the importa-
tion of a regular officer who was not even a member of the
Party. Rommel and he fell out, however, on ah issue which
would have been surprising to any one who did not know of
Rommel's descent from schoolmasters. So far from wanting
to militarise the Hitler Youth, he objected that von Schirach
was laying too much stress on sport and military training
and not paying enough attention to education and the deve-
lopment of character. He strongly objected, he said, to
small boy's of thirteen being made into " litde Napoleons "
and was not at all encouraging to a lad of eighteen who
arrived in uniform and a large Mercedes and naively con-
fided in him that he " felt like a commanding general." The
Hitler Youth were already contemptuous of schools and
schoolmasters and refused to be treated as schoolboys. In
an 1 attempt to put this right, Rommel arranged a meeting
between Baldur von Schirach and Dr. Rust, the Minister of
Education. But von Schirach was arrogant and Rust was
a fool and nothing came of it. Rommel then told von
Schirach that, if he was determined to train the boys as
soldiers, he had better first go and learn to be a soldier him-
self. Von Schirach, though he eventually went, objected
that he would lose all his influence with his Hitler Youth if
.,■*.«
he w<ere se,en obeying the orders of a drill-sergeant !
Meanwhile, as soon as 4ie felt able to do so, he set about
62
ROMMEL
getting rid of Rommel. Since he was one of Hitler's inti-
mates it was not too difficult to represent that Rommel was
not quite a good enough Nazi to be entrusted with the train-
ing of the Hitler Youth. Rommel was only attached from
the stafF of the War Academy and no open dispute between
the Party and the Army arose. Rommel returned to Potsdam
and was rather pointedly not given the golden badge of the
Hitler Jugend.
Having finished his three years' tour of duty at Potsdam
on November 9th, 1938, he was appointed next day to com-
mand the War Academy at Wiener Neustadt. He had been
promoted the previous year and had thus risen from captain
to full colonel in nineteen years- — a rapid enough rise in
peacetime but not sensational in view of his record and the
enormous expansion of the Wehrmacht since 1935. Such as
it was, no one could say that it was due to influence in the
higher command of the Army, still less to any favours from
the Nazis.
What his record of service does not show is that, before
leaving Potsdam, he had been seconded from the War
Academy to a temporary job which changed I us whole
future — for better and for worse. An officer was wanted to
command the FuhrerhegU'ithattailon, the battalion respon-
sible for Hitler's personal safety, during the march' into the.
Sudetenland in October, 1938. Infanterie Crfift An had
been published in 1937. Hitler had read and admired it
He made the appointment to his escort himself and chose
the author. For the first time Rommel was brought to close
quarters with the man who was to make him a Field-
Marshal and to murder him.
«
So maity buckets have been dropped into the dark well of
Hitler's character, so much is known about his treachery,
his cruelty, his cunning, his bloodthirstiness, his strange
obsessions, his megalomania, that only one mystery now
BETWEEN TWO WARS
63
remains : how did he manage to impose so long, not upon
the mass of the German people (that is understandable, for
to them he was a Voice and a Vision), but upon some quite
decent and intelligent men who were in daily contact with
him?
Rommel was no trained psychologist, nor was he ever
Hitler's intimate. But he was shrewd, a keen observer and a
good judge of normal men. At this period he had an oppor-
tunity of studying the Fiihrcr under stress. The impressions
he formed at the time may add little to our knowledge. But
they were precise and he made a note of them which his son
has preserved. There was no doubt, he said, that Hitler had
a magnetic, perhaps an hypnotic power, derived from his
evident belief that he was inspired by God or Vorsehung
(the force which orders all things on earth), to lead the Ger-
man people " up to the sun." (Rommel even then suspected
that, if he could not lead them to victory, he would be
equally prepared to lead them to destruction, provided only
that the end was dramatic.)
This power was displayed in his handling of a conference.
At the start Hitler would have an almost vacant look and
appear to be fumbling, like a man idly turning over the
pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. Suddenly his sixth sense (Rom-
mel's own Fingers pitzengefuhl) would come into play and
he would listen intently. Then " out of the depths of him-
self," he would produce an answer which, for the moment
at least, would entirely satisfy all those to whom he was
speaking. "At such moments he would speak like a
prophet." Rommel realised that " he always acted by in-
tuition, never by reason." But Hitler had, he said, an extra-
ordinary gift of grasping the essential points in a discussion
and distilling a solution from them.
This same intuition enabled him to sense the thoughts of
any one to whom he was speaking and, when he chose, to
say what he knew would please him. His flattery was adroit
64
ROMMEL
Thus, when he had already made up his own mind on a
course, he would consult someone who was certain to hold
the same views as himself and appear to be convinced by his
arguments, even a little unwillingly. When the decision
was taken, his consultant, already flattered by being asked
his opinion by the Fuhrcr, would be doubly flattered at the
thought that he had influenced it. (It would be interesting
to know whether Hitler had read Mr. Dale Carnegie, as
Mr. Dale Carnegie presumably read Mein Kampf)
The next thing that struck Rommel was Hitler's truly
remarkable memory. Like General Smuts, he knew practi-
cally by heart any book which he had ever read and, as with
General Smuts, whole pages and chapters were photo-
graphed exactly upon his mind. His grasp of statistics was
particularly strong; he could reel off figures of troop dis-
positions, enemy tanks destroyed, reserves of petrol and
ammunition, etc., in a manner which impressed even the
highly-trained products of the General Staff.
Baron von Esebeck, the German war correspondent, told
me a story, which he had at first hand, to show that Hitler
*
never lost this faculty nor the intuition which had already
led the German armies to disaster. In the early spring of
1945 Hitler visited an Army Headquarters on the Eastern
Front. " When do you expect the next Russian attack?" he
asked the Army Commander. The Army Commander gave
a date and his reasons. "No," said Hitler, "it will be a
week later," which it was. Then he asked, " How many
rounds per gun have you for your medium artillery?" The
Army Commander gave a figure. " No," said Hitler, " I
sent you more than that : you ought to have so-and-so. Ring
up and ask the general commanding your artillery." Hitler
was right and the Army Commander was wrong. This is an .
old trick, well known to visiting Royalty and inspecting
generals, but Hitler was a master of it and needed no
prompting.
BETWEEN TWO WARS
65
Hitler's last quality, which greatly impressed Rommel,
who always valued it very highly, was, surprisingly enough,
his physical courage. When the Germans were about to
enter Prague on March J 3th, 1 939, Rommel was again in
command of the escort battalion. " What would you do if
you were in my place, Colonel?" the Ftihrer asked him.
RommePs answer was in character. " I should get into an
open car," he said, " and drive through the streets to the
Hradschin without an escort." With the Czechs in the mood
they were in, this was advice which few men, personally res-
ponsible for Hitler's safety, would have offered. It was also
advice which few men in Hitler's position would have taken.
But he took it and the old news-reels show them acting upon
Rommel's suggestion.
Of all their stations, Wiener Neustadt, in the mountains
south-west of Vienna, gave the Rommcls their happiest
memories of the time between the wars. Rommel had an
independent command. Free from any interference by
higher authority, he was doing his favourite job, the train-
ing of budding officers in minor tactics and soldierly con-
duct. With his wife and young son he lived in a charming
bungalow surrounded by a large garden. There were end-
less excursions to be made in a beautiful countryside, end-
less opportunities for the practice of his latest hobby, photo-
graphy, in which, as may be imagined, he was technically
highly competent but also showed a talent for selection and
composition. The rest of the staff were congenial but the
Rommcls were always content with a domestic life and
sufficient to themselves. The summer days slipped pleasantly
away. As for the shadow of war, Rommel was not alone
amongst Germans in thinking, after Munich and even after
Prague, that Hitler would "get away with it somehow."
General Thomas, head of the economic branch of the Ger-
man High Command has, since the war, remarked that
" every intelligent German came to the conclusion that the
R. c
66
ROMMEL
Western Powers saw in Germany a bulwark against Bol-
shevism and welcomed German rearmament," which shows
to what misconceptions appeasement may lead. Even as
late as August 23rd, 1939, when Rommel was promoted
Major-General and posted to the staff of the Ftthrer's head-
quarters, to be responsible again for Hitler's safety, he was
not sure that he was off once more to the wars. An eleventh-
hour settlement would not have surprised him half as much
as did the alliance with Russia, signed on the same day.
That alliance made war inevitable and, at 4.40 a.m. on
September 1st, the German air attack upon Poland was
launched. Lloyd George had been proved right when, in his
memorandum to the Peace Conference on March 25th,
1919, he said: "The proposal of the Polish Commission
that we should place two million Germans under the control
of a people of a different race, which has never proved its
capacity for stable self-government throughout its history,
must, in my judgment, lead sooner or later to a new war in
the east of Europe. . .
It would be idle to pretend that Rommel had any qualms
of conscience over the invasion of Poland. Just as he had
welcomed rearmament, whether secret or open, because he
felt that Germany could expect little consideration from her
conquerors until she was strong enough to speak with them
on equal terms, so he had always believed that the Polish
Corridor must disappear and Danzig be restored to the
Reich, by amicable arrangement if possible but by force of
arms if necessary. The fact that his wife's family lived in
West Prussia, that it was in Danzig that he had met her, that
it was from the War Academy at Danzig that he was first
commissioned, may have given him a direct personal interest
in the matter, but his opinion was shared by the vast
majority of Germans. Moreover, it is fair to remember that
in this case, as in the case of the Sudetenland and Czecho-
slovakia, even the educated German swallowed the propa-
BETWEEN TWO WARS
67
ganda adroitly served up to him by Goebbcls because be
never had the opportunity of hearing the other side. Men
like General Beck and Ulrich von Hassell, who could view
European affairs dispassionately and from an international
standpoint, were few and far between, as, indeed, they are
in any country. This does not in any way excuse German
aggression : it merely explains why it did not horrify the
German professional soldier as much as it did the rest of
the world.
From Hitler's headquarters, Rommel had a bird's-eye
view of the lightning campaign which overwhelmed Poland
in four weeks, before the bulk of the Polish army had even
reached its concentration areas. On September 2nd he was
at Prusc/o, on the I Oth at Kielce, on the 13th at Lodz and
on October 5th at Warsaw, which had capitulated on Sep-
tember 30th. A day or two later he was on his way back
to Berlin. He did not fail to profit by this object-lesson in
the art of modern war. He saw the importance of close air
co-operation with the ground troops and of "ground-
strafing" by low-flying aircraft, which the R.A.F. was
strangely reluctant to learn. He saw that to spread con-
fusion in the back areas was often more demoralising to the
enemy than to inflict casualties. He saw that, in mechanised
warfare, what paid was to push on and exploit success in
depth, even at the risk of being cut off, by-passing points
of resistance and leaving them to be dealt with at leisure by
the oncoming infantry. (This was merely an adaptation to
armour of Ludendorff's infiltration tactics in the March,
1918, offensive and of his own practice in Rumania and
Italy.) He saw that tanks must be used in mass and not dis-
persed in " penny packets." Above all, he saw that, for a
man of his temperament, an armoured division was the one
command.
Incidentally, the campaign confirmed his opinion of Hit-
ler's personal courage. " I had great trouble with him," he
68
ROMMEL
told his wife ; " he was always wanting to be right up with
the forward troops. He seemed to enjoy being under fire."
During the invasion of Normandy, Rommel did not find the
Fiihrer conspicuous for courage. But by then he had long
since revised his opinion of him on other grounds.
■ w
Chapter Four
GHOST DIVISION
To those who took no part in it, the five weeks' fighting
that preceded the fall of France seemed curiously unreal.
It was as though one watched a familiar building, struck by
a heavy bomb, in that split second before it crumbles and
subsides into dust.
I had, I remember, flown back to India by K.L.M. from a
week's hurried leave in England, landing at Jodhpur on the
morning of May 10th. The previous Sunday, a magical
spring day, I had lunched in the Bois, where the chestnuts
were in bloom. Over a cigar and a second brandy I had
wondered idly when, if ever, I should do anything so
pleasant again, for there was no doubt that the " phoney "
war was coming to an end. But it was only a vague, personal
foreboding, which few in Paris seemed to share. " Cette fois
on les aura," said the barman in the hotel when I left to
catch the night train to Rome. " Ca ne sera pas comme en
quatorze." He wore the ribbon of the Croix de Guerre in his
DVyAon-hole and seemed a sensible chap.
As I sat in the U.S. Club in Simla a week or so later and
heard over the wireless the old familiar names, Cambrai,
Marcoing, Peronne, Arras, Bapaume, the La Bassee Canal,
B6thune and, soon, Amiens, Abbeville, Fecamp, St.
Valery, names associated with battles in which, after months
of bloody fighting, gains could be seen only on trench-maps,
or with back areas where one went out thankfully to rest, it
seemed impossible that this could be happening in a country
one had known. Were British troops really fighting again
over that old, once shell-torn ground ? Could it be true that
70
ROMMEL
they were being pushed out overnight from places where
the line had been held for years?
Dunkirk was different One could visualise the beaches
and the long lines of men stretching far out into the sea. But
for me at least the weeks before were like some horrid
dream, in which one went abstractedly to work, agreed with
someone in the G.H.Q. mess that " It looks damned bad,"
but from which one expected at any moment to awake.
It was only long after the flood of victory had flowed
again over the lost ground, only the other day, in fact, that
I began to get the feel of it, to realise what it must have
been like to live through those bewildering, hopeless weeks
— and that from the other side.
On the red cloth of the dining-room table, in the little
house in Hcrrlingen-bei-Ulm, with a painting of Rommel
in uniform looking down at us from the wall, Manfred
Rommel and T opened out the huge velvet-covered volume
in which the day-by-day and round-by-round story of the
7th Panzer Division, the "Ghost Division," is recorded.
Rommel was a great one for records. To Captain Aldinger,
his old companion in the Wurttemberg battalion in the pre-
vious war, recalled from retirement and the designing of
peaceful gardens to become his Ordonnanzoffizier in this,
was given the task of collecting the orders and maps and
casualty returns for each day that the division was in action
and, subsequently, of collating them. Captain Aldinger, as
might be expected of him, had done a precise and perfect
job. On the left-hand page is a typewritten abstract of the
orders and war diary, on the right a large-scale map on
which the position of the divisional units and of Divisional
H.Q. is shown hour by hour. There is not a correction nor
an erasure. From this book, the only copy in existence, it is
possible to see exactly what the division did between May
10th, 1940, when it crossed the Belgian frontier, to 5 p.m.
on June 19th, when Cherbourg capitulated to it uncondi-
tionally and Rommel accepted, in the Military Prefecture',
CHOST DIVISION
71
the surrender of Admiral d'Abrial, with four other French
admirals and 30,000 prisoners-of-war.
Nothing, I realise, could be more tedious than to follow
its fortunes in such detail. Some day some military historian
may do so in the way of duty, though it seems unlikely that
the French will care, the British take the trouble, the Ameri-
cans be interested or the Germans look backwards, to fight
these old battles over again. Nevertheless, having spent a
week-end on the record, page by page, I venture to think that
not even General Patton's advances will show armour more
boldly handled or a commander more ready to take risks
and quicker to exploit success. General von Thoma has said
that Rommel was really an infantryman at heart, that he
never understood the " technique " of tanks but merely the
tactics. (He admits that he was an infantry tactician of the
first order.) Since General von Thoma himself fought in
192 tank engagements during the Spanish Civil War alone,
many of them against Russian tanks under Marshal Koniev,
and, after commanding a tank brigade with great dash and
skill in Poland, was Chief Staff Officer of the German
Mobile Forces, he ought to know. But when one reads the
story of the " Ghost Division " it is not surprising that Rom-
mel taught us a trick or two in Africa about the use of tanks.
On his return from Poland he remained at the Fuhrer's
H.Q. and was again responsible for his safety. But he was
acbj~g for a fighting command and by this time knew Hitler
well enough to ask him for it Hitler, for his part, had taken
a fancy to Rommel who was not of the arrogant type of
officer with whom he felt ill at ease, however much he
bullied them, perhaps because he knew they secretly des-
pised him. " What do you want ?" he asked and the reply
was naturally " command of a Panzer Division." Rommel
took over the 7th Panzer Division at Godesberg, on the
Rhine, on February 15th, 1940, succeeding General
Stumme, whom he was to succeed again when Stumme died
of a heart-attack at the beginning of the battle of El
72
ROMMEL
Alamein. Frau Rommel remained with Manfred in the
house at Wiener Neustadt.
Rommel had just time enough to make himsell known to
every officer and man in the division and to get to know at
least the officers personally, before they were on the move.
In two months' intensive training he also had time to work
out his own theories of tank tactics on the ground and to
apply the lessons he had learnt in Poland. When the order
came for the advance into Belgium, the division was fighting
fit and knew that it was under a commander who, whatever
mistakes he might make, would make none through hesi-
tating to " have a go."
On May I Oth the frontier was crossed about thirty miles
south of Liege. On May 13th the division had its first big
task, to effect a passage of the Meuse. The Belgians fought
well from houses which had been put into a state of defence
and from pill-boxes. They had anti-tank guns in concrete
positions and plenty of covering artillery. A bridge had to
be built under heavy fire and Rommel was up to his waist
in water helping to shift baulks of timber. " I'll give you a
hand," he said, and stayed with them until he was sure that
the job would be done. Divisional commanders doubtless
have no business to be messing about in the front line. But
it was a story which did not take long to go round the divi-
sion. Rommel had already re-earned his old reputation of
never asking men to do what he would not do himself. To-
•wards evening the French counter-attacked with tanks and
infantry but the attacks were beaten off and by nightfall the
first tanks were across, with Rommel's tank leading.
The next day was nearly the end of him. He drove in his
tank into a sand quarry and came under heavy anti-tank
fire. The tank was put out of action, Rommel was hit in the
face and French native troops were advancing to capture
him when Colonel Rothenburg, commanding 25th Panzer
Regiment, who won the Pour le Merite and Knighthood
GHOST DIVISION
73
Cross during these operations and was afterwards to die in
Russia, came up in his own tank and drove them off.
By May 15th, 7th Division was far ahead of 5th Panzer
Division on its right flank and during the night, Rommel,
still in front, captured a French battery when it was moving
up into what its commander supposed to be a supporting
position.
The following night the division broke through the exten-
sion of the Maginot line in the fortified zone west of Glair-
fay. The rearward positions, with their artillery and
anti-tank guns under concrete, were smothered with arti-
ficial fog and artillery fire; the villages to the flanks were
blanked off by the same means. At 1 1 p.m. the attack was
lauched by moonlight, the tanks and the motor-cycle battal-
ion leading. The mass of the division followed. The higher
command had laid down that tanks should not fire while
on the move. Rommel disregarded this order and en-
couraged his tank crews to do so, saying that loss of accu-
racy and consequent waste of ammunition were more than
compensated by moral effect under such conditions. " We'll
do it like the Navy," he said, " fire salvoes to port and star-
board." As they broke into and out of Avesnes around mid-
night, leaving it still occupied by French troops, with French
tanks firing wildly in all directions and heavy street fighting
continuing, the German tanks fired on the move at batteries
w both flanks. A French mechanised division retreating
westward along the road, crowded with refugees, and
French tanks parked alongside it were overrun before they
could come into action. An artillery regiment followed the
tanks through Avesnes during the night and captured forty-
eight tanks intact. French infantry ran, throwing away their
weapons and spreading panic before them. Had all stood
fast the Gennans would have been in trouble, for the guns
of their tanks and the ported anti-tank guns of the motor-
cycle battalion could at first do nothing in Avesnes against
the heavy armour of the French tanks.
74
ROMMEL
" Vous ites anglais?*' asked a Frenchwoman of Rommel,
patting him on the arm as he stood beside his tank in a
village street beyond Avesnes. u Non, Madame, je suis
allemand" replied Rommel, who had a smattering of
several languages, though he was no linguist. "Oh, les
bar bares!" cried the woman and, throwing her apron over
her head, ran into her house.
Meanwhile all communications were interrupted and
even the infantry brigade was not aware of the break-
through. Nevertheless, Rommel determined, on his own
responsibility, to launch the whole division in an attack to-
wards the west, in an endeavour to reach the Sambre, secure
a bridgehead and keep it open. The attack began about
5.30 in the morning (this after a night's continuous fighting),
with 25th Panzer Regiment pushing towards Landrecies,
where the Guards were first engaged in World War I. They
were attacked by motorised columns from both flanks but
the French infantry were shocked into surrender by the
sudden appearance of the German annour. By 6 a.m.
Landrecies was captured, large numbers of French troops
caught in their barracks and a bridge over the Sambre
seized intact. Rommel made the French throw down their
arms, over which he drove a tank. The regiment pushed on
to Le Gateau, where it was halted by Rommel, for the
advance had been made by only two of its battalions, with
part of the motor-cycle battalion, and the mass of the divi-
sion was far behind. While 25th Panzer Regiment took up a
position on high ground east of Le Gateau, Rommel himself
went back in an annoured car to bring it up.
All day the 25th Panzer Regiment was heavily attacked
by tanks. Behind it, Pommereuil was recaptured by the
French, who were thrown out again by the oncoming divi-
sion. By the evening of May 17 th the. situation was suffi-
ciently clear to allow the divisional artillery to move up into
forward positions and another bridge over the Sambre had
been seized at Berlimont, to enable 5th Panzer Division, now
GHOST DIVISION
75
completely outdistanced, to come up and cross on the right.
If one looks at the map, one sees that Rommel had pushed
forward a narrow salient, thirty miles Jong and only two
miles wide, like a linger pointing into the heart of France.
(From Avesnes to TiC Gateau alone is nearly fifteen miles.)
In doing so he had taken enormous risks, for there were
strong French forces on both flanks. Hut he had broken
through the fortified zone and had secured the vital cross-
ings of the Sambre. The operations were rightly regarded
as of great importance to the progress of the campaign and
for his success and his personal bravery Rommel was given
the Knighthood Gross.
That boldness pays is shown by the fact that the Division's
total casualties were only 35 killed and 59 wounded, whereas
it had taken over 10,000 prisoners in two days, and captured
or destroyed 100 tanks, 30 armoured cars and 27 guns.
Though there were great difficulties in bringing up petrol"
and enemy tank attacks were still continuing on either flank,
25th Panzer Regiment pushed on at the same speed and by
5 a.m. on May 20th, by-passing Gambrai, it had crossed the
Ganal du Nord at Marcoing and taken up a position south
of Arras. On the way, French troops had once more been
captured in their barracks. Again the mass of the division
was left behind and again Rommel went back to bring it
up, taking with him two tanks, his signal section and an
aifhoured car. On the Arras-Gambrai road, at Visc-ert-
Artois, he ran into the enemy, his two tanks were destroyed
and he remained surrounded for several hours.
The fighting round Arras on May 21st is of interest be-
cause it was here that, for the first time in either war,
Rommel bumped up against the British. It is pleasant to
record that he found them a much tougher proposition than
anything he had yet encountered. Debouching from Arras
to the south and south-east, the 1st Army Tank Brigade of
the 1st Armoured Division attacked him around Achicourt
and Agny. They broke through and his 42nd Anti-Tahk
76 ROMMEL
Battalion was overrun, most of the gun crews being killed,
for the Germans found, to their surprise, that they could
not penetrate the armour of the " I " tanks, even at close
range. The attack was only stopped by artillery fire from
an artillery regiment, and from a flak (AA) battery armed
with 88 mm. guns — a weapon which doubtless came as an
equally unpleasant surprise to us. Even so, Stukas had to
be called in before the British armour withdrew again to
Arras.
Meanwhile 25th Panzer Regiment which, as usual, had
pushed on and reached the high ground south of the Scarpe
at Acq, was ordered by Rommel to turn round and attack
the British tanks in the rear. In the tank battle which fol-
lowed near Agnes, though the British lost seven tanks and
six A.T. guns, 25th Panzer Regiment lost three Mark IVs,
six Mark Ills and some light tanks and thus had consider-
ably the worst of it. Rommel, forced to fight a defensive
action for once, had another narrow escape, for an officer
was killed beside him while the two of them were looking
at a map which both were holding.
That this was a harder day is shown by the fact that the
division lost 250 in killed and captured alone, whereas its
total bag of British prisoners was only 50, though it claimed
43 British tanks destroyed.
The next few days were tough, too. The division crossed
the Scarpe on May 22nd but the diary records that British
tank attacks were beaten off with difficulty, that mines had
to be laid against them, that Mont St. Eloi was captured and
lost and captured again and so on. In the advance to the La
Bassee Canal on the 24th, British snipers are reported as
being active in the bushes and hedges south of the Canal
and difficult to dislodge. In spite of them, bridgeheads were
secured on both sides of Guinchy on the 26th, the first tanks
and guns went over on the 27th, on the 28th the division
had taken up a line facing east towards Lille and on the
29th it was ordered out to rest west of Arras. Rommel, with
GHOST DIVISION
77
his usual curiosity, celebrated his first day of rest after a
fortnight's continuous fighting by driving into Lille. When
he saw that the streets were full of British and French sol-
diers, he realised that he had made a mistake. Since they
were as surprised as he, but for a second or two longer, he
was able to turn the car round and drive out before any
one had the presence of mind to interfere with him. Count-
ing up his recorded escapes from dead) or capture during
this period, apart from the ordinary risks which a divisional
commander runs who insists on leading his advanced guard
personally into action, one feels that we were a little unlucky
to be bothered with Erwin Rommel in Africa.
Within a few days the division was pulled out of rest
again and given a special task. The end was now in sight.
The French were patently on the point of being driven out
of the war and the British had already been driven out of
France. Between May 29th and June 4th, more than
300,000 British troops had been embarked at Dunkirk —
thanks to Hitler's refusal to allow the German armour to be
put in against them. There remained the 51st Highland
Division, landed too late and now about to take ship .again
from Fecamp and St. Val£ry. It was for Rommel to stop
them. He had first to cross the Somme and break through
what was left of the Weygand Line.
A race against time was the sort of thing that appealed
t$ him and he wasted none of it. Having made a personal
" recce " with his regimental and battalion commanders, he
crossed the Somme on the morning of June 6th. That day
and the next he met with opposition and had to stage attacks
to clear it. Then, right shoulder up, he squared away
towards the East of Rouen.
The division moved at night and as the tanks rumbled
and clanked through the silent villages, the French peasants,
thinking them British, turned out to wish the crews " bonne
chance." They went on their way without speaking. On the
night of June 9th they reached the Seine, ten miles south-
78
ROMMEL
west of Rouen. Next morning some bolder spirit found the
heart to put up a fight at Yvetot. Whoever he was, he was
thrust aside. By 2.15 in the afternoon the division had
covered the twenty miles from Yvetot to Veulettes and
reached the sea, between Fecamp and St. Valery. This time
it was closed up and the divisional artillery was well
forward.
At Fecamp, embarkation was going on and ships were
lying off' the shore under destroyer escort when 37th Panzer
Battalion appeared and, with its supporting artillery, at once
engaged them. A British destroyer promptly closed for
action and was reported hit. So were other vessels and the
little harbour was brought under heavy artillery fire. In
such conditions, embarkation by daylight was soon made
impossible.
St. Valery was the real prize, for here were the head-
quarters of General Fortune, commanding the 51st Division,
and it was here that the bulk of the division was preparing
to embark. During the night of June 10th and the morning
of the 11th Rommel seized the high ground to the west,
from which he could bring the port under artillery fire. At
3.30 p.m. he himself led 25th Panzer Regiment and part of
6th Infantry Regiment in to the attack, under cover of his
guns.
At the 5 1 st Division dinner last year, Field-Marshal Lord
Montgomery said that he sensed in the division at £1
Alamein a certain anxiousness to do well and avenge the
tragedy of St. Valery and that it was at Alamein that the
reborn Highland Division, advancing to the attack to the
skirl of the pipes, at last " found its soul." But although St.
Valery was a tragedy for the successors of "Uncle"
Harper's boys of the 1914-18 war, it is due to the division
to say that its enemies of 7th Panzer Division were not under
the impression that it had lost its soul or its fighting spirit
in those June days of 1940. " The enemy fought back des-
perately, first with artillery and anti-tank guns and later with
GHOST DIVISION
79
machine-guns and small arms : there was particularly hard
fighting round Le Tot and on the road St. Sylvain-St.
Valery," says the record and this, and the tribute to the
British armour around Arras, are among the very few entries
in which it is admitted that the Ghost Division had found
the going hard.
By evening, Rommel had taken about a thousand
prisoners and, what was more important, was in a domi-
nating position west of St. Valery from which his guns could
prevent embarkation from the harbour. Nevertheless, in
the evening heavy fighting was still going on and first two
(Pioneer) battalions and then the rest of the division were
ordered up in support. A written demand from Rommel to
General Fortune to surrender and march out the 51st
Division under white flags to the west was refused and the
Germans could see that barricades were being erected on
the harbour moles and that guns and machine-guns were
heing brought into position.
At 9 p.m. a heavy bombardment was opened. The con-
centrated fire of the whole of the divisional heavy and light
artillery was brought to bear on the northern part of St.
Valery and the harbour and 2500 shells fell in this small
area. At the same time 25th Panzer Regiment was again
put into the attack, with 7th Infantry Regiment and 37th
Pioneer Battalion. The line was advanced nearer to St.
Valery. But " in spite of the heavy fire the tenacious British
troops Hid not give up. They hoped to be embarked during
the night but the enemy was prevented by heavy artillery
fire from loading. In the early morning hours the British are
busy trying to embark from the steep coast to the east of St.
Valery, under cover of fire from warships. But the divisional
artillery first hinders this and later makes it impossible.
There is a duel between a warship and the 88 mni» A* A.
battery. . . . 8th Machine Gun Battalion attacks. . . . Parts
of 6th and 7th Infantry Regiments attack and gain more
ground near St. Val6ry. ... On the left, Rommel, with 25th
80
ROMMEL
Panzer Regiment under Colonel Rothenburg and part of
7th Infantry Regiment, pushes into St. Valery itself and
compels capitulation as the enemy commander sees that
further resistance is impossible."
Twelve thousand prisoners were taken at St. Valery, of
whom eight thousand were British. They included, beside
Major-General Fortune himself, the commanders of the 9th
French Army Corps and of three French divisions. Tanks
to the number of 58, 56 guns, 17 A. A. guns, 22 A.T. guns,
368 machine-guns, 3550 rifles (there must have been more
in the harbour), and 1 1 33 trucks were amongst the booty.
The divisional artillery claimed an armoured cruiser sunk,
which would be an unusual victim for a panzer division, but
I am advised by the Admiralty that this claim is unfounded.
Rommel never forgot General Fortune and often spoke
of him to his wife and to his son Manfred with sympathy, as
.the gallant leader of a good division who had had bad luck.
Somehow he happened to hear that General Fortune had
refused to be repatriated, feeling that he could do more for
the officers and men of the 51st Division by remaining with
them in captivity, and this increased his respect for him. It
would appear that General Fortune also remembered Rom-
mel. Not long ago a German prisoner-of-war, repatriated
from the Channel Islands, came to Herrlingen to see Frau
Rommel and to say that he had met General Fortune and
had been asked by him to visit her, if possible, on his return
to Germany and to express the General's sympathy on her
husband's death. I could not check this story with Major-
General Fortune before he died but it would appear to be
true, since a German soldier could hardly have invented it.
I hope so, for I am one of those old-fashioned persons who
regret that chivalry should be among the casualties of
" total " war. Fortunately it dies hard and keeps cropping
up in unexpected places, as will be seen lacer in this book.
The surrender of St. Val&y was on June 1 2th. On June
M,
Cw HOST DIVISION
81
17th, the day that Petain asked for an armistice, three days
after the Germans entered Paris, the 7 tl i Panzer Division
was pushing up the Cotentin Peninsula to attack Cherbourg.
One column moved along the coast through Goutance,
another through St. L6, a name which few could then have
pin-pointed on the map but which to-day must be as familiar
to many Americans as Detroit. Without any support, it had
moved 150 miles and met no opposition to speak of. But just
before midnight on the 17th it bumped a strong French posi-
tion at Le Fosses and the battalion was driven back by
heavy fire from artillery and anti-tank guns. Here, again,
was an unknown Frenchman with some fight left in him.
Rommel, a cautious commander when there was no
reason to be reckless, decided to call the action off and
resume it in daylight, when he could judge what he was up
against. Meanwhile he moved up an infantry brigade and
an artillery regiment with some batteries of light artd heavy
A. A. By 8 a.m. he had broken through and resumed the
advance on Cherbourg. At 1.15, when he was only three
miles south-west of the city, he ran into road blocks,
strongly held. At the same time he came under heavy
artillery fire from the forts. By 5 p.m., however, height 79,
just west of Cherbourg, had been captured and during the
evening 7 th Infantry Regiment under Colonel von Bis-
marck, with two panzer companies, had taken the high
ground at Quercqueville and pushed into the suburbs of
the city. Before midnight his troops had reached the railway
station.
During the night the divisional artillery was moved up to
begin the bombardment of the forts next morning. At first
light it. opened up and silenced the most troublesome of
them, while the infantry pushed farther into the suburbs.
General Collins of the United States 7th Corps was nick-
named " Lightning Joe " for capturing Cherbourg widiih
twenty days of the landing in Normandy. He had to fight
for it, however. There was no fight in the senior French
82
ROMMEL
officers of both services who were in Cherbourg in June,
1940. It is charitable to suppose that they already knew of
P£tain's request for an armistice. Otherwise there would
seem to be no excuse for the fact that they surrendered the
fortress and 30,000 men to a single armoured division, barely
twelve hours after it had come within range of the formi-
dable fortress guns.
That was what happened. At 2 p.m. on Tune 1 9th French
naval and military officers came out to offer unconditional
surrender and the fighting stopped. At 5 p.m. the formal
capitulation paper was sifmed. In the harbour was the un-
damaged transport of a British mechanised division.
The division was withdrawn before it could take over and
count the arms in the forts. But in the operations from May
10th it had captured :
The Admiral of the French Navy (North) and
4 other admirals,
1 Corps Commander,
4 Divisional Commanders with their staffs,
277 guns and 64 A.T. guns,
458 tanks and armoured cars,
4-5000 trucks,
1500-2000 cars,
1500-2000 horse and mule wagons,
300-400 buses,
300-400 motor-cycles,
and the major part of the 97,468 prisoners credited to the
Group to which it belonged. It had brought down 52 air-
craft, captured 15 more on the ground and destroyed 12
more.
There was much more booty which could not be counted
because the division had moved too fast. Nor was there time
to calculate, even approximately, the losses in killed and
wounded which it had inflicted on the enemy. Its own
*
OHOST DIVIS ION
83
casualties during the period were : 48 officers killed and 77
wounded; 108 sergeants and above killed and 317 wounded;
526 other ranks killed and 1252 wounded; 3 officers, 34
sergeants and above and 229 other ranks missing. It had
lost in tanks, Mark I, 3; Mark II, 5; Mark III, 26; and
Mark IV, 8.
The figures of casualties and tank losses are small com-
pared with what was accomplished. At the same time, when
one remembers that Rommel was always properly parsi-
monious with men's lives, they are by no means negligible.
They prove that the division had had hard fighting and had
not merely chased a beaten enemy across France.
Chapter Five
"NONE SO BLIND . . .»
The Good Fairy who looks after the British had to work
overtime in 1940. She never did them a hetter turn than
■
when, despite her deputy, Mr. Churchill, sHe saw to it that
the French did not continue the war in North Africa. Had
they done so, Hitler must have followed them. Spain would
have come in or heen forced to allow the passage of German
troops. Gibraltar would have fallen. The western end of
the Mediterranean would have been closed. French
colonial troops would never have stood against German
armour. Stiffened by a couple of German panzer divisions,
even the chicken-hearted Graziani must have been dug out
of his deep shelter and hustled into Cairo by Christmas.
Britain's last base within striking distance of Europe would
have gone. The loss of the Suez Canal would have closed
the other end of the Mediterranean. The road to Syria,
Iraq, Ix&n and, ultimately, the Caucasus would have been
wide open. Turkey could have been pinched out or coerced
into joining the Axis. Such are the contentions of better
strategists than I. Had the half of it come off the Good
Fairy would have had her hands full.
Only the German Naval Staff correctly appreciated these
resplendent possibilities. With no taste for " Operation Sea
Lion," the invasion of Britain, Admiral Raeder suggested,
on September 6th, 1940, that the best way to strike at her
was to exclude her from the Mediterranean. On September
26th he was more explicit. " The British," he said, " have
always considered the Mediterranean the pivot of their
world-empire. . . . Italy is fast becoming the main target of
84
''none so blind . . . M
85
attack. . . Britain always attempts to strangle the weaker.
The Italians have not yet realised their danger when they
refuse our help. . . For this reason the Mediterranean ques-
tion must he cleared up during the winter months* Gihraltar
must he taken. . The Suez Canal must be taken. It is
doubtful whether the Italians can accomplish this alone;
support by German troops will be needed. An advance from
Suez through Palestine and Syria as far as Turkey is neces-
sary. If we reach that point, Turkey will be in our power.
The Russian problem will then appear in a different light.
Fundamentally, Russia is afraid of Germany. It is doubtful
whether an advance against Russia from the north will be
necessary. . . The question of North- West Africa is also of
decisive importance. All indications are that Britain, with
the help of Gaullist France, and possibly also of the U.S.A.,
wants to make Jthis region a centre of resistance and to set
up air bases for an attack against Italy. . . . In this way Italy
would be defeated." If Admiral Raeder is ever visited by
the shades of Hitler, Keitel and Jodl he may well greet them
with " Don't say I didn't tell you !"
" The Fuhrer agrees with the general line of thought,'*
add the minutes of the meeting. Why, then, did he not
follow it out? First, he was not sea-minded. Second, he,,
half believed, even in the late summer of 1940, that Britain
wguld come to terms. Third, if she were obstinate, he hoped
to " attract France into the orbit of the anti-British coali-
tion," as Ciano reported after the Brenner meeting on
October 4th. Lastly, by the end of September, the Russian
bee was already buzzing in his bonnet. Of these deterrents,
the first was a disability he shared with Field-Marshal
Keitel, Colonel-General Jodl and Colonel-General Haider,
his military advisers. The second was a private illusion
which Mr. Churchill had done his best publicly to dispel.
The French coup he might very well have brought off, had
he made a quick and generous peace. The majority of
Frenchmen would almost certainly have settled down and,
86
ROMMEL
temporarily at least, accepted a German hegemony over
Europe. There were no very hard feelings against the Ger-
man Army. On the contrary, it was regarded with grudging
admiration. To-day, even ex-members of the Resistance
reserve their hatred for (a) Darnand's milice and collabora-
tors generally; (b) the Gestapo; (c) the S.S., in that order.
The German Army comes a bad fourth. " On ne pent pas
dire qu'ih n'etaient pas assez corrects, ces gens-la " is still
commonly said in the part of France where I am writing.
Their conduct is, indeed, often favourably compared with
that of the American liberators. As for the last fatal folly,
there was no cure for that but the Russian winter and the
Red Army.
Obsessed though he was with Russia, Hitler did not alto-
gether forget North Africa. Heavy-handed efforts were
made by Ribbentrop to bring Franco into the war. A plan
(" Operation Felix ") was prepared for the capture of Gib-
raltar. Goering's pet scheme of a triple thrust into Morocco,
Tripolitania and the Balkans was strongly pressed by its
author and at least considered. Moreover, though we did
not know it at the time, General von Thoma, Chief of the
German Mobile Forces at Army Headquarters, was sent in
October to see General Graziani and discuss the dispatch of
German troops to Libya. General von Thoma reported
against the proposal, which was, he says, mainly political —
to ensure that Mussolini did not change sides. His conten-
tion was that nothing less than a force of four panzer divi-
sions would be of any use, that these could only be main-
tained with difficulty, if at all, in the face of British
sea-power, and that they would have to be substituted for
Italians. Graziani and Badoglio would object to arty such
substitution and, in fact, did not want German troops at all.
General vbn Thoma added that the African theatre was
only suitable for the sort of war that General I^ettow-
Vorbeck had carried on in East Africa during World War I.
He claims that Field-Marshal von Brauchitsch and Colonel*
"none so blind..."
87
General Haider, his Chief of Staff, agreed with him and
were also against sending German troops to Africa, which
is very probable. They had both opposed von Manstein's
plan of breaking into France through the Ardennes instead
of through the Low Countries and Hitler had overruled
them. Hitler lost his temper and von Thoma feels that the
reason he was never sent to Africa in command until the
war was already lost there (he arrived at El Alamein, where
he was captured, on September 20th, 1942), was Hitler's
spite.
It does not seem to have occurred to him even after the
war that, whether Hitler's motives were political or military,
he was right and von Brauchitsch, Haider and he, von
Thoma, were wrong. Hitler should, no doubt, have over-
ruled his military advisers, the more so as General von
Thoma takes some pride in having pointed out to him, on
the strength of his experience in Spain, that the Italian
troops were useless, that " one British soldier was better than
twelve Italians," that " Italians are good workers but no
fighters : they don't like the noise ! " and so on. But who,
except General von Thoma, could suppose that General
Wavell would dare to attack so vastly superior a force or
that Graziani's army would crumble as quickly and com-
pletely as it did?
When the first golden opportunity was already lost and
Graziani defeated, Hitler took action. Having offered
Mussolini German anti-tank units after the fall of Sidi-
Barrani and suggested (a delicate matter for one dictator
to another) placing Italian troops under German command,
he woke up completely on the capture of Bardia and told
his Chiefs of Staff that he was resolved to do everything in
his power to prevent Italy from losing North Africa. . . .
" The Fiihrer is firmly determined to give the Italians sup-
port. German formations are to be transferred as soon as
possible, equipped with anti-tank guns and mines, heavy
tanks, and light and heavy A.A. guns. . . . Material is to be
88
ROMMEL
shipped by sea, personnel by air. . . . Units cannot be trans-
ferred until the middle of February and will then take about
five more weeks from the time of loading."
At a conference between Hitler, Mussolini and their staffs
on January 19th and 20th, the Italians reported that they
were bringing their three divisions in Tripoli up to full
strength and transferring one armoured division and one
motorised division from Italy, the move to be completed
about February 20th. They " very warmly welcome the dis-
patch of the German 5th Light (Motorised) Division." Its
move was to be made between February 15th and 20th but
equipment could be shipped earlier. At another, domestic,
conference on February 3rd, Hitler told his Army Staff that
" the loss of North Africa could be withstood in the military
sense but must have a strong psychological effect on Italy.
Britain could hold a pistol at Italy's head. . . . The British
forces in the Mediterranean would not be tied down. The
British would have the free use of a dozen divisions and
could employ them most dangerously in Syria. We must
make every effort to prevent this. . . We must render effec-
tive assistance in North Africa.'* The Luftwaffe, which had
already been ordered to assist the Italians, must intervene
still more actively with Stukas and fighters and must strike
a blow against the British troops in Cyrcnaica, using the
heaviest bombs. It must work in co-operation with the
Italian Air Force to protect the transports, to disrupt British
supplies by land and sea and to combat the British fleet.
But first of all attempts must be made to subdue the air
base of Malta.
Even if this intervention were enough to bring the British
advance to a standstill, the " blocking unit," the 5th Light
Division, was still insufficient, said Hitler, and must be rein-
forced by a strong armoured unit. The dispatch of German
troops must be speeded up and air transport used if neces-
sary.
All this was well enough. It will be seen, however, that
"none so blind . .
89
the thinking was purely defensive. Hitler said as much in a
letter to Mussolini on February 28th. 41 If we arc patient for
another five days," he wrote, *' I am sure that any new
British attempt to push on towards Tripoli is bound to fail.
] am very grateful to you, Ducc, for the fact that you have
placed your motorised units at the disposal of General Rom-
mel, fie will not let you down and I am convinced that in
the near future he will have won the loyalty and, I hope,
the affection of your troops. I believe that the mere arrival
of the first Panzer Regiment will represent an exceptional
reinforcement of your position. 7 ' The last part of this pre-
diction, at least, was soon to be proved correct.
Hitler thus realised the importance of not losing North
Africa. Neither he nor his staff seem to have seen the possi-
bility of conquering it and the far-reaching results that
would flow from a successful offensive against Egypt.
Haider, for example, never took the North African cam-
paign seriously from the start and never regarded it as more
than a political move to keep the Italians in the war. For
this the outlay of three or four divisions might not prove too
costly, " Of course, if the opportunity for offensive action
presented itself we would take it but on the whole we re-
garded the matter as a fight for time," he said in his inter-
rogation. " I last talked to Rommel about this subject in the
jpring of 1 942. At that time he told me that he would con-
quer Egypt and the Suez Canal and then he spoke of East
Africa. I could not restrain a somewhat impolite smile and
asked him what he would need for the purpose. He thought
he would want another two armoured corps. I asked him :
*Even if we had them, how would you supply and feed
them?' To this question his reply was, 'That's quite im-
material to me; that's your problem!' As events in Africa
grew worse, Rommel kept demanding more and more aid.
Where it was to come from didn't worry him. Then the
Italians began to complain because they were losing their
shipping in the process. If history succeeds in unravelling
90
ROMMEL
the threads of what went on in Africa, it will have achieved
a miracle, for Rommel managed to get tilings into such an
unholy muddle that I doubt whether any one will ever be
able to make head or tail of it."
Rommel is dead but the unravelling is not so difficult as
Colonel-General Haider imagines. Nor is the verdict of
history likely to be as favourable to liimself as he supposes.
History does not rate very highly men in key positions who
allow their judgment to be influenced by their personal likes
and dislikes. That Haider disliked Rommel is obvious from
the tone of his own statement and from the adroit substitu-
tion of " two armoured corps " for the two armoured divi-
sions for which Rommel actually asked. It is obvious from
the omissions. Haider speaks of a conversation in "the
spring of 1942." He refrains from mentioning that it was
on July 27th, 1941, that Rommel first sought permission to
launch an offensive, with the Suez Canal as its objective and
February, 1942, as its target date. Whatever he may have
asked for in the spring of 1942, he then asked only for three
German divisions, with mixed units amounting to another,
and three extra Italian divisions. The Army Command
jibbed at providing the extra German units and Haider or
one of his staff wrote rude comments on the margin of the
plan. Yet if Rommel had had four extra German divisions
(two hundred were being employed on the Russian front
and the Germans sent three to Tunis in three weeks after
the Allied landings in North Africa in November, 1942), it
is long odds that he would have reached Cairo and the
Canal at the beginning of 1 942.
As for supply, Haider again fails to mention that Rommel
all along saw, what the German and Italian General Staffs
were strangely blind in not seeing until too late, that the
key to all supply problems and, indeed, to the control of the
Mediterranean, was the capture of Malta.
Lastly, Haider, perhaps naturally, omits to mention that
Rommel once called him a bloody fool, or the German equi*
"none so blind . . 91
valent, and asked him what he had ever done in war except
sit on his backside in an ofiice chair. It is not to be supposed,
however, that he has forgotten it.
■
The story of the war in North Africa is the story of an un-
ending battle between Rommel, who saw — and proved — the
possibility of a major success there and a High Command
which refused to take the North African campaign seriously.
In that battle Rommel had all the odds against him. He was
far away in the desert and " les absents nut ioujours tort"
He was not a General Staff officer and was, therefore, de-
cried by the professionals. On the rare occasions when he
saw Hitler, he could seldom see him alone. When he did,
he found him, understandably, engrossed in Russia. He was
patted on the back and promised support but he felt that
any impression lie might make would be rubbed out as soon
as he left by Hitler's entourage. Above ail, Keitel, Jodl and
Haider were jealous of his popularity with Hitler and the
German public, of his war record and, no doubt, of his good
luck in having an independent command beyond the reach
of the Fiihrer. The easiest way to "smear" him was to
make out that, while he might be a good leader in the fields
he was not a man whose views on the larger issues of war
could be taken seriously.
Rommel, for his part, had the poorest opinion of Keitel
and Haider. In this he was not alone. Prince von Bismarck
called Keitel an imbecile; von Hassel found him "stupid
and narrow-minded, quite uninformed politically . . . down-
right servile in his attitude towards the Party." His grateful
Fiihrer described him as " a man with the mind of a movie
doorman." As for Haider, who appears to have been the
sour and superior type of staff officer, he struck von Hassell
as early as 1 940 as " a weak man with shattered nerves . . .
no more than a caddie to Hitler." Beck, his brilliant pre-
decessor as Chief of Staff, thought him merely a competent
technician with no personality. His record in the conspiracy
92
ROMMEL
against Hitler shows him continually shivering oh the brink
but never willing to take the plunge. Jodl, who had such
brains and character as there were in this party, treated war
as chess. His business was to produce plans, not to question
orders. Ail three were identified with Hitler's ferocious
policies in Russia and elsewhere. Keitel and Jodl were tried
at Nuremberg and hanged. Haider, who is alleged by von
Hassell to have signed the orders for the brutal treatment
to be accorded to the Russians, was luckier, perhaps be-
cause he had already spent some years in a concentration
camp, perhaps because he was so obviously a subordinate,
perhaps because he was needed by the Allies as a prosecution
witness against his former superiors and so used.
Rommel despised all three of them as " chairborne
soldiers." He despised them for their subservience to the
Party. When he came to know what had been done under
their orders, he detested them for having dishonoured the
German Wehrmacht. As will be seen, he was not afraid to
protest against atrocities to Hitler himself. If, then, a man
is to be judged by his enemies, these three were a good
advertisement for Rommel. It was fortunate for the Allies
that they were, at this time, so well entrenched at head-
quarters.
All these headaches and heartaches were, however, in the
future when Rommel, in full favour with the Fuhrer, a hero
already to the German public and promoted General-
leutnant the month before, was appointed to the command
of the " German troops in Libya n on February 15th, 1941.,
The only hint of them was given by Field-Marshal von
Brauchitsch at a farewell interview in Berlin (Rommel did
not see Hitler). His mission, von Brauchitsch told him, was
merely to assist the Italians, who would retain the supreme
command of operations in North Africa, and prevent a
British advance to Tripoli. The German troops were, in
fact, a " blocking unit " and, when he had had a look round,
"none so blind..."
93
he had better come back and report whether they were
really needed. General Schmundt, Hitlers military A.D.C.,
was to go with him, doubtless to make an independent
report to the Fiihrer.
Schmundt proved a good friend to Rommel, though it
was perhaps a pity that Rommel liked and trusted him as
much as he did. Appointed at the suggestion of KeitePs
brother to succeed Colonel Hossbach, an old Prussian officer,
who resigned in disgust when Colonel-General von Fritsch
was " framed " by Himmler on a false homosexuality
charge, Schmundt was a youngish regular officer, very good-
looking, very intelligent, very ambitious and very " smooth."
His friends had never known him to be a keen Nazi but,
whether from conviction or from self-interest, he became
one. That is to say, he became a devoted admirer of Hitler
himself. To Rommel, of whom he seems to have been
genuinely fond, he drew the distinction which Rommel had
always instinctively drawn, between the Fiihrer and his fol-
lowers. Of course Hitler was, unfortunately, surrounded by
rascals, he would explain, most of them a legacy from the
past. But what a great man ! What an idealist ! What a
master to serve ! Living in the closest personal contact with
Hitler and a witness, as he must have been, of many of his
outbursts, can he have believed all this? It seems incredible.
It was not incredible to Rommel who himself, when he
served him, had seen only Hitler's better side. Thus, on
their way to Africa and while Schmundt remained there,
the two struck up a friendship and established a working
partnership. Thereafter, when he wished to bring some-
thing to the personal notice of the Fiihrer, Rommel wrote
directly to Schmundt. Keitel and Haider suspected that they
were being by-passed, though they could not prove it. The
suspicion naturally did not make them any better disposed
towards Rommel.
This relation with Schmundt explains why Rommel so
long preserved his illusions about Hitler for, even from Rom-
94
ROMMEL
mel, Schmundt would never hear a word against the
Fiihrer. Whatever was wrong was the fault of the Gocrings,
the Himmlcrs, the Bormanns, the Keitels, the Jodls, the
Haiders. Yet only a few days before the attempt of July
20th, 1944, when Rommel was already in trouble with
Hitler for his pessimism about the outcome of the war,
Schmundt sent him a telegram saying, " Remember, you can
always count on me." Schmundt was in the room with
Hitler when the bomb exploded, and died about two months
afterwards. Of his wounds? So it was said. Rommel was
never quite sure.
Meanwhile Rommel, like many a junior officer and some
senior officers who ought to know better, had defeated
security, when he heard of his appointment, by writing to
his wife to let her know where he was going. " Now I shall
be able to do something for my rheumatism," he wrote.
Since Frau Rommel remembered that the doctor who had
treated him for rheumatism during the campaign in France
had said : " You need sunshine, General, you ought to be
in Africa," the inference was not difficult to draw. How-
ever, he was able to come home for a few hours after his
visit to Berlin. Then he and Schmundt set off tor Rome,
for Africa and the sunshine. The faithful Aldinger followed
with the kit.
Chapter Six
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
I. ROMMEL V, WA VELL
Rommel was just over two years in North Africa, The
graph of his fortunes (and of ours, in reverse), during that
period is easy to follow. There is a sharp and spectacular
rise for his first victory in April, 1941, followed by a small
decline for his failure to capture Tobruk on May 1st. This
is rather more than evened off by his defeat of General
WavelFs minor offensives in mid-May and mid- June. Then
comes a series of rapid ups-and-downs, like the recordings
of a demented seismograph, at the end of November and
beginning of December, ending in a long drop when he is
squarely beaten by Generals Auchinleck and Ritchie and
driven back to the borders of Cyrenaica. At the end of the
year he is once again on the datum line. There follows
another rapid rise when he counter-attacks unexpectedly in
January and February, 1942, and drives us in turn back to
Lrazala. On a graph and on the ground he is about two-
thirds of the way to the high point he reached the previous
April.
At the end of May, after an initial drop that lasted only a
few days but might have been a headlong plunge to disas-
ter, begins that most spectacular rise of all which, in a
month, carries him over and past Tobruk, past the Egyptian
frontier, past Mersa Matruh, Bagush and El Daba, to Ala-
mein and the very gates of Alexandria. That is the peak.
There General Auchinleck holds him and an almost imper-
ceptible but ominous decline begins. General Montgomery's
95
96
ROMMEL
victories at Alam Haifa in August and El Alamcin in early
November turn it into a descent which proceeds unbroken
until May 12th, 1943, when the survivors of the Afrika
Korps lay down their arms in Tunisia. Rommel himself has
flown off to Germany two months earlier, in a vain attempt
to persuade Hitler to allow him at least to save the men.
The graph is easy to follow : the battles are not. Nor, I
think, is there much point in attempting to describe them in
detail again. Those who want to know where 4th Armoured
Brigade was at first light on the morning of November 26th,
1942, can turn to the official historians or to the various
divisional histories. Those who want to see the broad pic-
ture cannot do better than read or reread Alan Moorehead's
African Trilogy, or the books of some of the other very able
correspondents who accompanied the British forces. Writing
under the stress of events, they caught the spirit of the desert
war. Yet, since this is the story of Rommel of the Afrika
Korps, I cannot altogether omit his battles in North Africa.
The reader must be asked to join or rejoin the Benghazi
Harriers and travel familiar ground, the same old coast road,
the same- old desert tracks. It may be a change to go
part of the way in a German truck.
When I mentioned to Alan Moorehead that I thought of
writing this book, he suggested that it might be useful to get
into touch with a German war-artist named Wessels. Wessels
was with Rommel in North Africa and Alan considered his
water-colour drawings of the Western Desert the best he had
ever seen. Unfortunately he had mislaid the address. Be-
fore he could find it, I had set off for Germany, to stay with
the 10th Hussars at Iserlohn and look around from there.
As soon as I arrived, the CO. of the 10th, also an " old
boy " of Campo P.G. 29, our prison-camp in Italy, said that
I might, perhaps, like to meet a German war-artist named
Wessels who was with Rommel in North Africa. If so, he
lived in Iserlohn.
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS 97
I met Wessels the same afternoon and a very good artist
he is, and a very agreeable one. When I told him what I
had in mind, he asked if I knew that General von Esebeck,
sometime commander of the 15th Panzer Division in the
desert, and General von Ravenstein, commander of the 21st,
both lived in Iserlohn, within five hundred yards of the
house in which I was staying and within twenty yards of
each other.
Apart from having served in two wars against them, I
have never known many Germans. I had certainly never
met a German general, except Rommel and that profes-
sionally and for a few seconds. My prejudice against a
class which is largely responsible for my having spent ten
years of my life in a sterile and unremunerative occupation
is at least as strong as most people's. Nevertheless, I must
admit that I found both of them congenial.
General von Esebeck, a quiet, elderly man, living alone in
a small bed-sitting-room on the top floor, with seventeenth
and eighteenth century paintings of his ancestors round the
walls, was a pathetic figure, I thought, a military Mr. Chips.
Wounded in the face by a bomb splinter near Tobruk in
1941 and sent, on his recovery, to the Russian front, he was
arrested on suspicion after July 20th, 1 944, and thrown into
a concentration camp. Lucky to be alive? Perhaps, if a
general, frail and prematurely aged, with no pension and
no possible career or interests outside the army, is lucky to
be alive in Germany to-day.
General von Ravenstein, across the road, was a horse
from the same sort of aristocratic stable, but one of a very
different colour and in very different condition. A lean,
good-looking Guards officer, who seemed much younger
than fifty-odd. If one had seen him, quietly dressed in his
good blue suit and well-polished shoes, a pearl pin in his tie,
strolling into the Guards Club or the Cavalry Club in Lon-
don, one would have placed him at once as a young and
successful general. After two disastrous wars, he seemed
R. D
98
ROMMEL
physically and mentally quite fit enough to command in
another. In both he did well. In June, 1918, eighteen
months after Rommel, he was given the Pour le Merite
for gallantry in action. Between the wars he retired and
became, of all things, head of a news agency in Duisburg,
until he was thrown out by the Nazis. Rejoining the army
as a colonel in 1939, he commanded a panzer unit in
Poland. Then, having fought in Bulgaria and Greece in
March and April, 1941, he came out to the desert to com-
mand a panzer regiment of 21st Panzer Division. He took
over the division before the Halfaya Pass-Sollum battle in
June.
It was von Raveristein who led Rommel's famous break-
through on November 24th-25th, 1941. His career in the
desert came to an abrupt end when, at first light on Novem-
ber 28th, he inadvertently drove into the middle of the New
Zealand Division. " It was terrible," he told mc, " because
I had on me the Chief of Staffs map with all our disposi-
tions and had no time to destroy it. When I saw that there
was no way out, I determined to call myself Colonel
Schmidt and hoped that they would not notice my rank
badges. But then I was taken up to General Freyberg. You
know how we Germans mention our name when we are
introduced? I clicked my heels and bowed and before I
could stop myself I had blurted out, 'von Ravenstein,
General'!"
General von Ravenstein eventually reached Canada. On
the way, he organised an attempt, which might easily have
been successful, to seize the ship. It was discovered at the
last moment by the captain. As an ex-P.O.W., in charge for
some time of escaping, in a prison-camp, I gave him full
marks for it. Though only repatriated in 1948, General von
Ravenstein has no complaints. He could not have been
better treated After the war, he was allowed almost com-
plete freedoms, " No shortages there," he said. " I can still
give you a good Havana cigar : I have a few boxes left."
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
99
Now, though he has to share it with two other families, he
lives in comfort in his own house in Iserlohn. He has some
good pieces of furniture and his ancestral portraits also
hang on the walls. His wife, a charming Portuguese countess,
who speaks even belter English and French than he does
himself, is with him. He also has a job. He is once again
head of his news agency in Duisburg. All things considered,
General von Ravenstein has not fared too badly. Since he
gave 4th Indian Division (and myself) a very uncomfortable
time in Sidi Omar just before he was captured, I propose to
send him a photograph we took, during his unsuccessful
attack on us, of seven of his tanks in flames.
General Fritz Bayerlein, whom I met in more orthodox
fashion through the good ofiices of the U.S. Historical Sec-
tion at Frankfurt, is something else again. A stocky, tough
little terrier of a man, full of energy and enthusiasm, he is
still only fifty. In the first war he fought, from the age of
sixteen, as a private soldier against the British. He took part
in the German attacks round Kemmel in March, 1918, and
in the decisive battles on the Sonnne and about Bapaume
and Gambrai in the summer. After the war, he had at first
no intention of soldiering. For lack of anything better to
do, he rejoined the army in 1921. He was at the Staff
College from 1932 to 1935, after which he was posted to
panzer troops.
Probably no one on either side, except Rommel himself,
saw more continuous active service in the Western Desert
than Fritz Bayerlein. He came over to Africa from
Guderian's Panzer Army in Russia in October, 1941, and
left only in May, 1 943, when he was wounded and flown out
just before the end. Those nineteen months were months of
almost incessant fighting. He was Chief Staff Officer to the
Afrika Korps until May, 1942, when General Garni was
wounded and he became acting Chief of Staff to Rommel
himself. (Rommel had come out as commander of the
Afrika Korps only but was given command of Panzer
100 ROMMEL
Gruppe Afrika s which included two Italian corps, in the
summer of 1941.) This appointment he held until the end,
except for five hectic weeks after the capture of General von
Thoma at El Alamein, when he commanded the Afrika
Korps during the retreat.
Obviously there could be no better authority on the North
African campaigns. Yet, as he unfolded, in a hut in the
U.S. Interrogation Centre at Ober Ursel, the familiar map
of the desert from Agedabia to Alamein, he told me that this
was the first time that he had been asked about Africa and
that I was the first British officer he had met who had served
there. He was also an authority on Rommel. Not only had
he lived with him all those months at close quarters; he had
previously known him at the Infantry School at Dresden
from 1930 to 1933. We spent a long day together, with a
great many "Do you remember's ?" I apologise for liking
German generals. I suppose I ought not to do so. But at
the end of it I liked General Bayerlein. From these three
first and from others later, I heard the German side of the
story.
■
At the beginning of this book I mentioned that General
Wavell or his staff made a miscalculation in a time and
space problem when they assumed that Rommel would not
be able to attack, in the spring of 1941, as early as he did.
The error did not add to the popularity of G.H.Q. There is
more excuse for our Intelligence Staff when we know that
Rommel surprised not only them, but also his superiors in
Berlin. He attacked on March 31st. It was only on March
21st that he was told by the Army Command to prepare a
plan for the reconquest of Cyrenaica and to submit it for
consideration not later than April 20th. It was to be a
prudent plan. In the face of substantial British forces, he
was not to go beyond Agedabia until 15th Panzer Division
arrived. Haider and his staff would doubtless have spent a
week or two in examining it with critical and unfriendly
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
101
eyes. They never had the chance. Nine days before they
were due to receive it, Rommel had already reconquered
Cyrenaica, with the exception of Tobruk, and reached the
I Egyptian frontier. He had done much more than he would
s have been allowed to attempt had he waited for permission.
Even his Fiihrer was ignored. On April 3rd, Hitler tele-
graphed to him telling him to be careful and not to launch
any large-scale attack without waiting for 15th Panzer Divi-
sion. In particular he must not expose his flank by turning
^up to Benghazi. The last part of the order could safely be
disregarded for Benghazi was evacuated the day the tele-
gram was sent. As for 1 5th Panzer Division, it was already
.landing in Tripoli and could thus be said to have " arrived."
" It is my belief," writes a very capable officer who was
serving with Intelligence in Cairo at the time, 11 that an
ordinary military appreciation was made, taking into con-
sideration the strength of both sides, time and space and all
the usual factors. Academically speaking, it was a good
appreciation as RommeFs attack should not have succeeded.
Unfortunately for us, he gambled and won. By the book, he
shouldn't have attacked so soon. . . ." Colonel-General
Haider would doubtless have agreed.
The same view is taken by Brigadier Williams, afterwards
General Montgomery's chief Intelligence officer but then a
v*-jop leader in the King's Dragoon Guards, the "recce"
(reconnaissance) regiment of 2nd Armoured Division. "I
think personally," he says, " that Rommel began by edging
up and found it easy to capture Agheila (that I remember
well, because I was in the fort when it was captured and had
to make a quick * get-away '), and that, after that, a well-
planned reconnaissance developed into a successful offen-
sive. . . . Certainly Rommel should not have dared to attack
us as soon as he did. . . ."
Such was the first appearance of Rommel on the desert
stage. The speed with which he overran Cyrenaica was im-
pressive, even to professionals. It impressed still more pain-
102
ROMMEL
fully the public which measured gains by the map. Yet
ground in the desert meant little. It should have been
thought of in terms of sea and not of land battles. Once the
enemy armour was out of action, the winning tank fleet
could cruise across it as far and as fast as its petrol and tracks
would allow. What was much more alarming was the vastly
superior quality of the German armour. This superiority
lasted until the arrival of the Sherman tank, before El
Alamcin. It was never appreciated either by our General
Staff or by the Cabinet, who always thought that quantity
could make up for deficiency in quality. In the desert, at
least, this theory did not work. Rommel handled his tiny
force with remarkable boldness and skill. His greater ex-
perience was, indeed, bound to tell. He had already led an
armoured division in action and a week of war is worth six
months of manoeuvres. He was opposed to inexperienced
troops and to commanders who had never seen even
manoeuvres on any sufficient scale, because of our lack of
tanks. In a word, he knew more about the business. So did
his tank crews. Nevertheless, "With better weapons they
were bound to beat us." " I do not believe that he could have
been easily stopped," says Brigadier Williams. " We had
only 2-pounder anti-tank guns and a lot of worn-out tanks."
Even had they been new, they were not in the same class
as the German panzers.
In the field of strategy Rommel met his match in General
Wavcll. The decision to hold Tobruk was a bold one in the
circumstances, but " the active defence of its garrison con-
stituted a menace to the enemy's line of communications,
which was likely to prevent his advance." In fact it did so —
and probably saved Egypt. Rommel always spoke of Wavell
to his son as a commander of the highest order, " a military
genius." In his library amongst many presentation volumes,
about North Africa by Frobenius and others with uncut
pages I found a well-thumbed copy, in the German trans-
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
103
lation, of WaveU's pamphlet on the art of generalship, Der
Feldherr, von General St. A. Wavell (Zurich, 1942).
It was because Rommel also appreciated the importance
of Tobruk that he launched a full-dress attack against it
on May 1st, as soon as he had been reinforced by 15th
Panzer Division. According to Aldinger, although the
Italians possessed the complete defence plans, which they
had themselves prepared, they denied having them and did
not hand them over. However that may be, 9th Australian
Division was not to be overawed by Rommel or any one
else. This sort of fighting, where what counted was the
tenacity and initiative of sections and individuals, was what
Australians were best at. Rommel got " a poke in the nose "
and was severely repulsed, with heavy losses in men and
tanks. The Army Command profited by the reverse to
remind him that " possession of Cyrenaica, with or without
Tobruk, Solium and Bardia is the primary task of the Afrika
Korps " and that a continuance of the advance into Egypt
was of secondary importance.
In the middle of May, before a consignment of new tanks
from England could be unloaded, General Wavell thought
he saw " a fleeting opportunity of attacking the enemy for-
ward troops on the Egyptian border near Solium in favour-
able circumstances." In a limited operation by a small
;; j .amber of Cruiser and " I " tanks, Solium and Capuzzo
were captured. Next day Rommel brought up his own
armour in force and compelled them to retire. On May 27th
he pushed us off the Halfaya Pass, the only place, apart
from Solium itself, where tanks can climb the 200 ft. escarp-
ment which runs for fifty miles south-east into the desert
General Wavell was still bent on recovering Cyrenaica, at
least as far as Tobruk. Moreover, he was " being urged to
attack with the least possible delay," and H is not hard to
guess who was prodding him from London. He now had
enough new tanks to re-equip 7th Armoured Division, which
104
ROMMEL
had been out of the line as a division since the victory over
Graziani. The division had been so short of equipment that
it had neither the tanks nor the wireless sets to continue its
training. Some of the new tanks were of a pattern that had
never been seen in the Middle East; many of them required
overhaul; all of them had to have sand filters and desert
camouflage. " The crews were as strange to each other as
they were to their machines."
It was estimated that the Germans had 220 medium tanks
and 70 light tanks against our total of approximately 200.
The decision to attack was, therefore, a bold one, to say the
least of it. Moreover, General Wavell had to try to combine
two armoured brigades, one equipped with Cruiser tanks
with a speed of 15-20 m.p.h. and a radius of action of 80-100
miles, the other with " I " tanks with a speed of 5 m.p.h.
and a radius of action, without refuelling, of only 40 miles.
It was like putting a man and a small boy, three-legged, into
a hundred yards sprint. On top of all this, the Germans
had something up their sleeve. This was the 88 mm. dual-
purpose gun. An anti-aircraft high-velocity gun which
could be used in an anti-tank role with armour-piercing
ammunition, it could go through all our tanks like butter.
Rommel's record of the Ghost Division definitely states that
it was used against British tanks near Arras. British infor-
mation is equally definite that it was not and that we first
ran up against it on June 16th, 1941, in the Western Desert.
At any rate it was a most alarming weapon and remained
a bogey to tank commanders and others until the end of
the war.
In the event, " Operation Battleaxe," after some initial
success, was a dismal failure, in which we lost just on a
hundred tanks. At the time, some of us, without any tanks
at all and with no air-cover, were being chased about Syria
by the tanks and aircraft of the Vichy French. We were
naturally resentful when we heard that six fighter rquadrom,
four bomber squadrons and two hundred tanks had been
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
105
employed in what seemed a completely futile operation. It
was interesting, therefore, to be told by General von Ese-
beck, by General von Ravenstein and by Aldinger, indepen-
dently, that our offensive was taken very seriously by Rom-
mel, and regarded as highly dangerous. General von
Ravenstein thinks we made a mistake in trying to attack
" the one strong point," llalfaya Pass, particularly with
tanks, and that our turning-movement round the southern
end of the escarpment should have been much wider. Had
we known about the 88 mm. guns dug in there, we should
probably have left llalfaya alone; it was the mixed nature
of our tanks which made it necessary for the " I " tanks of
4th Armoured Brigade, with their limited range, to turn
sharply north to Gapuzzo, while the rest of 7th Armoured
Division ranged farther afield on their flank. At least it is
satisfactory to know that " Battleaxe " caused the enemy
some anxiety.
From Aldinger I heard a queer story about this period.
When we went into Syria it will be remembered that the
French hotly denied that they were helping the Germans.
They were resisting our advance, they said, merely because
we were invading French territory. They would equally
have resisted the Germans or any other invader. Having
had my truck shot to pieces outside Mczze, near Damascus,
'• spent three days as a prisoner and heard this explanation
given with great vigour and apparent sincerity by various
staff officers at French headquarters. What the truth was, I
never discovered. The French had, we were told, refuelled
German aircraft on their way to Iraq to support Rashid Ali's
rebellion : it did not appear at the time that there had ever
been more than a few Germans in plain clothes in Damascus
or Beirut. Aldinger's story was that, just before or just after
" Baaleaxe," a French aircraft from Syria landed at Bardia,
that the French officer pilot was brought immediately to
Rommel, that he spent more than an hour with him and
then took off again. If this is so, and Aldinger is positive, he
106
ROMMEL
presumably came from General Dentz, Commander of the
Vichy French.
'Die rest of the summer passed quietly, with both sides
trying to build up. Here Rommel was at a disadvantage.
The eyes of the German High Command were fixed upon
Russia and there was no interest in North Africa, Ultimately
there might have to be an offensive against the Suez Canal
and even against Iran. This, however, could wait until after
the defeat of Russia. It would then be opened through
Anatolia and the Caucasus. The German army in Libya
would play only a supporting part and no new divisions
need be expected. Meanwhile, since nothing could be done
about his supplies without an operation against Malta, Rom-
mel must restrict himself to planning the capture of Tobruk.
If it fell, he was not to advance into Egypt but to stop at
Solium. If the attack failed, he must be prepared to retire
to Gazala.
Rommel has often been rated, both by British and by
German experts, as a mere military opportunist, a tactician
who was not qualified to have any opinions about strategy.
That he was a master of " grand tactics " rather than of
strategy is probably true. Yet if he were unable to compre-
hend the broad principles of strategy, it is surprising that
he should have been employed as an instructor at Potsdam.
It is still more surprising that he should have learnt nothing
of them during the years he was there.
In this case, he showed a clearer appreciation than most
of the professional strategists. The plan which he put for-
ward officially in July, 1941, for the capture of the Suez
Canal has already been mentioned. General von Ravenstein
tells me that his ideas in fact went very much further. This
advance was to be only the prelude to a further advance to
Basra, with the object of stopping the flow of American
supplies to Russia through the Persian Gulf. Rommel's own
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
107
supplies, after the first phase, were to be assured through
Syria, though he thought that Turkey might be induced to
come in on the German side if all went well l>oth in Russia
and North Africa. Alternatively, she might be attacked and
collapse.
Before any one dismisses such a scheme as fantastic, as
did the German Army Command, who had only seen the
first part of it, he should read General Auchinleck's dispatch
(38177), covering events in the Middle East from November
1st, 1941 to August 15th, 1942. He will then see how much
we had with which to hold Syria, after the Vichy French
had capitulated; how much we had in Iraq and Iran; how
easily Cyprus could have been captured by airborne troops
at any time before the late summer of 1 942 and what a con-
stant preoccupation to him was his northern flank. His
fear was, admittedly, an attack through the Caucasus. But,
whichever way the attack came, we were too thin on the
ground to meet it, had it been made in force. It is also
relevant to remember the figures of American supplies which
actually reached Russia through the Persian Gulf.
As for Malta, Rommel continually told his staff (and,
later, his family) that he could not understand what on earth
the High Command were about not to take it. This, he
thought, could easily have been done at any time during
Ciie summer of 1941 with smoke and airborne troops. Since
35 per cent of his supplies and reinforcements were sunk in
August and 63 per cent in October, he had a personal in-
terest in the matter. Yet it was not until the end of 1941,
when sinkings had risen to something like 75 per cent, that
the High Command woke up to the importance of Malta
for the command of the Mediterranean. They then sent
U-boats and light surface craft and reinforced the Luftwaffe
in Sicily. The result was that, by early 1 942, when Rommel
had planned to launch his offensive, they virtually con-
trolled the Central Mediterranean. (A share of khe credit is
108
ROMMEL
also due to the young Italians who made their way into the
harbour of Alexandria and sank the only two British battle-
ships, Queen Elizabeth and Valiant, at their moorings.)
By that time they had left it too late to reinforce Rommel
with the extra German divisions for which he had asked.
Nor, indeed, do they appear ever to have had any idea of
doing so. And although they had neutralised Malta and, as
Kesselring thought, " eliminated it as a naval base," they
had made no attempt to capture it. It was not until the end
of April, 1942, under pressure from Admiral Raeder and
after a discussion with Mussolini, that Hitler gave permis-
sion for a surprise attack on the island with German and
Italian paratroops at the beginning of June. (Operation
Hercules.) " Even though the postponement of the Malta
operation is not a welcome move," wrote the German naval
representative at the meeting, " nevertheless I am glad to see
the increased interest displayed by the Fiihrer in this impor-
tant area. . . . The whole business is now assuming impor-
tance after having been regarded hitherto as a subsidiary
matter in which victories were looked upon as gifts from
Heaven but in which nobody bothered to do anything
seriously for c the Italian theatre of war.' "
The attack was twice put off. At the beginning of July,
the last minute of the eleventh hour, Hitler finally postponed
Operation Hercules until after the conquest of Egypt. He
did not consult either the Italians or his own naval com-
mand. It is possible that he consulted Keitel and Jodi.
Even in the early summer of 1941, the senior officers of
the Afrika Korps, fresh from their first victory, felt that
North Africa was regarded by the High Command as a
side-show, no more than " picking the chestnuts out of the
fire for the Italians." There was, for example, the matter
of air support. Why could they not have a few extra fighter
squadrons ? " I remember Field-Marshal Milch of the Luft-
waffe commjef over to inspect in May, 1941," said General
von Esebeck. " We all prayed that the R.A.F. would favour
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS 109
us with a good heavy raid while he was there. Fortunately
the R.A.F. obliged. General Milch was wearing a beautiful
white uniform. I could not have been more delighted than
when I saw him dive into a slit trench. When he came out,
I was even more pleased to see that it was the trench into
which the servants had thrown the refuse from the kitchen."
With or without encouragement from the Army Com-
mand Rommel was determined to attack. The first objective
was clearly Tobruk. " Our freedom from embarrassment in
the frontier area for four and a half months/' wrote General
Auchinleck, " is to be ascribed largely to the defenders of
Tobruk. Behaving, not as a hardly pressed garrison but as
a spirited force ready at any moment to launch an attack,
they contained an enemy force twice their strength. By
keeping the enemy continually in a high state of tension,
they held back four Italian divisions and three German bat-
talions from the frontier area from April until November."
General Wavcll's decision, made in the confusion of a swift
and losing battle, had paid off. There could be no advance
into Egypt so long as Tobruk held out.
Permission to attack even Tobruk was not, however, easily
obtained. Rommel wanted to reduce it in October or
November. Hitler, Jodl and Keitel were against his making
the attempt until January, 1942. They did not want to stir
*r.p anything in North Africa while their hands were full in
Russia. The Italians, whose intelligence, from their agents
in Cairo and Alexandria, was better than that of the Ger-
mans, knew of General Auchinleck's coming offensive. They,
too, opposed any move by Rommel, nominally under their
command. The Luftwaffe produced aerial photographs of
the railway which was being pushed forward west of
Matruh. General von Ravenstein was present when Rom-
mel threw them on the ground. " I will not look at them,"
he exclaimed petulantly. Then came a report from Admiral
Ganaris. A British soldier in hospital in Jerusalem had told
the nursing sister, a German agent, that the British were
110
ROMMEL
soon going to launch a big attack upon Rommel. On the
strength of this, Hitler and Jodl told Rommel that he had
better keep quiet, leave Tobruk alone and get ready to meet
Auchinleck's attack. (It does not seem to have occurred
to them that it would be twice as hard to counter if Tobruk
remained in British hands.)
Rommel was determined to take Tobruk. He would not
accept the order and flew off with von Ravenstcin to Rome
to dispute it. Von Ravenstein was in the office of Rintclen,
the German liaison officer with the Italians, when Rommel
* l blew his top." Having called the unfortunate Rintelen a
coward and " a friend of the Italians," he seized the tele-
phone and got on to Jodl himself. " I hear that you wish
me to give up the attack on Tobruk," he said. " I am com-
pletely disgusted." Jodl mentioned the British offensive.
Rommel said that he would put 21st Panzer Division, whose
commander he had with him in the office, to hold it off
while the attack on Tobruk was in progress. Jodl played
for safety. " Can you guarantee," Rommel reported him as
saying, "that there is no danger?" " I will give you my
personal guarantee ! " shouted Rommel. Thereupon Jodl,
having covered himself, gave in.
The attack was fixed for November 23rd. Everything was
already " laid on " for it and as Countess von Ravenstein
and Frau Rommel had joined them, Rommel decided to
remain in Rome for his birthday, November 15th. The
ladies went sight-seeing. Von Ravenstein remembers that
they came back to the Hotel Eden for luncheon, full of the
wonders of St. Peter's. Rommel listened for some time in
silence. Then he joined in the conversation. " You know,
von Ravenstein," he said, " I have been thinking again
about what we ought to do with those infantry batta-
lions ..."
Rommel saw none of the sights of Rome. He did, how-
ever, by invitation of the Italian command, see, on his birth-
day, the' film On from Benghazi, which depicted the
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS 111
advance of the previous April. It showed the victorious
Italians attacking with the bayonet. It showed some very
scruffy British officers, played by Italian " bit players," run-
ning in panic before them ; it did not show a single German
soldier in action. "Very interesting and instructive," said
Rommel to his hosts, " I often wondered what happened in
that battle."
The story has been told how it was only Rommel's ab-
sence from his headquarters at Beda Littoria, near Gyrene,
which saved him from death or capture. In brief, a British
commando party under Major Geoffrey Keyes was landed
from a submarine. It was met and guided by a very gallant
officer, John Haseldon, afterwards killed. Disguised as an
Arab, he had been living behind the enemy lines. "The
first building on the right as you enter the village from
Cyrene," says Major Kennedy-Shaw in Long-Range Desert
Group, " is a grain silo, then comes a row of bungalows,
then, standing back from the road amongst the cypresses, a
larger, two-storied building, dark and rather gloomy. In
this house, in 1941, lived Rommel ... At midnight, Keyes
and the two men with him, Campbell and Terry, were at the
front door, loudly demanding admission in German. The
sentry opened to them but when they were inside, showed
fight and was overpowered. At the noise, two officers
^•appeared on the stairs and were shot down. All the lights
in the house were then extinguished and silence fell. Keyes
started to search the ground floor rooms first. The first was
empty but from the darkness of the second came a burst of
fire and Keyes fell, mortally wounded. Campbell was also
hit and taken prisoner but Terry got away. Major Keyes
(who was awarded a posthumous V.C.) is buried at Beda
Littoria on a hill a mile south of the village, with four
Germans."
Rommel was in Rome. In any case he would not have
been caught in the gloomy house amongst the cypresses.
These were not his headquarters but the headquarters of his
112
ROMMEL
"Q" staff, under Lieut.-Colonel Otto. His own head-
quarters were in the desert west of Derna. He came some-
times to Beda Littoria but never stayed the night there. John
Hascldon's information was wrong; the Arabs had either
seen Rommel there by day or had confused him with some-
one else. Geoffrey Keyes fell mortally wounded but he was
picked up dead nearly a mile away. With one foot shot off
and badly wounded in the other, he had managed to crawl
off into the night. " A very brave man," said Aldingcr, who
told me the story from the German side.
II. "OPERATION CRUSADER"
If we did not surprise Rommel in his headquarters, the
opening of General Auchinleck's offensive took him and his
troops completely by surprise. When our armoured brigades,
with their armoured car screen far in front, swept across the
frontier wire at dawn on November 18th, they drove
through empty desert to their battle positions on the Trigh-
el-Abd.
" Operation Crusader " was the first battle of the Eighth
Army. It opened with high hopes. Mr. Churchill even ex-
pected a victory comparable with Blenheim or Waterloo. ;
Unfortunately, he said so. Because these hopes were not
fully realised and were soon obscured in the fog of subse-
quent failure, few, outside the Eighth Army itself, ever knew
how near it came to complete success. Because only final
results count, fewer still can have taken the trouble to com-
pare the figures with those of the Battle of El Alamein. Of
a total enemy strength of 100,000, 60,000, including 21,000
Germans, were killed, wounded or captured in Operation
Crusader. The Eighth Army, 118,000 strong, lost 18,000
officers and men. At El Alamein, 150,000 of the Eighth
Army faced 96,000 Germans and Italians and killed,
wounded or captured 59,000 of them, including 34,000
GO
P
w
01
H
m
w
CO
w
Pi
w
H
GO
w
114 ROMMEL
Germans. The Eighth Army losses were 13 3 500. In Novem-
ber, 1941, we went into action with 455 tanks against Rom-
mel's 412. At El Alamein, General Montgomery had 1114,
against between 500 and 600, more than half Italian.
Figures, however, do not tell the whole story. Of General
Montgomery's 1114 tanks, 1 28 were Grants and 267 Sher-
mans, with 75 mm. guns in completely revolving turrets, all
brand new. In November, 1941, we had not a tank that was
fit to fight the German Mark Ills and Mark IVs, Before
our tanks, mechanically unreliable and anncd with their
pitiful 2-pounder gun, could even begin hitting the enemy
tanks effectively, they had to close them by 800 yards. While
they were doing so, they were all the time under fire of
50 mm. (4-pounders) and 75 mm., against which their
armour was no defence. We had no effective anti-tank gun
at all.
Why, then, did General Auchinleck attack with one and a
half armoured divisions instead of the three he himself con-
sidered necessary? First, so long as there were strong Axis
forces in Cyrenaica there was a constant threat to Egypt and
he could not hope to secure his northern flank against a
possible German invasion through the Caucasus. Second,
H.M. Government considered it essential to take the offen-
sive in North Africa at the earliest possible moment.
** Possible 99 is an elastic word, especially in London.
The decision accepted, no fault can be found with the
general plan. The idea of basing the main force on Girabub
and striking across the desert via Gialo to cut RommeFs
communications was rightly turned down. The administra-
tive difficulties would have been enormous. Moreover, the
flank of the force would have been exposed, during its ad-
vance, to incessant air attacks from the coastal airfields in
the north. These could have been " stepped up 99 at will, by
reinforcements of the Luftwaffe flying in from Greece and
Crete. Our own forces, including the R.A.F., would have
had to be split. It would have been necessary to leave a
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
115
strong covering force to hold the frontier. Otherwise Rom-
mel would have turned the tables on us by coming down the
escarpment and making direct for Alexandria. That was, in
fact, precisely what he intended to do, had we attacked from
the south. The thrust by a brigade group at Gialo was,
therefore, merely the deception. It was effective; General
Bayerlein told me that that was where they thought the
main attack would come.
The plan adopted was to thrust towards Tobruk, while
feinting from the centre and the south. The first object was
the destruction of Rommel's armoured forces. The two
Panzer divisions, 15th and 21st, were the backbone of the
enemy's army. What was likely to bring them to battle on
ground of our choosing? Clearly, reasoned General Auchin-
leck, an obvious move to raise the siege of Tobruk. (The
relief of Tobruk was, in fact, incidental to the wider object
of driving Rommel out of Cyrcnaica and, in the next phase,
out of Tripolitania. By this plan, the garrison would itself
be able to take part in the action.) Since our tanks were
inferior to his, we must try to attack his armour with
superior numbers. In no case must our single armoured
division be caught by the two panzer divisions together. Sur-
prise as to time and the direction of the thrust was essential.
In brief, the main attack was to be delivered by 30th
Porps under Lieut. -General Willoughby Norrie. Including
most of the armour (7th Armoured Division and 4th
Armoured Brigade Group), with two brigades of the 1st
South African (Infantry) Division and the 22nd Guards
(Motor) Brigade, it was to concentrate round Gabr Saleh
and strike north-east or north-west. When it had defeated
the enemy armour, it was to relieve Tobruk. The garrison
of Tobruk (70th Infantry Division, an Army Tank Brigade
and a Polish Brigade Group) was to make a sortie when
General Norrie considered that the time was ripe.
Meanwhile 13th Corps, under Lieut.-General Godwin-
Austen, comprising the New Zealand Division, 4th Indian
116
ROMMEL
Division and 1st Army Tank Brigade, was to pin down and
cut off the enemy troops holding the frontier defences. It
was then to advance westwards on Tobruk to help 30th
Corps. 4th Armoured Brigade of 30th Corps was to protect
its left flank. 11th Indian Infantry Brigade, below the
Solium escarpment, and 5th Indian Infantry Brigade, above
it, were to contain the enemy frontally and cover our base
and railhead.
Rommers force was one-third German and two-thirds
Italian. It consisted of three armoured, two motorised and
■
five infantry divisions. The two German panzer divisions,
15th and 21st, and the 90th Light (Infantry) Division,
formed the Panzer Group, Afrika. 21st Panzer Division was
twelve miles south of Gambut, across the Trigh Capuzzo.
15th Panzer Division, with 90th Light, was concentrated
round El Adem, El Duda and Sidi Rezcgh. 2 1 st Corps, con-
sisting of four Italian infantry divisions, stiffened by three
German infantry battalions, was besieging Tobruk. The
Italian armoured Division (Aricte) was at El Gubi, with its
guns dug in. The motorised division (Trieste) was at Bir
I lacheim. The frontier defences at Halfaya, Solium, and
Capuzzo were manned by German infantry battalions. Sidi
and Libyan Omar were held by the Savona Division, with
some German guns. Bardia had a mixed garrison of German
and Italians.
■
The preparations for the offensive were elaborate. The
railway line was pushed forward 75 miles west of Matruh.
A pipeline was built from Alexandria and a water-point
opened ten miles behind the railhead. Nearly 30,000 tons
of munitions, fuel and supplies were stored in the forward
area before the battle opened. (This was sufficient to cover
the difference between the daily rates of delivery and con-
sumption for one week at most !) The Roval Navy and the
R.A.F. for many weeks continually attacked the enemy's
supply lines by sea and air. Thanks to the R.A.F. and the
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
117
Long Range Desert Group, General Cunningham, com-
manding Eighth Army, had almost exact information about
the enemy's dispositions and order of battle. Thanks to the
R.A.F. and to first-class administration, camouflage and
" security," the enemy knew nothing of ours. The essential
surprise was achieved.
The battle that ensued was desperately fought by both
sides. On ours there was an exhilaration, a will to victory
that I had not seen equalled since the final battles at the
end of the first war. " Give me another . . . tank," I remem-
ber a wounded Scottish sergeant shouting as he leaned out
and pointed to his gun, the muzzle drooping like a stick of
chewed celery from a direct hit. " Mon, we're doing all
right up there; we're giving the b s hell !" This a hun-
dred yards from the truck of General Willoughby Norrie,
commanding 30th Corps, who had just mislaid the whole
of his Main Headquarters but remarked that there was a
lot to be said for fighting a battle with only an A.D.C. : it
saved so much paper. (About the same time, the entire
headquarter; of the Afrika Korps had been captured by the
New Zealanders.)
It was a real soldier's battle, a " proper dog-fight," like
those great aerial mix-ups which we used to watch over the
lines in 1918. It was fought at such speed, with such swiftly-
ciianging fortune, under such a cloud of smoke from burst-
ing shell and burning tanks, such columns of dust from
careering transport, in such confusion of conflicting reports,
that no one knew what was happening a mile away. Even
to-day it is hard to follow from maps which show the situa-
tion, hour by hour. Occasionally, out of the murk, would
emerge some heroic figure like " Jock " Campbell, leading
his tanks at Sidi Rezegh in an open car, winning his V.C. .
half a dozen times over. There were hundreds more whose
exploits were unrecorded. How many have ever heard how
Major-General Dennis Reid, commanding the Indian Bri-
118
ROM MEL
gade Group from Girabub, took Gialo by walking alone into
the fort and holding up with his pistol sixty Italian officers
at dinner?
The heart of the battle was Sidi Rczegh, the key to
Tobruk. Here was the hardest fighting of all, tank against
tank, man against man. The " high-spot " was, however,
Rommel's dramatic dash with his armour across the frontier
wire at Bir Shofcrzen on the afternoon of November 24th,
Alan Moorehead has vividly described, in A Year of Battle,
this raid on our back areas and the resulting stampede of
thousands of soft-skinned vehicles over the desert, like a
shoal of mackerel before a shark.
Why did Rommel suddenly abandon the main battle and
rush eastward with his armour? Had he any plan or was he
merely " stirring up the pot " ? Was his move a master-
stroke or a desperate gamble? Major-Genera\ Fuller and
Lieut-General Sir Giffard Martel, amongst others, have
argued the question and reached opposite conclusions. The
answer is essential to any appraisement of Rommel as a
commander. Again, why, when they passed within a mile
or two of them, did his tanks not pause to set fire to our two
main supply dumps, F.S.D. 63, fifteen miles south-east of
Bir Gubi and F.S.D. 65, fifteen miles south-east of Gabr
Saleh ? Without them, the New Zealand Division could not
have been maintained. Without them, 30th Corps would
have had to retire from Sidi Rezegh. There was only the
Guards Brigade to protect them.
The second questions can be answered first, because the
answer is easy. Though the dumps were each six miles
square, the Germans did not know that they were there.
"God in Heaven!" said General Bayerlcin, "you don't
mean to tell me that ?" General von Ravenstein was equally
shaken. " And to think," he said, " that I saw and identified
the Guards Brigade and never bothered to wonder what
they were doing there ! I don't think I even fired on them."
Both of them returned to the subject, in the same words.
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS 119
"If we had known about those dumps, we could have won
the battle." They could, indeed, and whoever was respon-
sible for the concealment and camouflage of those huge
quantities of petrol, water and stores can take some belated
credit to himself. So can the R.A.F., for keeping the German
reconnaissance aircraft away from the area.
As to the larger question, General Baycrlein knew exactly
what Rommel had in mind. He still meant to take Tobruk
but he could not do so while he was himself being attacked.
If he turned on 70th Division, it would merely withdraw
into the perimeter. The advance of the New Zealand Divi-
sion along the Trigh Capuzzo had come as an unpleasant
surprise to him. If he concentrated all his force against it,
he could doubtless destroy it and open up the road to his
frontier positions again. But that would give time to what
was left of 7th Armoured Division to refit. Meanwhile there
was 70th Division on his flank. If he turned on 7th
Armoured Division, south-east of Sidi Rezegh (as General
Martel thinks he should have done), then the New Zealand
Division would join up with 70th Division. If he played
safe and retired to Gazala, it would mean abandoning the
frontier garrisons, the stores there and his own dumps along
the coast. His strength lay in his two panzer divisions. Was
there any way in which he could use them, not merely to get
lamself out of an awkward situation or to pursue a ding-
dong battle, but to recover the initiative and turn defeat into
victory at one stroke? Yes, he decided — to thrust suddenly
eastwards into our back areas and so disrupt our communi-
cations that General Cunningham would be glad to call the
battle off and withdraw from whence he came. He would
then deal with Tobruk, a few days later than he had
intended.
"You have the chance of ending this campaign to-
night !" he told General von Ravcnstein, who was to lead
the attack with 21st Panzer Division, when he gave him his
ordem They were to push straight through to the frontier
120
ROMMEL
wire and beyond, " looking neither to right nor left " and
then turn up nortli to the sea by Solium. Meanwhile a
" combat group " of one motorised Battalion with one com-
pany of tanks was to attack General Cunningham's head-
quarters at Maddalcna. Another combat group from 15th
Panzer Division was to follow up, go down the escarpment
and capture the railhead at Bir Habata, where there were
large stocks of petrol. If, as Rommel rightly suspected, there
was nothing much between the escarpment and Alexandria,
then 21st Panzer Division should join it and make at least
a rapid raid into Egypt. By that time such alarm and con-
fusion ought to have been caused ihat Eighth Army would
be coming helter-skelter back to its original positions. (There
was, in fact, one brigade of the 4th Indian Division behind
a large minefield at the foot of the escarpment. After that,
there was nothing but the barely trained and badly-
equipped 2nd South African Division, which had not yet
seen a shot fired. Its nearest brigades were at Mersa
Matruh.)
No one can say that his was not a bold plan to have con-
cocted in the middle of a hard-fought battle. Why, then,
did it fail? The answer is that it succeeded only too well,
up to a point. On November 23rd, General Cunningham
already wished to break off the battle. He would un-
doubtedly have done so next evening had not General
Auchinleck flown up from Cairo and forbidden him. In a
letter written at Advanced Eighth Army Headquarters on
the night of November 24th, General Auchinleck said, after
examining the dangers of going on with it : " The second
course is to continue to press our offensive with every means
in our power. There is no possible doubt that the second
is the right and only course. The risks involved in it must
be accepted. You will, therefore, continue to attack the
enemy relentlessly, using all your resources, even to the last
tank. . . General Fuller rightly calls it "an outstanding
example of the influence of generalship on operations.'*
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
121
Rommel, on the contrary, had to be restrained by a junior
officer. As usual, he was up in the forward area. About
noon on November 25th General Ravensteiu, lying behind
Halfaya with some twenty or thirty tanks left out of his
original sixty, received orders from Rommel to be ready to
attack Egypt. At 2 p.m. came a wireless message : " All
orders given to you hitherto are cancelled. 21st Panzer
Division is to break through the Indian lines in the direction
of Bardia." After his two unsuccessful and, it would seem,
rather unnecessary attacks m the morning and afternoon on
7th Indian Brigade (and 4th Indian Division H.Q.) behind
their minefields in Sidi Omar, he was doubtful about being
able to get through. However, he sent an officer with a
column of heavy trucks, which he hop^d would be mistaken
in the darkness for tanks, to " make a hole " between Solium
and Capuzzo and drove through after them. Next morning,
the 26th, he was in Bardia. There he found Rommel sitting
up, sound asleep, in his truck. " General," said von Raven-
stein, 11 1 am happy to tell you that I am here with my divi-
sion!" Rommel exploded, "What do you mean, you are
here?" he demanded. "What are you doing here? Did I
not give you an order to be ready to attack from Hal fay a in
the direction of Egypt ?" Von Ravenstein produced his copy
of the countermanding wireless message. Rommel exploded
again. " A fake 1" he shouted. " This is an order from the
British; they must have our code!"
The message in fact came from Lieut.-Colonel Westphal,
later a lieutenant-General and Chief-of-Staff to Fields
Marshal von Rundstedt, but then no more than a Gl (Ops.)
left behind in charge of the rear headquarters near Tobruk.
He had seen all the air reports, recognised that Rommel's
plan of attacking Egypt was impossible to carry out and
cancelled the order on his own responsibility. Rommel was
a big enough man to congratulate him afterwards. " You
did right," he said. " I am very grateful to you." So, it
appears, was von Ravenstein.
122
ROMMEL
Meanwhile shouts for help were coming from 90th Light
Division, battling desperately to hold off the New Zealand-
ers at Sidi Rezegh. During the night of November 26th-
27th Sidi Rezegh was captured. El Duda had been taken
by 70th Division that afternoon and, for the first time, the
Eighth Army and the garrison of Tobruk joined hands.
(General Godwin-Austen moved the headquarters of 13th
Corps into Tobruk, whence he is credited with having sent
the signal " Tobruk and I both relieved.") On November
27th a wireless intercept told General Ritchie, who had
replaced General Cunningham, that the two panzer divi-
sions were hurrying home.
Thus ended the eastward excursion. In the event, it had
done little damage, beyond causing alarm and despondency
in the back areas. (Some truck drivers arc said never to have
drawn rein — or taken their foot off the accelerator — until
they reached Cairo. This may be an exaggeration but many
were still full of running at Mersa Matruh.) Rommel had
failed to recover the general initiative. As he had lost much
of his armour, particularly to the artillery of 4th Indian
Division at Sidi Omar, his last state was worse than his first.
Nevertheless, General Auchinleck admits that his sudden
drive '* came as a rude shock." Had it succeeded, military
historians would have rated it a masterpiece.
For the Germans as well as for ourselves the break-
through had moments which are more amusing in retro-
spect than they were at the time. In the evening of Novem-
ber 24th, Rommel with General Bayerlein and General
Cruwell, commanding the Afrika Korps, crossed the frontier
wire, Rommel driving " Mammut," the Elephant, his British
armoured command truck, a souvenir of Mechili to which
he was much attached. It was dark when they tried to turn
back and they could not find the gap in the wire, which
marked the gap in the mine belt that guarded it. (I remem-
ber giving up the attempt to find that gap myself and sleep-
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
123
ing peacefully in my station-wagon, to discover next
morning that my two front wheels were in the minefield.)
Rommel and party slept, perhaps not so peacefully, in the
middle of Indian troops and slipped out unchallenged at
first light.
The previous afternoon Rommel had visited a field hos-
pital, full of a mixed bag of German and British wounded.
Walking between the beds, he observed that the hospital was
still in British hands and that British soldiers were all about.
It was, indeed, a British medical officer who was conducting
him round, having mistaken him, or so he imagined, for a
Polish general. The German wounded goggled at him and
began to sit up in bed. " I think we'd better get out of
this," whispered Rommel. As he jumped into " Mammut,"
he acknowledged a final salute.
General von Ravenstein also told me bow Rommel tried
to capture wbat he insisted was General Cunningham and
his staff. " I had had no time to take prisoners," he said.
" In fact, when I drove through some British units and
numbers of men, seeing the tanks on top of them, tried to
surrender, I had to call out, * Go away ! I'm not interested
in you!' What could I have done with prisoners? Then
Rommel joined me. On a piece of rising ground east of the
wire we saw through our glasses a group of staff officers
with their maps. 'General Cunningham!' said Rommel.
* Go and take him !' While I was collecting a tank or two he
became impatient 'Never mind, I'll go and take them
myself !' Standing up in his car, his sun glasses pushed up
on his forehead, waving and shouting, be dashed oft' with
three unarmoured staff cars and about twenty motor-
bicycles, in a cloud of dust. However, General Cunningham
(if it was General Cunningham), saw them coming and,
being unarmed, I suppose, and without an escort, he and
his staff jumped into their cars and made off."
(I still cannot find out what became of the "combat
group " from 15th Panzer Division which was supposed to
124
ROMMEL
attack Maddalena. General Neumann-Silkow, son of a Scot-
tish mother, then commanding the division, was killed ten
days later and no one else seems to know. I lad it turned up,
it would have found Eighth Army Headquarters in a state
of considerable " flap," busy trying to organise a defence
force of tanks with scratch crews and no ammunition. An
essential part of the plan thus miscarried.)
The dog-fight round Sidi Rezcgh was resumed. Every-
thing turned on whether 1st Brigade of 1st South African
Division could get up to the support of the New Zealanders
in time. The division was new to desert war. Its 5th Brigade
had been overrun and almost completely destroyed a week
earlier in a well-conceived and brilliantly executed German
attack. Major-General "Dan" Pienaar, a foxy, last-war
veteran, was understandably cautious about moving across
country and perhaps being caught by enemy armour in the
open. His advance was slow and hesitating. When 15th and
21st Panzer Divisions arrived, having fought an action
against the concentrated tank strength of 7th Armoured
Division on the way home, General Freyberg was unable
to hold on. The New Zealanders were driven off Sidi
Rezegh. By December 1st Tobruk was once again isolated.
Nevertheless, General Ritchie and General Auchinleck, who
had joined him at Maddalena, rightly guessed that Rom-
mel's bolt was shot. They resolved to give him no rest. In
fact, he made two more efforts. In an attempt to reach his
frontier garrisons, he sent two strong armoured columns
eastward, one along the coast road, the other along the
Trigh Capuzzo. Both were defeated, the first by 5th New
Zealand Brigade, the second by 5th Indian Brigade. Next
morning, December 4th, he launched a heavy attack on the
Tobruk salient. Backed by 88 mm. guns brought up to close
range, it was very nearly successful. Had it been resumed
next day, it might have been completely so, for deep pene-
trations had been made into our positions. But that night
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS
125
Rommel, knowing that the Eighth Army was about to
attack him again, began to withdraw.
The withdrawal was never a rout. Aided by a surprisingly
gallant defence of El Gubi by the Italians, it became a fight-
ing retreat, conducted by easy stages. Behind a screen of
anti-tank guns, the German armour was handled with great
skill and resisted all attempts to outflank and roll up the
main force. When an opportunity offered, it struck back. I
still remember that grey December afternoon, the 15th,
when I stood by 5th Indian Brigade truck near Alam Haza
and heard the last telephone message come through from
the CO. of The Buffs as his battalion was overrun by Ger-
man tanks. For all that, Rommel was gradually forced out
of every position in which he tried to stand. Now greatly
outnumbered in tanks and short of petrol, thanks to the
destruction by 4th South African Armoured Car Regiment
of one of his main dumps near El Gubi, he could do no more
than fight a series of delaying actions. By January 1 1 th he
had taken refuge in an immensely strong defensive position
round Agheila where " a broad belt of salt-pans, sand dunes
and innumerable small cliffs stretches southwards for fifty
miles, its southern flank resting on the vast expanse of shift-
ing sands of the Libyan Sand Sea.** ITie Eighth Army had
nothing left with which to dig him out.
* To those who watched it anxiously from afar," writes
Licut.-Colonel Carver of 7th Armoured Division, "the
changes and chances of the battle were inexplicable; they
only knew the disappointment of hopes buoyed up, to be
dashed again and again, so that when victory came at last
and Rommel's hold on Cyrenaica collapsed, they failed to
appreciate the lion-hearted determination and persistence
which had won through at last. To those who took part, a
bitter taste remained; those who fought in tanks cursed
those who sent them into battle, inferior in armour and
armament and in tanks which broke down endlessly. The
126
ROMMEL
infantry, with a sprinkling of useless anti-tank guns, looked
to the tanks to protect them against enemy tanks and were
bitter at their failure to do so. The armoured commanders
hurrying from one spot to another to protect infantry from
the threat of enemy tanks, which did not always materialise,
blamed the infantry for wearing out their tanks and crews
by such a misuse of the decisive arm in desert warfare."
To this I would add a footnote of my own. Though it is
mentioned in General Auchinleck's despatch, no one who
did not serve in the desert can realise to what extent the
difference between complete and partial success rested on
the simplest item of our equipment — and the worst. Who-
ever sent our troops into desert warfare with the 4-gallon
petrol tin has much to answer for. General Auchinleck
estimates that this " flimsy and ill-constructed container "
led to the loss of thirty per cent of petrol belt/den base and
consumer. Since the convoys bringing up the petrol reserves
at one time themselves required 180,000 gallons a day, the
overall loss was almost incalculable. To calculate the tanks
destroyed, the number of men who were killed or went into
captivity because of shortage of petrol at some crucial
moment, the ships and merchant seamen lost in carrying it,
would be quite impossible. Not only did the 4-gallon tin
lead to " a most uneconomical use of transport," as General
Auchinleck mildly remarks; it also encouraged the grossest
extravagance. What to do with a leaking tin if your tank
was full ? 14 Chuck the b over the side," was the answer
of the always improvident British soldier — and his practice.
Yet when I went back to India at the beginning of 1942,
there was a factory outside Cairo still turning out these
abominations. This at least partly disposed of the current
rumour that someone in the Ministry of Supply had ordered
x-millions of them and insisted that they be delivered. It
did not dispose of the statement made to me by a very dis-
tinguished American engineer with whom I discussed the
matter in New Delhi, that he had seen, in the railway work-
DESERT UPS AND DOWNS 127
shop at Gwalior, stamps suited to the mass production of
the admirable German "Jerrycan," with which everyone
who could lay hands on them had already equipped himself.
When I asked him what they were being used for, he said
that they were stamping out steel ovens for Italian prisoners
of war ! Meanwhile " the progress of our armour was first
retarded by the enemy rearguards and finally brought to a
standstill by lack of petrol." How many millions of gallons
had gone into the sand?
Under such handicaps, with a bare numerical superiority
of ill-armed, ill-armoured, unreliable tanks; with a far
inferior system of tank recovery; compelled, for lack of
anti-tank guns, to use 25-pounders to hold off the panzers;
with one division untrained to the desert; with a total
strength little more than that of the enemy, the Eighth
Army had defeated Rommel and driven him out of
Gyrenaica. With one hundred Sherman tanks it would have
destroyed him and the war in North Africa would have been
over. The survivors of this battle cannot wear an " 8 " on
their Africa Star. For some reason it was assumed by the
authorities responsible for such things that the Eighth Army
sprang into being only on October 23rd, 1 942, at the battle
of El Alamein. They can, however, be proud that they
fought with it through some of its greatest days.
Chapter Seven
TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA
If Rommel had an outstanding quality, it was resilience.
Like one of those weighted toy figures, no sooner was he
knocked down than he was on his feet again. By January
11th, 1942, he was licking his wounds behind El Aghcila.
The same day, more than three hundred miles to the east'
ward, the South Africans captured Solium. Bardia had
fallen at the beginning of the month. On January 1 7th the
garrison of Halfaya, cut off from their water-supply and
exhausted from lack of food, at last surrendered. The fron-
tier strongholds were reduced at leisure and at small cost.
Their fate was certain from the moment that Rommel began
his withdrawal.
Two-thirds of the Axis armies had been destroyed. Of the
Afrika Korps, barely half had escaped death, capture or
disablement. The morale of the remainder can hardly have
been at its highest. As for the Italians, any fighting spirit
that ever existed in the infantry divisions had sunk to zero
during the long walk back from Tobruk. (The Germans,
they complained, took all their transport.) The two German
panzer divisions, or what was left of them, had been with-
drawn to be re-equipped. Of Rommel's 412 tanks, 386 were
lying, burnt out, blackened wrecks around the battlefields.
Over 800 of his 1000 aircraft had been shot down or des-
troyed on the ground. No new German formations could
be expected for some time. It seemed that all he could hope
for was to stand at Agheila until he was driven out by the
Eighth Army or forced to withdraw by difficulties of supply,
128
TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA
129
General Auchinleck estimated that not until the middle of
February could he himself overcome his own administrative
problems and concentrate enough troops to resume the
offensive.
On January 21st, Rommel attacked. "The improbable
occurred : without warning the Axis forces began to
advance."
As on March 31st, 1941, Rommel may at first have in-
tended no more than a large-scale reconnaissance. Yet it
needed a man both morally and physically tough to think
even of that at the moment. For Rommel, like our own
commanders, had had two months of incessant fighting. 1
Like them, he had slept in or beside his truck, never undis-
turbed for more than an hour or two. Like them, he had
eaten what and when he could. Like them, he had faced
bitter cold and rain and blinding dust-storms. Even more
than they, he had spent most of his days and nights bump-
ing at speed across the battlefield. During the long retreat
he had had neither the thrill of pursuit nor the prospect of
victory to make him forget fatigue. When he reached
Agheila he was, in fact, exhausted. Yet, to the men of the
Afrika Korps, he assigned no limited objective. They were
to take three days' rations and to follow him as far and as
fast as they could. Reinforced, but with no more than a
hundred tanks, some of them light, and with virtually no
fighter cover at all, he set out with three columns. The weak
and widely dispersed covering forces were quickly brushed
aside. "As usual," says General Auchinleck, "Rommel
rapidly and skilfully made the most of his initial success."
The reconnaissance developed at once into an offensive. 1st
Armoured Division, which had just replaced the veteran
" desert rats " of 7th, was new to desert warfare. It lost 100
of its 150 tanks and many guns. The Eighth Army was
caught off balance. By February 7 th, at the cost of only
about thirty of his own tanks, Rommel had hustled it back
r. E
130
ROMMEL
to the line Gazala-Bir Hacheim. It was bold and brilliant
generalship, by any standard.
Not only in Cyrenaica was the barometer falling for the
British. From the Far East a chill wind was blowing; the
breath of impending calamity was in the air. The Japanese
were sweeping at speed through the " impenetrable jungles 99
of Malaya. The " impregnable fortress " of Singapore was
about to be attacked from the side whence no attack could
come. In Burma, two weak divisions were faced with the
prospect of withdrawing across country — if they could.
'Nearer home, the Axis High Command had at long last
come lo see the strategic importance of Malta and the Medi-
terranean. Incessant air attacks were launched against the
island; as the result, Rommel lost not a single ton of his
supplies in January. Aircraft and submarines closed the
Central Mediterranean to our own convoys. Heavy losses
were inflicted on our naval forces; Admiral Cunningham
was left with only three cruisers and a few destroyers. His
flagship sat on the bottom in Alexandria.
These events started a series of chain reactions. Just as
General Wavell had had to discard from weakness to assist
the foredoomed campaign in Greece, so General Auchinleck
was prevented from building up his strength by demands for
reinforcements for the Far East. Already in December, be-
fore Rommel had been driven out of his Gazala position, the
18th Division had been diverted from the Middle East to
Malaya. (It landed in Singapore just before the capitulation
and two of its brigades went straight into Japanese prison
camps without firing a shot) Simultaneously, the dispatch
of 1 7th (Indian) Division had been stopped. Tanks, fighter
aircraft, guns had also to be sacrificed.
Yet, because it seemed certain that Malta must fall unless
we could secure the airfields of Western Cyrenaica and give
cover to the island and to the relieving convoys, the Cabinet
TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA 131
was insistent that an offensive be staged at the earliest
possible moment. What was the earliest possible moment?
'* Now, if not sooner," was the view of the Prime Minister.
" When there is some chance of it being a success/' said
General Auchinleck. A premature offensive might result in
the piecemeal destruction of the new armoured forces which
he was trying to create. Then, in an attempt to save Malta,
he might lose Egypt and the whole Middle East. The vicious
circle was completed by the fact that every day that passed
with Malta unable to interfere with Rommel's " build-up "
reduced the chances of attaching him successfully. In
February, a convoy carrying a large number of tanks had
already reached Tripoli.
Long-distance arguments, like long-distance telephone
calls in India, leave the exasperated participants with the
impression that there must be a half-wit at the other end
of the wire. Especially is this the case when both, from their
own angle, are right. Fortunately Sir Stafford Cripps and
General Nye, Vice-Chief of the Imperial General Staff, were
persuaded to come out to Cairo, since General Auchinleck
could not be persuaded to leave the Middle East and go to
London. There the Commander-in-Chief was able to con-
vince them that his strength both in tanks and in the air was
altogether too low to offer even a reasonable prospect of
8vl immediate offensive being successful.
By agreement, the offensive was fixed for the middle of
May. Rommel meanwhile received so many tanks that it
was doubtful whether we would even then have numerical
superiority. The War Cabinet, however, was determined
that, to save Malta, the risk of losing Egypt must be
Accepted. General Auchinleck was ordered to launch his
attack not later than the middle of June. In the event,
Rommel attacked first, on May 27th, with tanks about equal
in number and greatly superior in quality, even to the new
American "General Grant's." The airfields of Western
132 ROMMEL
Cyrenaica were not captured ; Malta did not fall, thanks to
Hitler's folly in postponing the airborne assault on it, but
we very nearly lost Egypt.
The disasters of June, 1 942, came as a staggering blow to
the British public. Nothing shook them more than the fall
of Tobruk which, in fact, it was not intended to hold if
things went wrong. South Africa, because of the surrender
of her troops there, and Australia, because of old associa-
tions, were equally appalled. Even the Eighth Army, which
had sensed victory in the first few days, could not under-
stand how it had slipped from its grasp. Thus it has never
been generally realised how close was Rommel to defeat —
and to capitulation.
" It all turned on the 150th Brigade box at Got-el-Ualeb,"
said General Bayerlein. " We never knew that it was there.
Our first attacks on it failed. If we had not taken it on June
1st, you would have captured the whole of the Afrika Korps.
By the evening of the third day we were surrounded and
almost out of petrol. As it was, it was a miracle that we
managed to get our supplies through the minefield in time."
The Gazala position consisted primarily of minefields,
stretching from Gazala on the coast to Bir Hacheim, forty
miles to the south in the open desert. Minefields alone will
not stop tanks; lanes through them can quickly be cleared.
There must be something behind them. It was impossible
to dig and man a continuous trench system, as in the
1914-18 war. Moreover, such a system would have been
useless for, however far it stretched, its left flank must always
be in the air. General Auchinleck and General Ritchie
therefore devised a series of " boxes " or strongholds, the first
at Gazala, the last at Bir Hacheim. Wired and mined in and
prepared for all-round defence, they were, in effect, castles.
Their garrisons were supplied to stand a siege and had their
own complement of artillery inside the boxes.
These boxes had a double function. In the first place,
TQ THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA 133
they were to guard the minefields and prevent the enemy
cutting lanes through them at leisure. In the second place,
like castles in the Middle Ages, they were points of resis-
tance which a prudent enemy must try to reduce. Other-
wise, the garrisons could sally out and take him in the rear
or harrass his communications. While he was involved with
them, our armour, kept well away outside the boxes, would
fall upon him. Having thus forced him to give battle on
ground of our own choosing, we could, when the right
moment came, take the offensive ourselves. A solid defen-
sive system from which to launch it and on which to fall
back if necessary, the Gazala position would be a sort of
Scapa Flow for the Eighth Army.
Rommel's first objective, as General Auchinlcck rightly
assumed, must again be Tobruk. He dare not advance into
Egypt until he had captured it. To attack Tobruk, he had
only two choices. He could smash his way through the mine-
fields and boxes and make direct for it or he could skirt the
whole Gazala position, come round by Bir Hacheim and
then strike north. Rommel chose the second course. The
Italian armoured division, the Ariete, was to capture Bir
Hacheim the first night if possible. In any case the Afrika
Korps was to make straight for the sea. It was, in fact, to
take Tobruk on the third day, having meanwhile defeated
&e British armour ! The Italian divisions were to hold the
front and prevent us breaking out westwards from the
Gazala position. One of them, Trieste, was to cut a gap
through the minefield where it was crossed by the Trigh-el-
Abd track. This was a precaution, to shorten the supply line
in case Bir Hacheim did not fall at once. It was behind this
minefield that the 150 Brigade box was situated.
" I never liked this plan/' said General Bayerlein, " and,
as Chief of Staff of the Afrika Korps, I told Rommel so con-
tinually. It seemed to me altogether too risky to go on with-
out first knocking out Bir Hacheim. Six weeks before he
asked me ' What would you do with your armour if you
134
ROM MEL
were General Ritchie ?' I told him that I would keep it well
away to the eastward, somewhere about El Adem, refuse
battle at first and then strike at our flank when we were
inside the Gazala position. ' You're crazy/ he said, * they'll
never do that !' though it was just what he would have done
himself. As a matter of fact, I think General Ritchie's dis-
positions were excellent. The American 'General Grant'
tanks, too, with their 75 mm. gun, came as a great surprise
to us and 15th Panzer Division lost 100 tanks the first day.
"General Cruwell, commanding the Afrika Korps, was
shot down and made a forced landing in the 150th Brigade
box, where he was taken prisoner. General Gausi, Ghief of
Staff to Rommel, was wounded. General Nehring took over
the Afrika Korps and I took over from Gausi. When we had
failed to capture Bir Hacheim and failed to get a passage
through the minefield, both of us begged Rommel to break
off the battle but he wouldn't hear of it. That was. I think,
on the evening of May 31st. We were in a reallv desperate
position, our backs against the minefield, no food, no water,
no petrol, very little ammunition, no way through the mines
for our convoys, Bir Hacheim still holding out and prevent-
ing our getting supplies from the south. We were being
attacked all the time from the air. In another twenty-four *
hours we should have had to surrender."
That bore out exactly a story which I first heard in Barce
prison camp only a few days after these events. On the first
day of the attack the 3rd Indian Motor Brigade was over-
run. An officer of the 10th Hussars, an old friend of mine,
had his tank destroyed soon afterwards and found himself
amongst the Indian prisoners, near Rommel's headquarters
east of the minefields. Ringed round by 88 mm. guns to
keep off our armour, Rommel was making desperate
attempts to capture 150th Brigade box and get his supplies
through. The Indian prisoners were dying of thirst and
fighting for the few drops of water that were served out to
TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA 135
the wounded. Major Archer-Shee, an officer of imposing
presence, demanded to see Rommel and, to his surprise, was
taken to him. He spoke enough German to make his protest.
If the prisoners could not be given food and water, then the
Germans had no right to keep them and should send them
back to the British lines. Rommel was reasonable and even
sympathetic. " You are getting exactly the same ration of
water as the Afrika Korps and myself/* he said : " half a
cup. But I agree that we cannot go on like this. If we don't
get a convoy through to-night I shall have to ask General
Ritchie for terms. You can take a letter to him for me. . . ."
It was, it seems, as near as that, though one cannot quite
picture Rommel going meekly off into captivity. But
General Auchinleck, back in Cairo, saw before General
Ritchie that the capture of 150th Brigade box changed
everything. " I am glad that you think the situation is still
favourable to us and is improving," he wrote on June 3rd.
" All the same, I view the destruction of 1 50th Brigade and
the consolidation by the enemy of a broad and deep wedge
in the middle of your position with some misgiving. I feel
that if he is allowed to consolidate himself . . . our Gazala
position, including Bir Hacheim, will become untenable
•eventually, even if he does not renew his offensive. . . .
Situated as he is, he is rapidly becoming able to regain the
i ddative which you have wrested from him in the last
week's fighting. . .
What went wrong? It is easy to be wise after the event.
In this case I am on record as having been right at the time.
In A Year of Battle, Alan Moorehead recalls my telling him
on June 2nd or 3rd, that I was afraid we had already
missed the boat by not launching an attack with 5th Indian
Division, under General Briggs, when Rommel was pinned
against the minefield. Such an attack had, indeed, already
been discussed. At intervals on June 2nd, I saw General
Briggs, a deceptively mild officer with two bars to his D.S.O.
136
ROMMEL
Together we deplored the delay. At one moment we were
going to attack : at another the whole division was going to
go south round Bir Hacheim and start on a non-stop drive
to Derna. In the end we hung about and did nothing.
When the attack was at last put in on June 5th, it was three
days too late. 150th Brigade box had fallen : a lane through
the minefield had been cleared. The Afrika Korps was itself
again, with petrol, food, water and ammunition, with plenty
of 88 mm. guns in position and with tanks behind them in
the salient. In the belated attack, 10th Brigade of 5th
Division had some initial success but our armour failed to
exploit it. In the evening the German tanks and lorried
infantry slipped round behind the brigade. Germans in
British carriers overran the single battalion protecting the
flank before they were recognised. The tanks and lorried
infantry followed. Brigade headquarters and the tactical
headquarters of the division went up in the smoke of burn-
ing tents and trucks. General Briggs and General Messervy
of 7th Armoured Division, returning from a " recce,"
managed to slip through. Brigadier Boucher, the brigade
commander, making his way back to his headquarters, and
I, waiting for him there, were less lucky.
That night, sitting amongst the German tanks in the open,
it was easy to see that Rommel was on the move again. He
had, indeed, recovered the initiative which General Ritchie
had wrested from him and had no intention of giving it up.
June 5th was the turning-point of the battle, though the
chance of winning it outright went three days earlier.
Rommel now did what he ought to have done at the start.
He sent General Bayerlein off to put Bir Hacheim finally out
of business. 1 1 took a week of unceasing artillery bombard-
ment and Stuka attacks. Even then the gallant Free French
were still holding out. But they could not hold out much
longer and General Ritchie told General Koenig to abandon
Bir Hacheim on the night of June 10th and try to break
TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA 137
through. He got away with a large part of his force, driven
out by a British girl driver.
With Bir Hacheim off his back, Rommel at once reverted
to his original plan of taking Tobruk. By midnight on the
1 1th, 90th Light Division was a few miles south of El Adem.
The armoured divisions were echeloned on its left. There
followed two days of great and decisive tank battles. Rom-
mel threw in all his armour. But he threw it in behind a
screen of anti-tank guns, of which he now produced more
than it was ever suspected that he had. The British
armoured brigades, weakened by the loss of most of the
Grants, had to try to break through the screen to get at the
German tanks. The guns took heavy toll of them. The
tanks fell upon the remainder. By nightfall on June 13th
most of our armoured strength was gone. Moreover, the
enemy had possession of the battlefield and could recover
his damaged tanks : ours were lost to us.
It was now clear that the Gazala position would have to
be abandoned. But both General Auchinlcck and General
Ritchie were reluctant to believe that the Eighth Army was
beaten. Tt had lost its armour but much of its infantry
was intact. The New Zealand Division had been ordered
from Syria. A new armoured division, the 10th, was on its
way to the front. There were about 1 50 tanks under repair
ih the workshops. We should soon again have more tanks
than Rommel. We were still superior in the air, as we had
been throughout. The decision was taken to give up Gazala
but to hold a line from the western perimeter of Tobruk to
El Adem and Belhamed. At the same time a mobile force
was to be maintained to the eastward and a new striking
force built up near the frontier. This meant that Tobruk,
or part of it, would again be invested, which was contrary
to plan, since the Navy had said that it could not be sup-
plied. However, a temporary and partial investment was
different to a sustained siege.
138
ROMMEL
In General Bayerlein's opinion, this decision was fatal.
" To my mind," he said, " General Ritchie ought to have
gone straight back to the frontier after we captured Bir
Hacheim and were astride the Gazala position. In any case
he should never have tried to hold Tobruk with the defences
in the state they were and with an improvised garrison. If
he was going to hold it, as we assumed he was, then he
should have prepared to do so from the start, laid new mine-
fields, got his guns into position and so on. Above all, he
should have put an experienced general in charge. If some-
one like General Morshcad or General Gott or General
Frcyberg had been there, things might have been different.
As it was, a few units fought well. I remember a Scottish
battalion (the Cameron Highlanders) which went on fight-
ing long after General Klopper had surrendered. But there
seemed to be no proper defence plan at all."
Fatal the decision certainly proved. Having captured Sidi
Rezegh on June 17th and heavily defeated our armour on
the same day, Rommel attacked Tobruk from El Duda on
June 20th, exactly as he had proposed to attack it on
November 23rd of the previous year. Using his Stukas to
dive-bomb the minefields and clear a passage, he quickly
broke into the fortress from the south-east. Inside, all was
soon confusion. General Klopper, bombed out of his head-
quarters, his signal communications gone, had lost all touch
and all control. As the German tanks fanned out from the
gap in the perimeter and drove straight to the harbour,
some troops fought on. Some broke out to the eastward, a
battalion of the Coldstream Guards naturally in good order.
The South Africans, holding the western and south-western
side of the perimeter, hardly knew what was happening
until 90th Light Division took them in the rear. Sullenly
at dawn next morning they obeyed General Klopper's order
to surrender. In prison camps for many months afterwards
they were bitterly resentful and ashamed. The fortress
which had held out for nine months in 1941 had been taken
TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA
139
in a day. Inevitably they would be blamed. Inevitably they
blamed General Klopper.
During the last hours and for long afterwards, Tobruk
was covered with a funereal pall of black smoke from the
dumps fired just before the capitulation. Millions of pounds
of petrol and stores were burnt. Nevertheless, there was
enough left to enable Rommel to drive on to Egypt.
It was now too late to stand on the frontier. General
Ritchie sought permission to retire to Mersa Matruh. Re-
luctantly General Auchioleck agreed, though with mis-
givings. For without armour, Mersa Matruh was no more
easily defensible than the frontier. By the evening of June
23rd, Rommel was again on the frontier wire.
Should he have gone on? General von Thoma says that
he disobeved a specific order from Mussolini, conveyed
through Marshal Badoglio, to stop on the frontier after the
capture of Tobruk. General Bayerlein denies this. A con-
ference was held west of Bardia on June 22nd, he says. He
himself only came in when it was nearing the end, but Rom-
mel told him afterwards that General Bastico, his immediate
superior, had been of opinion that an advance into Egypt
should not be attempted. There was, however, no order to
that effect either from the Italian or the German High
Command and General Bastico gave way when Rommel
* lold him that he had been assured by Marshal Kesselring
that he would get all the supplies he wanted. The point is
clarified, if that is the word, by two extracts from Ciano's
Diaries. On June 22nd he says that " a restraining telegram
has already been sent from Rome advising Rommel that he
should not venture bevond the line Fort Capuzzo-Sollum."
Next day he writes, " From some intercepted telegrams from
the American observer in Cairo, Fellers, we learn that the
British have been beaten and that if Romnfel continues his
action he has a good chance of getting as far as the Canal
Zone.* Naturally Mussolini is pressing for prosecution of the
attack. . . /'
140
ROMMEL
The decision was, then, Rommel's, the indecision was not.
To a man of his temperament it was inevitable. He had the
Eighth Army on the run. Was he to stop and let it re-form
and then start the whole business over again from the line
where he had halted fourteen months before? With the
glittering prize of Egypt and the Suez Canal almost within
his grasp, both the German and the Italian High Command
must realise what was at stake and give him the extra sup-
port and supplies he needed. " No one could have guessed,"
says General Bayerlein, " that the British would so quickly
regain control of the Mediterranean and be so successful in
stopping our shipping." Still less could any one have guessed
that Hitler, with his famous intuition, and Keitel, Jodl and
Haider, with their trained staff minds, would not even see
the opportunity that lay open before them. Of course he
must go on. The Afrika Korps was, indeed, exhausted. But
to Rommel, with his tremendous vitality, no soldier was
ever too exhausted to fight the last round of a winning battle
— or, for that matter, of a losing one.
Go on they did, and at speed. By the evening of June
24th (four days from the fall of Tobruk), Rommel was up
to Sidi Barrani. Next day his columns were within forty
miles of Mersa Matruh. That evening General Auchinleck
personally took over command of the Eighth Army. At once
he resolved that no part of it should be shut up in the Mersa
Matruh defences, which he had not enough troops to man.
The Tobruk mistake was not to be repeated. Rommel must
be stopped, if possible, in the area between Matruh and El
Alamein. But 30th Corps was to occupy the El Alamein
position as a precaution. On the evening of June 26th, the
German tanks broke through the minefields south of
Charing Cross. Next day they bumped the New Zealand
Division fresh and, as always, full of fight. They lost heavily
but pressed forward along the coast and succeeded in cutting
the road twenty miles east of Matruh. 50th Division and
the newly-arrived 10th Indian Division had to fight their
TO THE GATES OF ALEXANDRIA 141
way out at night, leaving much of their ammunition and
equipment behind* There was now nothing for it but to
withdraw to the position which General Auchinleck had
Jong before prepared. On June 30th Rommel came up to
the £1 Alamein line. Alexandria was 65 miles away. He
had, General Baycrlein assures me, just twelve German
tanks left.
Chapter Eight
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
i. "desert-worthy"
On the morning of June 21st, Rommel was able to report
that. Tobruk was in his hands. Next day he learnt by wire-
less from Hitler's headquarters that he was a Field-Marshal,
at fifty the youngest in the German Army. That evening he
celebrated his promotion — on tinned pineapple and one
small glass of whisky from a bottle which one of his staff
had procured from the Tobruk NAAFI. After dinner he
wrote to his wife : " Hitler has made me a Field-Marshal.
I would much rather he had given me one more division."
Still, he was in unusually high spirits, as well he might be
when he looked back on his fourteen lean years as a captain
and reflected where the next ten had brought him.
This was the peak of his professional career and of his
success in North Africa. He had reached it in sixteen months
from landing in Tripoli, with the modest mission of pre-
venting the British capturing Tripolitania. He had had to
adapt himself, not only to a new type of warfare but to the
strange and exacting life of the desert. It would be infelici-
tous to say that he took to it like a duck to water, but he
quickly became as " desert-worthy "* as a Bedouin. " Rom-
mel may not have been a great strategist," said General
Bayerlein, " but there is no doubt that he was the best man
in the whole of the German Army for desert war."
It was a young man's war. Rommel was no longer a
*" Desert-worthy^ " was a term first used for vehicles fit for the desert. It came to
be more widely applied, to formations, to units and even to individuals.
142
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
143
young man. Thanks to years of ski-ing and mountaineering
lie was, however, physically in his prime. "He had the
strength of a horse," said a young German paratroop officer,
himself a ski-ing champion. " I never saw another man like
him. No need for food, no need for drink, no need for sleep.
He could wear out men twenty and thirty years younger.
If anything, he was too hard, on himself and everyone else."
There was, indeed, a Spartan strain in Rommel which
made him take pride in being impervious to discomfort and
fatigue. Neither heat nor cold nor hard lying affected him.
Even the ghibli, as the Germans called the hamseen, the
blinding sandstorm which reduced all in the desert, Arabs
and camels included, to a common misery, he professed to
regard as an exaggerated annoyance. Piloting his own
Storch, he insisted on taking off in one during his first
desert battle. When he had nearly killed himself, coming
in to land with visibility nil, he admitted that it had been
" difficult to see what the British were up to." No doubt
they were merely up to their eyebrows in driving sand.
Like Napoleon, Rommel could snatch a few minutes'
sleep, sitting up in his truck or with his head on a table,
and wake completely refreshed. I asked Gunther, his bat-
man, now a pastry-cook in Garraisch, whether he minded
being disturbed when he was having a night in. " Not at
oil," said the stolid Gunther, who was with him for four
years. " He always seemed quite pleased and was wide-
awake in a second. He slept with one eye open : if a message
came, he usually woke before I called him." Gunther added
that he was a very even-tempered man who never took it
out of his batman and was easy to satisfy. (His generals
saw a different side of him.)
Food, Rommel had never cared much about. He was
quite content to set off for a day in the desert with a small
packet of sandwiches or a tin of sardines and a piece of
bread* Once he invited an Italian general to lunch with him
in the open. " It was rather awkward," he remarked after-
144
ROMMEL
wards : " I had only three slices of bread and they were all
stale. Never mind, they eat too much.'* Realising that the
more one drinks in the desert the thirstier one becomes, he
carried only a small flask of cold tea and lemon and often
brought it hack untouched.
In the evening he would dine alone in his caravan with
his old friend Aldinger. He insisted on being given the same
rations as the troops. They were not very good. " One of
the reasons we had so much sickness, especially jaundice,"
said von Escbeck, the war correspondent, cousin of the
general, "was that our rations were too heavy for the
desert. Our black bread in a carton was handy but how we
used to long to capture one of your field bakeries and cat
fresh, white bread ! And your jam ! For the first four
months we got no fresh fruit or vegetables at all. We lived
all the time on Italian tinned meat. The tins had a big
' A.M.' on them : the troops used to call it f asinus
Mussolini/ "
To a young officer of the Afrika Korps who ventured to
say that, while he had no complaints, the food was not too
appetising, Rommel replied genially : " Do you imagine that
it tastes any better to me?" In fact he never noticed how it
tasted. His only recorded taste, a negative one, was that he
disliked tea and coffee made with brackish water. (He can-
not have enjoyed his visit to Girabub, where the water has
the exact consistency of Epsom salts. Of Girabub, they used
to say : " Here Mr. Eno would have starved to death and
Mr. Bromo made a fortune.")
After the evening meal, which lasted twenty minutes at
the most and at which he drank his one glass of wine, Rom-
mel would turn on the wireless. He listened only to the
news. Then he would write his daily letter to his wife. In
action, when he had no time to write, it was Gunther's duty
to write for him. He also carried on a continuous corres-
pondence in his own hand with survivors of his first-war
battalion. No letter from one of them ever went unanswered.
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
145
Official papers took up the rest of the evening until bed-
time. If he read at all, it was a newspaper or a book on a
military subject. He had some interest in the history of
North Africa and was mildly curious about the ruins of
Gyrene. But the story that he had kept up his classics and
was a keen archaeologist who spent his scanty leisure in dig-
ging for Roman remains was a production of the propagan-
dists. Von Esebcck was responsible for it. " Some of us had
been scratching about and had turned up some bits of
Roman pottery," he totd mc. u We were looking at them
when Rommel came along. What he actually said, when
we showed them to him, was : * What the hell do you want
with all that junk?' But you can't tell that from the photo-
graph!"
In the morning, Rommel was up and about by six. A
stickler for turn-out on a parade, he let the Afrika Korps
dress as they pleased in the desert. Usually they followed
the Australian fashion and wore shoes, shorts and their
peaked caps. He himself was always shaved and in uniform.
Sometimes he wore shorts but more often breeches and
boots and invariably a jacket. His tropical helmet tie threw
away, like the rest of us, soon after his arrival : he never put
on a tin- hat. His only eccentricity, perhaps borrowed from
the British, was a check scarf round his neck in winter,
iinder it, according to the German customs he wore his
Iron Gross. He was thus considerably more dressy than our
own commanders who, in their short, zip-fastened, camel-
hair coats and corduroy slacks, could only be distinguished
by their red hats and rank badges — when they wore them.
(General Messervy, temporarily captured when command-
ing 7th Armoured Division, succeeded in passing as a pri-
vate soldier. "A bit old for this, aren't you?" asked a
German officer. " Much too old," agreed General Messervy :
" Reservist : they had no right to call me up.")
By 6.30 a.m. Rommel had started on his daily round of
his positions. Sometimes he went by air, flying the aircraft
146
ROMMEL
himself. Though he had no ticket, he was a confident pilot
and an excellent navigator. In battle, he generally used
" Mammut," his British armoured command truck. Often
he drove himself about in a Volkswagen, finding his way un-
erringly across the desert from the first. No post was too
isolated for him to turn up at it. When he descended on the
back areas, it was an unlucky senior officer whom he caught
in bed after seven. " You damned lazy fox," he said to one
unfortunate colonel who came out to meet him in his
pyjamas. " 1 suppose you were waiting for me to bring you
your breakfast?" To Aldinger lie remarked afterwards :
" It's a great thing to be a Field-Marshal and still remember
how to talk to them like a sergeant-major."
His visits to the forward area were no mere perfunctory
inspections. With his keen eye for country and his great
mastery of minor tactics, he missed nothing — a machine-gun
badly sited, transport in the wrong wadi, mines too ob-
viously laid, an uncamouflaged CP. If he were not satisfied
with a position, he would drive out alone a mile or so into
the blue, to look at it with the enemy's eyes. Not infre-
quently he drew fire. Then he would return to a flank, so
as not to give the position away. Crawling towards the fort
at Acroma, he was fired on when he was half-way through
the minefield. " That comes of being in a hurry," he said.
" I should have moved more slowly." His attention to their
own small problems, his fertility of tactical ideas, his skill
in desert navigation, these impressed the young officer and
the young soldier. He was one of themselves, a " front-line
type."
Moreover, he could talk to them, for he had a great affec-
tion for youth. " He was always gay when he was speaking
to young men," said von Esebeck. " He had a smile and a
joke for everyone who seemed to be doing his job. There
was nothing he liked better than to talk with a man from
his own part of the country in the Swabian dialect. He had
a very warm heart," added von Esebeck reflectively, " and
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
147
more charm than any one I have ever known." This last,
from a well-read and sophisticated man, who had seen much
more of the world and of " society " than Rommel, was a
surprise.
In battle, Rommel was at his best. He was a natural
leader and he relied, both instinctively and deliberately,
upon personal leadership. As was remarked at the time, he
was the first to identify desert war with war at sea, the first
to understand that " no admiral ever won a naval battle
from a shore base." He had an exceptionally quick brain
and an exceptionally quick eye for a military situation. But
the reason that he was able to catch so many fleeting oppor-
tunities, the secret of his early successes, was that he did not
have to wait for information to be filtered back to him
through the usual channels of command. He was up to sec
for himself, in his aircraft, his tank, his armoured car, his
Volkswagen or on foot. It was thus that he was able, with-
out any appreciable interval for planning, to turn his recon-
naissances in April, 1941, and January, 1942, into victorious
offensives. It was thus that he was able to emerge from
defeat and almost certain disaster at the end of May, 194-2,
and to swing the issue of the battle as soon as his supplies
were assured. So far as one man can in modern war, he
contrived to " ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."
He has been criticised, by Captain Liddell Hart amongst
others, for " dashing about the battlefield " and being too
often out of touch with his headquarters. There is some
truth in that. Yet Captain Liddell Hart himself admits that
he had " a wonderful knack of appearing at some vital spot
and giving a decisive impetus to the action at a crucial
moment." Major-General Fuller has fewer doubts. "In
rapidity of decision and velocity of movement," he writes,
"the Germans completely outclassed their enemy and
mainly because Rommel, instead of delegating his command
to his subordinates, normally took personal command of his
armour. ... It was not that the British generals were less
148
ROMMEL
able than the German. It was that their education was out
of date. It was built on the trench warfare of 1914-1918
and not on the armoured warfare they were called upon to
direct." Rommel was twice defeated when General Auchin-
leck took over in the forward area and gave his orders on
the spot. He escaped defeat in June, 1942, because decisions
and communications on our side were too slow.
No one in the desert doubted that personal command
paid. But it would be a mistake to picture Rommel as a
modern Prince Rupert, always waving his hat and leading
his tanks in headlong charges against the enemy. On the
contrary, he was a canny fighter who, more often than our
own commanders, refused action except on his own terms.
His main contribution to tank tactics was, indeed, his use of
a screen of self-propelled anti-tank guns. Behind it, his
panzers advanced; behind it, they would withdraw or re-
fuel; through it, they would be launched to the attack, when
his guns had taken toll of our armour. Repeatedly our tanks
were entrapped and led on to the guns in their attempts to
close. Repeatedly, with his own armour concentrated, he
caught ours dispersed. He was artful in other ways. His
first order on landing in Tripoli was for the construction of
dummy tanks. He constantly used his transport to create
dust and suggest the presence of his panzer divisions. He
started by dragging tarpaulins behind trucks but soon got
the idea of fitting propellors behind them. The streams of
coloured flares which lit the desert at night were often for
our benefit. Captured trucks and carriers were freely em-
ployed, not only because the Germans were short of trans-
port but also to create confusion during an advance.
Nor was his system of command so haphazard and slip-
shod as has been supposed. He did not merely rush about
the battlefield giving impromptu orders to individuals or
minor formations. Had he done so, he could never have
controlled forces of 100,000 men with the success he did.
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
149
His orders were often given verbally. In the heat of battle,
when he thought that the enemy would not have time to
profit if they picked them up, he sometimes gave them over
the air in clear. But Aldinger assures me that a shorthand
note was always taken and that they were confirmed in
writing, whenever time allowed. In any case they were short
and unequivocal. Rommel never had any doubt about what
he wanted and left none in the minds of his subordinates.
Inevitably, he took great personal risks in battle. Again
and again he was close to death or capture. Once both his
driver and his spare driver were killed alongside him and he
had to drive the truck out himself. Rommel was an excep-
tionally brave man and completely imperturbable under
fire but our senior commanders would have done the same
had it been the custom. No one could have been braver, on
a lower level, than Generals Freyberg, or " Jock n Campbell
or 44 Strafer " Gott. Rommel, like Napoleon, and Welling-
ton, took risks because he had to, if he were to direct the
battle in person. They were merely occupational hazards.
He was the more easily able to accept them because he was
comfortably convinced that it was impossible for him to be
killed in action. <-
So were his subordinates. They, however, attributed his
immunity to his " Fingerspitzengefiihl," that innate sense of
what the enemy was about to do. " At noon on November
25th," said General Bayerlcin, " we were at the headquar-
ters of the Afrika Korps at Gasr-el-Abid, Suddenly Rommel
turned to me and said, ' Bayerlein, I would advise you to
get out of this : I don't like it.' An hour later the head-
quarters were unexpectedly attacked and overrun. The
same afternoon we were standing together when he said,
' Let's move a couple of hundred yards to a flank : I think
we are going to get shelled here.' One bit of desert was
just the same as another. But five minutes after we had
moved the shells were falling exactly where we had been
150
ROMMEL
standing. Everyone you meet who fought with Rommel in
either war will tell you similar stories." Everyone did.
It is easy, in considering, academically, Rommel's method
of command, to forget its main purpose and its main effect
— the encouragement in his troops of a will to win. On that
hangs, in the last analysis, the issue of all battles. Battles
may, indeed, he lost by bad generalship or bad staff -work.
But no generalship, however good, and still less staff- work,
can outweigh lack of morale in the fighting man. " A la
guerre les trots quarts sont des affaires morales," said
Napoleon and others have put it higher. Rommel's con-
tinual prowling about their forward positions may have
been an irritation to his subordinate commanders. It is
possible that lie could sometimes have been better employed
in studying maps and messages at his headquarters than in
dashing into the dust and confusion of a desert u dog-fight."
That it was his personal inspiration and the physical sight
of that stocky, confident figure in action which made the
Afrika Korps what it was is certain.
At the time we believed that the Afrika Korps was a carps
d* elite, hand-picked from volunteers and specially
toughened and trained for desert warfare. It was not so.
The men were not volunteers. "Otherwise the whole of
the German Army would have volunteered," said General
von Ravenstein. Nor were they individually selected. They
were recruited from depots and units in the usual way and
it is not to be supposed that German commanding officers
were always more scrupulous than our own in sending their
best for extra-regimental duty. There was no special train-
ing, except that some of the officers were privileged to be
attached to the Italians for instruction. Otherwise the
Afrika Korps was just the run-of-the-mill of the Reichswehr.
The young German soldier was strong, willing and well-
trained in the use of his weapons. He was disciplined,
patriotic and brave. Physically he was not particularly well-
suited to the desert. The very young and the very blond
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
151
(could not stand the heat ; nor could the veterans of the first
war. On the whole, the Germans did not adapt themselves
to desert conditions as easily as did the Australians, the New
Zealanders, the South Africans, the Indians or the British.
Few of them, either officers or men, had ever been out of
Europe. They did not understand Africa. For example, it
was hard to make them realise that all water was not fit to
drink. "There was no proper water purification system,"
said von Escbeck, "and we suffered much from dysentery
as well as from jaundice. Our doctors did not know nearly
as much as yours about keeping troops fit in a tropical
climate. German field hospitals were inferior to yours and
there was, at first, no plasma for blood transfusions. It took
us a long time to learn to look after ourselves in the desert."
On the credit side, the Afrika Korps had better weapons,
though less transport, and knew better how to use them. It
had better prospects of leave. It was better supplied with
newspapers, such as its own " Oasc." It was homogeneous,
whereas the Eighth Army was always a very mixed bag. It
arrived in Africa in good heart. All this admitted, it was
Rommel who, almost at once, by personal influence and
example, by force of character, by taking more risks than his
troops, converted it into that tough, truculent, resilient fight-
ing force we knew. Rommel was the Afrika Korps, to his
own men as well as to his enemy. It was he who made them
bold, self-confident and even arrogant in battle. It was he
who taught them to pull the last ounce out of themselves
and never to admit that they were beaten. It was because
they were the Afrika Korps that, even when they were taken
prisoner, they marched down to the docks at Suez with their
heads high, still whistling "We march against England
to-day." In Germany in 1949 they still carry their paim-trec
brassard in their pocket-books. If you ask them whether
they were in North Africa they take pride in answering :
" Yes, I was in the Afrika Korps : I fought with Rommel."
Good-luck to them, for they fought well and, as the Ger-
152
ROMMEL
mans say, the next best thing to a good friend is a good
enemy.
Idolised by the Afrika Korps, Rommel was revered some
way this side of idolatry by his generals. From all their
accounts, he was a hard and difficult man to deal with. In
battle he put out the most sensitive antennae to the reactions
of the enemy : he was not so sensitive to the feelings of his
senior offiers. He had a rough tongue and could be brutal.
He was impatient. He would not see what he did not want
to see. He would not have his orders questioned. He could
not bear to be told that anything was impossible. He had a
bad habit of going over the heads of commanders and giving
orders direct to subordinates. A still worse one was that of
dragging his Chief of Staff with him wherever he went and
leaving no one at headquarters with authority to take a
decision. In action he was inclined to occupy himself with
details, such as the capture of General Cunningham, which
did not strictly concern a supreme commander. Out of the
line he was unsociable. " Of course he had not had quite
the same early advantages as most German Field-Marshals,"
explained, deprecatingly, one of his generals, around whom
one could still detect a lingering aura of cavalry messes and
country estates, of full-dress uniforms and balls and the visits
of minor royalty.
Such was the criticism. The grounds for it were inherent
both in Rommel himself and in his method of command.
He was a man who insisted on " running his own show." It
was inevitable that he should often overrule his subordinate
commanders. It was his nature to do so with little ceremony.
It was equally inevitable that senior German officers should
dislike a system practised in the past by Napoleon but out-
moded in modern war, if only because in modern war direct
personal command is seldom possible. To do them justice,
the criticism was invariably and immediately qualified.
Rommel was the bravest of the brave; he had a sixth sense
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
153
in battle; he was wonderful with troops; when he had
quietened down it was always possible to talk to him; if he
gave orders over one's head he would apologise afterwards;
he was generous with praise and would admit when he had
been wrong. Could they think of any one better for desert
war, I asked them. No, they all agreed, nor of any one half
as good.
If. NOSTR'ALLEATI ITALIANI
The Afrika Korps was homogeneous. The Axis forces in
North Africa were not entirely so. There were also the
Italians. Poor Italians, they have almost taken the place in
military legend of our own " oldest allies " in the first war.
Rommel naturally had his stock of stories which were re-
tailed to Manfred, with additions by Aldinger. There was,
for example, the story of the attack which the Italians were
persuaded to launch at Tobruk. When they were half-way
across and out of reach of the Germans, they dropped their
arms and put their hands up. Suddenly they turned about
and came scampering back. " Mamma mia f " they ex-
plained breathlessly, 11 those aren't English, they're Austra-
lians !" Again, Rommel was visiting their trenches when the
Australians made a local attack. " Sancta Maria! "'■ cried the
Italians and fell on their knees. " I'm going to give you a
bit of advice," said Rommel to the Italian officer in com-
mand. " Stop them praying and persuade them to shoot. . . .
This is where I leave you. Good-bye !"
The story that the Australians had sent back Italian
prisoners with the seats cut out of their breeches and a
message to the Germans to replace them with an equivalent
number of the Afrika Korps, I regarded with some distrust.
I remembered that the Germans were said to have done
exactly the same with our oldest allies after an attempted
raid in 1918 at Merville. In that case, however, their back-
154
ROMMEL
sides were painted blue and the message from the Germans
was to the effect that when they wanted specimens they
would come and collect them. The British need not, there-
fore, bother to send them over. There was a suspicious
similarity about those stories and I should not be surprised
if they are as old as war itself.
On the whole Rommel agreed with the Italian soldier
who said to him : " Why don't you Germans do the fight-
ing, General, and let us Italians build the roads?" But he
never thought that they were all cowards. The Arietc
Armoured Division fought very well at El Gubi and else-
where : Brescia was not too bad. There was a good batta-
lion commanded by a Major Montemuro. The pioneers
were all good and worked well, even under fire. Properly
officered, given decent equipment and a prospect of home
leave, he felt that something might have been made of them.
(General Speidel told me that the northern Italian divisions
of General Garibaldi's 8th Italian Army, to which he was
Chief of Staff, fought well in Russia under much worse
conditions.) The equipment, like the officers, was worthless.
The early Italian tanks were only " sardine-tins " and many
tanks and armoured cars had no radio sets and had to com-
municate by flags. Since this must have been known to
Mussolini and since, as appears from Ciano's Diaries, he
had the profoundest contempt for his unfortunate fellow-
countrymen and for all his generals, it remains a mystery
how he expected them to " live like lions." Nevertheless,
though no lions, some of them had a slightly pathetic ad-
miration for Rommel. At a meeting of his Council of
Ministers on February 7th, 1942, Mussolini, after his usual
attack on the Italian generals, described how " the Bersa-
glieri are enthusiastic about Rommel. They give him their
feather and carry him in triumph on their shoulders, shout-
ing that with him they are sure to reach Alexandria." The
incident may have been embellished for the occasion. Never-
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY 155
j
thcless, Rommel had a paternal way with Italian "other
ranks " which made him simpatico to them.
To the Italian High Command and to Italian officers he
was not simpatico in the least. The officers as a class he
considered contemptible. He was especially horrified to
learn that there were three scales of rations for Italian
troops in the desert, one for officers, one for N.G.O.s and
one for other ranks, in sharply descending order. That the
officers did not attempt to look after their men, he attri-
buted to the fact that they had " no military tradition."
But that did not excuse, in his eyes, their too evident reluc-
tance to acquire one. (He made an exception of the Air
Force, which produced some dashing fighter-pilots.) For
their part, Italian officers regarded him as a rough, rude
man, always demanding impossibilities.
Since he was always nominally under Italian command,
disputes on the higher levels were inevitable. General Gari-
baldi, with whom he first had to deal, he found a genial old
gentleman, quite a good soldier and, what was more impor-
tant to Rommel, prepared to let him have his way. General
Bastico, whom he christened " Bombastico," was more
troublesome. Though General Bayerlein described him as
" nix " and " mil," Bastico had ideas of his own. After the
Sidi Rezegh battle in December, 1941, he came over with
Kcsselring to Gazala and quarrelled with Rommel about his
intention of withdrawing to Agedabia. It would have a
very bad effect in Italy and might cause a revolution. Rom-
mel replied that he could guarantee only one thing, that he
was going to get the Afrika Korps out. If the Italians liked
to stay where they were, that was their affair. Conversely,
there was Bastico's attempt to prevent the advance into
Egypt, already mentioned in the last chapter.
Then there was General Count Ugo Cavallero, Chief of
Staff after the resignation of Badoglio in December, 1940.
Because he spoke German as well as Italian and gave the
156 ROMMEL
*
impression of a competent staff officer, Rommel was at
first inclined to trust him. He was also dependent on him for
his supplies. Ciano paints Gavallero's portrait with the
loving care which one Italian gangster is always ready to
lavish on another. " A perfect bazaar-trader who has found
the secret way to Mussolini's heart and is ready to follow
the path of lies, intrigue and imbroglio. He must be
watched; a man who can bring great trouble to us. . . .
Among the many insincere individuals that life puts into
circulation every day, Cavallcro easily carries off the palm.
. . . To-day, with his artificial, hypocritical and servile
optimism, he was unbearable. ... A shameless liar. . . . He
would bow to public lavatories if this would advance him.
... A dangerous clown, ready to follow every German whim
without dignity . . . the servant of the Germans . . . deli-
berately deceiving the Ducc." When Mussolini proposed,
after Rommel's promotion to Field-Marshal, to make
Cavallcro one also, because otherwise he was "between
Rommel and Kesselring, like Christ between the thieves/'
Ciano protested. "Bastico's promotion," he said, "will
make people laugh, Cavallero's will make them indignant."
Lastly came the Duce himself. To any one still inclined
to suppose that only dictatorships can get things done, be-
cause only dictators know their own minds, it is instructive
to study Mussolini's attitude towards Rommel, as recorded
by Ciano. In May, 1941, having read an order of the day
which Rommel is said to have addressed to the Italian divi-
sional commanders, threatening to denounce them to mili-
tary tribunals, he is considering a personal protest to Hitler.
On December 5th, 1941, he is " so proud of having given
the command to the Germans. . . ." On December 17th,
when the battle went wrong, " he blames Rommel who, he
believes spoilt the situation with his recklessness." By Feb-
ruary 7th, 1 942, after Rommel's counter-attack, he " extols
Rommel, who is always in his tank at the head of his attack-
ing columns." On May 26th, " Mussolini now interests him-
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
157
self only in the coming offensive in Libya and he is definitely
optimistic. He maintains that Rommel will arrive at the
Delta unless he is stopped, not by the British but by our
own generals." On June 22nd, he is 41 in very good humour
and preparing to go to Africa. In reality lie was the man
behind the decisive attack, even against the opinion of the
High Command. Now he fears that they may not realise the
magnitude of the success and therefore fail to take advan-
tage of it. He only trusts Rommel. . . ." Four days later he
is M pleased over the progress of operations in Libya but
angry that the battle is identified with Rommel, thus
appearing more as a German than an Italian victory. Also
Rommel's promotion to Field-Marshal, 'which Hitler evi-
dently made to accentuate the German character of the
battle,' causes the Duce much pain. Naturally he takes it
out on Graziani 4 who has always been seventy feet under-
ground in a Roman tomb at Cyrcne, while Rommel knows
how to lead his troops with the personal example of the
general who lives in his tank.' " On July 21st, he is in a
good humour and is so certain of reaching the Delta that
he has left his personal baggage in Libya. Still, he has
"naturally been absorbing the anti-Rommel talk of the
Italian commander in Libya." On the 23rd, he has
44 realised that even Rommel's strategy has its ups-and-
downs." By September 9th, he is 44 angry with Rommel,"
who has accused Italian officers of revealing plans to the
enemy. On September 27th, he is " convinced that Rommel
will not come back. He finds him physically and morally
shaken." By January 5th, 1943, he has " only harsh words
for Cavallero and for 4 that madman Rommel, who thinks
of nothing but retreating in Tunisia.' "
No Cavallero, Rommel was hardly up to dealing with
dictators. He liked Mussolini when he first met him, pre-
cisely because he seemed to be a man who knew his own
mind and could give an order. Naively he imagined that
Mussolini was his friend. He did not realise how quickly
158
ROMMEL
II Duce's friendship shifted with the breeze of fortune. For-
tunately Rommel could see a joke, even against himself. In
1942 he was summoned to Rome to discuss supplies. When
he entered that enormous room in the Palazzo Venezia he
spotted, lying on the immense desk the insignia of the Italian
order for valour. Rightly he guessed that it was intended
for him. The discussion grew heated. When Rommel rashly
said something disparaging about the Italian navy, Musso-
lini glared at him. Then he seized the order, pulled open
a drawer, flung it in and locked the desk. " It was a beauti-
ful thing/' said Rommel ruefully. " Why couldn't I have
kept: my silly mouth shut for another ten minutes? He
couldn't very well have asked me to hand it back."
There was something to be said on the Italian side, how-
ever. Tact was not Rommel 1 s strong point. When he was
about to make his counter-attack in January, 1942, he did
not tell his Italian superiors about it, for fear there should
be a " leak." He merely instructed his " Q " staff to pin up
the orders for it in the Italian back-area messes after the
advance had started. Since this was the first news the Italian
General Staff had had of it they were understandably indig-
nant. Rommel was sent for. He replied that he was in the
front line but would be glad to see General Bastico there.
General Bastico did not appear. Some days later Rommel
was told that he proposed to withdraw all Italian troops.
Rommel said that it was all the same to him if he did. This
cost him his first decoration — and the affection of General
Bastico.
Feeling also ran high on the Italian side over the delicate
matter of the division of loot. There was in existence an
official agreement, drafted, one can only suppose, by
Cavallero, under which the Italians were to hand over to the
Germans everything they captured in Russia while the Ger-
mans were to surrender to the Italians the spoils of war in
North Africa. It is unlikely that the first head of the agree-
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
159
ment was often invoked : the Italians complained bitterly of
the non-observance by their allies of the second. *' There is
violent indignation against the Germans because of their
behaviour in Libya," writes Ciano in the summer of 1942.
" They have grabbed all the booty. They have thrust their
claws everywhere, placed German guards over the booty and
woe to any one who comes near." No one can squeal more
shrilly than the hijacked mobster and it was fortunate for
Rommel that he was too much of a big shot and too well
protected to be taken for a ride. What made Ciano even
more furious was that " the only one who has succeeded in
getting plenty for himself is Cavallero. . . ."
The Axis allies were not, therefore, the best of bed-
fellows. Nevertheless, in summing up the Italians to Man-
fred, Rommel made a not ungenerous and refreshingly
un-German remark. " Certainly they are no good at war,"
he said. " But one must not judge everyone in the world
only by his qualities as a soldier : otherwise we should have
no civilisation."
XII. CIVIL WAR
Towards his enemy, Rommel's attitude was one of
friendly if sometimes suspicious hostility. Like all Germans,
ne resented at first our employment of Indian divisions
against Europeans, until he encountered 4th Indian Division
and discovered that the Indian soldier was at least as well-
disciplined and " correct " as any in the desert. He could
not resist a mild sneer, for propaganda purposes, at the
" coloured English " who accompanied the South Africans,
though he knew very well that they were non-combatants.
The Australians he considered rough, particularly with the
Italians, but it was the sort of roughness which amused him
and did not show " a bad heart." He ranked Australians
160
ROMMEL
highly as individual fighting-men hut thought that they were
inclined to get out of hand. He would have liked a division
of them but remarked that an army of Australians would
not be an easy command. The South Africans he considered
good material but too raw, though he gave credit to their
armoured cars and acknowledged that they later fought very
well at Alamcin. For the New Zealanders he had a great
and lasting admiration. They were, he always maintained
to Manfred, Aldinger and others, the finest troops on our
side.
The British he respected — as promising amateurs. He
even went so far as to admit that, for small, independent
operations, requiring great personal initiative, such as those
of the Long Range Desert Group and the S.A.S. (Special
Air Service), they were better than the Germans, who would
not have had the same confidence or shown so much enter-
prise far behind the enemy lines. (It is fair to recall that the
L.R.D.G. contained a high proportion of New Zealanders
though it was organised and commanded by British regular
officers.) British regular formations were, he thought, stub-
born and brave in defence but insufficiently trained. He
made an exception of 7th Armoured Division, particularly
of the two Rifle battalions of the Support Group, the 11th
Hussars and the artillery. Nevertheless he thought that in
tank actions our armoured units and even single tanks were
far too much inclined to go bald-headed into the attack.
His criticism that we used armour in penny packets and thus
invited its destruction in detail has been echoed by British
military critics. The British system of command he
naturally thought too slow, involved and clogged with
paper. In spite of many inquiries I cannot discover that
lie expressed any opinion about any individual British
general except General Wavcll, whose campaign against the
Italians would, he declared, always be studied as a supreme
example of bold planning and daring execution with small
resources. His assessment of his opponents was thus strictly
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
161
professional and unemotional. He certainly did not hate or
even dislike them : for New Zealanders, individually and
collectively, he had almost an affection.
" The war in North Africa was a gentleman's war," said
General Johann Cramer, last commander of the Afrika
Korps, to a correspondent of The Times, when it was all
over. Rommel also took pride in the clean record of his
troops (and of ours), for he had strong views on correct con-
duct and the observance of the soldier's code. There was
nothing remarkable about that. They were shared by the
great majority of German regular officers, particularly those
who were serving before 1933. In the higher ranks, there
were only a few exceptions, the Keitels and the Jodls, who
had sold out so completely to Hitler that they were prepared
to transmit, even if they did not approve, his most out-
rageous orders.
To us this survival of chivalry came as a surprise. Know-
ing nothing of the feud between the Party and the Wehr-
macht, of the Nazis' jealousy of the Army, of the contempt
of the officer class for the " brown scum," of the long, if
weak-kneed, opposition of many generals to their Fuhrer,
we naturally lumped all Germans together. In war it was
perhaps as well to do so. Nations, by and large, get the
governments they deserve. If they put up with Hitlers and
Mussolinis they must take the consequences. Their enemies
cannot be expected to draw nice distinctions between the
wearers of different varieties of the same uniform. Never-
theless it can now be conceded that, whatever it may have
done in Poland and Russia, the regular German Army else-
where fought a clean war. Strangely enough, it fought a
cleaner one than in 1914-18. Perhaps because there was
less hand-to-hand fighting, perhaps because the officers were
on better terms with their men, perhaps because General von
Seeckt and his successors had established a better tradition,
there was none of the killing of prisoners which one remem-
bers, on both sides, in World War I. (The fact that it was
R. F
162
ROMMEL
much easier in this war to be taken prisoner, through no
fault of one's own, may also have had something to do with
At any rate, it was quickly discovered by the British that
the Afrika Korps proposed to fight according to the rules.
For this the whole credit was given to Rommel. Since the
Afrika Korps looked up to him for an example in every-
thing, he undoubtedly deserved a large share of it. How-
ever, he was lucky. " Thank God, we had no S.S. divisions
in the desert," said General Bayerlein, " or Heaven knows
what would have happened : it would have been a very
different sort of war." He went on to tell me, what I for
one had not realised, that, while a German general might
have control of S.S. troops in the field during actual opera-
tions, he had no powers of discipline over them whatsoever.
His only remedy, even against an " other rank," was to re-
port him, through the usual channels, to Himmler in person.
The result was likely to be unsatisfactory. A general who
saw, at a railway station, some S.S. men beating Russian
prisoners with their rifle-butts, attempted to check the
N.C.O. in charge. " And who are you?" asked the N.C.O.
insolently. " A general of the Reichswehr." " We take no
orders from generals of the Reichswehr; we are the S.S..
We take orders from Himmler!" He had, however, picked
the wrong general. " In that case," said the general, " I
must request you to step over to that tree because in three
minutes' time I propose to hang you from it." Since the
general had with him a train-load of his own troops, the
N.C.O. apologised. " Within a fortnight," said the General,
" I was told privately that Himmler had my name on his
black-list." The name was, in fact, Fritz Bayerlein. ** Had
the July 20th plot succeeded," he added, " there would have
been civil war between the S.S. divisions and the Army in
Italy."
The Afrika Korps did not beat up prisoners. On the con-
trary, after the first rough pounce, it treated them with
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
163
almost old-world courtesy. At Gambut, soon after the open-
ing of the May, 1942, battle, I met an Army Film Unit
photographer, a Scot, who had just managed to escape after
an hour or two in enemy hands. He was newly arrived from
England, this was his first experience of action and he was
highly indignant. "What like of people are these bluidy
Germans, sir ?" he asked me. " I wad never ha' credited it.
A German officer, an officer Ah'm tellin' ye, actually took
ma camera off me an* wouldna give it back. . . . Never
mind," he added more cheerfully, " Ah hae his receipt for
it." So he had, on the back of an envelope, with name, rank
and date. He proposed to look for the Oberlcutnant after
the war.
This was my favourite story, until 1 had the misfortune
to be captured myself. I could then cap it with the young
German who, after searching me, politely handed back a
gold cigarette-case which he found in the pocket of my
bush-shirt. He apologised for taking my field-glasses but
explained that these were M Hilar gut whereas the cigarette-
case was privat. Comparing notes with others in prison-
camp I found that no one had any serious cause for com-
plaint until after being handed over to the Italians. Since
I still have my cigarette-case, I must have been lucky in my
Italians also. I tried, however, not to expose them to the
same temptation.
Misunderstandings there were from time to time between
Rommel and ourselves and some of them had unpleasant
repercussions upon prisoners. Such misunderstandings were
quite genuine and the fault was not always on the German
side. For example, we published an order to the effect that
prisoners should not be given a meal before being interro-
gated. The intention was innocent enough. A prisoner is
usually somewhat shaken when he is first captured and if he
is interrogated immediately he may give away information
of value. If, however, he has a meal and perhaps a cigarette,
he has time to collect himself. The order meant no more
164
ROMMEL
than that the meal should be postponed until after the
investigation. The assumption was, I presume, that this
might involve a delay of an hour or two.
It was nevertheless unwise to put such an order on paper
and still more unwise to circulate it in forward areas where
it might fall into German hands. I did not realise quite how
unwise until I reached Tmimi aerodrome, having spent
twelve hours standing up in a truck, under a hot sun, with-
out food or water. Having been captured 24 hours earlier
and having had nothing to eat or drink for six or seven
hours before that, I was looking forward to an evening meal
and above all to water. We were paraded and addressed by
a German officer in English. " I regret, gentlemen," he
said, " that we are unable to give you anything to eat or
drink. As your orders are that German prisoners shall be
starved and deprived of water until they reach Cairo for
interrogation, I am obliged to treat you in the same way.
You will get nothing until you reach Benghazi and have
been interrogated, unless the British Government see fit to
cancel the order. They have been asked to do so." Pre-
sumably the British Government did, since we were given
a meal and a drink at Derna next morning.
More serious might have been the consequences of an
order found on a British commando officer captured during
an unsuccessful raid on Tobruk in August, 1942. Whatever
ks intention, as translated into Italian it gave the impression
that, if prisoners could not conveniently be removed, they
were to be killed. I have not seen the original text. I can
only assume that it stressed that the infliction of casualties
on the enemy was more important than the capture pf
prisoners. The distinction is a little subtle, even in English.
Staff officers who draft such orders should remember that
»
fine shades of meaning do not always survive translation.
They should also remember that all orders are liable to fall
into enemy hands and that those who suffer are their own
countrymen in captivity. Many were manacled for months
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY 165
■
■
after the Dieppe raid, when our own orders for the hand-
cuffing of German prisoners were captured.
Hitler's famous'or infamous order of October 18th, 1942,
was at least unequivocal :
" From now on," said Para. 3, " all enemies on so-called
Commando missions in Europe or Africa challenged by
German troops, even if they are to all appearances soldiers
in uniform or demolition troops, whether armed or un-
armed, in battle or in flight, are to be slaughtered to the
last man. It does not make any difference whether they
are landed from ships and aeroplanes for their actions,
or whether they are dropped by parachutes. Even if
these individuals, when found, should apparently be pre-
pared to give themselves up, no pardon is to be granted
to them on principle. . . ."
" This order does not apply,*' said Para. 5, to the treat-
ment of any enemy soldiers who, in the course of normal
hostilities (large-scale offensive actions, landing opera-
tions and airborne operations), are captured in open battle
or give themselves up."
1 1 will hold responsible under Military Law," added
the final paragraph, " for failing to carry out this order,
all commanders and officers who either have neglected
their duty of instructing the troops about this order or
acted against this order where it is to be executed."
The order was signed " Adolf Hitler " and was, therefore,
<c top level."
On June 18th, 1946, General Siegfried Westphal was
questioned about it at Nuremberg :
Question : " You were, on the African front ?"
Answer: " More than a year and a half."
Question: "How was the war conducted there?"
Answer: " I can answer in a sentence : it was conducted
in a chivalrous and irreproachable manner."
166
ROMMEL
Question: "Who was your chief?"
Answer: " Marshal Rommel."
Question: "Did he ever order or sanction violation of
the rules of war?"
Answer: " Never."
Question: " What position did you hold with him?"
Answer: "I was head of the Operations Section and
afterwards his Chief of Staff."
Question: "You were, then, always in contact with
him?"
Answer: " I was in contact with him always, both per-
sonally and on service matters."
Question: " Do vou know the order issued by Hitler on
October 1 8th. 1942?"
Answer: "Yes."
Question: "Did you receive this order ?' 5
Answer: " Yes, we received it in the desert near Sidi
Barrani, from a liaison officer."
Question: " How did Marshal Rommel behave on re-
ceipt of this order?"
Answer: " Marshal Rommel and I read it standing be-
side our truck. I then immediately proposed that we
should not publish it. We burnt it at once, where we
stood. Our reasons were as follows : The motives of the
order, which T think you will find in the introductory
paragraph,* were clear in themselves. We knew the British
orders for hand-to-hand combat. We knew the slogan of
EI Alamein : * Kill the Germans wherever you find them '
and various other aggravations of the war. We had also
captured an order, issued by a British armoured brigade,
according to which prisoners must not be given anything
•" 1 . Our enemies have for a Ions time been adnptinv methods, in earryim? on the
war, which are not in a.rcordancc with the International Conventions of Geneva.
Particularly brutal and stralthy is the behaviour of the members of the so-called
Commandos, which, as has been proved, are themselves in p..rt recruited from circles
of released criminals in the enemy countries. Captured orders prove that they are
instructed not only to shackle prisoners, but even to s'mply kill defenceless prisoners
the moment they think that, in the future pursuit of the mission, these prisoners con-
stitute a burden, or otherwise an inconvenience. Finally orders have been found in
which the killing of prisoners has been ordered as a matter of principle.*'
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
167
to drink. Nevertheless, we did not wish this order to reach
our troops, for that would have led to an aggravation of
the war of which it would have been impossible to foresee
the consequences. That was why the message was burnt
ten minutes after it was received. . . . But it was only on
another continent that one could have got away with so
blatant an act of disobedience. I do not think one could
have done it in the east or the west.'"
In fact, Rommel was very far from being the only Ger-
man general who ignored this and similar orders.
General Westphal was then questioned about the strange
case of " the nephew of Field-Marshal Alexander " :
Question: " Gould you briefly run through the case of
the commando action in which the nephew of Field-
Marshal Alexander took part ?"
Answer: "In the autumn of 1942, a close relation of
Field-Marshal Alexander was taken prisoner behind the
German lines. He was wearing an Afrika Korps cap and
was armed with a German pistol. He had thus put him-
self outside the rules of war. Marshal Rommel gave the
order that he should be treated like any other prisoner.
The Marshal thought that he did not understand what
might have been the consequences of his conduct.'*
(What Rommel actually said when someone proposed that
he should be shot, as he could legitimately have been, was :
" What, shoot General Alexander's nephew ! You damned
fool, do you want to make a present of another couple of
divisions to the British Army?" In fact, the officer in ques-
tion was no relation of Field-Marshal (then General)
Alexander. If he said he was, Rommel and Westphal un-
doubtedly swallowed his story, for Rommel related the
incident to his family.)
There are endless anecdotes about Rommel's treatment
of our prisoners, all, so far as I have heard, to his credit. For
168
ROMMEL
perhaps the best I am indebted to Brigadier G. H. Clifton,
D.S.O., M.C., at the time of his encounters with Rommel a
captured New Zealand brigade commander.
Brigadier Clifton, christened "the flying kiwi," was a
born escaper. When he joined us in Campo PG 29 he at
once evolved a very bold plan which came tragically near
to success. He lowered himself at night out of a second-
story window into the smallest possible patch of shadow in
the angle of a wall. The wall was actually on a sentry's beat.
He stood face to the wall until the sentry moved away and
then slid across the vard on his stomach and under a barbed
wire fence. Travelling at high speed across country, he
reached the nearest railway station, Ponte d'Olio, and took
the first train in the morning to Milan. From the main
station he crossed over by tram to the north station for the
Como line and arrived in Como some time before he was
missed at morning roll-call. At Como he made his fatal
mistake. He proposed to follow the road past the Villa
d'Este, as T did myself later on, and then cross over the
mountains into Switzerland. To save time he hired a
carriage at the station. When he was paving it of, there
was a dispute about the fare. Two carabinieri, who had
already been watching him with some suspicion, strolled
over. That evening he was brought back to us.
Removed to Campo PG 5, the " strafe " camp for inve-
terate escapers, we heard that he had been seen standing
on the roof, fired at by sentries from all sides. On his way
to Germany, seated between two guards in a railway
carriage, he contrived to dive through a window while the
train was running* When I met Rommel's widow, almost
the first question she asked me was, "Did you know
Brigadier Clifton? Where is he and did he manage to
escape? My husband always hoped he would get out of
Italy. He had a great opinion of him."
•He was severely wounded but on Mnrch 22nd, 1945, be escaped again: on April
15 he was home in Auckland. N**w Zealand.
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
169
Here, then, is Brigadier Clifton's story :
" In the early hours of September 4th, 1942, I drove out
into ' No-man's-land ' south of Alameyil Ridge, to tidy up
someone else's night battle which had gone astray. It was
before first light and a most confusing situation. As the
result, we drove up to the wrong people, while looking for
a forward company of my own brigade. The enemy con-
cerned were Italian parachutists from the Folgerc Division
and, for a few minutes, it looked as though we might return
with fifty Italians instead of staying as their prisoners. The
argument was settled against us, however, by the interven-
tion of a German artillery officer who was acting as F.O.O.
about 100 yards away. He came down, told the Italians
not to be so-and-so fools and we went ' into the bag.'
" About two hours later I arrived back at my old head-
quarters in the Kaponga Box, now occupied by a swarm of
Italians and a German paratroop battalion in reserve. It
was only 7 o'clock in the morning but it seemed a lifetime
since I left, expecting to return for breakfast.
" Ten minutes later there was great excitement and an
Intelligence Officer came across and told me that Rommel
was arriving. Sure enough, three or four reconnaissance
Vehicles came round the corner, headed by an enormous
stafT car, with Rommel in person sitting up at the back. He
stepped out to much saluting and clicking of heels. I noticed
that he addressed himself first to the Italian colonel who
was the senior officer in the area.
" After a short discussion he then summoned the German
major commanding the paratroops and a few minutes later
I was called over and so met the famous Rommel for the
first time. He was a short, stocky figure, running to waist-
line and. obviously rather sensitive about it, but full of self-
assurance and drive. Speaking in German, although he evi-
dently understood English, he proceeded to harangue me
about the * gangster' methods of the New Zea landers. It
appeared that we had bayoneted the German wounded at
ROMMEL
Minqarqaim in the night battle behind Matruh and he was
very much annoyed about it. He said that if we wanted to
fight rough, so could they, and that any further action of
this sort on our part would be answered by immediate
reprisals.
"As the nearest New Zealander available for such re-
prisals it became a rather personal matter to me. I was,
however, able to explain our point of view over the occur-
rences of that famous night-attack. Our first wave, going
through in the dark, caught the Germans by surprise. Some
of them, lying on the ground, had fired or thrown bombs
after the first company had passed. As a result, the supports
following on simply stuck every man who failed to stand up
and surrender. It is quite likely that some of the Germans
were bayoneted several times by people in passing.
" I explained what had happened. Whether it was the
way I put it across I do not know but Rommel said, ' Well,
that is reasonable and could happen in a night battle but . . .*
He then went on to describe an incident in which a German
wounded officer had been thrown into a burning truck.
" After some discussion on this alleged incident he asked,
4 Why are you New Zealanders fighting? This is a
European war, not yours. Are you here for the sport?*
Realising that he really meant this, and never having pre-
viously faced up to putting into words the self-evident fact
that if Britain fought we fought too, I held up my hands
with the fingers closed and said, 'The British Common-
wealth fights together. If you attack England you attack
New Zealand and Australia too.' 'What about Ireland?'
asked Rommel quickly. I had the answer to that one. A
week or so earlier we had been given the figures of Southern
Ireland volunteers in the fighting services. I believe their
percentage to total population equalled any nation in the
Commonwealth.
" Rommel did not comment on this, wished me good luck
and off he went to the battle, where his last offensive in
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
171
Egypt was being very roughly handled. Six days later I
escaped from Matruh but that is another story of a long
walk and bad luck, which finished when T was recaptured
on September 15th by three young panzer officers hunting
gazelle ten miles west of the front at El Alamein. In due
course, after being shot up by our own Hurri-hombers, a
most embarrassing interlude, I was dumped at Rommel's
headquarters for the second time.
" The Marshal deigned to see me again, accompanied by
the three lads who had picked me up and were expecting
seven days special leave to Germany as a reward. (Inciden-
tally, they were disappointed.) Rommel once more opened
the conversation with strong comments on our 1 gangster '
methods, occasioned this time by a Flying Fortress high-
level bombing attack on a hospital ship leaving Tobruk. He
then said, 1 1 do not blame you for attempting to escape, it is
your duty and I would have done the same if I were in your
position.'
"Appreciating his increasing waistline and tight boots
and breeches, I replied : ' I am quite sure vou would try, sir,
but I do not think you could have walked as far as I did.'
(More than 100 miles in less than five days on one can of
water.) Rommel came back very quickly with, ' No, I would
have had more sense and borrowed a motor-car.' Trick to
him. ' So would I, but with only twenty seconds start there
was not much time, though we had a suitable vehicle
marked down.' He then added that I was a nuisance and
that any further attempt at a break would finish by my
being shot while escaping. However he decided to get rid of
me quickly by plane from Daba early next morning direct
to Rome.
" Germans are literally minded, in addition to having a
tragic lack of humour. Rommel impressed me as an out-
standing exception and that impression grew stronger with
every senior German officer I had the misfortune to meet.
On the occasions when he met our troops either as prisoners
172
ROMMEL
■v
or wounded he greeted them as one soldier meeting others
and treated them very fairly. Brigadier Hargest, who was
captured at Sidi Azeiz in late November, 1941, and was
taken into Bardia by Rommel, formed the same impression.
I think he comments on it in his book, Farewell Campo 12."
(Brigadier Hargest was pulled up by Rommel for not
saluting. " That did not prevent him from congratulating
me on the fighting quality of my men," he wrote.)
Clifton's story is creditable to both sides.
Hospital-ships were a sore point with Rommel. He was
indignant when he heard that the Royal Navy was pulling
them into Malta for examination, furious when it was re-
ported that they had been attacked by the R.A.F. at sea.
Drafting a strong note of protest, he was somewhat shaken
to learn that an Italian general, frightened of flying the
Mediterranean, had taken a passage in a hospital-ship as a
stretcher-case and had been removed, unwounded, at Malta.
His final disillusionment came at a conference in July before
El Alamein. Rommel was complaining bitterly about being
halted for lack of petrol. Three tankers had just been sunk
in two days. Gavallero reassured him. Other means had
already been adopted to keep him supplied. Petrol was
being sent over in the double-bottoms of hospital-ships!
Rommel turned on him. " How can I protest against British
interference with hospital-ships when you do things like
that ?" he demanded. Cavallero was surprised and hurt.
To sum up the spirit in which the desert war was fought, I
may quote General von Ravenstein. " When I reached
Cairo," he said, " I was received very courteously by
General Auchinleck's A.D.C. Then I was taken to see
General Auchinleck himself in his office. He shook hands
■
with me and said : 1 1 know you well by name. You and
your division have fought with chivalry. I wish to treat you
as well as possible.'
" Before I left Cairo I heard that General Campbell had
been awarded the Victoria Cross. I asked and obtained per-
SUCH WAS THE ENEMY
173
mission to write to him. I still have a copy of nay letter if
it would interest you."
The letter read :
Abbasia, February 10th, 1942
"Dear Major-General Campbell,
" I have read in the paper that you have been my brave
adversary in the tank battle of Sidi-Rezegh on November
21-22, 1941. It was my 21st Panzer Division which has
fought in these hot days with the 7th Armoured Division,
for whom I have the greatest admiration. Your 7th
Support Group of Royal Artillery too has made the fight-
ing very hard for us and I remember all the many iron
that flew near the aerodrome around our ears.
" The German comrades congratulate you with warm
heart for your award of the Victoria Gross.
" During the war your enemy, but with high respect.
" von Raven stein "
"Jock" Campbell was killed soon afterwards, when his
car overturned near Buq-Buq. I do not suppose he ever
received the letter. If he had, I think he would have
appreciated it.
There are two opinions on the question of chivalry in
war. General Eisenhower holds the other. " When von
Arnim was brought through Algiers on his way to captivity,"
he writes in Crusade in Europe, "some members of my
staff felt that I should observe the custom of bygone days
and allow him to call on me. The custom had its origin in
the fact that mercenary soldiers of old had no real enmity
towards their opponents. Both sides fought for the love of
a fight, out of a .sense of duty or, more probably, for money.
A captured commander of the eighteenth century was likely
. to be, for weeks or months, the honoured guest of his captor.
The tradition that all professional soldiers are comrades-in-
arms has, in tattered form, persisted to this day.
" For me, World War II was far too personal a thing to
174
ROMMEL
entertain such feelings. Daily as it progressed there grew
within me the conviction that, as never before in a war be-
tween many nations, the forces that stood for human good
and men's rights were this time confronted by a completely
evil conspiracy with which no compromise could be
tolerated. Because only by the utter destruction of the Axis
was a decent world possible, the war became for me a
crusade. . . .
" In this specific instance, I told my Intelligence Officer to
get any information he possibly could out of the captured
generals but that, so far as I was concerned, I was interested
only in those who were not yet captured. None would be
allowed to call on me. I pursued the same practice to the
end of the war. Not until Field-Marshal Jodl signed the
surrender terms at Rheims in 1945 did I ever speak to a
German general, and even then my only words were that he
would be held personally and completely responsible for
the carrying out of the surrender terms."
General Eisenhower is a wise and generous man, with
whom no one would willingly disagree. Nevertheless, there
are some who feel that even tattered traditions may be worth
preserving if, when wars are over, we still have to live
together in the same world.
Chapter Nine
THE END IN AFRICA
We left Rommel, at the end of June, knocking, not very
peremptorily, at the gates of Alexandria. He was now up
against something hitherto unknown in the desert, a position
that could not be turned. The British right flank rested on
the sea, its left, forty miles south, on the " impassable 99
quicksands of the Qattara Depression. (Randall Plunkett of
the Guides Cavalry found himself unpopular with the plan-
ning staff in Cairo when he succeeded in bringing his
armoured cars across them from Siwa during the retreat.)
Moreover, the position had been more thoroughly prepared
for defence than the Germans imagined.
The Eighth Army was, however, very far from being en-
tirely on the defensive. The general impression in England,
even to-day, seems to be that, having fallen back completely
routed from the frontier, it remained cowed and cowering
at El Alamein while a panic-stricken staff in Cairo burnt
mountains of paper and made ready for a retreat into Pales-
tine or East Africa. Then, so runs the popular legend,
General Montgomery arrived out of the skies and, having
re-created or, indeed, created it, at once turned defeat into
victory. The legend is unfair to the Eighth Army : it is also
contrary to the facts. At the beginning of July there was
certainly " a bit of a flap." On what was locally known as
Ash Wednesday, papers were indeed burnt. Some civilians
and women were evacuated. The fleet left Alexandria,
where it would have been too much exposed to bombing.
In common prudence, preparations were made for the de-
fence of the Delta, in case the Germans should succeed in
175
176
ROMMEL
breaking through the Alamein defences. There were even
plans for a fighting retreat into Palestine and, if necessary,
Iraq, should the Delta go too. Plans against any eventuality
are always prepared by planning staffs. That is what they
are there for. There were doubtless plans for the con-
tinuance of the war from Canada, had it been necessary
for the British Government to leave England.
General AuchinJeck, however, had no more intention of
abandoning El Alamein than had Mr. Churchill of leaving
London. On the contrary, throughout July the Eighth Army
continually attacked the enemy in an endeavour to recover
the initiative from him and, if possible, to destroy him where
he stood. The first attack was made on July 2nd, after Rom-
mel had unsuccessfully attacked El Alamein itself on July
1st. Close fighting continued for several days and it was
only lack of reserves which brought the advance of 13th
Corps to a standstill. On July 10th, 9th Australian Division
captured the important position of Tel-el-Eisa, west of
Alamein, and held it against heavy and repeated counter-
attacks. On July 14th, the New Zealand Division and 5th
Indian Infantry Brigade put in a night attack and gained
ground on the vital Ruweisat Ridge. On the night of July
16th, the Australians captured the El-Makh-Ahad ridge to
the south. Rommel reacted strongly, for we had created a
salient in his position. His attacks on the Ruweisat Ridge
on July 18th and 19th were, however, repulsed.
On July 21st, while the Australians attacked in the north,
the New Zealand Division, supported by armour, was
launched in the centre in an attempt to cut the enemy posi-
tion in half. Our armour was defeated and the attempt
failed, though valuable ground was gained. On July 26th
another major attack was staged to the north from the Tel-
el-Eisa salient. This again failed, in the face of heavy Ger-
man counter-attacks, partly because the infantry failed to
clear gaps through the enemy minefields so that the tanks
could get forward, but mainly because there was a lack of
THE EL A LAME IN POSITION
178
ROMMEL
enough fresh, well-trained troops to maintain the impetus of
the assault.
On July 30th, General Auchinlcck reluctantly concluded
that, with the troops he had, no further offensive operations
were feasible at the moment. He expected to be able to
return to the attack about the middle of September. By
then he would have at his disposal 44th Division, just
arrived from England and now being trained in desert war-
fare, 8th Armoured Division, also newly arrived and being
rearmed with American medium tanks, and 10th Armoured
Division, retraining and re-equipping. In the event, in spite
of strong pressure from the Cabinet, General Alexander, in
consultation with General Montgomery, put back the date
more than a month.* By that time General Montgomery
had two extra British divisions and a mass of new tanks and
guns such as the Eighth Army had never seen before. Since
he made a complete job of it when he started, there is no
doubt that the postponement was justified by the result.
Nor is there any doubt that his supreme self-confidence and
his gift of " the common touch " had an electric effect upon
the troops. With the advantage of being a new broom, he
inspired first curiosity, then interest, then admiration. The
admiration was well-deserved. There is, however, no cause
to magnify either his great victory or his great personal
qualities by suggesting that the Eighth Army had ceased
to exist as a fighting force when he took it over. It had, in
fact, captured more than 7000 prisoners during July. It had
stopped Rommel's advance to the Delta. It had paved the
way for a major offensive which it was then too weak to
undertake.
There is a rather tragically ironical footnote to all this
from the German side. " We were very much impressed and
very much disturbed by the way you attacked us all through
July," said General Bayerlein. " You very nearly succeeded
in breaking through our position several times between the
•Generals Alexander and Montgomery took over command on August 15th, 1942.
THE END IN AFRICA 179
■
10th and the 26th. If you could have continued to attack
for only a couple of days more you would have done. July
26th was the decisive day. We then had no ammunition at
all for our heavy artillery and Rommel had determined to
withdraw to the frontier if the attack was resumed."
Personal reputations apart, it was a very good thing for
us and a very bad thing for Rommel that it was not resumed.
Once back on the escarpment, with his communications
shortened and in a naturally strong defensive position, he
would have needed a great deal of " winkling out.'* In all
probability he would have escaped the overwhelming defeat
which overtook him, since there would have been no politi-
cal or psychological objection to withdrawing farther from
the frontier, as there was to any withdrawal at all from El
Alamcin. In any case his fate must have been postponed,
for our build-up, nearly three hundred miles to the west-
ward, would have taken much longer to prepare. Indeed,
it could hardly have been completed before the British and
American landings in North Africa on November 8th. In
that case Rommel must have seen the red light and retired
to Tunisia in his own time.
Why did he not withdraw as soon as he realised that he
could not break straight through to Cairo? The answer
given by various critics both on the German and on our
aide is that he was ignorant of logistics. " His obvious weak-
nesses in the administrative field should deprive him of any
lasting recognition as a great general," asserts Milton Shul-
man in Defeat in the West. Liddeil Hart remarks, more
mildly, that " a definite defect was his tendency to disregard
the administrative side of strategy." These criticisms seem
to stem directly from Rommel's reply to Haider's question
regarding supplies: "That's your problem," rather than
from any positive evidence of his failure to appreciate the
importance of logistics. The supply problem was, in fact,
the problem of the German and, primarily, of the Italian
High Command. Isolated in his desert headquarters, Rom-
180
ROMMEL
niel could do no more than say what he needed and try to
insist that he be given it. He could not fly over and earmark
the shipping. He could not compel the Italians to surrender
the petrol which was said to be lying about in profusion in
Southern Italy but which in fact they could not spare even
for their own fleet. He could not order away German divi-
sions from France, though they were serving no useful pur-
pose there, since it was obvious that an invasion could not
be attempted in 1942. He could only argue, demand and
protest. That he did unceasingly, to the annoyance of the
Italians and of his own Army Command. He was not in the
happy position of General "Eisenhower when he wished to
concentrate a corps east of Tebessa during the operations in
North Africa the next year. "Logistics staffs opposed my
purpose. . . . They wailed that our miserable communica-
tions could not maintain more than an armoured division
and one additional regiment. ... I nevertheless ordered the
concentration of the corps of four divisions to begin and
told the logistics people they would have to find a way to
supply it." That was their problem and no one has argued
that General Eisenhower was ignorant of logistics.
There is another passage from Crusade in Europe which
is worth quoting in this context because it shows what can
be done when there are quick brains and willing hands at
the shore end :
" As a result of splendid action in Washington an extra
shipment of 5400 trucks has been brought into the theatre.
The shipment immeasurably improved our transport and
supply position and had a profound effect in all later
operations. It was accomplished under circumstances that
should give pause to those people who picture the War
and Navy Departments as a mass of entangling red tape.
The shipment demanded a special convoy at a time when
both merchant shipping and escort vessels were at a pre-
THE END IN AFRICA
181
i mum. General Somervell happened to be visiting my
headquarters and I explained to him our urgent need for
this shipment. He said that he could be loading it out of
American ports within three days, provided the Navy
Department could furnish the escorts. I sent a query to
Admiral King, then in Casablanca, and within a matter
of hours had from him a simple 1 Yes/ The trucks began
arriving in Africa three weeks after I made my initial
request."
At his home base, until September 1942, Rommel had
General Haider "unable to restrain a slightly impolite
smile " when he was asked for help.
Had Rommel's request been entirely unreasonable or had
he been told that, reasonable or not, they could not be com-
plied with because of other commitments, there would have
been no excuse for his persistence. In fact, he could easily
have been given, early in 1942, the little extra he needed to
take Cairo. All the troops and supplies w*uld, at that time,
have reached him in safety. In the late summer of 1942,
when the British had recovered control of the Central Medi-
terranean and convoys could not pass Malta with impunity,
he was still fobbed off by Kesselring and Cavallero with
promises that his forces would be made up and his supply
problems solved. On August 27th, just before the. Alam-el-
Halfa battle, there was a meeting at which they both
guaranteed Rommel 6000 tons of petrol, 1000 tons of which
were to be air-lifted. " That is my condition : the whole
battle depends on it," said Rommel. " You can go on with
the battle," replied Cavallero, "it is on its way." Such
assurances should not have been given, least of all by
Kesselring. Better than any one else, he knew the effect of
the arrival of Spitfires in Malta.
Rommel -s own staff suspected Kesselring of "double-
crossing " him, of continually reporting against him and the
182
ROMMEL
Afrika Korps to Goering, while assuring the Army Com-
mand that all was going well in North Africa. I have been
told that this is unfair to Kesselring, who could act only
through the Italians. Nevertheless, Ciano, on September
9th, 1942, speaks of Kesselring " running to Berlin to com-
plain of Rommel." Only a week earlier Cavallero was
" repeating his optimistic declarations and saying that
within a week the march (to the Delta) will be resumed."
Probably Ciano's own shrewd comment sums it up best :
" Victory always finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an
orphan." The fact remains that Kesselring, as Commander-
in-Chief South from April, 1 942, was Rommel's immediate
superior and could have ordered him not to advance to El
Alamein, not to attack, or to withdraw.
At the end of July, General Auchinleck had correctly
judged that Rommel must attack before the end of August.
He added, in his appreciation, that he would " hardly be
strong enough to attempt the conquest of the Delta except
as a gamble and under very strong air cover," since only in
armour was he likelv to have any superiority. In fact Rom-
mel fought the battle of Alam-el-Halfa, which began on
August 31st, under many disadvantages, besides that of
having to attack an enemy in prepared defensive positions.
Though he was slightlv superior in numbers, six of his divi-
sions were Italian. These had to be stiffened with his only
German reinforcements, 164th Infantry Division and the
Ramcke Parachute Brierade of four battalions. In guns and
armour he had no superiority at all. The R.A.F. held com-
plete command of the air. The nature of the Alamein posi-
tion was such that it was almost impossible to achieve sur-
prise or to profit bv skill in manoeuvre. Lastly, he was him-
self so ill with an infection of the no«e and a swollen liver,
probably the result of neglected jaundice, that he could not
get out of his truck. For one who relied much more on his
personal observation and judgment during the progress of
THE END IN AFRICA
183
a battle than on a preconceived plan, this was perhaps the
greatest handicap of all.
Rommel attempted to achieve a decision in the only way
in which it could have been achieved, by feinting in the
north, making a holding attack in the centre and staging
his main effort in the south. His intention was to penetrate
above the Qattara Depression and then strike north to the
sea. By this means he hoped to turn die whole position,
just as he had turned the Gazala Line three months before.
Had he succeeded the Eighth Army would have been
trapped and its communications cut.
Unfortunately for Rommel, this was precisely what
General Alexander and General Montgomery had deduced
that he would do. General Montgomery had also seen, im-
mediately on his arrival in the desert, that the answer was
to refuse his left flank, fortify the Alam-el-Halfa Ridge,
which Rommel dare not by-pass, and lead his armour on to
its defences. He had, therefore, called up the whole of 44th
Division, entrenched it on the ridge and dug in artillery and
tanks to support it. He had also cunningly allowed a
"going" map to be captured which showed good going
south of Alam-el-Halfa where in fact there was very soft
sand.
To do Rommel justice, his Fingers pitzengefiihl came into
play at once, even when he was lying helpless in his truck.
" He wanted to break off the battle the first morning," said
Bayerlein, " as soon as it was obvious that we had not
achieved a surprise. It was I who persuaded him to let me
continue." (Bayerlein was then temporarily commanding
the Afrika Korps, General Nehring having been wounded
on the night of August 31st in an air attack.) " The strength
of the defences of the Alam-el-Halfa Ridge came as a com-
plete surprise to me," added General Bayerlein. " I made
sure I could take it and went on attacking it much too
long."
184
ROMMEL
When I showed him the passage in Alan Moorehead's
biography in which he describes how General Montgomery
pui his finger on Alam-el-Halfa almost as soon as he looked
at the map, Bayerlein shook his head ruefully. " Excellent,
excellent," he murmured, with the respect of one profes-
sional for another. "That was very good generalship
indeed."*
Bayerlein gave the rest of the credit to the R.A.F. " We
were very heavily attacked every hour of the day and night,"
he said, ** and had very heavy losses, more than from any
other cause. Your air superiority was most important, per-
haps decisive." He added a rude remark or two about
Kesselring, whose promises had apparently included com-
mand of the air by the Luftwaffe.
His gamble having failed, on September 3rd Rommel
began to withdraw. Wisely, General Montgomery did not
attempt to follow him up. He could afford to wait.
Three weeks later, for the first time in his life except when
he was wounded, Rommel was compelled to report sick and
fly to Germany for treatment. Before going into hospital at
Zemmering, he had an interview with Hitler at his head-
quarters. He told the Fuhrer that Panzer Group Afrika was
standing in front of the door of Alexandria but that it was
impossible to push it open unless they were reinforced and
the supply position improved. Above all, they could do
nothing without petrol. (Giano notes in his diary on Sep-
tember 2nd that " three of our oil-tankers have been sunk
in two days," on September 3rd that " the sinkings of our
ships continues; to-night there have been two," and on
September 4th that " two more ships have been sunk
to-night.")
Rommel received another assurance, this time from the
m
highest authority. " Don't worry," said Hitler, " I mean to
give Africa all the support needed. Never fear, we are going
*Thr <torv terms to have been «omewhai over-dramntised. The Alam-el-Halfa
position had already been mined ami prepared, to some extent* for defence before
General Montgomery arrived. lie developed an existing plan.
THE END IN AFRICA
to get Alexandria all right." He then volunteered a story
that very small shallow-draught vessels, like landing-craft,
were already in mass production, especially for Africa, and
that some two hundred of them would be available almost
immediately. They were to be armed with two 88 mm. guns
each and would be much more difficult targets than tankers.
They would be able to slip over at night and by means of
them the petrol problem would be solved. No reference to
these craft is to be found in the minutes of the Fuhrer Con-
ferences on Naval Affairs for 1942, but Hitler may have
referred to light craft called, after their inventor, Siebel-
fachren. These were quite unsuited for work in a seaway,
such of them as existed were mostly in dock for repairs and
there was no question of their being in mass production.
Hitler, as usual, was letting his imagination run away with
him.
This was not all. After the interview, he took Rommel out
and showed him the prototype of the Tiger tank and of the
Nebelwerfer, the formidable multiple mortar which we en-
countered later in Italy. These were afco in mass production
and Africa was first priority for deliveries. In fact, said
Hitler, quantities of Nebelwerfer would be sent over at once
by air, all available air-transport being used for the purpose.
Incidentally, there was a new secret weapon of such appall-
ing power that the blast ** would throw a man off his horse
at a distance of over two miles."
Rommel laughed about this last embellishment. Yet Hitler
may not have been talking so wildly. Tn the first atomic
bomb test in New Mexico, a building four miles from the
blast centre was moved two feet off its concrete foundation.
For the rest, Rommel, having seen the Tiger tank and the
Nebelwerfer took his Fiihrer's promises seriously. The fact
that he did so no doubt explains an optimistic speech which
he made to foreign journalists in Berlin on October 3rd.
In if he predicted that the Germans would soon be in Alex-
andria. (General von Thoma, who saw him for a few days
186
ROMMEL
before he left North Africa, formed the impression that he
was not really confident but spoke with confidence to im-
press the troops, particularly the Italians. That was, how-
ever, before his interview with Hitler.) It was not until about
a fortnight later that Rommel began to have doubts. He
confided them to his wife. " I wonder if he told mc all that
to keep me quiet," he said reflectively. For the first time
he was vaguely suspicious of the Fuhrer.
Meanwhile it had been decided at the same interview
that Rommel should not go back to North Africa. When he
came out of hospital, he was to be given an Army Group in
the southern Ukraine. General Stumme would replace him
in command of Panzer Group Afrika. Hitler was solicitous
about his health; a change of climate would do him good,
he said. It may well be that he did not want his own decep-
tions to be discovered.
Then, when Rommel was still in hospital at Zeinmering,
Hitler telephoned to him personally at noon on October
24th. " Rommel, there is bad news from Africa," he said.
**The situation looks very black. No one seems to know
what has happened to Stumme. Do you feel well enough
to. go back and would you be willing to go?" Rommel had
had only three weeks' treatment. He was still a very sick
man and in no condition to return to the desert and fight a
desperate battle. It never occurred to him to refuse : his
heart was with the Afrika Korps. He left next morning at
seven by air, stopped in Italy for a conference with Rintelen
about petrol supplies, landed in Crete and was in head-
quarters in North Africa by 8 p.m.
When he arrived the battle was already lost. " Alamein
was lost before it was fought," said General Cramer. " We
had not the petrol." "Rommel could do nothing," said
General Bayerlein, who had been on leave and followed two
days afterwards. " He took over a battle in which all his
reserves were already committed. No major decisions which
could alter the course of events were possible."
THE END IN AFRICA
187
Incredible though it seems, the German Intelligence Ser-
vice was firmly of the belief that the British could not
possibly attack during October. An officer from Army Com-
mand headquarters was specially sent over at the beginning
of the month to say so. No wonder the unfortunate General
Stumme died of heart failure twenty-four hours after
General Montgomery's bombardment opened. (It appears
that he fell or jumped out of his car during a British air
attack without the driver noticing. The car returned with-
out him and he was later found dead.)
In justice to Stumme it should be said that he had in-
herited the defence scheme from Rommel. Bayerlein assures
me that the latter had arranged every detail of the disposi-
tions before leaving Africa. That he took the very unusual
course, for him, of splitting his armour with 15th Panzer
Division in the extreme north and 21st Panzer Division in
the south, both too close behind the line and both sub-
divided into battle groups, can only have been due to his
distrust of the Italian divisions, who held the greater part
of it.
His distrust was justified. Cowed by the fire of more than
a thousand guns, attacked incessantly from the air, the
Italians had little fight left in them when the attack was
launched. But for the German infantry and paratroops in-
terspersed amongst them, they would have broken more
quickly than they did.
This time General Montgomery was greatly superior in
numbers and immensely so in tanks, guns and ammunition.
El Alamein was an old-fashioned battle of material. Yet it
was far from mere " ironmonger ing." It was preceded by a*
most elaborate cover plan. To suggest an attack in the
south, while concealing the preparations for the real attack
in the north, and at the same time to make it appear that
arrangements in the south were still incomplete, the most
elaborate and ingenious measures were taken. Hundreds of
dummy vehicles were placed over tanks in the assembly
138
ROMMEL
areas; dummy lorries were parked in gun-positions so that
the guns could be moved in at night and hidden under
them; dummy tanks and dummy guns replaced the real
articles in the staging areas as they went forward; mock
dumps were started in the southern area and built up so
slowly that they could not be ready until November; a fake
wireless network was operated there with fake messages; a
dummy pipeline, with dummy petrol stations and reservoirs,
was built in the wrong direction and deliberately not com-
pleted; the movement of every vehicle was controlled to
guard against tell-tale tracks in the sand. Aided by the fact
that the R.A.F. allowed the Luftwaffe little chance of air
reconnaissance and by the entirely wrong information sup-
plied by the German Intelligence, the deception was so
successful that the date of the attack, the direction of the
main thrust and the location of the armour were completely
hidden from the Germans. This involved the physical con-
cealment in 13th Corps area to the north of two extra divi-
sions, 240 guns, 150 extra tanks, to say nothing of such items
as 7500 tons of petrol.
" It was not until D plus 3 that the enemy finally con-
centrated all his resources against our real attack," writes
Field-Marshal Alexander. D plus 3 (October 26th) was the
day that Rommel took over and it is interesting to speculate
whether he would have been so thoroughly deceived had he
been in North Africa all through October. That he would
have placed any reliance on German Intelligence reports is
unlikely, for he had the lowest opinion of them.
h . . To Bayerlein alone he admitted that the battle was lost.
The admission did not deter him from making a desperate
attempt to restore it. In the north, 15th Panzer Division
had already been badly mauled by being thrown in piece-
meal against the strong concentrations of 10th Armoured
Corps. Gathering up the survivors, bringing up 21st Panzer
Division by a forced march from the south, ordering forward
THE END IN AFRICA
189
90th Light, Rommel was planning a counter-offensive
within a few hours of his arrival — and against the right spot,
the British salient in the north. Two days previously he had
been in a hospital bed in Zemmering : that afternoon, with
the sun behind him, he was leading a mass tank attack of
the two staunch divisions which had so often followed him.
He knew the ground. He had had time for reflection in the
aircraft flying south. Nevertheless it was a quick apprecia-
tion and a gallant effort.
The attack was broken up by artillery fire and air bom-
bardment before it could get to grips. It was renewed the
next day and beaten off by the 2nd Rifle Brigade and the
Australians. Rommel had suffered losses in tanks which he
had no hope of replacing. Determined and savage fighting
followed when the 9th Australian Division thrust north-
wards again and took on successfully the pick of the German
troops.
Then General Montgomery switched the direction of his
attack. In the early hours of November 2nd he struck far-
ther south, at the junction between the Germans and the
Italians. The infantry broke through on a 4000-yard front
and opened the road for the armour. It was no easy passage.
9th Armoured Brigade lost 87 tanks to Rommel's usual
screen of anti-tank guns. 1st Armoured Division, coming
through the gap, were set upon by 21st Panzer Division.
" The enemy fought with the certain knowledge that all was
at stake and with all the skill of his long experience in
armoured fighting." At one moment he almost broke
through our salient. " Operation Supercharge " was, how-
ever,, the beginning of the end. That night Rommel decided
1q withdraw. He might still have got out most of the Ger-
mans with the transport he had. The Italians would have
fiad tp walk, but most of them would have preferred to sur-
render rather than suffer the attentions of the R.A.F. on
the long road home. On November 3rd, when the with-
190
ROMMEL
drawal had already started, came an order from O.K.H., the
German Army Command. " The position requires," it read,
" that the El Alamcin position be held to the last man. There
is to be no retreat, not so much as one millimetre ! Victory
or death !" It was signed " Adolf Hitler."
For once Rommel was caught in two minds. 11c knew
that the order was ridiculous and that to obey it must make
greater disaster certain. Yet it was so explicit that he felt
that it could not be disregarded. Against Bayerlein's advice
he caused it to be circulated to the troops. General von
Thoma, commanding the Afrika Korps, asked to be allowed
to retire to Fuka and Daba. Rommel would not give him
permission. Von Thoma nevertheless withdrew his troops
during the night. " I cannot tolerate this order of Hitler,"
he said. Rommel turned a blind eye.
Next morning von Thoma went out to confirm a report,
which Rommel refused to believe, that British columns had
broken through in the south and were already west of the
Germans. At noon, General Bayerlein, having had no word
from von Thoma, drove out in his command car to look for
him. As he approached the Tel-el-Mansr position, heavy
fire forced him to leave his car and make for the ridge on
foot. When he was within two hundred yards of it he saw
the general standing beside his burning tank. British tanks
(they were, in fact, the 10th Hussars), ringed him round. All
the German tanks and anti-tank guns on the position had
been destroyed. Bayerlein waited until he saw British
carriers drive up to von Thoma and carry him off. Then he
himself withdrew unobserved. When he arrived back at
headquarters, south of Daba, he and Rommel heard the 10th
Hussar troop leaders talking about having captured a Ger-
man general. That night General von Thoma dined with
General Montgomery in his headquarters mess and invited
the Eighth Army Commander to stay with him in Germany
after the war. These mutual courtesies were criticised in
THE END IN AFRICA 191
England. They were not regarded as out of place in Africa.
Next morning Bayerlein attained his ambition of com-
manding the Afrika Korps, just when it had virtually ceased
to exist. " What can I do in face of this order of Hitler's?"
he asked Rommel. " I cannot authorise you to disobey it,"
said Rommel with unusual diplomacy. But there could be
no more question of obeying it if any one was to be saved.
For the moment, with the shock of defeat coming on top
of his illness, Rommel was a broken man. Nevertheless.,
though his staff found him more than ordinarily difficult to
deal with, he conducted the retreat with great skill. This
time he had no hope of turning on his pursuers. His remain-
ing force amounted to little more than a composite division :
eighty German tanks were left against nearly six hundred
British. He could only save what he might out of the wreck.
He was lucky to save anything at all. Had not heavy rain
come on the night of November 6th, turning the desert into
a morass and preventing the movement of the troops sent
to cut him off, he would have been encircled at Matruh.
Had the R.A.F. had the technique of "ground strafing,"
wfiich it later acquired, he would not have got that far. Had
air transport been developed as General Slim developed it in
the much more difficult conditions of Burma, completely-
equipped forces would have been dropped well behind him
. and supplied by air. General Montgomery has also been
criticised by both sides for being too cautious. " I do not
think General Patton would have let us get away so easily,"
said Bayerlein, who, having fought in France afterwards,
compared Patton with Guderian and Montgomery with von
Rundstedt. He added, however, that " the best thing Rom-
mel ever did in North Africa was this retreat." As the Eighth
Army covered the seven hundred miles from El Alamein to
Benghazi in fifteen days and as this time Rommel was not
allowed to stand at El Agheila, there is, perhaps, not much
room for criticism of either commander.
192
ROMMEL
On November 8th came the Allied landings in North
Africa. Tripoli at once became of minor importance. Rom-
mel received no reinforcements but they were poured into
Tunisia by sea and air. Six months later they were all
prisoners. Of the many bitter pills which Rommel had to
swallow, before the last, one of the bitterest must have been
to see what the German High Command could do in a lost
cause and to compare it with what they had failed to do in
support of a winning one. In November two regiments of
airborne troops and an engineer battalion were flown in.
They were followed by odd infantry units, tanks and
artillery and formed into a scratch division. By the middle,
of December, 10th Panzer Division had arrived. Another
infantry division, 334th, was brought over in the latter half
of the month. A Grenadier regiment came from Crete.
There appeared also a heavy tank battalion, the 501st,
armed with the new Tiger tanks which Rommel had been
promised. The redoubtable Hermann Goering Panzer Divi-
sion was on its way. Other German units, apart from various
Italian formations, were added before the end to swell the
Allied game-bag. What could not Rommel have done with
half of this force five or six months earlier?
There is no profit in following Rommel's retreat or the
advance of the Eighth Army through Tripolitania. With his
25,000 Italians, his 10,000 Germans and his sixty tanks, he
was steadily and relentlessly pushed back. All the way he
made the most skilful use of mines, road demolitions arid
booby-traps to slow up his enemy. Often his German rear-
guards had to fight desperately to extricate themselves, for
this time he sent the Italians on ahead. Temptingly strong
defensive positions had to be abandoned because he had not
the troops to hold them. 90th Light Division made a stand
outside Tripoli itself, but Rommel's old victims at St.
Valery, 51st Highland Division, riding in on the back of
tanks, turned them out in a moonlight attack. Tripoli, was
occupied without any further resistance. On January 23rd,
THE END IN AFRICA
193
the 11th Hussars, who had struck the first blow across the
frontier wire when Italy came into the war, drove into the
city at dawn.
There is no greater test of troops or a commander than a
long retreat, nothing which so quickly breaks the spirit as
the knowledge that one must fight only to be able to with-
draw. Rommel was sick at heart as well as in body. It was
during the retreat that he learnt how loyalty to his Fuhrer
was rewarded. At the end of November he was summoned
home for an interview. Hitler treated him, for the first time,
to one of his famous scenes. Rommel had told him that the
position in North Africa was hopeless and that it would be
better to sacrifice what was left of the material and get the
Afrika Korps out to fight again in Italy. Hitler said that he
was a defeatist and that he and his troops were cowards.
Generals who had made t\\e same sort of suggestion in
Russia had been put up against the wall and shot. He would
not yet do that to Rommel but Rommel had better be care-
ful. As for Tripoli, it was to be held at all costs for other-
wise the Italians would make a separate peace. Rommel
asked him whether it was better to lose Tripoli or the Afrika
Korps. Hitler shouted that the Afrika Korps did not matter.
For the first time, Rommel told his family, he realised
Hitler's contempt for the whole German people and the fact
that he cared nothing for the men who fought for him.
Nevertheless he answered back. Let Hitler come out to
Africa and see for himself or let him send some of his en-
tourage to show them how to do it. " Go !" screamed Hitler,
" 1 have other things to do than talk to you." Rommel
saluted and turned on his heel. After he had shut the door,
Hitler came running after him and put his arm on his shoul-
der. " You must excuse me," he said, " I'm in a very ner-
vous state. But everything is going to be all right. Gome
and see me to-morrow and we will talk about it calmly. It
is impossible to think of the Afrika Korps being destroyed."
Rommel saw him next day, with Goering. " Do anything
R. O
194
ROMMEL
you like," said Hitler to Goering, " but see that the Afrika
Korps is supplied with all that Rommel needs.*' " You can
build houses on mc" said Goering in the German phrase,
" I am going to attend to it myself."
The Reichmarshal took Rommel with him in his special
train to Rome and invited Frau Rommel to go with them.
When they met at Munich station Goering was wearing a
grey semi-civilian suit with grey silk lapels. His tie was
secured by a large emerald clip. The case of his watch was
studded with emeralds. On one of his fingers, to Rommel's
horror, was a ring with an enormous diamond. More horri-
fying still, his nails were varnished. Goering displayed the
ring to Frau Rommel at the first opportunity. "You will
be interested in this," he said, " it is one of the most valuable
stones in the world." This was the first time Frau Rommel
had met the Reichmarshal. She, too, was startled. In the
train he spoke only of pictures. " They call me the Maecenas
of the Third Reich," he said, and described how Balbo had
sent him a statue of Aphrodite from Cyrene. North Africa
was not otherwise mentioned during the journey, and
Goering resisted all Rommel's attempts to turn the conver-
sation from statues to supplies. However, he gave Rommel
the Fluggevfuhrerabzeichen, the Air Force pilot's cross, in
diamonds, and seemed to think that that should satisfy him.
In Rome, where they stopped at the Excelsior, it was the
same story. " Goering did nothing but look for pictures and
sculpture," said Rommel with profound contempt. " He
was planning how to fill his train with them. He never tried
to see any one on business or to do anything for me." To
Frau Rommel, Goering remarked that her husband seemed
very depressed. " He is not normally so," she replied. " As
a rule he is very optimistic. But he takes a very realistic
view." " Ah !" said Goering, 11 he does not comprehend the
whole situation as I do. We are going to look after him, we
are going to do everything for him." He then went off into
a long and boastful monologue about his own achievements,
THE END IN AFRICA
195
past, present and future. He appeared to Frau Rommel to
be on the verge of megalomania. Contrasting this extra-
ordinary figure with the shrewd and capable Gocring who
appeared before the judges at Nuremberg, one wonders
whether, at this period, he had not gone back to morphia.
Apart from art, his only interest seemed to be his model rail-
way. He was photographed in a guard's uniform with a
green flag. The story was all over Rome that he had gone
to a party dressed in a toga. Rommel put up with it for
three days. Then he said : *' I'm doing no good over here —
only losing my temper : I'd better get back to the Afrika
Korps."
He flew off next day, convinced that Goering was mad
and Hitler not much better. It was the second stage of his
disillusionment.
Though Tripoli fell in defiance of the Fiihrer's wishes, this
was not the end of Rommel in North Africa. His title had
changed three times during 1942. Up to January 21st he
was still commander of the Panzer Croup Africa. Then he
became supreme commander of the Panzer army in Africa
and held this appointment until October 24th. On his
return to El Alamein on Stummc's death he arrived with the
title of supreme commander of the German-Italian Panzer
§
Army. On February 22nd the Army Group Africa was
formed and he was given command of it. It consisted of
5th Panzer Army, under General von Arnim, composed of
the new forces which had been rushed to Tunisia, and of 1st
^Italian) Army under General Messe, comprising the two
Italian Corps, 20th and 21st, and the Afrika Korps, which
had been driven out of Libya. The 1 st Italian Army was, in
fact, the German-Italian Panzer Army under a new name.
Thus, instead of being " put up against a wall and shot," he
was promoted to command all the Axis forces in Tunisia.
The German High Command still believed that it would be
possible to retain a bridgehead around Tunis and Bizerta
and keep a large Allied army immobilised, as at Salonica in
196
RO M MEL
the first war. It is surprising that the command should have
been given to Rommel, who believed nothing of the sort
Nevertheless, even before being gazetted to his new
appointment, he showed a real flash of his old form. From
Tripoli he had retired to the Mareth Line. This was an
immensely strong position, another but more elaborately
prepared El Alamein. The French, who had fortified it as
an African Maginot Line against any Italian advance from
Libya, considered it impregnable by frontal attack. It could
not be turned, they said, because the going to the west was
fC incroyabte." In any case, to outflank it meant a turning
movement of 150 miles. Rommel rightly judged that
General Montgomery would need time to think this over.
Since he never lost the offensive spirit for long and did not
propose to sit down and wait to be attacked, he looked
round for something to undertake meanwhile. It need not
necessarily be against the Eighth Army : there was also the
Allied First Army, which would doubtless come in on his
rear as soon as he was again at grips with General Mont-
gomery.
He chose precisely the most vulnerable spot. In the
southern sector of the First Army front, across the Faid
plain between Gafsa and Fondouk, lay the American 2nd
Corps. Behind it was the Kasserine Pass. Defensive positions
had been only sketchily prepared. The U.S. 1st Armoured
Division was dispersed behind the front, half of it north
towards Fondouk, where Intelligence was' convinced that
any attack must fall. The troops were green and untried,
under commanders who had as yet had no experience of
modern war.
This was Rommel's meat. He had already pulled out his
faithful 21st Panzer Division and rearmed it with the tanks
of an independent tank battalion sent to reinforce Tunisia.
With about a hundred tanks, supported by Stukas, he fell
upon the American Armoured Division on February 14th.
THE END IN AFRICA
197
The forward positions were quickly overrun and Rommel
pushed on with his armour through the hastily-constructed
defences of the Kasserine Pass. The mixture of American,
British and French troops added to the confusion. There
was " no co-ordinated plan of defence and definite uncer-
tainty as to command." A big salient had been driven into
the Allied lines. With his forces almost intact, Rommel had
open country in front of him and few natural obstacles to
an advance northwards. He might very well turn the whole
front in Tunisia and bring on a general withdrawal, if not a
disaster. It was the Gazala Line over again.
Such was the situation when General Alexander came up
to command. "It was clear to me," he writes, " that .
although Rommel's original intention had been merely to
give such a blow to 2nd Corps as would leave his right rear
secure while he prepared to meet Eighth Army, he now had
much bigger ideas. From previous experience I knew him to
be a man who would always exploit success by every possible
means, to the limit of rashness, and there now glittered be-
fore him the prospect of a tactical victory."
On February 20th things looked so black that General
Alexander had to wire to General Montgomery to do some-
* thing to make a diversion. The latter at once agreed and
said what he would do. " We will soon have Rommel run-
ning about between us like a wet hen," he added. Thanks
largely to good generalship by General Alexander, who
rightly predicted that Rommel would turn north, where the
glittering prize lay, the German thrust was stopped two days
later; Rommel withdrew in good order, leaving behind him
only nine tanks, plenty of mines to discourage pursuit and
some very shaken initiates to war in North Africa.
"The Battle of Kasserine had given me many anxious
moments," says Field-Marshal Alexander in his dispatch.
"As in his advance to £1 Alamein, Rommel had over-
exploited a considerable initial success to leave himself in a
198
ROMMEL
worse position than before ; he can hardly be blamed for his
attempt to snatch a great victory, for on both occasions he
came very near it, but the result was equally disastrous to
him."
That the retreat had not broken Rommel's nerve nor
changed his habits in battle is shown by an incident which
occurred about this time. The authority for it is Dr.
Loeffler, one of the German counsel at the Nuremberg
Trials, who was serving in tanks in Tunisia and was an eye-
witness. Under heavy fire, Rommel drove up in his staff
car to the commander of a tank battalion who was sitting
inside his tank with the lid closed, at the entrance to a
village. Rommel rapped on it. " What are you doing?"
he asked the battalion commander when he opened up. " It
is impossible to get on," replied that officer. At the same
moment a salvo from a British battery burst all round the
tank. The lid was hastily closed and the battalion com-
mander imagined that Rommel must be dead. Ten minutes
later there was another rap on the lid. It was Rommel, who
had driven forward into the village and now returned. " You
are quite right," he said, " there are four anti-tank guns at
the other end of the street. Another time you might go and
get that sort of information for yourself."
This was Rommel's last battle but one in Africa. The last
was Mcdenine, on March 5th. Rommel was too late by a
few days to catch Montgomery off balance. When 1 5th and
21st Panzer Divisions went in to the attack, a strong force
was waiting for them. The battle of Alam-el-Halfa was
repeated. " The infantry held their positions against strong
infantry and tank attacks with no wire and few mines to
protect them," says Major-General de Guingand, Chief of
Staff of the Eighth Army. " The anti-tank guns were sited
to kill tanks and not to protect the infantry. The effect of
the concentrated use of our artillery was devastating It
was the perfectly fought defensive battle. . . . Rommel com-
pletely failed even to penetrate our positions." He left 52
f HE END IN AFRICA
199
of the 140 tanks with which he started on the battlefield.
The British casualties were 130 all ranks killed and
wounded. No tanks were lost. General de Guingand says
that prisoners reported that Rommel had gone round trying
to whip up enthusiasm and to impress upon the troops the
importance of the battle but was obviously a very sick man,
with his throat bandaged and his face covered with desert
sores. An eye-witness quoted by General Alexander relates
that he told a party which stopped near him that unless they
won this battle the last hope in Africa was gone.
A week later he left for Germany. Various explanations
have been given for his abrupt departure before the battle of
the Mareth Line. The most implausible is that of General
Eisenhower. " Rommel himself escaped before the final
debacle/' he writes, " apparently foreseeing the inevitable
and earnestly desiring to save his own skin." He did, in-
deed, foresee the inevitable. But no one who has followed
his career up to this point will believe that consideration for
his own skin ever influenced any action of Rommel's from
the day that he became a soldier. It has been said that the
Italians demanded his withdrawal, but I can find no evi-
dence of this. More plausibly, ill-health and the need for
further treatment have been given as the reasons for his
return. It has been said that Hitler ordered him out because
of the effect upon German morale if he were captured. Since
Hitler had not yet begun to realise that all was lost in
Tunisia, this is improbable. It was not, indeed, until May
8th that the High Command issued the order that Africa
would now be abandoned and that the German and Italian
forces would be withdrawn by sea. By that time, like so
many of Hitler's orders, it could no longer be obeyed. The
capitulation followed four days afterwards.
The explanation given by Rommel's family, which came
first-hand from him, is that he flew out on his own initiative
and without orders, to beg Hitler again that he be allowed to
save the German troops at the sacrifice of the material. He
200
ROMMEL
was again refused and again called a defeatist and a coward.
When he then proposed to go hack and see it through with
them, permission was refused. I see no reason to doubt their
story.
The Afrika Korps did not forget him. Until the end his
old divisions fought as stubbornly as under his leadership.
Nor did his memrvy fade at once from the minds of his
opponents. In Operation Victory General de Guingand
mentions that he left Africa before the battle of the Mareth
Line. Nevertheless he continues to refer, perhaps subcon-
sciously, to " Rommel's troops."
After the fall of Tunis, Rommel was summoned to
Wolfsschanze, the " wolf's lair," the code-name for Hitler's
headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia. Hitler
seemed desperate but was in a more reasonable mood. " I
should have listened to you earlier," he said, " Africa is lost
now." Rommel spoke of the general position of the German
forces and suddenly asked the Fiihrer : " Do you really think
we can have the complete victory we aim at?" "No!"
answered Hitler. Rommel pressed him. "Do you realise
the consequences of defeat?" he asked. "Yes," Hitler re-
plied, " I know it is necessary to make peace with one side
or the other, but no one will make peace with me." In
recounting this interview to Frau Rommel and Manfred,
Rommel said that Hitler was a modern Louis XIV and
quite unable to distinguish between his own interests and
those of the German people. It never occurred to him that
he might abdicate if he were the obstacle to peace. Rommel
added that it was only when he was completely depressed
that it was possible to reason with him. As soon as he was
again surrounded by sycophants who assured him that he
was on top of the world, he switched round immediately.
Rommel had also realised, late in the day, that hatred was
the mainspring of Hitler's character. When he hated, his
hatred was passionate. He could not govern or control him-
THE END IN AFRICA 201
self : he wished simply to kill. Manfred remembered this
conversation later, and still remembers it.
On April 6th, at Wadi Akarit, 15th Panzer and 90th
Light Division, " fighting," said General Alexander, " per-
haps the best battle of their distinguished careers," tem-
porarily staved off disaster but could not prevent the
junction of First and Eighth Armies. On April 29th they
and 21st Panzer Division "continued to show an excellent
spirit," in spite of heavy losses. On April 30th, First Army
was to be reinforced by the best formations of Eighth Army.
General Montgomery selected 7th Armoured Division, 4th
Indian Division and 201st Guards Brigade. The two divi-
sions were those which had won the first British victory in
Africa under General Wavell. On Mav 7th the 11th
J
Hussars of 7th Armoured Division, the original and authen-
tic " desert rats," entered Tunis. On May 12th, after a last
battle in the hills above Enfidaville, General Graf von
Sponeck surrendered 90th Light Division to his old enemy,
General Freybcrg and his New Zealandcrs. The last of the
Afrika Korps went into captivity — without its leader. The
desert war was over.
It remained for Field-Marshal Keitel, in a fit of prc-
death-bed repentance, to say the last word about it :
" One of the biggest occasions we passed by was at El
Alamein. I would say that, at that climax of the war, we
were nearer to victory than at any other time before or
after. Very little was needed then to conquer Alexandria
and to push forward to Suez and Palestine. . . ."
General Hairier, however, remains unrepentant. In a
turgid and ill-written book, Hitler als Feldheer, designed to
put all the blame for Germany's defeat on the Fiihrer and
tries to exculpate the General Staff and provide a new ver-
sion of the " stab in the back," he still maintains that " to
beat England decisively in North Africa was impossible."
202
ROMMEL
Control of the supply lines of the Mediterranean could not
be wrested from her. German submarines only arrived with
a loss of fifty per cent. (In fact, two were lost out of sixty.)
England could bring everything she wanted through the
Red Sea. (lie does not mention that it all had to come
round the Cape of Good Hope.) "It was, from the begin-
ning only a question of time. . . Fortunately for the
British, the German General Staff has always produced its
Haiders.
i
Chapter Ten
THE ATLANTIC WALL
In the late summer of 1943 Rommel was where many
German generals on the Russian front would have been glad
to change places with him — commanding Army Group B
in Northern Italy, with headquarters near Lake Garda. On
his return from North Africa he had first gone into hospital
at Zemmering for six or seven weeks and was then posted as
a "military adviser" to Hitler's headquarters. His advice
was not asked for and he felt that he was wasting his time.
A rumour that Mr. Churchill was about to stage an invasion
of Europe through the Balkans caused Hitler to send him
to Greece, but he was in Athens only twenty-four hours
when, on the news of the fall of Mussolini on July 25th, the
Fiihrer hurriedly recalled him by telephone. Army Group
B was then being formed around Munich, for Hitler already
suspected that the Italians were about to surrender or, pos-
siblv, to change sides.
His suspicions were strengthened when Rommel, with
Field-Marshal Jodl, went to Badoglio's headquarters to dis-
cuss the question of sending more troops to Italy. General
Roatta, Badoglio's Chief of Staff, did everything possible to
prevent the move which would, he said, be most unpopular
with the Italians. He also objected to Jodl's placing an S.S.
guard on his billet. What right had Jodl, he asked, to bring
"political troops" into Italy? What would Jodl have said
if he had given him as a guard a company of Jews? Jodl,
who had heard a report that he and Rommel were to be
poisoned, said nothing but kept his S.S. Rommel decided
that the sooner Army Group B moved into Italy the better*
203
20* ROMMEL
They were his Tiger tanks which I watched, on the morning
of September 9th, as they moved along the Rivergaro road
to occupy Piacenza.
When the armistice was announced in our prison camp
the evening before, I had hastily bought a well-worn alpaca
suit and a large straw hat from the caretaker. Now, out on
a " recce " and looking, as I fondly imagined, every inch an
Italian peasant, I was leaning over a garden wall, enjoying
the sunshine and my first taste of freedom for sixteen
months. The sight of German tanks in that quiet country-
side was unwelcome, as was the appearance of two S.S. men
with tommy-guns in the garden a few minutes later. I had
to slip away hurriedly into the vines and thence across the
fields to the camp to report. I heard afterwards that every-
one who saw me — except, fortunately, the S.S. men — recog-
nised me for what I was and wondered what I was doing in
Alfredo's second-best suit.
Even in a prison-camp we had known, what our Intelli-
gence apparently did not know, that the Germans were
ready to react vigorously to an Italian surrender. One of
our tame guards had reported, at least a fortnight before,
that German divisions were streaming over the Brenner. We
had not expected that the reaction locally would be quite so
quick. Some of us, indeed, hoped to take the train from
Piacenza that afternoon, for Rome and the south. Having
nearly all been captured in North Africa, we would have
been less optimistic had we realised that Rommel was in
command. (It was, we still feel, a strange oversight that
50,000 British prisoners-of-war in Italy received no orders
or information of any kind at the time of the armistice. Hie
result was that most of them, obeying a six-months-old order
to " stay put," were carried off to Germany. Negotiations
with Badoglio went on from the end of July until Septem-
ber : someone might have given us a thought.)
Apart from making occasional sweeps through the hills,
Rommel's troops did not hunt us about unduly In the
THE ATLANTIC WALL
205
desert his order of priority had been (1) petrol arid oil, (2)
water, (3) food, (4) prisoners. " We can pick them up later,"
he used to say. Apparently he still observed it. Once the
Germans had a tight hold on Northern Italy, they seemed
more interested in looting their former allies of food and
machinery and sending the young men off to German
labour-camps than in rounding up the odd prisoners who
were still at large.
Rommel, characteristically, was bored with his comfort-
able appointment. Possibly he did not like serving again
under Kesselring : certainly he had hoped for another fight-
ing command. Summering in the Italian lakes was not his
idea of war. Moreover, immediately after the armistice, he
began to have trouble with the S.S. and with Sepp Dietrich,
commanding the S.S. Corps. There were reports of wide-
spread looting and of brutal behaviour in Milan and other
northern cities. Rommel was indignant, both because of
these incidents and because he was not allowed to interfere
with the discipline of the S.S. He forwarded a long list of
S.S. officers for punishment and, since he was at least free
to control the location of his troops, ordered the S.S. units
out of Milan. " How are things going now in Milan, Field-
Marshal?" he was asked by Himmler, paying a visit of in-
spection to Italy. "Better, since we moved the S.S. out,"
replied Rommel. The S.S. were not, however, so easily de-
feated. When Rommel complained to an S.S. general about
their looting, the general, knowing that Rommel collected
stamps, sent him a magnificent (looted) collection.
It was thus with relief that, at the beginning of Novem-
ber, Rommel learnt that he had been given a special mission
by the Fiihrer. He was to inspect the coastal defences in the
west, from the Skagerrack to the Spanish frontier, and
report on their readiness to resist invasion. Some expert
advice in the naval side would clearly be needed. Rommel's
Chief of Staff, General Gausi, who had been with him in
North Africa until he was wounded on May 31st, 1942,
206
ROMMEL
knew just the man. This was Vice-Admiral Ruge, then
commanding the German naval forces in Italy and pre-
viously in charge of mine-sweepers. (After the first war, he
was interned for his share in scuttling the German Fleet in
Scapa Flow.) Gausi had met and liked Ruge, and Rommel
applied for him on Gausi's recommendation. There could
have been no better choice. Vice-Admiral Ruge, still living
in Guxhavcn and teaching German to British naval officers,
is the type of officer we like to think peculiar to the British
Navy. In fact, all navies produce it for it is a product of
earlv training, discipline and the sea. Since he was a man of
intelligence, energy and integrity, Rommel took to him at
once and Ruge became his close friend and confidant.
Why was it that Admiral Ruge, for his part, felt himself
at ease with Rommel from their first meeting, even though
the Field-Marshal, returning uncxpectedlv to his headquar-
ters, caught him in an old bridge coat, with a muffler round
his neck? It was his answer to that question which enabled
me to place Rommel and will, perhaps, help to explain him
to many English readers. " He was a type one meets more
often in the Navy than in the other services," said Admiral
Ruge. When, with that in mind, I looked aerain at Rom-
mel's photograph, covering up the cap, and reflected on all
the stories I had heard about him, the odd pieces of his per-
sonality seemed to slip into place. Perhaps because my own
father was a sailor and I spent much of my early life at sea,
I felt that I could now understand this very unusual German
general. He had hardly seen salt water until his last assign-
ment. But think of him in the line of Nelson's captains, an
unromantic Hornblower, and he runs true to type.
The qualities which he showed in the desert and elsewhere
are not peculiar to sailors. Soldiers, too, can be bold and
determined and tireless and grave. They can have good,
orderly minds without much book-learning and with no
interest in the arts. They also can be brusque in manner,
direct of speech, intolerant of inefficiency and anxious to
THE ATLANTIC WALL
207
get on with a job. But when one adds some of Rommel's
other characteristics, his manual dexterity and skill in im-
provising mechanical devices; his extreme simplicity and
contempt of " frills 99 ; a mild streak of concealed and sub-
conscious puritanism, so that no one felt inclined to tell a
dirty story in his presence; above all, his intense devotion to
home and family, then the combination recalls to me my
father and his contemporaries as strongly as do the clear
blue eyes with the network of fine lines round them. Admiral
Sir Walter Cowan, whom he captured in the desert, serving
at seventy-two with an Indian cavalry regiment, and with
whom I was afterwards in a prison-camp, may not appre-
ciate the comparison but I can picture the two of them
barking away at each other, neither prepared to yield an
inch, and yet understanding each other perfectly. They
were, indeed, very much two of a kind and Admiral Ruge
would have made a good, though less prickly, third.
Reporting for duty on November 10th, Ruge was sent to
Berlin to collect all the maps and charts and information he
could find. When he had got the papers together they were
destroyed in an air-raid. It was not until the beginning of
December that he and Rommel were able to start work in
Denmark. The inspection of the Danish coast took ten days.
Then Rommel moved the headquarters of Army Group B
to Fontainebleau and began to study the French coast. (The
German Bight of the North Sea was excluded from his task.)
He had not been in France since 1940 and what he saw, or
failed to see, appalled him. The great "Atlantic Wall,"
with which the German propaganda machine had succeeded
in impressing its own people as well as the Allies, was a fake,
a paper hoop for the Allies to jump through.
The German Navy had, indeed, erected batteries for the
protection of the principal ports. These had been linked up,
to some extent, by batteries of the Army Coastal Artillery.
But whereas the naval guns were in steel cupolas, the army
artillery was merely dug in and had no overhead cover
208
ROMMEL
against shells or bombs. (Admiral Ruge explained that the
Army Command was unwilling to put its guns under con-
crete because of the consequent restriction of the field of fire.
From 1942 onwards the scarcity of steel made it impossible
to obtain the necessary turrets.) As for the string of strong-
points, in many cases they had no concrete shelters at all.
These were especially lacking along the coast between the
Orne and the Vire. Where they existed, the head cover was
only 60 cm. thick and useless, therefore, against the pre-
liminary air bombardments which were to be expected.
Even the elementary precaution of surrounding the
strong-points with minefields had been ignored. In three
years, only 1,700,000 mines had been laid. The monthly rate
of supply when Rommel arrived was 40,000 — a fraction of
what we laid in 1941 below the Sollum-Halfaya escarpment.
There were no shallow-water mines below low-water level,
nor were the minefields to seaward sufficient. Beach obstacles
were of the most primitive sort, quite ineffective against
tanks and not much use even against infantry. The fact was
that no serious and concerted attempt had yet been made to
put the French coast into a state of defence against invasion.
Nothing was done outside the ports until after the St.
Nazaire and Dieppe raids and then the effort was half-
hearted.
Admiral Ruge blames the engineer-general in charge, who
was not up to his job. He was bogged down in detail and
never thought out a clear over-all plan. " He was not the
man to reconcile the differing views of Army and Navy."
The German High Command was equally to blame for not
supervising him. In the absence of prodding from above,
the local commanders took things easily and decided for
themselves how much or how little to do. France had, in-
deed, become a home of rest for tired generals and tired
divisions from Russia. The permanent garrison was com*
posed of " category " troops of very poor quality, under the
sort of officers whom such troops attract The Todt organs
THE ATLANTIC WALL
209
sation, which had built the Siegfried Line, was busy repair-
ing bomb damage in Germany.
As may be imagined, Rommel set to with a will to put
this right. Beginning just before Christmas, he spent his
days making long trips by car with his staff to various sec-
tions of the coast and to all the headquarters, down to divi-
sions. By daylight he inspected the defences; when the early
darkness of the winter afternoons stopped outdoor work, he
held conferences. " He got up early," says Admiral Ruge,
44 travelled fast, saw things very quickly and seemed to have
an instinct for the places where something was wrong. On
one typical winter inspection we arrived at Perpignan late
one night. We left at 6 a.m. next morning, without break-
fast. Driving through snow and rain, we reached Bayonne
at 2 p.m. An hour later, having received the report of the
local commanding general, we left, without luncheon, for
St. Jean-de-Luz, on the Spanish frontier. There we inspected
batteries. We arrived at Bordeaux at 7 p.m. and conferred
with General von Blaskowitz. At 8 p.m. we had an hour off
for supper, our first meal of the day. We settled down to
work again at 9 p.m., but fortunately the engineer-general
feli asleep over the table." To the snug staffs of the coastal
sectors Rommel blew in like an icy and unwelcome wind off
the North Sea.
Of his own headquarters, which he had moved to La
Rochc-Guyon, north-west of Paris, he saw little, except at
night. The fact that they were in a fine old castle, full of
historical associations, since it had belonged to La Rochefou-
cauld, Due de Roche-Guyon, aroused no interest in him.
Nor could he be persuaded for a long time to visit Mont St.
Michel for pleasure. When at last Admiral Ruge succeeded
in dragging him there, he remarked that it " would make a
good dug-out/* but, said Ruge, enjoyed pottering about it.
On the other hand, he needed no persuasion to go twice to
Paris to inspect a revolving gun-turret in concrete which
German technicians had constructed.
210
ROMMEL
Unfortunately for Rommel, lie was very far from having
a free hand. He could give no direct orders to the troops
but could only make suggestions to the Commander-in-
Chief West (Field-Marshal von Rundstedt) or to the High
Command. Since he was working under -personal instruc-
tions from Hitler and at the same time was subordinate to
von Rundstedt, efficiency was impossible and some friction
inevitable. Actually von Rundstedt and Rommel got. on
better than might have been expected. Von Rundstedt was
an aristocratic and dignified German officer of the old
school, a very able if orthodox strategist. He might easily
have resented the arrival in his area of a jumped-up Field-
Marshal with no staff training and no recent experience of
European war. The ill-defined set-up had in it all the
makings of a bitter quarrel. Happily von Rundstedt was by
no means as stiff as he appeared to be and had a sense of
humour. Long after Rommel was dead he told Captain
Liddell Hart that he had no complaint to make of him.
" Whenever I gave him an order he obeyed. ... I do not
think he was really qualified for high command but he was
a very brave man and a very capable commander."
That did not alter the fact that the Commander-in-Chief
West, who, when he took over early in 1942, had seen as
quickly as Rommel the weaknesses of the Atlantic Wall, did
not believe that it could be so strengthened as to form a
real obstacle to an invasion. Nothing, he felt, could prevent
the Allies landing in force. As a result; he had failed to
speed up the work on the defences. It was only at the begin-
ning of 1944 that Rommel sought and obtained an indepen-
dent command. At the end of January he was made
Commander-in-Chief of the German Armies from the
Netherlands to the Loire, These included the occupation
troops in Holland, the 15th Army, holding from the Dutch
frontier to die Seine, and the 7th Army, from the Seine to
tha Loire. General Blaskowitz's Army Group G controlled
THE ATLANTIC WALL
211
the 1st Army, covering the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees
and the 1 9th Army, holding the Mediterranean coast. Field-
Marshal von Rundstedt remained Supreme Commander
over all.
This was a logical arrangement. According to his staff, it
was suggested by von Rundstedt : according to Admiral
Ruge, the proposal came from Rommel. Whoever was the
author of it, one feels that von Rundstedt's attitude was :
" I don't personally see any sense in trying to do anything
with the Atlantic Wall but if Rommel feels that he can,
belter let him get on with it." The reaction of the staffs
on both sides was one of profound relief.
Get on with it Rommel did and it was a very good thing
for the Allies that he was not given six months longer. By
then the physical difficulties of the landing would have been
immensely greater.
He was still working under serious handicaps. " He had
very little influence with the Navy," said Admiral Ruge,
" and none at all with the Air Force." It was not until July
1st, more than three weeks after the invasion, that he was
able to write to Commander-in-Chief West : " With a view
to obtaining unified command of the Wehrmacht and con-
centration of all forces, I now propose to take over command
of the headquarters and units of the other two services em-
ployed in the Army Group area or co-operating with it. . . .
Close co-operation between the flying formations and the
flak corps and the heavily engaged army can be guaranteed
only by the strictest command from one headquarters. Dup-
lication of orders leads to military half-measure. . . This
was labouring the obvious. But the jealousy between the
Services and the system of private armies owing allegiance
to Goering, Himmler, etc., was one of the major causes of
German defeat.
Moreover, the knowledge that von Rundstedt's disbelief
in fixed defences was shared by die Army Command, always
212
ROMMEL
inclined to discount anything done by Rommel, did not fail
to percolate down to subordinate commanders. As late as
April 22nd Rommel was writing :
" My inspection tour of the coiistal sectors . . . shows
that unusual progress has been made. . . . However, here
and there I noticed units that do not seem to have recog-
nised the graveness of the hour and some who do not even
follow instructions. There are reports of cases in which
my orders that all minefields on the beach should be alive
at all times have not been obeyed. A commander of a
lower unit gave an order to the contrary. In other cases
my orders have been postponed to later dates or even
changed. Reports from some sectors say that they intend
to try to put one of my orders into effect and that they
would start doing so the following day. Some units knew
my orders but did not make any preparations to execute
them. 1 give orders only when they are necessary. I
expect them to be executed at once and to the letter and
that no unit under my command shall make changes, still
less give orders to the contrary or delay execution through
unnecessary red tape."
Rommel must have missed the ready obedience of the
Afrika Korps. In the desert he had not had to give orders
twice.
Lack of backing from above and of enthusiasm below
were no help in a race against time. Rommel was accus-
tomed to the first. As for the second, no one was better than
he at rousing the spirit of tired and apathetic troops. Like
a mate of a sailing-ship, he could "put a jump into a
wooden dog." " He had a knack of handling men and of
talking to them," said Admiral Ruge. " Like many of us
who had been young officers in 1918, he had done some
deep thinking after the revolution about the relations be-
tween officers and men. That is one of the reasons, I think,
THE ATLANTIC WALL
213
why our Army and Navy kept their discipline so long under
such very difficult circumstances. Wherever we went at this
time in France he spoke freely to all ranks. He explained
his ideas to them clearly and patiently and told them exactly
what he wanted them to do. Naturally, they listened for,
apart from his reputation, he had great commonsense, a
gift of quiet humour and an instinct for the human side of
a situation often lacking in trained staff officers. A new
spirit was very soon evident in the troops and the work of
preparing to resist the invasion began to go ahead."
On the other side of the Channel, General Montgomery
was speaking in just the same simple, direct and effective
fashion to the troops who were to cany it out and to the
factory workers who were to keep them supplied.
In neither case were these "pep-talks" greatly appre-
ciated by higher authority. Both commanders were sus-
pected of aiming at a personal "build-up." The British
newspapers, says Moorehead, were encouraged to "go
slow " on Montgomery. As far back as the summer of 1941,
the Army Propaganda Department had been instructed,
apparently by General Haider, not to make too much of
Rommel. Baron von Esebeck had been refused permission
to rejoin him in North Africa. Rommel's enemies in high
"laces were now in a quandary. They had to make the most
of the Atlantic Wall, if only to intimidate the Allies. They
could not publicise it and the work being done on it without
at the same time publicising the man in charge. They con-
tented themselves, therefore, with describing him in private
as a mountebank and a seeker after notoriety. They added
that he had never been the same, since his illness in North
Africa. Rommel, meanwhile, like Montgomery, realised that
propaganda and the exploitation of his own personality were
merely another weapon. " You can do what you like with
me," he said to his chief cameraman, " if it means 4 the post-
poning of the invasion by even a week.** In private, says
Admiral Ruge, he remained modest and unassuming. " He
214
ROMMEL
was not a vain man and he had no wish to push himself
forward."
Personal jealousies Rommel could ignore : scarcity of
material was an ohstacle that could not be overcome. At this
period enormous quantities of steel and concrete were being
used for submarine shelters and for the launch ing-sitcs of
Vl's and V2's. The new submarines and the secret weapons
were Hitler's latest prescription for winning the war. Had
they not been spotted in time, they might well have enabled
him, if not to win it, at least to prolong it indefinitely. Per-
haps rightly, they were still given priority over fixed
defences. Rommel had, therefore, to make do with what
he could lay his hands on. Hitler might agree, as he did,
that all coastal defence batteries should be put into concrete
emplacements, with at least six feet of concrete overhead.
But even armed with this order Rommel could not get the
concrete, simply because there was not enough to go round.
When the invasion came, many batteries had no overhead
cover at all and were quicklv blotted out from the air.
Rommel nevertheless managed to get a prodigious
amount of work done and, in this new field, showed his in-
nate talent for improvisation. In a few months, though
hampered by supply and transport difficulties and, towards
the end, by continual air attacks, he succeeded in having
four million mines laid, as against less than two million in
the previous three years. Given time, he proposed to lay
fifty to a hundred million and, after surrounding all strong-
holds with deep minefields, to fill up the country between
them with mines, wherever if was " tankable." What would
the answer have been if he had thus converted whole areas
of France into vast mine-swamps? The point was not raised
at Field-Marshal Montgomery's post-war conference at
Camberley in May, 1946, though it had occurred to one
distinguished commander and student of war, Lieut-
General Sir Francis Tuker. General Patton might have been
puzzled.
THE ATLANTIC WALL
215
Because mines, like every tiling else, were in short supply,
they were not at all of conventional construction. Rommel
raided depots and arsenals, where he discovered stocks of
hundreds of thousands of old shells. These he made into
mines, as did the Japanese, more primitively, in Bunna.
(Under the Japanese system, an unfortunate individual sat
with his shell in a hole in the road and was supposed to
touch it off when a tank ran ovor him.) Nor were the mine-
fields laid in conventional pattern. Rommel's idea was to
employ mines in as many different ways as possible. " Here
he had to fight many a battle against the engineers,*' said
Admiral Ruge. " They wanted to lay their mines by the
book while he was always for variety." Rommel and Ruge
were, in fact, still making a comparative study of mining
tactics ashore and at sea when the invasion overtook them.
Rommel's open mind greatly impressed his naval adviser.
45 He was an unconventional soldier and, unlike many of the
General Staff, he was very much interested in technical
things. He saw the point of any new device of a technical
kind very quickly. If one gave him an idea in the evening
he would often telephone in the morning and suggest an
improvement He had a strong mechanical bent and his
suggestions were always sound." In the many "gadgets"
that were improvised to make a landing difficult, one can
see the traces of the young officer who took his new motor-
bicycle to pieces and put it together again, just as one can
see, in the deceptions and ruses employed, the artful enemy
we knew in North Africa.
Amongst the "gadgets" were, for example, the beams
driven into the beaches below low- water mark, some with
mines on the top, some with steel cutters to act as "tin-
openers." There were home-made " nutcracker " mines in
blocks of concrete. There were mined logs with a seaward
slope. There were the obsolete tank obstacles, made out of
three iron bars at right-angles, which were now useless
against tanks but, as Rommel pointed out, could still impede
216
ROMMEL
infantry if set below high-water mark. There were naval
mines sunk in shallow water with floating lines attached to
the horns. Ashore there were poles driven in on open fields
and wired together with mines on top to impede glider
landings. Many of these and other such devices were, how-
ever, not ready by June 6th because of difficulties of supply,
of transport and of labour.
Amongst the deceptions were, naturally, dummy mine-
fields, though Rommel had to complain that they would
hardly be convincing to air reconnaissance i f cattle were
allowed to graze over them. There were dummy batteries
which, in fact, were later heavily bombed. There was the
usual camouflage, though here again Rommel had to point
out that it was not much use camouflaging a battery position
in a green field with black nets. There were arrangements
for make-shift smoke from straw and leaves, real smoke
apparatus being in short supply. Infantry and artillery com-
manders were ordered to be ready to light fires on dummy
batteries and on dummy emplacements and entrenchments
behind the line, to distract enemy gunfire from the beaches.
But, on April 22nd, " there are no reoorts from any place
that these preparations have been made."
As a preliminary measure, when the invasion was immi-
nent, Rommel was anxious that Vl's should be used against
the British concentration areas in the South of England. He
was refused, though many of the installations were ready,
because there were not yet enough Vl's to allow of a con-
tinuous fire being kept up. It was, perhaps, too late. But it
is interesting to note that General Eisenhower says that, had
the Germans succeeded in perfecting these weapons six
months earlier and had they been used principally against
the Portsmouth-Southampton area, " the invasion of Europe
would have proved exceedingly difficult and perhaps
impossible."
Similarly, Rommel wanted the Navy to mine the naviga-
tion channels and the Luftwaffe to drop the new pressure-
THE ATLANTIC WALL
217
•
box mines all round the Isle of Wight. The Navy objected
to laying mines too close to the shore and the Fiihrer would
not allow the pressure-box mine to be used because there
was no known method of sweeping it and the Allies might
lay similar mines and u block our harbours completely."
(He was, presumably, still thinking of his new submarines.)
The real conflict of opinion was, however, on the whole
broad question of how the invasion could best be resisted.
Rommel apparently had no doubts. " Wc must stop the
enemy in the water," he said, " and destroy his equpiment
zvhile it if still afloat" The first twenty-four hours, in his
view, would be decisive. Once the Allies secured a bridge-
head it would be impossible to drive them back into the sea
or to prevent them breaking out. He based his belief entirely
on the factor of air superiority. " He had never forgotten
how the R.A.F. had kept him and his army of 80,000 men
nailed to the ground for two or three days in North Africa."
The air force that would accompany the invasion would be
incomparably more powerful. As for the Luftwaffe, it would
be shot out of the skies and the reinforcements promised by
Goering, like the supplies for North Africa, would never
appear. Road and rail traffic would be completely disrupted
and movement in the back areas would become impossible.
It was no use, therefore, thinking of conventional large-
scale counter-offensives : the troops would never get up to
make them or would arrive in disorder and too late. If this
reasoning were correct, then the main line of resistance must
be the beach. Every man in the forward divisions must be
ready to fight at once if a landing were attempted on his
part of the coast. Reserves, headquarters and ancillary ser-
vices must be right up behind the fighting troops. The
armour must be in close support, so that the guns of the
tanks could actually bear on the beaches. If this strong belt
of resistance were eventually broken, at least it would hold
up the invaders for some time and their breakout would be
local.
218
ROMMEL
The Army Command, the Commander-in-Chief West, his
staff, and the majority of the army, corps and divisional
commanders took the more orthodox view. With 3000 miles
of coast line to defend; with only 59 divisions, most of them
second-class and only ten of them armoured, with which to
defend it; with no certainty where the main landing would
be made, it was useless to think of preventing the Allies set-
ting foot above high-water mark. The only correct course
was to keep the reserves, including the armour, well in rear,
to wait until the main effort was identified beyond doubt
and then to launch a large-scale counter-offensive at the
right moment. That might be when the invaders were ashore
and still building-up. It might be when they had moved out
of their bridgehead but were temporarily "off balance.'*
Von Rundstedt justifiably considered himself a good enough
general to select it according to circumstances.
For Rommel it may be said that his appreciation of the
effects of Allied air power was proved accurate. It was only
with the utmost difficulty that troops could move behind the
front and then across country, by night and in small forma-
tions. One division from the south of France took twenty-
two days to cover the four hundred miles to Normandy and
had to do most of it on foot. General Baycrlein, now com-
manding the crack Panzer Lehr Division, ninety miles
south of Caen, took more than three days to get up and lost
five tanks, 130 trucks and many self-propelled guns before
he came into action, though he was well provided with
" flak " and had trained his division in the use of cover and
camouflage. In the Falaisc gap, roads, highways and fields
were so choked with destroyed equipment and with dead
men and animals, says General Eisenhower, " that it was
literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time
stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh."
On the other hand, Rommel can be accused of grossly
over-estimating the chances of holding the Atlantic Wall. It
was no good saying, at the end of April, that " we must, in
THE ATLANTIC WALL
219
the short time left, bring all defences up to such a standard
that they will be proof against the strongest attack." For
that he should have been in charge two years before, with
unlimited material and the men to put it into place. Even
so, there is no such thing as a defensive belt " proof against
the strongest attack." That was a lesson that he and his
"Ghost Division " had helped to teach in 1940. As it was,
his defences were not even a quarter complete. Nor could
he have had any confidence in the men who manned them.
Dug-outs, convalescents from the Eastern Front, boys with-
out battle experience, with a residue of renegade Poles,
Rumanians, Jugoslavs and Russians, they were not likely to
stand up to the sort of sea and air bombardment he had him-
self foretold. His reputation as a strategist would rank higher
if he had backed von Rundstedt's proposal for evacauting,
before the invasion, the whole of southern France up to the
Loire. Had that been done, he might have fought his last
battles in the moving warfare of which he was a master.
But such a plan, as he knew, was foredoomed. Selling ideas
of retreat to the Fiihrcr was a task more hopeless than that
of defending the Atlantic Wall. However, as will be seen in
the next chapter, he is not to be judged entirely on what he
said and seemed to believe at this period.
General Montgomery had no doubt what Rommel would
do. His analysis of his old opponent's plans and personality
was a masterpiece. " Last February," he said, in May,
" Rommel took command from Holland to the Loire. ... It
is now clear that his intention is to defeat us on the beaches.
* . . He is an energetic and determined commander; he has
made a world of difference since he took over. He is best at
the spoiling attack; his forte is disruption; he is too impul-
sive for a set-piece battle. He will do his level best to
' Dunkirk * us — not to fight the armoured battle on ground
of his choosing but to avoid it altogether and prevent our
tanks landing by using his own tanks well forward. On
D-day he will try (a) to force us from the beaches; (b) to
220 ROMMEL
secure Caen, Bayeux, Carentin. Thereafter he will continue
his counter-attacks. ... We must blast our way on shore
and get a good lodgment before he can bring up sufficient
reserves to turn us out. Armoured columns must penetrate
deep inland and quickly. . . . We must gain space rapidly
and peg out claims well inland. . . . While we arc engaged
in doing this, the air must hold the ring and must make very
difficult the movement of enemy reserves by train or road
towards the lodgment areas. The land battle will be a
terrific party and we shall require the support of the air all
the time — and laid on quickly."
It came about as both men predicted. Rommel did try to
" Dunkirk " us. The air did hold the ring. The first twenty-
four hours were decisive. Once the Allies secured their
bridgeheads, only by some gross mistake on their part could
they have been thrown back into the sea. Would von
Rundstedt have had a better chance of defeating them in
open warfare when they debouched from it? With the
troops at his disposal and in face of Allied air supremacy, it
seems unlikely. Nor was General Montgomery the man to
give him the opportunity of catching him " off balance."
Progress might have been slower but one feels that it would
have been just as sure.
In fact, neither of the plans for resisting the invasion was
put to the test for neither von Rundstedt nor Rommel was
free to do as he wished. Because Hitler, if he did not inspire
it, backed Rommel in his belief that the beaches must be
the main line of resistance, von Rundstedt was unable to
form his army of manoeuvre. Because von Rundstedt,
against Hitler's intuition and Rommel's judgment, took the
orthodox staff view that the main landing would come in
the Pas de Calais, the nearest point to England, and the
direct road to the Ruhr, Rommel was not able to concen-
trate a strong armoured force immediately behind the Nor-
mandy beaches, where he and Hitler expected it. Three
weak armoured divisions only were placed at his disposal for
THE ATLANTIC WALL
221
the whole front from the Scheldt to the Loire. The rest
were in reserve, nominally under the orders of Commander-
in-Chief West. Even he could not move them without the
permission of Kcitcl, Jodl and Hitler which, as usual, came
too late. In the forward area in Normandy, Rommel had
only his old 21st Panzer Division, now re-formed with very
few of the old personnel. According to von Esebeck, it was
removed from his command while he was away seeing Hitler
the day before the invasion and transferred to von Rund-
stedt's Panzer Group West. He retrieved it and used it to
advantage, for it was this division which prevented the
capture of Caen the first day. But, rightly or wrongly, Rom-
mel did not feel that its commander, Major-General
Feuchtingcr, handled it with the boldness of von Ravenstein
in the desert. When he reached the front he found it, says
von Esebeck^ held up by airborne troops. 41 How many
gliders were there," asked Rommel. 44 Hundreds and hun-
dreds," replied Feuchtinger. 41 How many did you shoot
down ?" 44 Three or four." 4 ' You have losl> your chance,"
said Rommel. Feuchtinger, for his part, complained that,
until Rommel's return, he could get no orders from any one
and that he had been forbidden to move without them.
As in Africa, 44 too little and too late " was the crime oi
the German High Command. For weeks before the invasion
Rommel had begged to be allowed to move the 12 S.S.
Panzer Division, the Hitler Jugend, to the mouth of the
Vire, near Carentan. It was near Carentan that the Ameri-
cans landed. Carentan was one of the three points which
General Montgomery had predicted that Rommel would try
to secure. When it was thrown in at Caen, the division
fought desperately under its fanatical Nazi leader, Kurt
Meyer. It might not have stopped the landing but that was
the way Rommel had planned to stop it. Rommel was re-
fused the division by von Rundstedt. Yet von Rundstedt
was not to blame. He could not move it without permission
from Jodl and Jodl could not move it without permission
222
ROMMEL
from Hitler ! No general could control a battle under such
conditions.
It was very shortly after the bridgehead had been secured
that Rommel and von Rundstedt found themselves for the
first time in complete and open agreement. Asked by Cap-
tain Liddell Hart long afterwards whether he had hopes of
defeating the invasion at any stage after the landing, von
Rundstedt replied : " Not after the first few days. The
Allied Air Forces paralysed all movement by day and made
it very difficult by night. They had smashed the bridges
over the Loire as well as over the Seine, shutting off the
whole area. These factors greatly delayed the concentration
of reserves there — they took three or four times longer to
reach the front than we had reckoned." The word " we "
did not include Rommel, who was thus posthumously
proved correct in his diagnosis, if not in his proposed treat-
ment. The story was told by von Rundstedt's Chief of Staff,
General Blumcntritt, to the author of Defeat in the West
how, towards the end of the month, Keitel called up von
Rundstedt and asked desperately, " What shall we do?" To
which von Rundstedt replied impassively: "Do? Make
peace, you idiots! What else can you do?" and hung up.
Admiral Ruge relates that, much earlier, Rommel told him
that the war must be brought to an end at all costs. " Better
end this as once, even if it means living as a British
Dominion," he said, " rather than see Germany ruined by
going on with this hopeless war." " On June* 1 1th we talked
for about two hours. I said that in my opinion Hitler ought
to resign and open the road to peace. As an alternative I
said that he ought to commit suicide. Rommel replied, 4 1
know that man. He will neither resign nor kill himself. He
will fight, without the least regard for the German people,
until there isn't a house left standing in Germany.' "
Rommel's reports were only slightly more discreet. On
June 12th he sent forward an appreciation of the position
on the previous day. After a conventional reference to the
THE ATLANTIC WALL
223
obstinate resistance of the German troops in the coastal
sectors, which had delayed the Allied operations, he went
on in a vein of almost unrelieved pessimism :
" The strength of the enemy on land is increasing more
quickly than our reserves can reach the front. . . . The
Army Group must content itself for the present with form-
ing a cohesive front between the Orne and the Vire and
allowing the enemy to advance. ... It is not possible to
relieve troops still resisting in many coastal positions. . . .
Our operations in Normandy will be rendered excep-
tionally difficult and even partially impossible by the
extraordinarily strong and in some respects overwhelming
superiority of the Allied Air Force and by the effect of
heavy naval artillery. ... As I personally and officers of
my staff have repeatedly proved and as unit commanders,
especially Obergruppenfuhrer Sepp Dietrich, report, the
enemy has complete control over the battle area and up
to sixty miles behind the front. Almost all transport on
roads and in open country is prevented by day by strong
fighter-bomber and bomber formations. Movements of
our troops in the battle area by day are also almost com-
, pletely stopped, while the enemy can move freely. ... It is
difficult to bring up ammunition and food. . . . Artillery
taking up positions, tanks deploying, etc. are immediately
bombarded with annihilating effect. . . . Troops and staffs
are forced to hide during the day. . . . Neither our flak
nor the Luftwaffe seems to be in a position to check this
crippling and destructive operation of the enemy Air
Force. . . . The effect of heavy naval artillery is so
strong that operation by infantry or panzer formations in
the area commanded by it is impossible. . . . The material
equipment of the Anglo-Americans, with numerous new
weapons and war material, is far superior to the equip-
ment of our divisions. As Obergruppenfuhrer Sepp Diet-
rich informed me, enemy armoured divisions carry on
224 romMel
the battle at a range of up to 3500 yards with maximum
expenditure of ammunition and splendidly supported by
the enemy Air Force. . . . Parachute and airborne troops
are used in such large numbers and so effectively that the
troops attacked have a difficult task in defending them-
selves. . . . The Luftwaffe has unfortunately not been able
to take action against these formations as was originally
planned. Since the enemy can cripple our mobile forma-
tions with his Air Force by day while he operates with
fast-moving forces and airborne troops, our position is
becoming extraordinarily difficult.
" I request that the Fuhrcr be informed of this.
" Rommel 99
If Rommel imagined that the Fuhrcr could be induced to
accept this " defeatist " view by references to his Nazi
favourite, Scpp Dietrich, he was very much mistaken. On
June 17th von Rundstedt managed to persuade Hitler to
come to a conference at Margival, near Soissons. It was
held at the headquarters, built in 1940, from which Hitler
was to control the invasion of Britain. Von Rundstedt took
Rommel with him. The two Field-Marshals both spoke out
and left the Fiihrer in no doubt what they thought about
the prospect of throwing the invaders back into the sea. So
far from that being possible, the only hope of preventing a
break-out was to withdraw behind the Orne and continue
the line to Granville, on the west side of the Cotentin
peninsula. Such a line, running through the " bocage," close
country with huge hedgerows, in the east, and thence over
wooded hills, might perhaps be held with infantry. The
remaining annour could then be reorganised and kept in
reserve. Hitler's reply of "no retreat" was almost auto-
matic. Rommel did not improve the atmosphere by protest-
ing to Hitler against the *' incident " of Oradour-sur-Glade,
which had occurred a week before. Here the S.S. Division,
Das Reich, had, as a reprisal for the killing of a German
THE ATLANTIC WALL
225
officer, driven the women and children into the church and
ihen set the village on fire. As the men and hoys emerged
from the flames, they mowed them down with machine-
guns. Afterwards they blew up the church and some six
hundred women and children with it. It was unfortunate,
they admitted, that there were two villages named Oradour
and that they had inadvertently picked the wrong one. Still,
reprisals had been carried out. Rommel demanded to be
allowed to punish the Division. " Such things bring disgrace
on the German uniform," he said. " How can you wonder
at the strength of the French Resistance behind us when
the S.S. drive every decent Frenchman into joining it?"
" That has nothing to do with you," snapped Hitler. ** It is
outside your area. Your business is to resist the invasion."
When, greatly daring, von Rundstedt and Rommel ten-
tatively broached the question of making overtures to the
Western Powers, the conference quickly broke up. The fare-
wells were not cordial on either side. Shortly afterwards a
homing VI hit the headquarters. There were, unfor-
tunately, no casualties.
Rommel's reports for the next few weeks were strictly
factual. No opinions about the future were expressed.
" Army Group B will continue its attempt to prevent all
efforts by the enemy to break through " was as far as they
• -ent. In reporting losses of 100,0.89 officers and men be-
tween June 6th and July 7th, as against 8395 replacements
brought to the front and 5303 warned for transfer, Rom-
mel merely commented : " The replacement situation gives
grounds for some anxiety in view of increasing losses." He
Was, in fact, " browned-off." On June 29th he and Field-
Marshal von Rundstedt had been summoned to Bcrchtes-
gaden. There the Fiihrer had announced that mobile war-
fare must not be allowed to develop because of the enemy's
air superiority and superabundance of motor vehicles and
fuel. A front must be built to block him off in his bridgehead
and he must be worn down by a war of attrition. Every
R. H
226
ROMMEL
method of guerrilla warfare must be employed. For Rom-
mel's special benefit he added, in front of Keitel and Jodl,
mat " everything would be all right if you would only fight
better." Rommel returned, furiously angry, to his head-
quarters at La Roche Guyon and handed on this bouquet
to his Chief of Staff, Generalleutnant Dr. Hans Speidel, who
had succeeded Gausi at the end of April.
Since General Speidel was to play and was, indeed,
already secretly playing a much more important part in
Rommel's life than that of a Chief of Staff, he requires
special mention. In appearance astonishingly like the then
British Secretary of State for War, Sir James Grigg, with
the same somewhat owl-like expression and the same pre-
hensile nose, he had (and has) an equally clear and exact
brain and a somewhat more equable and philosophical tem-
perament. This is not surprising since he is that very rare
bird, a professional soldier who is also a professional philo-
sopher. After joining the army in 1914, at the age of seven-
teen and serving throughout the war on the Western Front,
part of the time in the same brigade as Rommel, he re-
mained in it l>etween the wars and started to study for the
Staff College. At the same time he contrived to read philo-
sophy and history at Tubingen University and became a
Doctor of Philosophy summa cum laude in February, 1925.
If this " double " is not a record, it must at least be rare.
As a staff-officer, Speidel, with his precise and analytical
mind and his card-index memory, was marked for success,
particularly as he combines with them warm, if well-
concealed, human feelings and a mildly satirical sense of
humour. Assistant Millitary Attache in Paris in 1933 (he
speaks impeccable French), he was made chief of the western
section when he returned to Berlin. After seeing the French
manoeuvres in 1937 he wrote a pamphlet in which he said
that the French army was not ready for a modern offensive
war but that it and its leaders could be counted on for a
desperate resistance if France were invaded. " Fortunately
THE ATLANTIC WALL
227
— or perhaps unfortunately — I was wrong," he remarked.
1A (Gl) of the 9th Corps at Dunkirk, he confirms that it
was Hitler's direct order which prevented von Bock from
using the two armoured corps of Guderian and von Kleist
against the embarking British. " Had they been put in," he
says, " not a British soldier could have left the coast of
France." Shortly afterwards he was sitting in the Hotel
Grillon in Paris, drafting, with General Dentz, the terms of
the French surrender. Since we always regarded General
Dentz as a monster of duplicity for his behaviour in Syria
and the French condemned him, first to death and then to
life imprisonment, it is perhaps of interest that General
Speidel thinks that he did the best he could in the circum-
stances and was " a patriot and a good soldier of France."
Speidel next became Chief of Staff to General von
Stulpnagel, Military Governor of France, and held the
appointment until the winter of 1941. Then, when he saw
that all power was passing into the hands of the S.D., the
securitv police of the S.S., he asked to he relieved of it, a
fact which throws some light on his character and subse-
quent behaviour. So docs his long friendship with Colonel-
General Beck, the former Chief of the General Staff.
From France, he went to hold various high staff appoint-
ments in Russia. In front of Moscow with the 5th Army,
b~ was later largely responsible for the planning of the
southern offensive of the summer of 1942, which brought
the Germans to the very verge of victory. As Chief of the
General Staff of the 8th (Italian) Army throughout 1943 and
the early months of 1 944 he took part in all the great battles
of that fateful year. Fatuously enough, I asked General
Speidel about conditions in Russia. The cold must have been
very severe? "Very severe, indeed," he agreed blandly,
" the only thing to be said for it was that it made it almost
impossible for staff officers to write." As for the causes of
the ultimate failure : " Too many Russians and one German
too many — Hitler."
228
ROMMEL
Dr. Speidel, still only fifty-one, is now lecturing on philo-
sophy at Tubingen University. As will be seen, he reached
that peaceful haven after a somewhat stormy and adven-
turous voyage. Meanwhile, amid all the tumult of the
Normandy fighting, he was the trusted adviser of the
Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B on other than
purely military matters.
On July 1 7 th, the Allied Air Force at last overtook Rom-
mel. There was nothing unusual in what happened to him.
His staff-car was only one of thousands of German vehicles
shot up on the roads of Normandy in July, 1944. Captain
Helmuth Lang, who was in the car with him, gives the facts.
From his statement it is clear that they were unlucky in
picking a road along which our aircraft were operating.*
'* As he did every day," writes Captain Lang, " Marshal
Rommel on July 17th made a tour of the front. After visit-
ing 277th and 276th Infantry Divisions, on whose sectors a
heavy enemy attack had been repulsed the night before, he
went to the headquarters of the 2nd S.S. Armoured Corps
and had a conversation with Generals Bittrich and Sepp
Dietrich. We had to be careful of enemy aircraft, which
were flying over the battlefield continually and were quickly
attracted by dust on the roads.
" About 4 p.m. Marshal Rommel started on the return
journey from General Deitrich's headquarters. He was
anxious to get back to Army Group B headquarters as
quickly as possible because the enemy had broken through
on another part of the front.
" All along the roads we could see transport in flames :
from time to time the enemy bombers forced us to take to
second-class roads. About 6 p.m. the Marshal's car was in
the neighbourhood of Livarot. Transport which had just
•In an article summarised in the Reader's Digest 9 the Countess Waldcck makes the
suggestion that the aircraft may have been German with British markings, ordered by
Hitler to eliminate Rommel because he had sent an " ultimatum * * to the Filhrer on
July 15th. There is no evidence to support this suggestion and so many improbabilities
inherent in it that it need not be taken seriously.
THE ATLANTIC WALL
229
been attacked was piled up along the road and strong groups
of enemy dive-bombers were still at work close by. That is
why we turned off along a sheltered road, to join the main
road again two and a half miles from Vimoutiers.
" When we reached it we saw above Livarot about eight
enemy dive-bombers. We learnt later that they had been
interfering with traffic on the road to Livarot for the past
two hours. Since we thought that they had not seen us, we
continued along the main road from Livarot to Vimoutiers.
Suddenly Sergeant Holke, our spotter, warned us that two
aircraft were flying along the road in our direction. The
driver, Daniel, was told to put on speed and turn off on to a
little side road to the right, about 300 yards ahead of us,
which would give us some shelter.
" Before we could reach it, the enemy aircraft, flying at
great speed only a few feet above the road, came up to
within 500 yards of us and the first one opened fire. Marshal
Rommel was looking back at this moment. The left-hand
side of the car was hit by the first burst. A cannon-shell
shattered Daniel's left shoulder and left arm. Marshal
Rommel was wounded in the face by broken glass and re-
ceived a blow on the left temple and cheek-bone which
caused a triple fracture of the skull and made him lose con-
sciousness immediately. Major Neuhaus was struck on the
nolster of his revolver and the force of the blow broke his
pelvis.
" As the result of his serious wounds, Daniel, the driver,
lost control of the car. It struck the stump of a tree, skidded
over to the left of the road and then turned over in a ditch
on the right. Captain Lang and Sergeant Holke jumped
out of the car and took shelter on the right of the road.
Marslial Rommel, who, at the start of the attack, had hold
of the handle of the door, was thrown out, unconscious,
when the car turned over, and lay stretched out on the road
about twenty yards behind it. A second aircraft flew over
230
ROMMEL
and tried to drop bombs on those who were lying on the
ground.
" Immediately afterwards, Marshal Rommel was carried
into shelter by Captain Lang and Sergeant Holke. He lay
on the ground unconscious and covered with blood, which
flowed from the many wounds on his face, particularly from
his left eye and mouth. It appeared that he had been struck
on the left temple. Even when we had carried him to safety
he did not recover consciousness.
" In order to get medical help for the wounded, Captain
Lang tried to find a car. It took him about three-quarters
of an hour to do so. Marshal Rommel had his wounds
dressed by a French doctor in a religious hospital. They
were very severe and the doctor said that there was little
hope of saving his life. Later he was taken, still unconscious,
with Daniel to an air-force hosnital at Bernay, about 25
miles away. The doctors there diagnosed severe injuries to
the skull — a fracture at the base, two fractures on the temple
and the cheek-bone destroyed, a wound in the left eye,
wounds from glass, and concussion. Daniel died during the
night, in spite of a blood transfusion.
" A few davs later Marshal Rommel was taken to the
hospital of Professor Esch at Vesinet, near St. Germain."
Early in July, no doubt as the result of his advice to Keitel
to make peace, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt had been
relieved of his command. He was replaced by Field-Marshal
Gunther von Kluge from the Russian front. Undeterred by
this warning to defeatists, Rommel decided to make one
more attempt to bring Hitler to reason. In consultation
with General Speidel, who drafted it, he had sent a report
to von Kluge two days before he was wounded and asked
him to forward it personallv to the Fiihrer. It was along the
same lines as his analysis of June 12th but even more pessi-
mistic.
"The position on the Normandy front," he began, "is
I
r H E ATLANTIC WALL
231
becoming daily increasingly difficult and is rapidly
approaching its crisis." There followed references to the
Allies' superiority in artillery and armour; to the heavy Ger-
man losses and lack of reinforcements; to the inexperience
of the divisions brought up; to their inadequate equipment;
to the destruction of the railway network by air attack and
the difficulty of using the roads ; to the lack of ammunition
and the exhaustion of the troops. On the other hand, the
enemy were daily providing new forces and masses of
material, their supply lines were not challenged by the Luft-
waffe and pressure was continually increasing. " In these
circumstances," concluded Rommel, " it must be expected
that the enemy will shortly be able to break through our
thinly-held front, especially in the 7th Army Sector, and
push far into France. . . . There are no mobile reserves at all
at our disposal to counter a break-through. Our own air
force has hardly entered the battle at all.
" Our troops are fighting heroically but. even so the end
of this unequal battle is in sight"
In his own handwriting Rommel added the words, " I
must beg you to recognise at once the political significance
of this situation. I feel it my duty, as Commander-in-Chief
of the Army Group, to say this plainly."
Von Kluge's covering letter, dated July 21st, is of interest.
lx shows that, for all the high hopes with which he took over,
it did not take him long to come to the same conclusion as
von Rundstedt and Rommel. It also shows him to have been
a man of considerable moral courage, for he cannot have
supposed that it would be popular at the Fiihrer's head-
quarters.
" My Fuhrer," he wrote, " I forward herewith a report
from Field-Marshal Rommel, which he gave to me before
his accident and which he had already discussed with me. I
have now been here for about fourteen days and, after long
discussions with the responsible commanders on the various
fronts, especially the S.S. leaders, I have come to the con-
232
ROMMEL
elusion that the Field-Marshal was, unfortunately, right. . . .
There is absolutely no way in which we could do battle with
the all-powerful enemy air force . . . without being forced
to surrender territory. . . . The psychological effect on the
fighting forces, especially the infantry, of such a mass of
bombs raining down on them with all the force of elemental
nature is a factor that must be seriously considered. Tt is not
in the least important whether such a carpet of bombs is
laid on good or bad troops. They are more or less annihilated
by it and, above all, their equipment is destroyed. It only
needs this to happen a few times . . . and the power of
resistance is paralysed. . .
" I came here with the fixed intention of making effective
your order to make a stand at any price. But when one sees
that this price must be paid by the slow but sure destruction
of our troops — T am thinking of the Hitler Youth division,
which has earned the highest praise . . . then the anxiety
about the immediate future on this front is only too well
justified. . . .
" In spite of all our endeavours, the moment is fast
approaching when this overtaxed front is bound to break
up. ... T consider it my duty as the responsible commander
to bring these developments to your notice in good time, my
Fiihrer."
Five weeks later Field-Marshal von Kluge had been
superseded and was dead. With death everywhere about for
the asking and stray bullets making heroes of frightened
men every moment of the day and night, he chose to die by
his own hand. He felt, he said, that he failed his Fiihrer in
the control of the operations. This wns not, however, his
only reason for being unwilling to meet him.
Chapter Eleven
"A PITILESS DESTINY"
■
Whfn, after the explosion of the atomic bomb, American
sailors went aboard the surviving target ships at Bikini, they
gradually became gripped by a strange, obsessive fear.
"Decks you can't stay on for more than a few minutes; air
you can't breathe without a gas-mask but which smells like
all other air; water you can't swim in; fish you can't eat : it's
a fouled-up world," they said. For fission products, having
fallen like a coat of paint over these ships, could not be
washeJ off by the Navy's old prescription of a good scrub-
down fore and aft. The neutrons and gamma rays remained,
dctectible only by Geigcr counters but threatening disease,
disintegration and the novel horror of atomic death.
One need not be psychic or even unduly sensitive to
atmosphere to feel that something evil, not to be registered
b\ r Oeiger counters, still hangs in the air of Germany to-day.
Miasmas no longer arise from the ruined cities, the country-
side is clean and beautiful. Relieved from the worst of their
material distress, the Germans go cheerfully enough about
their work. In the village inns in the evenings they sing and
dance and drink their beer more lightheartedly than most of
us. Hatred of the occupying troops and their camp-
followers is doubtless there but it is well concealed. Why,
then, is one seldom quite at ease? Perhaps because one
knows that so many of the Gestapo and S.S. are still at large,
with false papers or free because those who might accuse
them are buried; that the polite young man who waits on
one so attentively in the hotel may have the blood of hun-
dreds on his hands. (A Gestapo agent, wanted for sixty
233
234
ROMMEL
separate murders, was recently identified in the popular in-
terpreter of a British camp.) Perhaps the reason is a little
more remote — that the taint of the Nazi regime, which has
not disappeared with the suicide or execution of its leaders,
will not vanish with the death of the last of their accom-
plices. The acid of the unceasing spying and suspicion, of
arrests at dawn, of torture and sadism and murder in cellars,
above all, of the lying and hypocrisy which pervade a police
state, has eaten in too deep. Like the fission products, it can-
not be washed out. The shadow of Hitler still darkens the
■-
German scene. " It's a fouled-up world.'*
At least, so I felt as I listened to the story of the last days
of Rommel and of the manner of his end. Not that there
was anything at all sinister about the surroundings in which
I heard it or anything at all morbid about those who told
it to me. On the contrary, when I sat in General Speidei's
house above the peaceful Black Forest town of Freudenstadt,
I had a feeling almost of nostalgia for the Victorian and
Edwardian interiors of my childhood. It was in just such
houses as this, a little over-furnished to modern taste but
so well-ordered, so solidly and smugly comfortable (though
never, perhaps, quite so incredibly clean), that the English,
too, used to live their comfortable and well-ordered lives,
their money in sound investments, their trust in God and the
Government, the servants in their place, the cat on the
hearth, the policeman on his beat. One might liave been in
North Oxford, forty years ago.
Frau Rommel's little house, though it is filled with relics
of Rommel, though paintings and photographs of him cover
the walls, though his death-mask is kept in a case in a corner,
has the same atmosphere of tranquillity and security. So has
Aldinger's. So has that in which I found Dr. Strolin, the last
of my informants. In each the story had to be interrupted
and papers removed so that an embroidered cloth could be
laid for tea. In each the china was Meissen, cherished and
unchipped and afterwards restored to its cabinet. In each
"a pitiless destiny"
235
were those once familiar four-decker cake-stands which
might be the symbol of a vanished age.
As for General Speidel, he looks what in fact he is, a don.
His wife, much too young, one would say, to be the mother
of a seventeen-year-old daughter, might never have had a
care in the world beyond minor domestic worries. The
children are handsome, punctiliously well-mannered and
brought up to speak when they are spoken to. Aldinger and
his wife are typical pillars of small- town society. Dr. Strolin
has the assured air of a man long accustomed to position
and authority. Frau Lucie Maria Rommel, though her
strong face is heavily lined, shows no other sign of an ex-
perience as harrowing as any woman has had to undergo.
Much more Northern Italian than German in appearance,
with her black hair and grey eyes, she has none of the senti-
mentality to be found in so many Germans. When she speaks
of " mein Mann" it is cheerfully and with pride. For nearly
thirty years they had a good life together, in spite of two
wars, dnd were happy. Of her husband's end she is willing
to talk when one has her confidence. She does so without
bitterness but with great disdain for those who were respon-
sible. Only once did she show how deep her feelings still are
after five years. When we drove up together to her former
house on the hill above Herrlingen, now a school, she stayed
in the car outside the .gates. " I like to see the children in
the garden," she said, "but I do not wish to go in there
again."
Manfred, the son, now studying law at Tubingen Univer-
sity, is a pleasant and perfectly normal young man, devoted
to his mother and to the memory of his father, and entirely
free, so far as one can judge, of any "complexes." He is
neither unbalanced nor embittered by what he saw at the
impressionable ape of fifteen.
Yet, against this background of almost Victorian nor-
mality, elsewhere now hard to find, these seemingly normal
oeople had been involved, or had deliberately involved
236
ROMMEL
themselves, in a struggle with a regime so ruthless that
death was far from the worst of its punishments for those
who challenged it. It was this contrast which, to me, made
the whole story more disquieting and macabre. Incidentally,
they had all displayed a four o'clock in the morning courage
which convinced me that their nerves were stronger than
my own.
Rommel returned from North Africa in March, 1943,
having, as they say, " had " Hitler. For a long time he had
known that Keitel and Jodl were both professionally and
privately his enemies. Goering he despised and distrusted,
suspecting him of having been prejudiced by Kesselring
against himself and the Afrika Korps. Recently he had been
warned by General Schmundt that his stock had slumped
with the Party bosses and particularly with the mysteriously
influential Bormann. He had, in fact, no friend at court
except Schmundt himself, who still spoke up for him. How-
ever, until after El Alamein he continued to believe that the
trouble with the Fiihrer was his entourage and that he would
act fairly and see reason if only he would free himself from
his sycophants.
Now he had no such illusions. He had come to realise that
there was in Adolf Hitler neither fairness, generosity nor
loyalty to those who served him. Nor was he open to reason.
This was a distressing revelation to Rommel, a straight-
forward, simple man with little subtlety, except in battle.
Since he had never been a political soldier and was com-
pletely out of touch with current politics, the shock was at
first purely personal and professional. He had lost faith in
a man who had been his friend and patron and was head
of the armed forces. It was only gradually that he came to
see that more than victory was being endangered, that,
thanks to Hitler, Germany was on the way to degradation
as well as to defeat.
His eyes were opened during the months he was in Ger-
m
"a pitiless destiny"
237
many before he took over command of Army Group B. He
had long disapproved of the Nazi M scum." For the first
time he now learnt at first hand from German officers what
the Gestapo and the S.S. had done in Poland and Russia,
what they were still doing there and in the occupied coun-
tries of Western Europe. For theiirst time he learnt of slave
labour, of the mass extermination of Jews, of the battle of
the Warsaw ghetto, of gas-chambers and the rest of it. In
North Africa it had been assumed that Germany was fight-
ing " a gentleman's war."
It was characteristic of Rommel that he went straight to
Hitler himself with these discoveries. " If such things are
allowed to go on," he said, " we shall lose the war." He then
proposed the disbandment of the Gestapo and the splitting
up of the S.S. among the regular forces. At the same time he
begged Hitler to stop the enlistment of very young boys. " It
is madness," he said, " to destroy the youth of the country."
Such ingenuousness must have staggered Hitler. It may
have amused Himmler, if Hitler communicated Rommel's
proposals to him. Strangely enough, the Fiihrer condes-
cended to argue with Rommel at some length. But he left
no doubt in the latter's mind that he had not the slightest
intention of changing his methods. Rommel thus realised
that his master's crimes were of commission also.
During the early part of the summer he brooded over
these matters and for the first time in his life, became poli-
tically conscious. His conclusions were those of many other
German generals. Hitler would lead the country to ruin.
He ought, therefore, to be curbed. So long as he had the
Party, the S.S. and many young officers and soldiers of the
Reichswehr behind him, there was no way of removing him
short of civil war. It might be sufficient to remove his
advisers and keep him as a figurehead, without any real
authority. How could that be done? Before Rommel had
followed out this line he was appointed to Army Group B
and went off, first to Northern Italy and afterwards to
238
ROMMEL
France. He put the whole problem temporarily at the back
of his mind and, as was usual with him, applied himself to
the work in hand.
There were others, however, whose plans were more ad-
vanced and who for some time had had their eyes on Rom-
mel. Dr. Goerdeler, Mayor of Leipzig, and Colonel-General
Beck, former Chief of the General Staff, were the key men
in the conspiracy against Hitler. They realised that, if it
were to have any chance of success, they must find a popular
figure, a modern Hindenburg, to put at the head of it when
the time came. He must he one who already had the public
confidence and who could not be suspected of acting from
self-interest. He must be a soldier whom the Army would
follow. General Beck, though his character and ability were
of the highest, would not do. The majority of Germans had
hardly heard of him and he had been dismissed by Hitler as
far back as 1938. Among the serving generals there was none
with a reputation, in the eyes of the public, which
approached that of Rommel. After Hitler himself, he was
probably the most popular man in Germany. Politically
there was nothing against him. He had, indeed, to his own
annoyance, been built up by the propagandists as a good
Nazi. At the same time he was known to be respected by
the British, with whom, at the crucial moment, he would
have to treat. Outside a small circle, no one knew that he
was at cross-purposes with the Ffihrer. He was, therefore,
the obvious choice, indeed the only one.
Fortunately the conspirators had just the right contact in
Dr. Karl Strolin, Qkcrbur germeister or Mayor of Stuttgart
from 1933 and well-known abroad as chairman of the last
meeting before the war of the International Federation for
Housing and Town Planning. Immensely popular in Stutt-
gart and a man of great energy and ability, Dr. Strolin was
one of those who had originally been a strong supporter of
Hitler and the Party. That it was possible to be a Nazi, at
"a pitiless destiny"
239
least at first, without being a gangster is shown by a tribute
paid to Strolin by the Consul-General of the United States
in Stuttgart, who knew him there for seven years, from 1934
to 1941. "He is a man of the highest humane principles,"
he wrote in 1948, " as is confirmed by what I heard of him
from Americans and Germans alike and especially from
members of the Jewish faith, many of whom spoke of him
with great appreciation and reverence. His nobility of
cliaracter and untiring efforts on behalf of those in distress
should entitle him to the greatest respect of the German
people, as well as of those whom he seived so unselfishly."
It was the rape of Czechoslovakia which turned Dr. Strolin
against Hitler; it was his friendship with Dr. Goerdeler
which made him a conspirator. Though he contrived, as-
tonishingly, to pemain Mayor of Stuttgart until the end of
the war, he worked actively against the Nazis from 1939
onwards. The story of how he saved twenty-one members of
the French Resistance, condemned to death in Alsace, has
been told by one of them. It does the greatest credit to his
intelligence and courage.
As an infantry captain in the first war, he served with
Rommel in 1918, after being twice wounded, on the staff of
the 64th Corps. Because they were both front-line soldiers
and unhappy on the staff, they became friends. Though
^Volin's interests were much wider than Rommel's the
friendship had been maintained between the wars. Recently
Strolin had helped Rommel to move his family from Wiener
Neustadt to Wurttemberg.
It was through Frau Rommel that Strolin started to work.
In August, 1943, he had the courage to put his name to a
document, which he and Goerdeler had drafted, demanding
that the persecution of Jews and of the Churches be aban-
doned, that civil rights be restored and that the administra-
tion of justice be taken out of the hands of the Party. This
heretical paper was sent to the Secretary of the Ministry of
240
ROMMEL
the Interior. Strolin was promptly warned that he would be
put on trial for " crimes against the Fatherland " if he did
not keep quiet. "At least I was now satisfied," he said,
" that nothing could be done by legal methods."
Strolin gave a copy of the paper to Frau Rommel. To-
wards the end of November or when he was home on short
leave for Christmas, she cannot remember which, she in
turn handed it to her husband. It made a profound im-
pression on him, since his own mind had been working in the
same direction. In December, Strolin also managed to visit
Frau Rommel at Herrlinger when he knew that General
Gausi, Rommel's Chief of Staff, would be there. His inten-
tion was merely to ask for an interview with Rommel but
he found that Gausi was also against Hitler, having recently
had to deal with some of his Gauleiters.
The fateful interview took place in Rommel's house in
Herrlingen towards the end of February, 1944. Strolin had
to make his way there secretly. He had been warned by the
ex-Commissioner of Police at Stuttgart, the same Hahn
whom Rommel had known in 1919, that he was on the list
of those for immediate liquidation should a resistance move-
ment develop in Germany. He also knew that his telephone
was tapped and his conversations recorded.
The interview lasted between five and six hours and
Strolin still has a vivid recollection of it. "I began," he
said, " by discussing the political and military situation of
Germany. We found ourselves in complete agreement. I
then said to Rommel, ' If you agree about the situation you
must see what it is necessary to do. 1 I told him that certain
senior officers of the Army in the East proposed to make
Hitler a prisoner and to force him to announce over the
radio that he had abdicated. Rommel approved of the idea.
Neither then nor at any time afterwards was he aware of
the plan to kill Hitler.
" I went on to say to him," continued Strolin, " that he
was our greatest and most popular general and more res-
"a pitiless destiny"
241
pected abroad than any other. 'You are the only one,' I
said, 'who can prevent civil war in Germany. You must
lend your name to the movement.' I did not tell him that
it was proposed to make him President of the Reich : the
idea was not, in fact, suggested until I returned and had a
talk with Goerdeler, and I don't think he ever heard of it
until the last day of his life.
" Rommel hesitated. I asked him again whether he saw
any chance of winning the war, perhaps by means of the
secret weapons. Rommel said that he knew nothing about
secret weapons except what he had read in the propaganda
reports, but that he personally saw no chance. Militarily, it
was already lost. Did he think that Hitler realised how bad
things were? ' I doubt it,' said Rommel, * in any case he
lives on illusions.' Gould he not ask for an interview and
try to open his eyes? 4 1 have tried several times," said Rom-
mel, ' but I have never succeeded. I don't mind trying again,
but they are suspicious of me at headquarters and certainly
won't leave me alone with him. That fellow Bormann is
always there.'
"We left it that Rommel should try, at some suitable
moment, to see Hitler and bring him to reason. If that
failed, he should write him a letter setting out the whole
situation, explaining to him the impossibility of winning the
war and asking him to accept the political consequences.
Finally, as a last resort, he should himself take direct action.
He thought it over for some time and said at length : ' I
believe it is my duty to come to the rescue of Germany.'
With that I had no more doubts. He was not a highly in-
tellectual man, he understood no more of politics than he did
of the arts. But he was the soul of honour and would never
go back on his word. Moreover, unlike most of the generals,
he was a man with the courage to act."
In April, Strolin found a new ally when General Speidel
was appointed Rommel's Chief of Staff. He was already in
touch with the conspirators. Thereafter Strolin was in almost
242
ROMMEL
daily contact with him by courier and, through him, with
Rommel. Speidel had discussions with his former chief,
General Heinrich von Stulpnagel, Military Governor of
France, and with General von Falkenhausen, Military
Governor of Belgium. In some Rommel took part, about
all he was kept informed. Stulpnagel was on the inner ring
of the conspiracy. Together he and Speidel worked out the
heads of an armistice agreement with Generals Eisenhower
and Montgomery. If Hitler had not already been removed,
it was to be made independently of him. It provided for
the evacuation of the occupied territories in the west. In
the east a shortened front would be maintained.
In fact, the western Allies could not have agreed to such
conditions. They were pledged not to make a separate peace
without Russia. Moreover they had round their necks the
"putrifying albatross " of unconditional surrender.
Clamped on by their own choioe at Casablanca, it
"whipped the Germans together under the swastika,"
strengthened Hitler, prolonged the war and cost many thou-
sands of British and American lives. 'Speidel and Stulpnagel,
however, supposed that Mr. Churchill and President Roose-
velt would welcome the chance of keeping the Red Armies
out of Western Europe, provided they did not have to make
terms with Hitler or the Nazis.
On May 27th another important meeting was held in
Speidel's house at Freudcnstadt. It was called at Rommel's
request. There were present Speidel himself, representing
Rommel, Strolin and von Neurath, former Foreign Minister
of Germany and later Gauleiter of Czechoslovakia. Von
Neurath was afterwards sentenced to fifteen years' imprison-
ment at Nuremberg. He must have thought it somewhat
ironical that he had already run the risk of punishment far
more severe at the hands of Hitler. I sat up with a slight
start when General Speidel said casually : " We met around
this table; von Neurath had the chair in which you are
sitting."
"a pitiless destiny"
243
With the German passion for documentation, Strolin had
written a special memorandum. It gave, he said, a complete
expose of the present position and was intended for Rom-
mel's guidance. u And do you mean to say," I asked him,
"that you put all that on paper?" "Yes," he replied, "I
had it copied in longhand in my office by one of my em-
ployees. He was very frightened and burnt the blotting
paper afterwards. I don't think General Speidel much liked
carrying it either. However, he went off with his copy in
his pocket and T brought mine back with me to Stuttgart."
It was like carrying a Mills bomb with the pin out.
Rommel himself was not as " security-minded " as he
should have been. He spoke very freely in the mess about
the war and about the Fiihrcr. Since he could trust his per-
sonal staff, this would not have mattered had his orderly
officer. Captain Hclmuth Lang, not been more conscientious
than discriminating. He kept the war diary, written in the
first person as though personally by Rommel, and it was his
duty, he felt, to record not merely the happenings of the
day but the obiter dicta of the Field- Marshal. He was scru-
pulous in doing so. Rommel was amused when he saw an
entry : " 0700 hrs. — had breakfast (omelette), 0730 hrs.—
battle of Caen begins." He was also amused when he read :
" Went for a walk with Captain Lang and Field-Marshal
von Kluge " and " discussed military situation with Captain
Lang : he agrees with my views." He was not, however, so
much amused when, idly turning over the pages, he came
across: "Hitler's orders are nonsense; the man must be
mad," and " Every day is costing lives unnecessarily; it is
essential to make peace at once." "Good God, man," he
said to Lang, " you are going to bring me to the scaffold !"
Aldinger was instructed to prepare a revised and expur-
gated version at once. Later Manfred and he burnt the
original, which Aldinger had apparently intended to keep
on his file. This typically German practice of reducing
244
ROMMEL
everything to writing and of preserving the most incrimi-
nating documents hanged many of the conspirators.
At the May 27th meeting, General Speidel drew the mili-
tary picture. When he had finished, von Neurath said :
" With Hitler we can never have peace : you must tell Rom-
mel that he must be prepared to act on his own responsibi-
lity. ,, That was the feeling of the others also and that was
the message which General Speidel took back to the head-
quarters at La Roche Guyon.
Meanwhile Rommel's will to act had been fortified from
a very strange quarter. Ernest Junger, author of Storm of
Steel, the front-line soldier who believed, even after 1914-18,
that war was the noblest occupation of man, was one of the
first to write against the Nazis in an allegorical novel, the
Marble Cliff, which was suppressed. He had now secretly
prepared a draft peace treaty, founded on the- idea of a
Europe united on the basis of Christianity — the abolition of
frontiers and the return of the masses to the Christian faith.
Only thus could the threat of Bolshevism be defeated. Rom-
mel found it moving and convincing and was anxious that
it should be published when the opportunity came. It was
now for him to create that opportunity.
From February onwards Rommel was in perhaps the most
extraordinary position in which any General ever found
himself. On tlie one hand he was the chosen defender of
the Atlantic Wall, entrusted by Hitler with the task of
defeating the invasion on the beaches. As such he was again
being publicised in the German Press : as such he was re-
garded, not only by the Allies but by the German Army. On
the other hand he was convinced that the invasion could not,
in fact, be defeated and was secretly committed to proposing
an armistice to Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery when
it succeeded — unless he could first bring Hitler to reason.
This dilemma he discussed in many long talks with
Admiral Ruge. "To continue the war is crazy," hie said.
•* Every day costs us one of our towns— to what purpose ?
"a pitiless destiny"
245
Merely to make it more certain that Communism will sweep
over Europe and bring all the Western Powers down to-
gether. If we have the atomic bomb, I suppose it is our
duty to go on, since it may decide the war in our favour and
whoever has it first is certain to use it. Personally I am sure
that we have not got it, for all the talk, and that we ought
to make peace." At the same time he recognised that it was
no use thinking of trying to make peace independently of
Hitler unless and until the invasion succeeded. " In Africa
I was my own master," he said, " and the troops looked to
me for decisions. Here I am only Hitler's deputy." Sub-
jected daily to intensive propaganda and believing implicitly
in the mysterious secret weapons, the rank-and-file would
have regarded any one who spoke of surrender as a traitor
and, with most of the junior officers, would have refused to
follow him. Thus an attempt had to be made to defeat the
invasion and at the same time preparations had to be made
for an approach to the Allies.
By a remarkable feat of mental balance Rommel con-
trived to ride these two horses together. As a soldier he did
his utmost to arouse the sleeping army of the west and to
inspire the troops with the determination to prevent a land-
ing. He also worked night and day to improve the neglected
defences of the Atlantic Wall. In his orders he declared that
it was, or soon would be, impregnable. The Allied com-
manders themselves were given an exaggerated idea of its
actual strength. When the landing was successfully made,
he battled desperately to throw the invaders off the beaches.
Had he been completely single-minded, had he believed im-
plicitly in his own predictions, he could not have done more.
Nor could any general have more persistently risked his own
life. He thus kept faith, professionally, with the Fuhrer.
He also kept faith with the Army. There was not a hint of
irresolution in his leadership. Though he had always hated
sacrificing troops unnecessarily, he flung them in in counter-
attacks, with what feelings-may be imagined. " I have never
246
ROMMEL
*
before sent men to certain death," he said to Ruge. His
strategy and tactics may be criticised : no one on our side
has ever suggested that he " pulled his punches."
At the same time he fulfilled to the letter the conditions
lie had made at his meeting with Dr. Strolin in February.
His situation report of June 12th gave Hitler fair warning
that things were " extraordinarily difficult " and that Allied
superiority, particularly in the air, left little hope of prevent-
ing a break-out. On June 17th at Soissons he had the per-
sonal interview which it was agreed that he should seek. He
then gave Hitler a military alternative to asking for peace —
that of taking up a defensive line behind the Orne. When
permission could not be obtained, both he and von Rund-
stedt broached the question of coming to terms with the
Western Powers. Finally, on July 15th, he sent his last
message to Hitler. Before he received a reply and thus be-
fore he could take the final step of an approach to the Allied
commanders, he was wounded. Only in this one particular
did the agreed programme remain unfulfilled.
As things turned out, it would have been better had Rom-
mel died of his wounds. Most men would have done so. He
showed once again his extraordinary resilience and vitality.
Baron von Esebeck, who himself had a narrow escape, since
he usually travelled with Rommel and only stayed at head-
quarters on Jury 1 7th to write a " piece " about him, saw
him in the hospital at Vesinet about July 23rd. He was sit-
ting on the side of his bed. " I'm glad it's you," said Rom-
mel : " I was afraid it was the doctor. He won't allow me
to sit up." " I'm sure he thinks I am going to die," he added,
" but I haven't any intention of dying. You'd better take a
picture of me." With this, he stood up, put on his uniform
jacket over his pyjamas and made von Esebeck take a photo-
graph in profile, showing the right, or undamaged, side of
his face. " The British will be able to see that they haven't
managed to kill me yet," he said. He then went on to speak
"a pitiless destiny" 247
(quite normally to von Esebeck and repeated what he had
already told him on June 12th, after he had written his
report to Hitler, that the war was lost. " He was especially
bitter," said von Esebeck, "about the complete failure of
the Luftwaffe. He said nothing about the attempt on
Hitler's life."
Speidel and Rugc also visited Rommel a few days after
he was wounded. They found that he had succeeded in
shaving himself! An unfortunate Surgeon-Major-General
who told him that he must really keep quiet was severely
" bitten." " Don't tell me what I must do or mustn't do,"
said Rommel, " I know what I can do." Thereafter Ruge
visited him nearly every day to read to him. " I read a
book called The Tunnel by Kellermann," he said. " It was
about building a tunnel from Europe to the United States,
exactly the sort of thing he liked. We used to talk about
4 after the war.' He had been very much impressed by the
enormous rise and fall of tide on the coast of Brittany and
said that he would like to be actively interested in a project
for drawing power from the tides. Anyway, he wanted to
do something technical and practical."
With Admiral Ruge, Rommel spoke freely about the plot.
" That was altogether the wrong way to go about it," he
said. *' The man is a devil incarnate but why try to make
p hero and a martyr of him ? He should have been arrested
by the Army and brought to trial. The Hitler legend will
never be destroyed until the German people know the whole
truth."
" I was in fear for Rommel," said Ruge, " and hoped that
it might be possible to get him into the hands of the British.
But, good friends as we wore, I never plucked up courage to
suggest it to him. In any case he was bent on going home."
On August 8th, in spite of the objections of Professor
Esch, chief medical officer at Vesinet, and of Dr. Schennig,
of Army Group B, Rommel insisted on being removed to his
248
ROMMEL
house at Herrlingen. "He was determined," said Frai
Rommel, 11 not to fall, seriously wounded, into eneim
hands." Both doctors accompanied him. They put him ii
charge of Professors Albrecht and Stock of the clinic o
Tubingen University. Professor Albrecht specialised in braii
surgery. When he examined Rommel's injuries he said, " 1
shall have to revise my lectures to my pupils. No man can
be alive with wounds like that." Tie added that he would
have preferred to have Rommel in his nursing-home at
Tubingen " for his own protection."
Contrary to all expectation, the wounds mended quickly.
Rommel became visiblv stronger every day. Meanwhile
Frau Rommel found it strange that, of all the high digni-
taries of the Reich and of the Army Command, no one took
the trouble to telephone to inquire about his condition.
Had she but known it, the hand of Hitler was already
closing over her husband. He would have been suspect in
any case, for the " defeatist " views which he had expressed.
But there was a track which led straight to him. On the
evening of July 20th, when it was already known that the
attempt had failed and that Hitler was alive and giving
orders, General Heinrich von Stulpnagcl was summoned by
Field-Marshal von Kluee to La Roche Ouyon. Von Kluge
was privy to the plot but not actively concerned in it. Had
it succeeded, he would have gone over openly to the con-
spirators and himself approached the Allies for an armistice.
As things were, he was of opinion that there was now
nothing to be done. He said as much to von Stulpnagel.
Then, to his horror, he leant that, before leaving Paris, von
Stulpnagel had already ordered the arrest of the Gestapo
and the S.D., the S.S. security police. Moreover, he ex-
pected von Kluge to proceed with the original plan. Von
Kluge at once made it clear that he had no intention of
doing anything of the sort. After a very strained discussion
he told von Stulpnagel to go back to Paris and release the
S.D. immediately.
"a pitiless destiny"
249
The commander of the S.S., General Oberg, was prepared
to try to hush things up and pretend that von StulpnagePs
orders for arrest had been merely an exercise. Next day,
however, there came a message for General von Stulpnagel
to report to Army Headquarters in Berlin. He set off by
car. At what moment in that long drive he determined to
take his life, no one can tell. Perhaps it was as he neared
Verdun, where he had fought with distinction in the bloody
battles of the first war. That, at any rate, was the spot he
chose. He made his driver take the car to the banks of the
Meuse canal and leave him. Wading in, he drew his pistol
and shot himself through the head. He succeeded only in
destroying his eyes. The driver heard the shot, found him
and pulled him out of the water. He drove him, unconscious,
to the hospital in Verdun. An operation was performed and
an eye removed. As he began to recover consciousness, von
Stulpnagel called out repeatedly, " Rommel !" According
to Colonel Wulfgang Muller, it was the surgeon who com-
municated with the Gestapo in Paris. According to General
Speidel, the S.S. and Gestapo were already standing around
his bed. The discrepancy may be merely one of time. The
Gestapo heard, at first or second hand. It was in the com-
pany of the Gestapo that General von Stiilpnagel completed
his journey to Berlin. There he was tortured. No one knows
what he said, if indeed, he said anything more. In his
delirium he had already said enough. Having been tortured,
he was tried and hanged. Speidel say that he was a brave
and honourable man, " chevalier sans pcur et sans
reproche." It is a pity that he was not more accurate with
his pistol. When, on August 18th, Field-Marshal von Kluge,
also summoned to Berlin, decided to follow the same path,
he took poison and made no mistake.
At Herrlingen the weeks passed quietly, the Only events
the visits of Professor Albrecht. He was delighted with his
patient's progress. Rommel was able to get up and to sit
250
ROMMEL
in the garden in the sunshine and soon to go for walks.
There was only one rather strange incident during his early
convalescence. In the middle of August, not long after his
return home, a man tried to get into the house by a sub-
terranean passage which led to the air-raid shelter. When
challenged and fired on by the guard, he fled. No great
attention was paid to this affair. There were many queer
characters, deserters, escaped prisoners-of-war and foreign
labourers, on the run in Germany during the summer of
1944.
On September 6th, Rommel had another unexpected
visitor. General Speidel came to the house to tell him that
he had been suspended the day before from duty as Ghief
of Staff to Army Group B. To-morrow he was to report to
Berlin to General Guderian, now Ghief of Staff to the Army
Command. " He told us/' said Frau Rommel, " that Keitel
and Jodl had been talking of my husband as a ' defeatist '
and warned him to beware of them. Because of his state
of health he told him no more. My husband imagined that
they were looking for someone to blame for the military
situation in the west He thought that this explained why
the German press and radio had spoken of his * accident '
and not of an enemy attack and why they had been so slow
in publishing the news that foreign papers came out with it
several days before."
General Speidel was not given the chance to report to
Berlin. Perhaps it was feared, from a misreading of his
character, that, like Field-Marshal von Kluge, Generals
Beck, von Stiilpnagel and others, he would try to take the
easier way out. At 6 a.m. there was a heavy knock at the
door of his house in Freudenstadt. It was an S.S. officer with
an armed guard. General Speidel was to accompany him
immediately. In such haste was he that he did not stop to
search the house. Frau Speidel was able to remove a photo-
graph of General Beck which hung (and still hangs) in a
ft "a pitiless destiny" 251
place of honour in the sitting-room. She was also able to
hide certain papers. Her husband was carried off by car to
Stuttgart and thence by train, closely guarded, to Berlin
and the Gestapo prison on the Prinz Albrechtstrasse. His
personal assistant telephoned later in the morning to Herr-
lingcn and informed Rommel of the arrest. It was never
officially communicated, though Rommel was still nominally
in command of Army Group B. Rommel wrote a letter of
protest to Hitler personally, which he sent to Sepp Dietrich,
asking him to forward it to the Fu'hrer. If it was forwarded
Hitler sent no reply.
That afternoon friends in Herri ingen warned Frau Rom-
mel by telephone that two suspicious-looking men had been
seen near their house, apparently trying to get into the
grounds. When approached, they had moved off. Aldinger
was able to establish that, about 3.30 p.m., the two men,
one of whom wore dark glasses, had taken post in the woods,
on the high ground behind the house. He also learnt that
they had new passports which described them as engineers
from Regensburg. They said that they were employed on
war work and had been evacuated to the Hcrrlingen area.
The proprietor of a local inn also reported to Rommel's
secretary, Adjutant Bottchcr, who had been with him for
some years, that the men had cars parked near his premises.
In the evening, having learned of Speidel's arrest, Strolin
took the risk of coming over from Stuttgart to Herrlingen.
He found the house guarded and Rommel, distressed and
in some degree alarmed, made a sign to him to speak in
whispers. An overhearing set mirrht somehow have been
slipped into the house, he said. On his desk was a pistol.
Strolin asked him why he wanted it. " Vm not afraid oi
the English or the Americans," said Rommel, " only of the
Russians — and the Germans." He then showed Strolin a
copy of the message he had sent to Hitler and they discussed
whether there was any possibility of helping Speide' Rom-
252
ROMMEL
mel explained that he had already telephoned to Army
Command but could get no satisfaction. Nor would they
even tell him why his Chief of Staff had been arrested. It
was the last time Stroiin saw Rommel alive. Frau Rommel
telephoned soon afterwards to ask him not to come to the
house again. She already feared the Gestapo.
There was another visitor a few days later. This was one
Maier, the local Party boss from Ulm. He came ostensibly
as a friend, and asked Rommel, while they were having tea,
whedier he could trust his servants. The head of the S.S. in
Ulm had told him, he said, that Rommel no longer believed
in the possibility of victory and was in the habit of criticising
Hitler and the High Command. Even Manfred felt that
his father spoke too freely to Maier. "Victory!" he ex-
claimed, " why don't you look at the map ? The British are
here, the Americans are here, the Russians are here : what is
the use of talking about victory?" When Maier said some-
thing about Hitler, Rommel replied, " That damned fool !"
Maier begged him to be more careful. " You should not say
things like that, Field-Marshal," he warned him ; " you will
have the Gestapo after you — if they are not after you
already."
An Italian journalist has recently produced a story to
the effect that Maier went home and wrote a thirty-page
report on this conversation, which he took next day to Ber-
lin and handed personally to Bormann. The Rommels do
not believe it. Maier, who came from Heidenheim, spent
some months with Manfred Rommel in a French prisoners-
of-war camp at Lindau and assured him that he had never
had any suspicion that his father had been murdered. He
later died in an American concentration camp and cannot
be questioned. The story may very well be true. The em-
ployment of a stool-pigeon was an old Nazi trick.
A month passed before the next move was made. Rommel
was now able to go by car to Tubingen for treatment. He
was due to do so on October 10th. On the 7th a telephone
"a pitiless destiny"
253
message came from Field-Marshal Keitel. Rommel was to
he in Berlin on the 10th for an important interview. A
special train would be provided for him on the evening of
the 9th. Rommel telephoned to Professor Albrecht to pul
off his treatment, explaining that he had been summoned
to Berlin. Both Albrecht and Stock advised him strongly
against undertaking so long a journey. Rommel told Aldin-
ger to get on to Keitel personally. The telephone was
answered by General Burgdorf, head of the Army Personnel
branch. "My husband spoke to him himself," said Frau
Rommel. " Captain Aldinger and I were in the room. He
asked him to tell Field-Marshal Keitel that the doctors
would not allow him to travel in his present state of health.
Then he went on to ask what it was all about and whether
it would not be possible to send an officer to see him. General
Burgdorf replied that the Fiihrer had given orders that
Field-Marshal Keitel should see him to discuss his future
employment." Rommel had not expected to be employed
again, after what had passed between him and the Fiihrer.
In any case he could not be fit for an active command for
some months. Aldinger formed the impression that he was
uneasy, but for once Rommel did not confide in him. Nor
did he say anything to his wife, though she had been in
fear for him ever since die arrest of General Speidel. Man-
ned had returned that morning to his A.A. battery.
Five days passed and there was no further word from
Berlin. On October 11th, Admiral Ruge came to the house
to dinner and stayed the night. They talked until after mid-
night. Rommel told Ruge about the order to go to Berlin
and said that he had refused because he did not feel well
enough. He added, " I shall not go to Berlin : I would never
get there alive." " I pooh-poohed this at first," said Admiral
Ruge," but he went on to say, ' I know they would kill me
on the way and stage an accident.' I think it was this belief
that influenced him two days later." ♦
On October 13th, came a telephone call from headquar-
254
ROMMEL
ters of War District 5 at Stuttgart. Rommel and Aldingcr
were out and a soldier servant took the call. He was told to
inform the Field-Marshal that General Burgdorf would
arrive at Herri ingen next day at noon. He would be accom-
panied by General Maisel. General Maisel also belonged to
the Personnel branch. Since July 20th he had been engaged
in investigating the cases of officers suspected of complicity
in the plot against Hitler. When Rommel received the
message he said very little. To Aldinger he remarked that
the two generals were doubtless coming to talk to him about
the invasion or about a new job. For the rest of the day he
was unusually silent.
Next morning Manfred arrived on leave by the 6 a.m.
train. He found his father already up. They breakfasted
together and then went for a long walk. Rommel told his
son of the expected visit. " What are they coming for?"
asked Manfred. " Is it about a new appointment for you?"
" That's what they say," replied Rommel. Manfred thought
that his father seemed worried. However, he pulled himself
together and talked to the boy about his own affairs and his
future. Rommel wanted him to be a doctor, not a soldier.
It was 1 1 a.m. when they returned to the house.
At noon precisely General Burgdorf arrived with General
Maisel and a Major Khrenberger, another Ordonnanz-
offizier. They came in a small green car. The driver wore
the black uniform of the S.S. The two generals shook
hands with Rommel. Frau Rommel, Manfred and Captain
Aldinger were introduced. After a moment General Burg-
dorf said that they wished to speak to the Field-Marshal
alone. Frau Rommel went upstairs to her room. Rommel
led Burgdorf into a downstairs room and Maisel followed.
As they moved away, Rommel turned to Aldinger and told
him to have the papers ready. He had already warned
Aldinger to prepare a file of his orders and situation reports
issued during the Normandy righting, for he suspected that
"a pitiless destiny"
255
he was to be interrogated about the invasion. Aldinger's file
was, of course, in order and he remained talking to Major
Ehrenberger outside the front door while Manfred went
upstairs to continue colouring some maps for his father. It
was nearly an hour later that General Maisel came out. He
was followed after a minute or two by General Burgdorf.
Rommel was not with them. He had gone upstairs to his
wife.
"As he entered the room," said Frau Rommel, "there
was so strange and terrible an expression on his face that I
exclaimed at once, ' What is the matter with you ? What has
happened ? Are you ill V He looked at me and replied : 4 1
have come to say good-bye. In a quarter of an hour I shall
be dead. . . . They suspect me of having taken part in the
attempt to kill Hitler. It seems my name was on XJoerdeler's
list to be President of the Reich. ... I have never seen
Goerdeler in my life. . . . They say that von Sttilpnagel,
General Speidel and Golonel von Hofacker have denounced
me. ... It is -the usual trick. ... I have told them that I
do not believe it and that it cannot be true. . . . The Fuhrer
has given me the choice of taking poison or being dragged
before the People's Court. They have brought the poison.
They say it will take only three seconds to act.' " Frau
Rommel begged her husband to go before the Court. He
ha-, never been a party to the killing of Hitler, nor would
he ever have agreed to it. " No," said Rommel, " I would
not be afraid to be tried in Public, for I can defend every-
thing I have done. But I know that I should never reach
Berlin alive."
As he was taking leave of his wife, Manfred entered the
room cheerfully, to see what had become of his father. The
generals were waiting for him. Rommel said good-bye to
his son also. Then he turned and went into the room next
door. Manfred followed at his heels. Rommel called for
his soldier servant and sent him to find Aldinger. To Aldin-
256
ROMMEL
ger he explained what was in store for him. He was now
quite calm but Aldinger could hear Frau Rommel sobbing
in her room. Aldinger was not disposed to take it like this.
" I told him," he said, M that he must at least make an
attempt to escape. Why could we not try to shoot our way
out together? We had been in as bad places before and got
away. ' It's no good, my friend,* he said, ' this is it. All the
streets are blocked with S.S. cars and the Gestapo are ail
around the house. We could never get back to the troops.
They've taken over the telephone. I cannot even ring up
my headquarters.' I said we could at least shoot Burgdorf
and Maisel. * No/ said Rommel, * they have their orders.
Besides, I have my wife and Manfred to think of.' Then
he told me that he had been promised that no harm should
come to them if he took the first choice. A pension would
be paid. He was to be given a state funeral. He would be
buried at home in Herrlingen. All the details of the funeral
had been worked out and explained to him'. . . . But if he
were brought before the People's Court and condemned, as
of course he would be, then it would be quite another
matter. . . . ' I have spoken to my wife and made up my
mind,' he said. * I will never allow myself to be hanged by
that man Hitler. I planned no murder. I only tried to serve
my country, as I have done all my life, but now this is what
I must do. In about half an hour there will come a tele-
phone call from Ulm to say that I have had an accident and
am dead.' When he had made up his mind, it was of no use
to argue with him. . .
Some of the few surviving conspirators feel that Rommel
should have insisted on being taken before the People's
Court and should there have struck a last blow for Germany
by denouncing Hitler. His appearance in the dock, they
say, would have shaken confidence in the regime. Had Rom-
mel been more of a fanatic ; had he been prepared to sacri-
fice his wife and child ; had he been in better health ; had he
been sure of reaching Berlin; had he been willing to be
"a pitiless destiny"
257
branded as a felon and to die on a hook, perhaps without
a chance of speaking, he might have chosen difTerently. His
proper course is endlessly debatable : the choice, heroic or
not, had to be made within an hour.
Having taken his decision, Rommel went downstairs with
Manfred and Aldinger. The generals were looking at the
garden. They came over to the car and Rommel got in first
into the back seat. Burgdorf and Maisel followed him.
Major Ehrenberger had already left to make the arrange-
ments. The car drove off.
Twenty-five minutes later the telephone rang. Aldinger
answered it. It was Major Ehrenberger, speaking from Ulm.
"Aldinger," he said, "a terrible thing has happened. The
Field-Marshal has had a haemorrhage, a brain-storm, in the
car. He is dead." Aldinger did not reply. "Did you hear
what I said?" asked Ehrenberger. " Yes," said Aldinger, " I
heard." " Then please tell Frau Rommel that I am coining
back to the house at once." Aldinger walked slowly up-
stairs to Rommel's widow. He had no need to speak. Half
an hour afterwards a car was heard on the drive. Aldinger
went to the door. Ehrenberger said that lie wished to see
Frau Rommel. Aldinger answered that she was unable to
receive him. Ehrenberger did not insist. Together he and
,*»ldinger drove, in silence, to the hospital at Ulm. Aldinger
was taken to a small room where Rommel's body was lying.
" I would have liked to be alone with him," said Aldinger,
" but Ehrenberger would not leave me."
Tears ran down his cheeks as he told me the story. For
thirty years Rommel had been his friend as well as his hero.
It needed an effort to remember that this precise little man,
who might have spent his life in some Government office,
had been through so many battles in two great wars. Back
from the table his plump, pretty young wife wept quietly
over her sewing. In this house Rommel would not be for*
gotten.
r. I
258 ROMMEL
While Aldinger was away, Colonel Kuzmany, commander
of the troops in Ulm, came to the house at Herrlingen. Frau
Rommel saw him. He was deeply moved, though he did not
suspect the truth. Immediately after Rommel had been
taken to the hospital, he said, Generals Burgdorf and Maisel
had come to his headquarters to announce the sudden death
of the Field-Marshal. Then they ordered him to make pre-
parations for a state funeral.
Later in the afternoon, Aldinger drove Frau Rommel and
Manfred to the hospital. The chief medical officer told them
that the two generals had brought in Rommel, dead, at
1.25 p.m. On their orders he had given him an injection to
stimulate the heart. " There was no reaction,'* said the doc-
tor, in a flat voice. Aldinger felt that he was on the point of
saying something more but did not dare. He did add, how-
ever, that there was to be no post-mortem — on orders from
above. Then he led them to the room. " When I saw my
husband," said Frau Rommel, " I noticed at once an ex-
pression of deep contempt on his face. It was an expression
we had never seen on it in life." It may still be seen on his
death-mask.
Next evening, the 15th, they went to the station to meet
Rommel's sister, whom they had summoned from Stuttgart.
Aldinger had been ordered to report to Military Head-
quarters in Ulm and they took him there on the way.
" While we were waiting outside," said Frau Rommel,
" General Maisel suddenly appeared. He came over to the
car and began to offer me his sympathy. I turned away
from him without speaking and pretended not to see his out-
stretched hand." Aldinger said that Maisel had asked him
where Frau Rommel was and "how she was taking it."
" In the car outside," said Aldinger, " and how do you sup-
pose?" When Rommel's sister saw her brother's body she,
too, remarked at once on that look of contempt which the
others had noticed the evening before. They had not yet
told her how he died.
'A PITILESS DESTINY'
259
Rommel's body was taken back to the house, where it lay
beneath a swastika flag, the face uncovered, in the room in
which the interview with the generals had taken place.
Under orders from Ulm, two officers mounted guard over it
with drawn swords.
Generals Burgdorf and Maisel went off to Berlin. After
they had left, Aldinger discovered that Rommel's cap and
Field-Marshal's baton were missing. Characteristically, he
telephoned to General Burgdorf and demanded that they be
returned, together with any papers taken from the body.
The cap and baton were recovered. RommeFs message of
July 15th, a copy of which Aldinger knew had been in his
breast pocket, was not returned. Burgdorf was killed in the
last days' fighting in Berlin. Maisel is still alive in the
American zone. To a German denazification court before
which he appeared in Frankfurt two years ago Maisel said
that the car had been stopped a few hundred yards away
from the house on the Blauberen road. He and the driver
were ordered by General Burgdorf to get out as he wished
to be alone with Rommel. " Approximately five minutes
later we noticed that General Burgdorf had left the car and
was walking up and down in the road alongside it. After
another five minutes he waved to us. When we approached
we saw the Field-Marshal leaning lifelessly against the back
seat." The S.S. driver, Dose, said that Rommel was doubled
up and sobbing but practically unconscious and obviously in
his death throes. The S.S. were good judges of such matters.
Dose sat him up and put on his cap, which had fallen on
the floor. Maisel also told the Court that he had not wanted
to believe that Rommel, a special favourite of Hitler, had
had anything to do with the attempt on his life. But when
General Burgdorf read his statement from two typewritten
sheets, Rommel's demeanour was such that " I got the im-
pression that the accusing statements were absolutely cor-
rect." His story was riot challenged. Frau Rommel had
been invited to give evidence but refused, not wishing to see
260
ROMMEL
General Maisel again, even in the dock. The case was ad-
journed for further evidence. In the summer of 1949
General Maisel was pronounced an offender in Category II
of the denazification law. The conviction carried with it a
sentence of two years' imprisonment. Since Maisel had
already been in custody for more than two years while his
case was being investigated, this sentence will not be served.
Burgdorf was described to me as " a drunken, foul-mouthed
butcher who should never have been a general." Of Maisel,
a general of his acquaintance said : "If there was any dirty,
underhand work going on, you could be sure that Maisel
was somewhere at the bottom of it."
" I would like to get my hands on General Maisel," said
General Johann Cramer of the Afrika Korps.
With the public announcement of Rommel's death began
the flood of telegrams and letters of condolence. Hitler sent
a not very effusive telegram on October 17th :
" Please accept my deepest sympathy on the loss of your
husband," it read. "The name of Marshal Rommel will
always be linked with the heroic fighting in North Africa."
It will be observed that neither Normandy nor wounds were
mentioned.
*
Dr. Goebbels and his wife also expressed their deepest
sympathy. Joachim von Ribbentrop said that he had been
very much moved to hear that Rommel had died " as the
result of his serious wounds in France." He assured Frau
Rommel that " his successes belong to the history of this
great period." Kesselring wrote later that " there were times
when I did not always agree with him, just as he did not
always understand me. . . . (But) I was very glad when he
was appointed to an important command in the West be-
cause I knew that his experience of fighting against the
British and Americans would be of the greatest value. . . .
His energy, his inspiring personality and His intuition would
have prevented many things that might have been pre-
"a pitiless destiny"
261
vented/' General Gambara, one of the best of the Italian
generals, wrote that " he will always live in the hearts and
minds of those who had the honour to sec him, as I did,
always calm and fearless under fire." Field-Marshal Model,
von Kluge's successor as Commander-in-Chief, West, pub-
lished an Order of the Day in which he referred to him as
" one of the greatest of German commanders . . . with a
lightning power of decision, a soldier of the greatest bravery
and of unequalled dash. . . . Always in the front line, he
inspired his men to new deeds of heroism by his
example. . . ."
There were one or two omissions. Neither then nor later
was there any message from Keitel or Jodl. Heinrich Borg-
mann, Hitler's adjutant, omitted to add the conventional
" Heil Hitler " to his letter. A few days later he resigned
his appointment.
Himmlcr's condolences came in unusual form. The con-
tent was also unusual. Three days after Rommel's death he
sent his personal assistant, Berndt, mentioned earlier in this
book as joining the Afrika Korps from the Propaganda
Ministry, to deliver a personal message to Frau Rommel.
The message was, that he, Himmler, knew the whole story,
that he was horrified and that he would never have had a
hand in such a thing. Berndt was now serving with the S.S.
He had gone back to the Propaganda Ministry and been
thrown out by Goebbels for repeating Rommel's remark that
the war was lost. To Himmler's message he added a gloss
of his own. Hitler, he declared, was equally innocent. It
was the work of Keitel and Jodl. Later he wrote a strange,
ecstatic letter from the front before he, too, was killed.
There had, he said, been some " higher purpose " in Rom-
mel's death but Hitler was not guilty of it. That is doubtless
what he believed, for he was one of those who never lost
faith in their Fuhrer. But Himmler, if, indeed, he had no
hand in it, at least knew that Keitel and Jodl would never
262
ROMMEL
have dared to make away with Rommel without their mas-
ter's orders. Nor were there many important killings about
which he himself was not consulted. The responsibility for
the arrangements may never be exactly fixed. Even in sys-
tematic Nazi Germany, orders for murder at the Field-
Marshal level would hardly be put on paper. Rommel's
family and friends have no doubt who spoke the operative
word.
The funeral took place on October 18th. It was an ela-
borate affair. Like the gangsters of Chicago, the Nazis had
a mortuary sense. They, too, did not stint the trappings of
death and were greater masters of ceremonial. Hitler had
ordered national mourning and Rommel was buried with
full military honours. All the troops in the neighbourhood
were turned out. The coffin was carried from the house,
covered with a huge swastika flag, while a guard in steel
helmets and white gloves presented arms. Thence it was
taken to the town hall of Ulm. Here, in a great vaulted
chamber used for entertainments and civic functions, Rom-
mel lay in state. The outside of the building had been hung
with banners : the pillars inside were crowned with eagles,
flags and laurels. On the bier were placed his marshal's
baton, his helmet and his sword. The jewels of his decora-
tions, earned in two wars, glittered on a velvet cushion. Four
officers wearing the brassard of the Afrika Korps, mounted
guard. They were relieved, as the time for the ceremony
approached, by four generals of the Reichswehr. In the
square outside were paraded two companies of infantry,
with a company of the Air Force and, a delicate touch, one
of the Waffen S.S. There was a military band. Thousands
of people thronged the square, amongst them many boys
and girls, to whom Rommel was always a hero. They
watched the arrival of high officers of all the services, of
representatives of the Party, of the Reich and of Germany's
allies. Last came Field-Marsha! von Rundstedt, the senior
serving officer of the German Army. As he entered the hall
A PITILESS DESTINY'
263
with RommePs family, the band played the funeral march
I from the G otter dammcrung. Field-Marshal von Rundstedt
! then delivered an oration in the name of the Fiihrer who
I ' as head of the Army, has called us here to say farewell
j to his Field-Marshal, fallen on the field of honour."
Von Rundstedt, greatly aged, it was observed, described
how Rommel had received his wounds by enemy action in
Normandy. "A pitiless destiny," he continued, "has
snatched him from us, just at the moment when the fighting
has come to its crisis." He then recited Rommel's services in
the two world wars, dwelling at length upon his campaigns
in Africa and upon the esteem in which he was held even by
the enemy. Normandy was passed over more lightly, with
the comment that he had " worked indefatigably to prepare
against the invasion " and, when the battle began, had
joined in it without any thought of his own safety.
The peaks of oratory and of irony were scaled by the
Field-Marshal, or the anonymous author of his speech, when
he declared that " this tireless fighter in the cause of the
Fiihrer and the Reich " had been " imbued with the
National-Socialist spirit" and that it was this which had
given him his force and had been the mainspring of all his
actions. He ended the passage with the immortal words :
"His heart belonged to the Fiihrer."
" In the name of Adolf Hitler " he then placed a magni-
ficent wreath at Rommel's feet, while the band played " Ich
hatt* einen Kameraden" perhaps the most moving of all
tributes from one soldier to another. Hitler was ever a sen-
timentalist.
From the town hall the coffin was taken on a gun-
carriage, dragged by one of those huge infantry half-tracks,
to the crematorium. In this case no evidence was to be left
which an exhumation might reveal. In the seats of the half-
track, young soldiers sat bolt upright, their hands folded.
The guard presented arms again, the band played, the
generals and the Party leaders stood stiffly to attention, there
264
ROMMEL
were more speeches, Rommel's decorations were carried l>e-
fore him on their velvet cushion, the Fiihrer's wreath was to
the fore.
Admiral Ruge, brought down by special train from Ber-
lin, represented the Gennan Navy. He did not know the
truth but he suspected something from von Rundstedt's
manner in the town hall and from the fact that the Field-
Marshal did not come to the crematorium. Amongst the
mourners were also Frau Speidel, Strolin and von Neurath.
It needed courage on their part to attend that ceremony.
Frau Speidel could hardly expect to see her husband alive
again for the doors of the prison in the Albrechtstrasse sel-
dom opened outwards. She and her children were in deadly
danger. Strolin had guessed the truth as soon as Frau Rom-
mel had telephoned to him on the evening of the 14th that
her husband was dead. Each morning since he had waited
at dawn for that heavy knocking that had aroused the
SpeidcLs. Was it not he who had set RommeFs feet on this
path ? Von Neurath, too, was deeply involved. The Gestapo
were certain to be present. There they were, indeed, a little
withdrawn, suave young men in civilian clothes, watching
from behind the wall. It is no wonder that Frau Speidel
seemed afraid to reply to Strolin's greeting.
Arrests at this moment would, however, have been out of
place. The producer had decided that this last act must be
played on a note of dignity and sorrow. " Deep respect for
the dead Field-Marshal " was the stage direction.
Next day Rommel's ashes were brought home to Herr-
lingen. Lying in a narrow valley with wooded hills rising
steeply on either si^e, Herrlingen is a pretty village of white
houses with red-tiled roofs and window-boxes. A clear, fast-
running stream flows through it. It looks at its best in the
spring, when the gardens are full of blossom, or, as then, in
the autumn, when the leaves have turned to golden-brown.
The white church, too, has charm, with its steep, barn-like
roof of weathered slate and its square tower, surmounted by
'A PITTLESS DESTINY
265
a faded green cupola. Restored by the first King of Wurttem-
berg in 1816, it contains monuments dating back to the
fourteenth century. Cottages cluster round it. The church-
yard, shared by Catholics and Protestants alike, though the
church is Catholic, slopes in terraces to the road, beyond
which runs the river. In the spring the graves are a mass
of pansies and wallflowers. In front of the tombstones of
their parents are small wooden crosses, miniature replicas
of those one sees in military cemeteries, commemorating the
young men of Herrlingen who fell in Africa, at Cassino, at
Riga, at Bjelgorod or, more often, simply " in dem Osten."
The churchyard is enclosed by a white wall, against which
have been planted flowering shrubs. Here, in an angle of the
wall, was the plot reserved for Rommel. From it only the
cluirch behind, the tops of the trees beyond the road and, to
the left, the grassy slopes of a bare hill, as steep as Monte
Matajur, are visible. It is a peaceful spot. Here, in the
presence of his friends and family, all that could die of
Rommel was lowered into the grave.
Though it is not an easy thing to question a woman about
her feelings as she stood by the graveside of her murdered
husband, I came to know Frau Rommel well enough to ask
her whether she had not been tempted to make a scene and
publicly to denounce his murderers. " It was hard not to,"
she said. " In the town hall, when Field-Marshal von Rund-
stedt was speaking, I longed to call out that they were all
acting a lie. But what would have been the use? They
would have hushed it up somehow or else my husband would
have been publicly disgraced. In any case he was dead. . . .
And I had to think of Manfred. I did not care any more for
myself but you must know what they did even to distant
cousins of those who were executed after July 20th . . .
Manfred would have been killed. They counted on all that :
they were very clever. No, it was my husband's decision and
I could not change it after he was gone,"
Thus all passed off according to plan. Only a hyper-
266
ROMMEL
critical observer would have asked why Marshal von Rund-
stedt stumbled in reading his speech, as though it had been
given to him only a few minutes before. Why did he make
no attempt to speak to Frau Rommel? Why, on passing
Strolin and von Neurath, did he raise his eyes and give them
so queer a look ? " He knew or guessed,'* said Strolin, " and
hated the part they had made him play." He must also have
disliked his lines. For von Rundstedt was a soldier and a
gentleman, with a long-standing contempt for Hitler and the
Party. There was a soldier of another sort who also had his
doubts. " What was the matter with that funeral ?" asked
an S,S. officer of Strolin's acquaintance. " Somehow I had
a feeling that there was something not quite right about it."
Such doubts were not general. Outside the inner circles
of the Party and of the High Command the great mass of
Germans believed that Rommel had died of his wounds and
mourned him sincerely, even in the midst of their own
troubles. I asked Captain Hartmann from Heidcnheim
whether he had had any suspicion. "None, at first," he
said. " Then, a few days after the funeral, I was out for a
walk with a friend. Suddenly he turned to me and asked if
I knew anything, as it all seemed rather queer. I began to
think. I had seen Rommel after his death, and he looked
perfectly peaceful. There were no signs of violence, no trace
of gunshot wounds or anything of that sort. But I had also
spent a whole day with him at Herrlingen three weeks be-
fore. He had then almost completely recovered from his
wounds and was mentally absolutely fit. We talked about
the first war and he could remember every name and date.
He did not seem to expect to be employed again, because
Goering and the OKH were against him. He was also con*
vinced that the war was lost. But he never said anything to
suggest that he had any fears for his own safety." Hartmann
continued to wonder whether, perhaps, there was not indeed
something rather queer. But it was not until April, 1945,
when Frau Rommel told him, that he knew the facts.
"a pitiless destiny"
267
Meanwhile life was resumed in the lonely house on the
hill with such courage as might be. There was one change
in the establishment. Frau Rommel had been given an old
soldier servant to help with the housework. He was almost
completely crippled, for most of one foot had been shot
away. He had also been severely wounded in the chest by a
shell splinter. Amongst his light duties he often answered
the telephone. He did so on October 13th, when the message
came that Generals Burgdorf and Maisel were arriving.
Shortly after the funeral, Frau Rommel was ordered to send
him back to duty. In spite of her protest that he could hardly
hobble, he was sent off and into the line near Prague. By
telephoning to an influential friend at Army Headquarters
she managed to get him back again. He had only been in
Herrlingen a short time when lie was again ordered to report
for duty with his regiment. Soon afterwards he was reported
killed. It may all have been due to the man-power shortage
or to the fact that Frau Rommel, now only the widow of a
Field-Marshal, was no longer entitled to a soldier-servant.
She still feels, however, that higher authority was strangely
interested in the fate of a crippled private soldier.
Otherwise she was unmolested. The two S.S. men whom
.she discovered one night in her garden may have been there
with no sinister intent. At any rate they went away when
she challenged them and demanded to know what they were
doing. " I was not nervous," she said, " though I quite
expected that they would come for me. particularly towards
the end when they were killing off so many people who
knew too much. I was always nervous for Manfred. It
would have been so easy to report him killed in action."
Manfred put his hand on her shouHer. " I was nervous
for you and for myself as well," he said. " I also knew too
much, and they might have thought that because I was
young I was likely to talk. The CO. of the battalion to
which I had been transferred from my flak battery was a
keen Nazi and I used to think he had his eye on me. That
268
ROMMEL
may have been my imagination. Anyway, I made up my
mind in April to get myself taken prisoner as soon as the
Americans were in Ulm and I knew that my mother was
safe."
He was lucky not to be killed in the process. While making
his way towards the French at Riedlingen on the Danube he
ran into an S.S. patrol. The S.S. were then engaged on
almost their last assignment. It was their duty and, no doubt,
their pleasure to apprehend any German soldiers whom they
found out of the line with no valid excuse and summarily
to hang them from the nearest tree. The uniformed corpses
dangling from the trees in the Black Forest and elsewhere
must have puzzled our troops. They were, in fact, amongst
the last emblems of the Nazi regime. Manfred was stopped
and questioned. He had, however, prepared his story. He
had almost fallen into the hands of the French a few minutes
before but had escaped. He was now hastening to find his
company commander. The French were in that village over
there. The S.S. let him pass. Soon afterwards Manfred was
indeed a prisoner. He was well treated. When General de
Tassigny learnt that he was his father's son he gave him a
job as orderly-interpreter and took pains to get news of his
mother.
Aldinger, who knew as much as any one, was, strangely
enough, not interfered with, though he* too, spent some
anxious hours before the surrender. Strolin also escaped
arrest. In his case the explanation seems to be that the Ges-
tapo intelligence work was inefficient and that the trail
never led directly to him. He was also so greatly respected by
the people of Stuttgart and so well known abroad that it
may have seemed wiser to leave him alone. Perhaps also
his friend the ex-Commissioner of Police may have had
something to do with it. To Strolin himself it remains a
mystery.
General SpeidePs escape was as nearly - miraculous as any-
thing can be which is the result of keen intelligence and iron
"a pitiless destiny"
269
self-control. It shows how well-armed is the philosopher
against a brutish and irrational world. When the Gestapo
questioned him in their prison on the Albrechtstrasse they
were convinced that he was guilty. He must certainly have
been on Dr. Goerdeler's list. Moreover, Goerdeler gave way
under torture and it is known that he mentioned many
names. Why, then, was General Speidel not hanged out of
hand ? " I think it was/* he told me, " because I remained
perfectly calm and argued everything out with them on a
completely logical and unemotional basis. I made them feel
I was concerned, not with my own fate but with the facts.
It was a bad moment when they confronted me with Colonel
von Hofacker of General von Stiilpnagel's staff, for I had
heard that he had been drugged or tortured into talking.
But I managed to catch his eye for a second and he pulled
himself together and said that they could not have taken
down his evidence correctly."
General Speidel survived two major " interrogations " in
the Albrechtstrasse and many minor questionings. He was
never for a second caught off his guard. He cannot possibly
have persuaded the Gestapo that he was innocent but he was
so greatly their intellectual superior that he inspired a doubt.
He even made them feel slightly silly. He thus saved his
life — for the moment. What is more, he very nearly suc-
ceeded in convincing them that, in his own words, " It was
absolutely impossible that Rommel should have had any-
thing to do with the events of July 20th, 1944." It was an
exercise in dialectics, conducted without passion and
apparently without anxiety. He could not save Rommel be-
cause Hitler's own passion and resentment were aroused.
He wanted to kill Rommel, it would seem, not so much for
being a traitor as for being right when he and Keitel and
Jodl were wrong, over Africa and again over Normandy.
For that he had come to hate him and hatred in his case had
only one form of expression. Speidel had not attracted his
hatred. It is possible that Hitler may also have felt that the
270
ROMMEL
execution of Rommel's Chief of Staff would arouse suspi-
cions about the elaborate farce which he had staged to cover
the removal of Rommel himself.
For seven months, then, General Speidel, or Dr. Speidel
the philosopher, defeated the ends of Nazi justice. He was
not, of course, set free. The Gestapo did not surrender their
victims so easily and may still have hoped that the incon-
trovertible evidence would turn up. In the last weeks of the
war Speidel was still in custody with other suspects at Urna,
near Lake Constance. There was a special guard under an
S.S. officer and Speidel had little doubt that his orders were
to see that they did not fall into the hands of the Allies alive.
The military side of his brain now came into action. With
the connivance of the commandant of the prison, who was
friendly, he forged a telegram purporting to come from
Himmlcr himself. It instructed the S.S. officer to be ready
to move the prisoners to a safer place. He was to telephone
to Himmler's headquarters for further instructions. The
telephone in the prison was out of order. The S.S. officer
had, therefore, to go elsewhere to telephone. While he was
away, the commandant of the prison permitted the
prisoners, General Speidel and more than twenty others, to
escape. They took refuge with a Roman Catholic priest,
who concealed them. Before they could be found, the Allied
troops had overrun the area.
This is almost the end of the Rommel story. I must, how-
ever, go back a few weeks to what still seems to me the
strangest chapter in it. Early in March, 1945, when his
world was visibly falling about Hitler's ears, Frau Rommel
received a letter dated March 7. It was from Der General"
baurat fiir die Gcstaltung der Deutschen Krie gerfriedhofe
or, as we should say, the War Graves Commission.
" The Fiihrer has given me an order," it ran, " to erect
a monument to the late Field-Marshal Rommel, and I have
asked a number of sculptors to submit designs. I enclose
some of them. At this moment it would not be possible to
"a pitiless destiny" 271
erect this monument or to transport it. One can only make
a model. ... I think that the Field-Marshal should be
represented by a lion. One artist has depicted a dying lion,
another a lion weeping, the third a lion about to spring. . . .
I prefer the last myself but if you prefer a dying lion, that,
too, could be arranged.
"The slab can be made immediately, as I have special
permission from Reichminister Speer. Generally monuments
cannot now be made in stone. But in this special case it can
be made and quickly shipped. . . ."
To this letter Frau Rommel sent no reply.
APPENDIX
ROMMEL'S RECORD OF SERVICE
W EH RP ASS
19- 7-10 — 3- 10-15 Inf* R e K« I2 4
1- 3-14 — 31- 7-14 Z. Fcld Art. Reg. 19
4-1 0-15 — 10- 1- 18 Wurttemberg Geb. Batt.
11- 1-18 — 20 12-18 Gen. Kdo. 64
29- 7-18 — 19- 8-18 Z. 4/Landw. Fulda Reg. 6 d, Bayr. L.
Division
20- 8-18 — 8-9-18 Z. 1 Landst. Fussart. Batt. XX A.K.
21- 12-18 — 24- 6-19 Inf. Reg. 124
25- 1-19 — 31-12-20 R.W. Sch. Reg. 25 (Schwab. Gemund)
1- 1-21-30- 9-29 Inf. Reg. 13 (Stuttgart)
1-10-29 —30- 9-33 Inf. Schule Dresden
1-10-33 — 14- I_ 35 ////Inf. Reg. 17 (Jaegar Goslar)
, 5- ! "35 —21- 1-35 R.W. Ministerium
25- 1-35— H-io-35 ////Batt. J.R.Go.
1 5- 1 0-35 — 9- u -38 Kriegsschule Potsdam
10-11-38 Kommandeur der Kriegsschule W. Neu-
stadt
23- 8-39 — 14- 2-40 Fuehrerhauptq. Unterstab.
15- 2-40 — 14- 2-41 Stab. 7 Panzer Div.
15- 2-41 — 14- 8-41 Befchlshaber der Deutschen Truppen in
Libyen
15- 8-41 — 21- 4-42 Kommando der Panzergruppe Afrika
22- 1-42 — 24-10-42 Oberkommando d. Pz. Armee Afrika
25-10-42 — 22- 2-43 Oberkommando d. Deutsch. Ital. Panzer-
armee
23- 2-43 — 13- 5-43 Oberkommando d. Heeresgruppe Afrika
14- 5-43 — 14- 7-43 Arbcitsstab Gen. Fcldmarschall Rommel
15- 7-43 — 3- 9-44 Oberkommando d. Heeresgruppe B.
4- 9-44 — 14-10-44 Fuehrer Res OKH (V)
272
APPENDIX TWO
THE ROMMEL PAPERS
hen this book was already printed and about to be bound,
VY I heard from Manfred Rommel that he had succeeded in
recovering some of his father's papers which, because of their
outspoken criticisms of Hitler and the German High ^Command,
had been hidden before Field- Marshal Rommel's death lest they
should fall into the hands of the Gestapo* I flew to Germany
next day and at Herrlingcn was able to examine part of a mass
of diaries, narratives of battles and military appreciations, written
or dictated at odd moments of leisure during the war, when
Rommel was in hospital at Semmering in the summer of 1942
and in the interval between his relinquishing command in Tunis
and taking over Army Group B. The extracts, which, thanks to
the courtesy of the Rommel family and the eleventh-hour efforts
of my publishers, I have been able to include here represent
only a very small portion of what I have seen and a still smaller
portion of the whole. Apart from their intrinsic interest, they
serve to show that Rommel had a gift of direct, clear and forceful
expression well in keeping with his character as a commander in
«*>ar. The papers are obviously of great importance to all students
of the North African campaign and it is hoped that an English
translation of them may before long be published. I shall be
happy if my own book, with these additional pages, helps to call
attention to it.
D. Y.
«73
THE RULES OF DESERT WARFARE
A paper prepared by Rommel as an introduction to his
account of the war in Africa
Of all the theatres of operations, North Africa was probably the
one where the war took on its most modern shape. Here were
opposed fully motorised formations for whose employment the flat
desert, free of obstructions, offered hitherto unforeseen possibilities.
Here only could the principles of motorised and tank warfare, as
they had been taught before 1939, be fully applied and, what was
more important, further developed. Here only did the pure tank
battle between large armoured formations actually occur. Even
though the struggle may have occasionally hardened into static
warfare, in its more important stages, in 1941-42 during the
Cunningham-Ritchie offensive and in the summer of 1942 up to
the capture of Tobruk, it remained based on the principle of
complete mobility.
Militarily, this was entirely new ground, for our offensive in
Poland and the West had been against opponents who, in their
operations, had constantly to consider their non-motoriscd infantry
divisions and whose freedom of decision was thus disastrously
limited, particularly in retreat. They were, indeed, often obliged
by this preoccupation to adopt measures which were quite un-
suitable for holding up our advance. After our break-through in
France, the enemy infantry divisions were overrun and outflanked
by our motorised forces. When this happened, the enemy
operational reserves had to allow themselves to be ground to pieces
by our attacking forces, often in tactically unfavourable positions,
in an endeavour to gain time for the retreat of the infantry.
Against a motorised and armoured enemy, non-mot orised
infantry divisions are of value only in prepared positions. Once
such positions have been pierced or outflanked and they are forced
to retreat from them they become helpless victims of the motorised
enemy. In extreme cases they can do no more than hold on in
274
THE RULES OF DESERT WARFARE 275
: their positions to the last round. In retreat they cause tremendous
embarrassment since, as mentioned above, motorised formations
have to be employed to gain time [to extricate them]. I myself
had to submit to this experience during the retreat of the Axis
forces from Cyrcnaica in the winter of 1941-42 because the whole
of the Italian and a large part of the German infantry, including
the majority of what was to become the 90th Light Division, had
no vehicles. Part of them had to be carried by a shuttle service
of supply columns, part had to march. It was only thanks to the
prowess of my armoured formations that the retreat of the Italo-
German infantry could be covered, for the fully motorised British
were in hot pursuit. Similarly, Graziani's failure can be attributed
mainly to the fact that the Italian army, (he greater part of it not
motorised, was helpless in the open desert against the weak but
nevertheless fully motorised British forces, while the Italian armour,
though too weak to oppose the British with any hope of success,
was compelled to accept battle and allow itself to be destroyed
in defence of the infantry.
Out of the purely motorised form of warfare which developed in
Libya and Egypt there arose certain laws, fundamentally different
from those [applicable] in other theatres. They will be the
standard for the future, which will belong to full motorised
formations.
In the flat desert country, so well suited to motor transport,
the encirclement of a fully motorised enemy produces the
following results:
(a) The enemy is placed in the worst tactical situation
imaginable, since fire can be brought to bear on him from
all sides. Even when he is enveloped only on three sides his
position is tactically untenable.
(b) When the envelopment is completed, he is tactically
compelled to evacuate the area which he occupies.
The encirclement of the enemy and his subsequent destruction
in the pocket, can, however, seldom be the primary aim of an
operation but is usually only an indirect object, (or a fully
motorised force whose organisational structure is intact will
normally and in suitable country be able to break out at any time
through an improved defensive ring. Thanks to motorisation, the
commander of the encircled force will be in a position to con-
876 ROMMEL
centrate his main effort unexpectedly against a favourable point
and force his way through. Time and again this was demonstrated
in the desert.
It follows, then, that encircled enemy forces can. only be
destroyed :
(a) When they are not motorised or have been rendered
immobile by lack of petrol or when they include non-mobile
elements which have to be considered.
(b) When they arc badly led or are deliberately , sacrificed
to save other formations.
(c) When their fighting strength is already broken and
signs of disintegration are evident.
With the exception of cases {a) and (b), which occurred very
frequently in other theatres of war, the encirclement of the enemy
and his subsequent destruction in the pocket can be attempted
only if he has first been so heavily engaged in open battle that the
organic cohesion of the forces lias been lost. Battles which aim at
the destruction of the enemy power of resistance should be con-
ceived as battles of attrition. In motorised warfare, material
attrition and the disruption of the organic cohesion of the
opposing army must be the direct aim of the planning.
Tactically, the battle of attrition is fought with the highest
possible measure of mobility. The following points require
particular attention:
(a) One should endeavour to concentrate one's own forces
both in space and time, while at the same time seeking to split
the opposing forces and to destroy diem at different times.
(b) Supply lines are particularly vulnerable as all petrol and
ammunition, essential requirements for the battle, must pass
along them. Hence, one should protect one's own by all
possible means and seek to confuse, or better still, to cut the
enemy's. Operations in the opposing supply area will cause
the enemy immediately to break off the battle, elsewhere
since, as already shown, supplies are the basis of the battle
and thus must be given priority of protection.
(c) The tank force is the backbone of the motorised army.
Everything turns on the tanks, the other formations are mere
ancillaries. War of attrition against the enemy tank units
must, therefore, be carried on as far as possible by one's own
THE RULES OF DESERT WARFARE 377
tank destruction units. One's own tank forces must deal the
last blow.
(d) Results of reconnaissance must reach the commander
in the shortest possible time and he must then take immediate
decisions and put them into effect as quickly as possible.
Speed of reaction in Command decisions decides the batde.
It is, therefore, essentia) that commanders of motorised forces
should be as near as possible to their troops and in the closest
signal communication with them.
(«) Speed of one's own movement and organisational
cohesion of the force are decisive factors and require particular
attention. Any sign of confusion must be dealt with as quickly
as possible by reorganisation.
(/) Concealment of one's own intentions is of the greatest
importance, in order to provide conditions of surprise for
one's own operations and thus enable one to exploit the time
required by the enemy command to react. Deception
measures of all kinds should be encouraged, not least to make
the enemy commander uncertain and compel him to move
with hesitation and caution.
(g) Not until the enemy has been thoroughly beaten should
one attempt to exploit success by overrunning and destroying
large parts of his disorganised forces. Here again speed is
everything. The enemy must never be allowed time to
reorganise. The fastest possible regrouping for the pursuit,
the fastest possible organisation of supply is essential for the
attacking forces.
In the technical and organisational fields the following points
must be given particular consideration in desert warfare:
(a) From the tank one must demand, above all, manoeuvr-
ability, speed and a long-range gun, for the side which has
the more powerful gun has the longer arm and can the earlier
engage the enemy. Weight of armour cannot make up for
lack of gun-power, since it can only be provided at the
expense of manoeuvrability and speed, both of which are
indispensable tactical requirements.
(&) The artillery, too, must have great range and, above
all, be mobile in the highest degree, including its ammunition
in large quantities.
ROMMEL
(c) The infantry serves only to occupy and hold positions
designed to prevent the enemy from particular operations or
to force him into them. Once this object is attained it must
be possible to move the infantry quickly and employ them
elsewhere. They must, therefore, be mobile and be provided
with equipment which enables them to take up defensive
positions as quickly as possible at tactically important points
of the battlefield.
It is my experience that bold decisions give the best promise of
success. One must differentiate between operational and tactical
boldness and a military gamble. A bold operation is one which
has no more than a chance of success but which, in case of failure,
leaves one with sufficient forces in hand to be able to cope with
any situation. A gamble, on the other hand, is* an operation which
can lead cither to victory or to the destruction of one's own forces.
Situations can arise where even a gamble may be justified, as when,
in the normal course of events, defeat would be merely a question
of time, when the gaining of time is pointless and the only chance
lies in an operation of great risk. The only time that a commander
can calculate the course of a battle in advance is when his forces
are so superior to the enemy's that his victory is self-evident from
the start. Then the problem is no longer one of " what with " but
only of " how." But even in such situations 1 think it is better
to operate on the grand scale rather than to creep about the
battlefield anxiously taking all conceivable security measures
against possible and impossible enemy operations.
Normally there is no ideal solution but each possible course has
its advantages and disadvantages. One must select that which
teems the best from the widest point of view and then pursue it
and accept the consequences. Any compromise is bad.
One of the first lessons which I drew from my experience of
motorised warfare was that speed of operation and quick reaction
of the Command were the decisive factors. The troops must be
able to operate at the highest speed and in complete co-ordination.
One must not be satisfied here with any normal average but must
always endeavour to obtain the maximum .performance, for the
side which makes the greater effort is the faster and the faster side
THE RULES OF DESERT WARFARE 279
wins the battle. Officers and N.C.O.s must, therefore, constant!/
train their troops with this in view.
In my opinion the duties of a Commander-in-Chief are not
limited to his staff work. He must also take an interest in the
details of Command and frequently busy himself in the front line,
for the following reasons:
(a) Exact execution of the plans of the Commander-in-Chief
and his staff is of the greatest importance. It is a mistake to
assume that every local commander will make as much of a
situation as there is to be made out of it. Most of them soon
succumb to a certain need for rest. Then it is simply reported
that this or that can't be done for some reason or another —
such reasons arc always easy enough to think up. People of
this kind must be made to feel the authority of the Com-
mander-in-Chief and be shaken out of their apathy by him.
The Commander-in-Chief must be the driving motor of the
battle. One must always have to reckon with his appearance
in personal control.
(b) The Commander-in-Chief must continually endeavour
to keep his troops acquainted with the latest tactical know-
ledge and experience and ensure that they are acted upon.
He must see to it that his subordinates are trained according
to the most modern developments. The best form of
" welfare *' for the troops is a superlative state of training,
for this saves unnecessary casualties.
(c) For the Commander-in-Chief, too, it is a great ad-
vantage to know the front and to have a detailed knowledge
of the problems of his subordinates. Only in this way can he
keep his ideas continually up-to-date and adapt them to the .
conditions of the moment. If, on the other hand, he conducts
the battle as though he were playing chess, he will inevitably
become inflexible in his theories. The best results are obtained
by the commander whose ideas develop freely from the con-
ditions around him and have not previously been channelled
into any fixed pattern.
(d) The Commander-in-Chief must have contact with his
troops. He must be able to fed and think with them. The
soldier must have confidence in him. In this connection there
$8o ROMMEL
is one cardinal principle to remember: one must never
simulate a feeling for the troops which in fact one does not
have. The ordinary soldier has a surprisingly good nose for
what is genuine and what is fake.
ALLIED AIR SUPREMACY
Writing after the battle of Alam-el-Halfa, Rommel stresses the
threat to the Axisjorces of the growing Allied air superiority
■
The enemy will conduct the war of attrition from the air. His
bombs will be particularly effective against the motoriscd forces,
standing without cover in the open desert. Their vehicles, tanks
and guns will ofTcr a magnificent target lor bombers and low-
Hying aircraft, whether on the march, in the attack assembly area
or in the attack itself. In due course the enemy will be able to give
our forces such a pounding that they will be virtually rendered
unfit lor action — and that without his having made any appreci-
able expenditure of the strength of his own troops. From the
Command point of view he will gain the following advantages:
(a) He will be able to secure complete aerial reconnaissance
reports.
(b) He will be able to operate much more freely and boldly
since, in an emergency, his Air Force will be able to break up
the approach march and assembly and, indeed, any operation
of his opponents or to delay them until he has taken effective
coun ter-measures.
(c) The slowing down of his opponent's movements will be
accompanied by the speeding up of his own. Since speed is
one of the most important factors in desert warfare, the effect
of this development is easy to foresee.
Moreover, whoever has command of the air is in a position to
inflict such damage on his opponent's supply columns that serious
shortages will soon make themselves felt. By maintaining a con-
tinuous watch over the roads leading to the front he can stop
ALLIED AIR SUPREMACY
completely all supply traffic in daylight and restrict it to the hours
of darkness, thus occasioning an irretrievable loss of time.
For us, therefore, it was fundamentally necessary to dispose of
such stronger air forces as would give us, if not equality in the air,
at least something approaching equality, . . . Any one who has to
fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy with
complete air superiority, fights like a savage against modern
European troops, under the same operational and tactical
handicaps and with the same chances of success.
We had now to try to put our defence against the expected
British attack (the El Alamein offensive] into such a form that the
British air superiority would have the least possible effect. For the
first and most serious danger was that which threatened us from
the air. As the result, we could no longer put the main burden of
the defensive battle on to the motorised lbrmations since these, as
has been shown, were too vulnerable to attack from the air.
Instead, we had to try to resist the enemy in fixed positions, con-
structed for defence against the most modern weapons of war. We
had to accept the fact that in future the enemy would be able to
delay our operations at will by strong air attacks by day and
similar attacks at night with the aid of parachute Hares. Ex-
perience had taught us that no man could be expected to stay in
his vehicle and drive on when attacked by enemy bombers and
that it was useless to try to work to a time-table. Our positions
had to be constructed so strongly that they could be held by their
local garrisons independently and over a long period, without
support of operational reserves, until, in spite of the delays caused
uy the R.A.F., reinforcements could arrive.
British air superiority threw to the winds all our operational
and tactical rules, which hitherto had been followed with such
success, simply because they could no longer be applied. Without
strong air forces of our own, there was no answer to the problem
of dealing with the enemy air superiority. The strength of the
Anglo-American Air Force was, in all the battles to come, the
deciding factor.
THE BATTLES OF 1942
RommeVs account of the battles of the spring and summer of
1942 runs to such length that it is impossible to give it lure, in
the limited space available, as a connected narrative. J have,
therefore, selected passages which throw light on his military
thinking, on his relation with the German High Command, on
his judgment of his opponents and on his plans, vetoed by Hitler,
for escaping complete disaster in North Africa. Such passages
have not been summarised but are given in his own words with
occasional interpolations in square brackets. It will be seen
that the views attributed to Rommel in the book itself are con-
firmed by his own writings. The words " operational '* and
*' operations,* 1 which occur frequently in the text, have a special
significance in German military phraseology, not easy to express
exactly in English, Hie field of " operations " lies between
strategy and tactics. Rommel himself, until the final stages, was
an ** operational " commander in North Africa, as was General
Montgomery, whereas Generals Wavell, Auchinleck and Alex-
ander had responsibilities in tlie sphere of strategy. " Operational
reserves ** are the reserves available to the commander in the
field. An " operation " is used by Rommel to describe a dynamic
movement of the bulk of his motorised forces
After the end of our counter-offensive, which had led, at the
beginning of 194s, to the reconquest of Cyrenaica, serious
difficulties arose over supplies.
The reason, apart from the scant attention given to the African
theatre of war by the German High Command, who failed to
recognise its immense importance, was the half-hearted conduct
of the war at sea by the Italians, whereas the British Navy was
very active and the R.A.F. caused us tremendous trouble.
The German High Command, to which I was subordinate,
continued to ignore the importance of the African theatre. They
did not realise that in the Near East we were able, with relatively
small means, to achieve successes which* in their strategic and
28a
THE BATTLES OF 1 942
283
economic value, would have far surpassed the conquest of the
Don Bend. Ahead of us were territories containing an enormous
wealth of raw materials, Africa, for example, and the Middle East,
which could have freed us from all of our anxities about oil. The
reinforcement of my army by a few German motoriscd divisions
would have been sufficient to bring about the complete defeat of
the entire British forces in the Near East.
It was not to be. Our demands for reinforcement by additional
formations were not granted. The decision was explained by the
statement that the Eastern From required such vast quantities ot
transport that the creation of further motoriscd units for Africa was
quite out of the question in view of Germany's limited productive
capacity. Quite clearly some people in the High Command
believed all along that Africa was in any case a " lost cause," as
had been unequivocally stated as far back as 1941- It was
apparently their opinion that the investment of large quantities
of material in Africa would pay no dividends. A regrettably
short-sighted and misguided view!
For the supply difficulties which they were anxious to describe
as " insuperable " were far from being so. All that was wanted
was a roan with real personality to deal with these questions in
Rome, someone with the authority and drive to tackle the pro
blems involved. This would undoubtedly have led to friction in
certain Italian circles but this could have been overcome by a
mission which was not encumbered with political functioas. Our
Government's weak policy towards the Italian Stale seriously
damaged the German-Italian cause in North Africa.
The heavy burden placed upon German material resources by
the Eastern Front was certainly not to be underestimated,
particularly alter we had lost the greater part of our equipment
there in the winter of 1941-42. But in spite of all this I am firmly
convinced that, considering the tremendous possibilities offered by
the North African theatre, there were undoubtedly less important
sectors of the front which could have spared some mechanised
divisions. It can truthfully be said that there was a lack of
understanding of the situation and hence of goodwill.
The consequences were serious. For a year and a half, up to
the moment when our strength failed in front of El Alamein, we
had, with only three German divisions, whose fighting strength
284 ROMMEL
was often ridiculously small, kept the British in Africa busy and
inflicted on them many a heavy defeat. After the loss of Africa
an increasingly large number of German divisions had to face the
British and Americans, until finally some 70 divisions had to be
thrown into the battle in Italy and France. Given six or seven
German motorised divisions we could, in the summer of 1942, have
so thoroughly mauled the British that the threat from the south
would have been eliminated for a long time. With a certain
amount of goodwill, supplies for these formations could have been
organised in sufficient quantities. Later on, in Tunis, when it was,
of course, already too late, it proved perfectly possible suddenly
to double the amount of our supplies. But at the time it had at
last come to be realised that we were up to our necks in trouble
in the Mediterranean theatre.
Earlier, after a period during which, out of total supply require-
ments of 60,000 tons only 1 8,000 tons reached the German army
on African soil, the situation temporarily changed, thanks to the
initiative of Field- Marshal Kcsselring, whose air forces were able,
during die spring of 1942, to gain superiority in the Central
Mediterranean. In particular, the heavy Axis air raids against
Malta contributed greatly to the fact that, for some time, the
threat to the sea routes was as good as eliminated. It was only
because of this that it was possible to increase the flow of material
to Tripoli, Benghazi and Derna.
Nevertheless it was obvious that the British Eighth Army would
be reinforced more rapidly than ourselves. The greatest efforts
had been made by the British Government to provide the Eighth
Army with all the material they could lay their hands on. Large
convoys arrived one after the other in the Egyptian ports, bringing
war material from England or America round the Cape. Naturally
this 12,000 miles voyage, which the British transports could make
at the most only a couple of times a year, involved tremendous
problems for the enemy staff, already struggling with the serious
problem created by the activity of our U-boats. But in spite of
all this, the British Navy and Merchant Marine were able to
maintain over this huge distance supplies to the British forces in
the Near East on a scale far superior to our own. Petrol, moreover,
could be obtained in abundance from the refineries of the Near
East. Only rarely did the British supply ports become the target
THE BATTLES OF I 94 2 *8 5
of serious German bombing attacks. From these ports the British
could bring up their supplies to the front by three routes :
r. A well-constructed railway ran from the Suez area to
the outer perimeter of Tobruk.
2. The British Navy had organised coastal shipping in an
admirable manner and in Tobruk had one of the best ports
in North Africa.
3. A well-built road sufficiently wide for supply columns
to pass was available.
Above all, there were people on the British side with great
influence who were doing everything they could to organise the
supply service in the most efficient manner possible. Our enemy
benefited by the fact that North Africa was the principal theatre
of war for the British Empire and was therefore regarded as the
most important by the British Government as well as from the
fact that Britain had a first-class, powerful navy of her own while
we had to deal with unreliable Italian naval staffs.
It was obvious to us that the British would try, with all the
means at their disposal, to destroy my army as soon as they felt
themselves strong enough to attempt it. Our southern flank lay
wide open. Ritchie would have a great number of operational
choices. Our supply lines would be constantly threatened. If
we were compelled to withdraw owing to the danger of being
outflanked we would be in very serious difficulties, for most of
my Italian divisions were not motorised. But Ritchie was not to
have the chance to exploit his many opportunities, for I had
decided to anticipate his attack.
■
■
British Positions in the Marmarica
The basic British plan for the defence of the Marmarica was
characterised by their efforts to impose upon the attacker a form
of warfare which was better suited to the British Command than
manoeuvring in the open desert. Technically the execution of this
plan was excellent, but the British approached the solution of the
problem from false premises. In North Africa, a rigid system of
defence in any position with an open southern flank was bound to
lead to disaster. In these , circumstances a defensive battle could
only be Successful if it were conducted as an operation. Naturally
286
ROMMEL
fortified positions might also be of great value — if they deprived
the enemy of the chance of any particular operational action. But
it was essentia] that they should not be occupied by the force
destined for the operational defence.
The plan which my staff and I worked out gave the possibility
of a decision in the most favourable circumstances. But the fate
of my army did not by any means depend on the success of this
conception alone. Following my usual practice, I calculated from
the beginning on the basis that things might not go according to
plan. As far as could humanly be foreseen the situation at the start
of the battle would be far from unfavourable. With full confidence
in our troops, their excellent tactical training and experience in
improvisation, we approached the battle full of optimism.
Plan of Attack
The opening move of the offensive was to be made by a frontal
attack of the Italian infantry divisions occupying the Gazala
positions against the 50th British Division and the South Africans.
A powerful force of artillery was earmarked to support this attack.
The impression was to be created both by day and by night that
tank assembly positions existed behind the front. For this purpose
tanks and lorries were to be driven round in circles in this area.
The British Command was 10 he made to expert our main attack
in the northern and central part of the Gazala position. What we
wanted to achieve was for the British tank formations to deploy
behind the infantry on this sector of die front. To the British
Command, the idea of a German frontal attack against the Gazala
position could not have appeared too far-fetched as it was by no
means impossible that we should prefer such an attack to the risky
right hook round Bir Hacheim. If our attempts to mislead the
British into concentrating their entire tank forces there should fail,
then we hoped that they would send at least part of their tank
brigades into that sector, and thereby split their striking force.
During daylight hours all movement of my motorised forces was
to be directed towards the point of attack of the Italian infantry.
But after nightfall the motorised group was to drive into its
assembly area. This group consisted of the German Afrika Korps
with the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions, the 20th Italian Motorised
THE BATTLES OF 1 942
287
{ orps and the 90th Light Division with the three reconnaissance
units. The beginning of the advance, which was to take the form
of an enveloping attack on Bir Hachcim, was fixed for 2200 hours.
From there the German Afrika Korps and 20th Italian Corps with
the Arietc Tank Division and Trieste Motoriscd Division were lo
push on to the coast via Acroma, in order to cut the supply line
and smash the British divisions in the Gazala position, together
with the tank forces which were there assembled.
The 90th Light Division was ordered to push into the El Adcm-
El Hamed area together with the three reconnaissance units in
order to prevent the withdrawal of the Tobruk garrison and the
bringing up of reinforcements into the Acroma area. In addition
the British were to be cut off from the extensive supply depots
which they had established in the area east of Tobruk. In order
to simulate the existence of massed tank forces in that area the
90th Light Division had been equipped with lorries on which were
mounted aero-engines fitted with propellers, which were intended,
by stirring up large quantities of dust, to suggest the approach of
strong tank forces. We wanted to keep the British forces in that
area from intervening in the Acroma battle, so long as our tank
units were trying to achieve a decision there.
Following upon the destruction of the British forces in the
Marmarica we had planned for a rapid conquest of the fortress
of Tobruk. My freedom of operation had been limited by the
Duce to the area bounded by the Egyptian frontier.
It had actually been intended that Malta should be taken by
Julian and German parachute and landing forces before the
offensive started but for some unaccountable reason our High
Command abandoned this scheme. Unfortunately, my request
to have this attractive little job entrusted to my own army had
been turned down back in the spring. Consequently, in view of
the steady increase in British war potential, we fixed the date of
the attack for May 26th, 1942.
Battles for Gazala Position
This covers the period from May 26th to June 15th. During
these three weeks the battle of attrition was waged in the Western
Desert in its most ruthless form. The battle opened very badly
288
ROMMEL
for us but in the fluctuating fighting which ensued, we succeeded,
partly by means of attacks with limited objectives, partly by means
of our defence, in defeating the superior British formations, in
spite of the courage which their troops displayed.
In view of the superior strength of the British forces this victory
of my German-Italian troops came as a complete surprise to world
opinion. The dispositions of my adversary, Lieut.-General Ritchie,
were severely criticised. Was their defeat in fact caused by the
mistakes of the British commander? After the battle I came across
an article by the British military critic, Liddcll Hart, which
ascribed the shortcomings of the British Command during the
African campaign to the fact that the British generals stuck too
closely to infantry warfare. I had the same impression. The
British Command had not drawn the inferences which it should
have drawn from the defeat of 1941-42. Prejudice against innova-
tions is a typical characteristic of an Officer Corps which has grown
up in a well-tried and proved system. That was the reason why the
Prussian Army was defeated by Napoleon. The same phenomenon
demonstrated itself during the war amongst both British and
German officers, who, in their preoccupation with complicated
theories, had lost the ability to adapt themselves to the realities of
the situation. A military doc- trine had been worked out down to
the last detail, and it was now regarded as the sum of military
wisdom. In their opinion, only that military thinking which
followed their standardised rules was acceptable. Everything out-
side these rules they regarded as a gamble and, if it succeeded, the
result of luck and accident. This attitude of mind created
prejudice, the consequences of which were quite incalculable.
For even military rules are affected by technical development.
What was valid in 1914 is valid to-day only where the greater part
of the formations engaged on both sides, or at least on the side
which is attacked, consists of non-motorised infantry units. In
this situation the armoured troops still play the part of the cavalry
whose task it is to outrun and cut off the infantry. Quite different
rules apply in a battle which is being fought by fully motorised
adversaries on both sides, as I have already explained. However
valuable it may be to base one's actions upon tradition in the field
of soldierly ethics, this attitude must be condemned in the field of
military science. For in these days it is not left to the military
rilE BATTLES OF 1 942
289
leaders alone to think up new methods, thereby rendering others
valueless; today the possibilities of warfare are constantly being
changed by technical progress. Hence, the modern army com-
mander must be free of all excessive attachment to routine methods
and must have an extensive understanding of technical matters.
He must be ready to adapt his ideas to the situation at any given
moment and to turn the whole structure of his thinking inside out,
if conditions should make it necessary. I think that my adversary,
General Ritchie, like many generals of the older school, had not
completely realised the consequences which followed from the
fully motoriscd conduct of operations and from the open terrain
of the desert. In spite of the excellent and detailed way in which
his plans had been worked out, they were bound to fail, for they
were in effect a compromise.
In spite of the dangerous situation which existed on the evening
of May 27th, which set us serious problems, I was full of hope
about the further course of the battle. For Ritchie had thrown his
armoured formations into the battle separately and at different
times, thereby giving us the chance of engaging them each time
with just about enough of our own tanks. This splitting up of the
British armoured brigades was incomprehensible. In my opinion
the sacrifice of the 7th British Armoured Division south and south-
east of Bir-cl-Harmat served no operational purpose whatever for
it made no difference whether my Panzer division were engaged
there or at the Trigh-el-Abd, where the remainder of the British
armoured Ibrces did eventually enter the battle. The principal aim
Oj> the British should have been to bring all their available
armoured formations into action at one and the same time. They
should never have let themselves be misled into splitting up their
forces before the battle or during our feint against the Gaza I a
position. The fact that their units were fully motorised would have
enabled them to cross the battlefield at great speed, if and wherever
danger had threatened. Mobile warfare in the desert has often
and rightly been compared to a batde at sea where, in the same
way, it is wrong to attack piecemeal, leaving part of the ships in
port during the battle.
[Here follows a detailed account oj events up to the evening of May 2<jtfu]
ROMMEL
Breaking through the Minefields
At first light on May 30th each of the divisions moved into the
area assigned to it and took up a defensive position. During these
movements we noticed the presence of strong British forces with
tanks in the Ualeb area. This was the strengthened 150th British
Brigade from the 50th Division. In the meantime part of the
10th Italian Corps had succeeded in crossing the British minefields
and establishing a bridgehead on the eastern side of them, although
the lanes the Italians cleared through the minebelts were subjected
to heavy British artillery (ire, which had a most upsetting effect
on our moving columns. All the same, by noon contact had been
established between the striking force and ihe 10th Italian Corps
and thus a direct route opened to the west for supplies and rein-
forcements. During the day the British brigade was encircled in
Got-el-Ualcb.
In the afternoon I drove through the minefield to the 10th Corps
headquarters for a meeting with Field-Marshal Kessclring; the
Italian Corps Commander and Major von Below, the Ftihrer's
adjutant, and told them my plans. The British minefield was to
be shielded by the Afrika Korps from all attacks by British forma-
tions from the north-east. Meanwhile I intended to smash the
whole of the southern part of the Gazala position and subsequently <
to resume the offensive. The operation would include the destrue- ]
tion of, first, the 150th British Brigade at Ualeb, and then the j
1st French Brigade in Bir Hacheim.
The enemy had only hesitatingly followed up our withdrawal.
The falling back of the German-Italian formations had evidently
come as a surprise to him and besides this the British Command
never reacted very quickly. Already on the morning of May 30th
we had noticed the British taking up positions with 280 tanks on
the east and 1 50 infantry tanks on the north of our front. We kept
waiting for the British to strike a heavy blow. But in the morning
only a few British attacks were launched on the Ariete and beaten
off by the Italians and there were some slight British advances on
the rest of the front. 57 British tanks were shot up that day.
In the afternoon I myself reconnoitred the possibilities of an
attack against the forces occupying Got-el-Ualeb and I detailed
part of the Afrika Korps, part of the 90th Light Division and the
THE BATTLES OE 1 942
291
Italian ** Trieste " Division for an attack on the following morning
against the British positions there.
The attacking formations advanced against the British 150th
Brigade on the morning of May 31st. Yard by yard the German-
Italian units fought their way forward against the toughest British
resistance imaginable. The British defence was conducted with
considerable skill. As usual the British fought to the last round
of ammunition. They used a new anti-tank gun of 57 mm. calibre.
Nevertheless by the evening of the 31st we had penetrated a con-
siderable distance into the British positions. On the next day the
British occupying forces were to receive their final knock-out.
Again our infantry, after heavy Stuka attacks, burst against the
British positions. On this day I accompanied the attacking troops
with Colonel Westphal. He was unfortunately severely wounded
the same day in a surprise British mortar attack and had to be
taken back to Europe, so that I had to do without him in the days
that followed. Tins was a bitter loss. For me his assistance had
always been of outstanding value, because of his extraordinary
knowledge and experience and readiness to take decisions.
The attack continued. One after another the sections of the
elaborately constructed British defence system were taken by my
troops, and by early afternoon the position was in our hands. The
last British resistance was at an end. We tooK 3000 prisoners, and
destroyed or captured 101 tanks and scout-cars as well as 124 guns
of every kind.
Ihe British Soldier
[In describing the operations of the next few days, Rommel touches on
the merits and demerits of his opponents. J
That day the Guards Brigade had evacuated Knightsbridgc,
after the area had been subjected ail the morning to the combined
fire of every piece of artillery we could bring to bear. This brigade
was practically a living embodiment of the positive and negative
qualities of the British soldier. An extraordinary bravery and
toughness was combined with a rigid inability to move quickly.
[After describing the capture of Tobruk, Rommel touches on his decision
to advance into Egypt, contrary to the Duce's original orders.]
This was a plan which might perhaps succeed. It was an
ROMMEL
experiment. The operation would not entail any risk to my army's
safety. As things were we could have defended ourselves with
success in every possible situation during our advance.
Later this advance came in for some criticism. It was "said that
the supply columns available in North Africa would not in the
long run have been able to manage the long supply-route from
Benghazi to El Alamein and that the British would have greatly
benefited from the shorter supply route to their front from Port
Said. To this there are the following counter-arguments:
(a) British superiority at Solium would have had an even
greater effect than at El Alamein. The enemy could have
outflanked our forces by deep detours and destroyed our
motorised divisions with their armoured formations which, at
the time of El Alamein, were heavily superior not only in
numbers, as before, but also in quality. The prospect of
withdrawing our non-motorised infantry from the Solium
front would have been even worse than from El Alamein.
During the El Alamein battle they represented the bulk of the
army, but they would have had no chance of effective action
at Solium, where the positions they occupied demanded no
break-through attempts from the enemy but only an easy
outflanking movement. They would have proved either an
easy prey for the British motorised units or a burden in a
withdrawal. Of course our supply columns had to cope with
serious difficulties during the advance into Egypt. But it was
essential to demand the same efforts from the supply staffs
in Rome as from the tank crews and infantry, overtired after
three weeks of fighting. Thus, supply by sea to the harbours
in the forward area should have been improvised as it bad
always been promised would be done in these circumstances.
When I gave the order for the thrust into Egypt, I assumed
that the fact that final success in Egypt had been brought so
close would have spurred the Italian High Command on to
making some sort of increase in their effort, and I had,
therefore, several times clearly and plainly asked for the
exploitation of the captured harbours.
(b) There would have been no considerable improvement
in our supply position at Solium either, because then Ben-
ghazi and Tobruk, instead of Tobruk and Mersa Matruh,
THE BATTLES OF I 942 293
■
would have been within effective range of the British bombers.
Benghazi would have been ruled out, for all practical pur-
poses, for vessels of large tonnage, and this would have meant
extending the transport route as far as Tripoli, which would
have been beyond the capabilities of our supply-columns. For
the British, on the other hand, to operate on the frontier
would have scarcely made any difference to their supply
position. At their disposal were railways, enough vehicles for
road-supplies, and well-organised coastal shipping.
( The advance into Egypt was marked by heavy and confused fighting,]
The New Zealand Division under Freyberg, an old acquaintance
of mine from previous campaigns, concentrated in the night and
broke out to the south. The wild flare-up that ensued involved
my own battle headquarters, which lay to the south. The Kiel
battle-group and parts of the Littorio went into action. The ex-
changes of fire between my forces and the New Zealanders reached
an extraordinary pitch of intensity. Soon my headquarters were
surrounded by burning vehicles, making them the target for
continuous enemy fire at close range. I had enough of this after
a while and ordered the troops, with the staff, to move back south-
eastward. The confusion reigning on that night can scarcely be
imagined. It was impossible to see one's hand before one's eyes.
The R.A.F. bombed their own. troops, German units were firing
on each other, the tracer was flying in all directions.
Before El Alamein
■
■
With amazing swiftness the British organised fresh reinforce-
ments for Alamein. Their High Command had recognised that
the next batde there would be largely decisive and they had con-
sidered the situation with sober care. The danger of the hour
drove the British to extraordinary efforts. In times of extreme
peril it is always possible to achieve objects until then considered
impossible, for there is nothing like danger for sweeping aside
preconceived ideas.
By July 13th the front was stabilised. From the point of view
of command the British were here in their element, for their strong
quality was a form of tactics which expressed itself in the modern*
kind of infantry fighting and static warfare. Their speciality lay
294 ROMMEL
in local attacks, carried out under the protection or infantry tanks I
and artillery. The Alamein position adjoined the sea to the north,
and to the south it sank away into the Quattara Depression, a
level area of moving sand with many salt-marshes, and therefore
impassable for heavy vehicles. As the Alamein position could not,
therefore, be outflanked, the war became one in which both sides 1
disposed of great experience and knowledge, but neither could)
make use of revolutionary methods which would come as a com- j
plete surprise to the other. The outcome of this static war depended ]
on who had mure ammunition.
I had, therefore, wanted to escape in the last few days from this]
static warfare, in whirh the British were masters and for which
their infantry had been trained, and to reach the open desert
before Alexandria, where 1 could exploit the absolute operational
superiority we enjoyed in open desert battles. But in this I did
no succeed; the British knew quite well how to break up the
thrusts of my severely weakened forces.
Retrospect
With these actions the great battle of the early summer came'
to an end. It had begun with a fantastic victory. After Tobruk
had been captured, the extraordinary strength of the British
Empire began to show itself again. For only a few days could wc
hope to go on past El Alamein and occupy the Suez Canal area.
While we must fight every battle with the same forces, the British
were able to throw fresh troops, fully armed and up to strength,
into the fight and withdraw from the Alamein front for recupera-
tion those divisions which had been badly hammered in Marmarica
and Western Egypt. My troops stayed in the fight. My numbers
grew always less, while at the same time the losses from dead,
wounded and sick kept rising. Always it was the same battalions
which advanced, largely in captured lorries, on the British
positions, and then, springing from their vehicles, charged over
the sand at the enemy. Always it was the same tank forces which
drove into the battle, and the same gunners who fired the shells.
The deeds performed in those weeks by officers and men reached
the limits of human efficiency.
I had made extraordinary demands on my forces and spared
THE BATTLES OF 1 942 295
neither the rank and file, nor their leaders, nor myself. It was
obvious to me that the fall of Tobruk and the collapse of the
Eighth Army was the one moment in the African war when the
road lay open to Alexandria with only a few British troops to
defend it. I and my colleagues would have been fools if we had
not done everything to exploit this one and only chance. If success
had depended, as it did in olden days, on the stronger will of the
soldiers and their leader, then we would have overrun Alamein.
But our sources of supply dried up, thanks to the inactivity and
disorganisation of the supply depots in Europe.
Then the powers of resistance of many of the Italian formations
collapsed. The duty of comradeship obliges me to make clear,
particularly as I was supreme commander also of the Italians,
that the defeats the Italian forces suffered in early July before El
Alamein were in no way the fault of the Italian soldiers. The
Italian soldier was willing, unselfish and a good comrade and,
c onsidering his circumstances, his achievement was far above the
average. The performance of all the Italian units, more especially
of the motoriscd forces, far surpassed anything the Italian Army
had done for a hundred years. There were many Italian officers
and generals whom we admired as men and as soldiers.
The cause of the Italian defeat sprang from the entire Italian
military and state system, from the poor Italian equipment, and
from the small interest shown in this war by many high Italian
leaders and statesmen. This failure often prevented me from
carrying out my plans.
■
The Battle of Alam-El-Halpa
By the end of August the urgently needed supplies of ammunition
and petrol, promised by the Supreme Command, had still not
arrived. The full moon, absolutely vital to our operation, was
already on the wane. Further delay would have meant finally
giving up our offensive. Marshal Cavallero, however, informed
me that the petrol ships, heavily escorted, would arrive in a matter
of hours, or the next day at the latest. Hoping for the fulfilment
of this promise; trusting to the assurance of Marshal Kesselring
that he would fly up to 500 tons over to North Africa in case of
need; but above all certain that if we let the full moon go by we
ROMMEL
were losing our last chance of taking the offensive, I gave the
order for the attack to be carried out on the night of August
<joth-3ist as planned.
Everything had been in readiness several days beJbre; lor we
had reckoned with the arrival of the petrol at any minute. But in
fact we did not want to start moving until after the arrival of the
petrol, in view of the unreliability of Cavallcro.
In the early stages ol the battle, the British defended their
strong positions with extraordinary toughness and so hindered our
advance. As a result they were able to send warnings and situation
reports back to headquarters and give the British Command time
to put the necessary counter-measures into operation. Such a
breathing space was of tremendous importance to the British.
They needed to hold their front only until their striking forces had
grouped themselves for the necessary action against the German-
Italian iorces which had broken through.
My plan, to go forward with the mororiscd forces another fifty
kilometres by moonlight, and from there to proceed to a further
attack northwards in the early morning light, did not succeed.
1 he tanks were held up by unsuspected ground obstacles and we
lost the element of surprise, on which the whole plan finally
rested. In view of this we now considered whether we should
break off the battle.
Had there been a quick break-through in the south by the
motonsed forces, the British would have needed time for recon-
naissance, ior making decisions and for putting them into effect.
During this time our movements need not have met with any
serious counter-measures. But we had now lost the advantage of
tliis breathing-space. The British knew where we were. I resolved
that my decision, whether or not to break off the battle, should
depend on how things stood with the Afrika Korps.
1 learned soon afterwards that the Afrika Korps, under the
outstanding leadership of the Chief ol the General Staff, General
Bayerlein, had in the meantime overcome the British mines and
was about to push farther eastwards. I discussed the situation with
Bayerlein and we decided to carry on with the attack.
Owing to the fact that the British tank forces were again
assembled ready for immediate action, a wide outflanking drive
to the east could not be carried out, in view of the constant menace
THE BATTLES OF 1 942
297
to our own (lank which would be presented by the 7th Armoured
Division to the south and by the 10th and 1st Armoured Divisions
in the north. We had to deride on an earlier turn northwards.
In the event, the offensive tailed because:
(a) The British positions in the south, contrary to what our
reconnaissance had led us to believe, had been completed in
great strength.
(b) The continuous and very heavy attacks of the R.A.F.,
who were practically masters of the air, absolutely pinned my
troops io the ground and made impossible any safe deploy-
ment or any advance according to schedule.
(c) The petrol, which was a necessary condition of the
carrying out of our plans, did not arrive. The ships which
Cavellero had promised us were some of them sunk, some of
them delayed and some oi them not even dispatched.
Kesselring had unfortunately not been able to fulfil his
promise to fly over 500 tons a day to the vicinity of the front
in case of need.
Brigadier Clifton
A night attack on the 10th Italian Corps cost the British
particularly heavy losses, including many dead. There were also
two hundred prisoners, among them Brigadier Clifton, command-
ing the 6th New Zealand Brigade. I had a conversation with him
on the following morning. He had just been busy convincing the
Julians that they must surrender, in view of the strong British
tank forces facing their position, and the Italians had already
taken the bolts out of their rifles, when, to his annoyance, a
German officer had arrived and his plan came to nothing.
He seemed extremely depressed as a result. I tackled him
about various acts, contrary to international law, committed by
New Zealand troops. Clifton showed the most absolute certainty
of victory, which was understandable now that our attack had
been beaten back. He was an old Africa veteran, for he had led
British troops against us since 1940, had been in Greece, and was
also in the winter fighting of 1941-42.
He impressed us as a very brave man and very likeable. He
insisted oa becoming a prisoner of the Germans and not being
ROMMEL
sent to Italy. I tried to carry out his wish, and, evading general
instructions, handed him over to a German depot in Mersa
Matruh. However the O.K.H. later ordered that he should be
handed over to the Italians.
a
But on the evening before he was due to be handed to the
Italians, Clifton asked to go to the lavatory, where he got out of
the window and vanished without trace. All troops were at once
warned by wireless. A few days later some of my staff officers
were hunting gazelle when they suddenly saw a weary foot-
traveller coming across the desert, carrying what seemed to be a
water-bottle in his hand. Closer observation revealed him as the
much sought-after Clifton. He was at once arrested and brought
in to us again. I expressed to him my recognition of his courage ;
for not every man would contemplate such a trek through the
desert. He looked very exhausted, which was not surprising* To
stop any more attempts at escape, I had him sent at once to Italy.
Later I heard that he disappeared from the Italian prison camp
in the disguise of a Hitler J ugend leader, with shorts and badge of
rank, and in this uniform crossed over the frontier into Switzerland.
[Rommel's information was incorrect.]
El Alamein
[Before going sick to Germany, Rommel made his plans to resist the
expected British attack at El Alamein.]
In training and command we were, as all previous battles had
shown, considerably superior to the British troops in the open
desert. Though it could be assumed that, as far as tactics were
concerned, the British had learnt a good deal from the many
battles and skirmishes which we had had with them, they could
not possibly have profited fully from them as their shortcomings
were not primarily due to their command but to the ultra-
conservative structure of their army, which was in no way suitable
for war in the open desert, though excellent for fighting on fixed
fronts.
In spite of all this, we could not take the risk of shifting the
main weight of the defensive action on to operations in the open
desert for the following reasons:
(a) The proportionate strengths of the motorised divisions
THE BATTLES OP 1 942
had become too unequal. While our adversary was constantly
being reinforced by motorised units, we received only non-
motoriscd forces, which, in the open desert, were as good
as useless. We were forced, therefore, to choose a form of
warfare in which they too could play their part.
(b) The British air superiority, the new air tactics of the
R.A.F., and the resultant tactical limitations on the use of
motorised forces, to which reference has already been made.
(c) Our permanent shortage of petrol. I did not want to
get myself again into the awkward situation of having to
break ofTa battle because we were immobilised by a shortage
of petrol. In a mobile defensive action shortage of petrol
means disaster.
Back to Africa
The Fiihrer's call came through. The situation at El Alamein
had developed in such a way that he must ask me to ily to Africa
to take over command. T set off the next morning. I knew that
there were no more laurels to be earned in Africa, for I had learnt
from reports of my officers that supplies there had fallen far short
of the minimum demands which I had made. It very soon became
clear, however, that I had not had any idea of just how bad the
supply situation really was.
When I arrived in Rome towards n a.m., I was met at the
airport by General von Rintelen, Military Attache and German
General attached to the Italian forces. He informed me of the
latest events in the African theatre. After powerful artillery
preparation, the enemy had occupied parts of the positions to the
south of Hill 31; several battalions of 1G4 Division and of the
Italians had been completely wiped out. The British attack was
still in progress and General Stumme was still missing. General
von Rintelen further reported to me that only three issues of petrol
remained for the Army in the African theatre, lor it had not been
possible in recent weeks to send wore across, partly on account of
the sinkings by the British, partly because the Italian Navy did
not provide the transport. This situation was disastrous, since
petrol for only 300 km. per vehicle between Tripoli and the front
was so little that a prolonged resistance on our part was not to be
3oo
ROMMEL
expected* Shortage of petrol would completely prevent our taking
the correct tactical decisions and would impose tremendous
limitations upon our planning. I was extremely angry, for at my
departure there had been at least 8 issues left for the Army in
Egypt and Libya and, in comparison with the minimum essential
30 issues, even that had been ridiculously little. Experience had
shown that one needed one issue of petrol for each day of battle.*
Without it one was crippled and the enemy could operate without
one being able to take practical counter-measures. General von
Rintelen regretted this situation and said that he had unfortunately
been on leave and had thus been unable to give sufficient attention
to the supply question !
Feeling that wc would fight this battle with but small hope of
even a defensive success, 1 flew across the Mediterranean in my
Storch and reached my battle headquarters at dusk. In the mean-
time the body of General Stumme had been found at about
midday and taken to Derna. The circumstances of his death had
been roughly these ; General Stumme had driven along the track
to the battlefield and had been fired upon in the region of dill 2 1
by British infantry with anti-tank and machine-guns. Colonel
Buchting who accompanied him received a mortal wound in the
head. The driver, Corporal Wolf, immediately turned the car.
General Stumme leapt out and hung on to the outside of the car
while the driver drove furiously out of the enemy fire. General
Stumme must have suddenly had a heart attack and fallen off the
car. The driver noticed nothing. On Sunday morning the General
was found beside the track, dead, but without any injury. .
General Stumme had always had far too high a blood pressure
for Africa and was not therefore really fit for tropical service. We
all deeply regretted his sudden death. He had spared no pains to
command the army well and had been day and night at the front.
Just before setting off for his last journey on October 24th he had
said to his deputy that he felt it would be wise to ask for my return
as, with his own short experience of the African theatre and in
view of the tremendous British strength and the disastrous supply
situation, he did not feel wholly certain of being able to bring
the battle to a successful conclusion. I, for myself, was no more
optimistic.
•An issue in Africa appears to have been petrol for 100 km.
THE BATTLES OF I 942 301
\After a detailed description of the battle, too long to include here,
Rommel gives the text of a telegram which reached him on the evening of
November 1st and shows, as he says, how the situation was misunderstood
in Borne.]
" For Field Marshal Rommel
The Duce has authorised me to convey to you his fullest apprecia-
tion of the successful counter-attack led personally by you. The
Duce conveys to you further his complete confidence that the
battle now in progress will, under your command, be brought
to a successful conclusion."
It soon became obvious that the Fuhrcr's Headquarters had
no better knowledge of the African situation. It is sometimes a
misfortune to enjoy a certain military reputation. One knows
one*s own limits but others expect miracles and set down a defeat
to deliberate ill will.
[After describing the concluding days of the battle, Rommel sums up.]
El Alamein in Retrospect
Wc had lost the decisive battle of the African campaign. It was
decisive because the defeat resulted in the loss of the major part
of our infantry and of our motorised forces. The consequences
defied estimation. The amazing thing was that official quarters,
both on the German and Italian side, attributed the trouble, not
to the failure of supplies, not to our air inferiority, not to the
■
order to conquer or die at £1 Alamein, but to the troops and the
Command. The military career of most of these people who made
such accusations against us was characterised by a continual
absence from the front on the principle " weit vom Schuss gibt
alte Krieger " — " far from the battle makes old soldiers."
It was even said that we had thrown away our weapons, that
I was a defeatist, a pessimist in defeat or in critical situations and
therefore largely responsible. The fact was that I did not sit down
under the constant reproaches which were levelled at the gallant
troops and this gave rise in the future to many a quarrel and
bitter argument. Those people, in particular, who had formerly
been envious of me, now, after the defeat, suddenly had the
302 ROMMEL
courage to spread slander about us, where previously they had
had to keep silent. The victim of this slander was the army, which,
after my departure, fell into British hands in its entirety, while
highly-qualified armchair strategists were still thinking about
operations against Casablanca.
It is no good denying that there were men in high places who
were by no means lacking in the intelligence required to under-
stand what was happening, but who lacked the courage to face
soberly the unalterable conditions and to draw the necessary con-
clusions from them. They preferred to put their heads in the sand,
live in a sort of military pipe-dream and look for scapegoats, whom
they usually found in the troops or in the field commanders.
With all my experience, I can confess to only one mistake — that
I did not circumvent the ** Victory or Death " order 24 hours
earlier or did not disregard it altogether. Then the army, together
with all its infantry, would in all probability have been saved in
a more or less battleworthy condition.
In order to leave no doubt for future historians about the con-
ditions and circumstances under which the Command and troops
were labouring at the battle of El Alamcin, I include the following
summary :
An adequate supply system and stocks of weapons, petrol
and ammunition are essential conditions for any army to be
able successfully to stand the strain of battle. Before the
fighting proper, the battle is fought and decided by the
Quartermasters. The bravest man can do nothing without
guns, the guns nothing without plenty of ammunition and
guns and ammunition are of little use in mobile warfare unless
they can be transported by vehicles supplied with sufficient
petrol. Supply must approximate in quantity to that which
is available to the enemy and not only in quantity but also
in quality.
In future the battle on the ground will be preceded by the
battle in the air. This will decide who will have to suffer
under the operational and tactical disadvantages detailed
above and who will, therefore, from the start be forced into
tactical compromise.
None of the conditions to which I have referred were in any
way fulfilled and we had to suffer the consequences.
THE BATTLES OF 1 942
3<>3
As a result of the British command ot the air and hence of the
seas in the Central Mediterranean, and of other reasons detailed
elsewhere, the army's supplies were hardly sufficient to enable it
to eke out a bare existence even on quiet days. It was out of the
question to think of building up stocks for a defensive battle. The
quantities of material which were available to the British far
exceeded our worst fears. Never before in any theatre of war had
such a concentration of heavy tanks, bombers and artillery with
inexhaustible supplies of ammunition been engaged on so short a
front as at £1 Alamein.
The British command of the air was complete. There were
days when the British flew 800 bomber sorties and 2500 sorties of
fighters, fighter-bombers and low-fiying aircraft. We, on the other
hand, could at the most fly 60 dive-bomber and 100 fighter sorties.
This number moreover became continually smaller.
Generally speaking, the principles of the British Command had
not altered. Now as ever their tactics were methodical and cast
to a pattern. On this occasion the British principles did in fact
help the Eighth Army to success, for the following reasons:
(a) It did mot come to a battle in the open desert, since our
motorised forces were forced to form a front for the sake of
the fron tally engaged infantry divisions, who were without
transport. The war took on the form of a battle of material.
(b) The British had such superiority in weapons, both
qualitative and quantitative, that they were able to force
through any kind of operation.
The methods used by the British Command for the destruction
iff my force were a result of their overwhelming superiority. They
consisted of the following:
(a) Highly concentrated artillery fire.
(b) Continuous bombing attacks by powerful bombef
forces.
(e) Locally limited attacks, which were carried through
with lavish use of material and which revealed an extremely
high state of training, entirely suited to the conditions.
Apart from this, the planning of the British Command was
based on the principle of exact calculation, a principle which can
only be followed where there is complete material superiority. In
actual fact the British did not attempt anything which could be
ROMMEL
called an ** operation " but relied solely on the effect of their
artillery and air force. As always, the British Command showed a
marked slowness in reaction. When, on the night of November
and-3rd we started on the retreat, it was a long time before the
enemy were ready to follow up for the pursuit. But for the inter-
vention of Hitler's unfortunate order, it is highly probable that
we would have escaped to Fuka with the bulk of our infantry. As
always the British High Command showed its customary caution
and little forceful decision. For instance, they attacked time and
again with separate tank formations and did not, as might have
been expected, throw into the battle the 900 tanks which they
could, without risk to themselves, have employed in the northern
front, thereby using their vast superiority to gain a rapid decision
with the minimum of effort and casualties. Actually, under cover
of their artillery and air force, only a half of that number would
have been sufficient to wipe out my forces, which were frequeudy
standing immobilised on the battlefield. Moreover, the British
themselves suffered tremendous losses for this reason. Probably
their Command wanted to hold its tanks in the second line so as
to use them for the pursuit, as apparently their assault forces could
not be re-formed fast enough for the follow-up.
In the training of their tanks and infantry formations, the
British Command had put to excellent use the experience which
they had gained from their previous battles with the Axis troops,
but it is true to say the new methods which were now being applied
were only made possible by the vast quantity of their ammunition
and new war material.
The British artillery demonstrated once again its well-known
excellence. Especially noteworthy was its great mobility and speed
of reaction to the requirements of the assault troops. Apparently
the British tank forces carried artillery observers who could report
the requirements of the front in the shortest possible time to the
artillery groups. In addition to their abundant supplies of am-
munition, the great range of the British guns was of tremendous
advantage to them. Thus they were able to bombard the Italian
artillery positions while the Italian guns, whose range was often
no more than 5-6 km, were quite unable to hit back. As by far
the greater part of our artillery consisted of obsolete Italian guns,
this was a particularly unpleasant state of affairs.
BACK TO TUNISIA 305
The courage of the German troops and of many of the Italians
in this battle, even in the hour of disaster, was particularly worthy
of admiration. The force could look back on a glorious record of
one and a half years, such as is seldom achieved by any army.
Every one of my soldiers was defending not only his homeland
but also the tradition of the Panzer Army, Afrika. The struggle
of my army, will in spite of its defeat, be a glorious page in the
history of the German and Italian peoples.
BACK TO TUNISIA
During the retreat from El Alamein in November , 1942 \ Rommel
prepared a plan /or juture operations in North Africa and this
formed the basis of his discussions with Bastico, Cavallero,
Kesselring, Goering and Hitlet. There follows an outline of
it in his own words
(a) In the existing conditions of supply, which permitted us
neither the months-overdue replacements of tanks, vehicles and
weapons nor a stock of petrol such as was necessary to carry
through a mobile battle, we could not hope to be able to hold out
against a powerful British attack in any position in Tripoli lania.
For all positions which were at all possible could be outflanked in
the south and consequently it would be necessary to put the main
burden of the defence on motorised forces. From the beginning,
therefore, it was necessary to be prepared to evacuate Tripolitania
in order to occupy the Gabes position, which, in the south-west,
leant on the Schott Dscherid and there finally come to a halt. In
carrying out this withdrawal from Mersa-el-Brega to Tunisia
there were two important considerations, on the one hand to gain
as much time as possible and on the other to carry out the
operation with the minimum losses of men and material.
Our problem in this retreat was the non-motorised force of
Italians. The slowest formation, assuming that one does not want
to abandon it, always determines the speed of retreat of the whole
army. This is a disastrous disadvantage in the face of a fully
ROMMEL
motorised and superior attacker. It was necessary, for these
reasons, to move the Italian divisions to the west into new
positions, before the beginning of the British attack, to keep the
motorised troops at Mersa-el-Brcga so as to tie down the British,
to mine the roads and to take advantage of every opportunity of
inflicting damage on the enemy advanced guard. The British
Commander had revealed himself as over-cautious. He risked
nothing which was the least doubtful and any bold action was
completely foreign to him. It was, therefore, the task of our
motorised forces to give an impression of constant activity so as
to make the British even more cautious and slow down their speed.
It was clear to me that Montgomery would never take the risk of
striking boldly after us and overrunning us, as he could have done
perfectly safely. Indeed, looking at the operations as a whole,
such a course would have cost him far smaller casualties than his
methodical insistence on overwhelming superiority in each tactical
action, at the sacrifice of speed.
In any case the retreat to Tunisia was to be carried out in
several stages, the British to be forced into deploying as often as
possible. This was a gamble on the caution of the British Com-
mander which proved to be very well justified. The Buerat line
was earmarked as the first position, the line Tarhuna-Homs as the
second. Even there we did not intend to accept battle; instead
the infantry was to move off beforehand, while the mechanised
formations lightly engaged the enemy and delayed their advance.
At Gabes, which, like £1 Alamein, could not be outflanked from
the south, the stand was finally to be made.
(b) In die Gabes position the infantry could bear the main
weight of the battle. The position did not lend itself to an attack
by motorised forces and could only be broken through by the
concentration of a tremendous quantity of material. Montgomery
would take no risk and would need several months to bring up
enough material from Libya so as to be able to attack the Wadi
Akarit with good prospects of success. In the meantime the
motorised forces were to be reinforced and refitted with the equip-
ment which would be brought into Tunis while the retreat was
going on. The 5th Panzer Army would have landed and we should
have a chance of building up another striking force.
BACK TO TUNISIA 307
The great danger for us was the wide open front in the west of
Tunisia which offered the British and Americans in that area good
opportunities of launching an offensive. We must, therefore, first
strike there, stage a surprise attack with the whole of our motorised
forces, destroy a part ol the Anglo-American formations and drive
the rest back into Algeria. Meanwhile Montgomery could not
hope to do anything against the Gabcs position until he had built
up large stocks of ammunition for his artillery.
After the British and Americans had been beaten in western
Tunisia and deprived of the power of staging an offensive, the
quickest possible reorganisation would have to be made for an
attack on Montgomery, to throw him back to the east and delay
his deployment. Such an operation would obviously be one of
considerable difficulty owing to the unfavourable nature of the
ground.
(c) In the long run neither Libya nor Tunisia could have been
held, for the African war was decided by the battle of the Atlantic.
From the moment that the overwhelming industrial capacity of
the United States could make itself felt in any theatre of war,
there was no chance of ultimate victory. Even if we had overrun
the whole of Africa and the Americans had been left with a
suitable bridgehead through which they could transport theii
material, we must eventually have lost the continent.* Tactical
skill at this stage could only postpone the collapse, it could not
avert it in the long run. In Tunisia the aim must be to gain time,
s^ as to bring as many as possible of the battle-tried veterans in
safety to Europe. Because our experience had shown that there
was no hope of maintaining a large army in Tunisia, our endeavour
must be to reduce the fighting troops there to fewer but better-
equipped formations. If the Allies tried to force a decision, we
must constantly shorten the front and evacuate more and more
troops by means of transport aircraft, barges and warships. The
first stand must be in the hilly country extending round Tunis from
Enfidaville, the second in the Cape Bon peninsula. When the
Allies finally took Tunis they must find nothing there, or at most
•This is only superficially a contradiction of Rommel's previous, views and a coo
firmatiou of those of General Haider. Rommel remained convinced that, giwn support,
he could have overrun tbe Middle East in the spring or summer of 1942 but he cam*,
to realise that American production must eventually prove decisive everywhere.
308 ROMMEL
a few prisoners, and would thus be robbed of the fruits of their
victory, as we were robbed at Dunkirk.
(d) From the troops scheduled for evacuation to Italy, a striking
force would be formed. These troops were the best both in
training and battle experience that we could put against the
British and Americans. Moreover, I was on such terms with them
that their value under my command was not to be measured only
by their actual numbers.
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INDEX
Abiial, Admiral d*, 71
Afrika Korps : Rommel's influence
on, 146-53; quality of, 150-1;
clean fighting record of, 161-2;
and prisoners of war, 162-4
Air supremacy, Rommel on
Allied, 280-1, 303
Albrecht, Professor, 248, 249, 253
Aldingcr, Captain, 43-4, 53, 70,
94, X05, H2, 144, 146, 153,
160, 234, 235, 243, 251, 253,
254, 255-9, 268
Alexander, General (later Field-
Marshal): and the battle of
Kasscrine Pass, 197-8; other
references, 24, 167, 183, 188,
199, 201, 282
AUenby, Viscount, 24
Archer-Shee, Major, 135
Army, the German: and Hitler,
58-60; and the S.S., 162. See
also Afrika Korps
/ ,-iim, General von, 195
Atomic bomb, 185
Auckinleck, Gen. Sir Claude:
letter to commanders about
Rommel, 23; and Tobruk, 109-
10; and Operation Crusader,
ti2f.; driven back by Rommel
129X.; takes personal command
of Eighth Army, 140; decision
to stop offensive, 178; other
references, 24, 95, 107, 148,
172, 182, 282
Australians, Rommel's opinion of,
159-60
Badoglio, Marshal, 86, 139, 155,
204
Balbo, Marshal, 194
Bardia, 20
Bastico, General, 139, 155, 158,
305
Battles :
Alam-el-Halfa, 96, 181-4, 295-7
Cambrai, 33
EI Alamein, 96, 112-13, 186-92,
298-305
Enfidavjlle, 201
France (1940), 6gf,, 274
Gazala, 132k, 287-91
Halfaya Pass, 27, 103-5
Kasserine Pass, 197-8
Medcnine, 198-9
Operation Battleaxe, 103-5
Operation Crusader, 112-27
Sidi Bar rani, 18
Sidi Rezcgh, 1 1 2f.
Tobruk, fall of, 138
Wadi Akarit, 201
Bayer lcin, Gen. Fritz, 99-160,
115, 118, 119, 122, 132-42
passim, 149, 155, 162, 178,
182-4, J86» i88 > >9<>> i 9'» 218,
296
Beck, Col.-Gen. Ludwig, 58, 67,
91-2, 227, 238, 250-1
Below, Major von, 290
Berganzoli, General, 18
Berndt, Himmler's personal assis-
tant, 28, 261
Bismarck, Prince von, 91
Bismarck, Col. von, 81
309
3io
INDEX
Bittrich, General, 228
Blaskowitz, General von, 209
Bluinentritt, General, 222
Bock, General von, 227
Borgmann, Heinrich, 261
Bo r maim, 26, 236
Bottchcr, Adjutant, 251
Boucher, Brigadier, 136
Boxes, British strongholds, 132-3
Bradford, Brig.-Gen. " Boy," 33
Brauchitsch, Field-Marshal von,
B6, 92
Briggs, General, 135-6
British, Rommel's opinion of,
159-61, 291-3, 298, 303-4
Brownshirts, the, 56
Buchting, Col., 300
Buller, Gen. Sir Redvers, 24
Burgdorf, General, 253, 254, 255,
256, 257, 258, 267
Burma, 130
Campbell, Maj.-Gen. "Jock,"
117, 149, 172-3
Canaris, Admiral, 109
Capuzzo, 20
Carentan, 221
Carnegie, Dale, 64
Carver, Lieut.-Col., 125-6
Cavallero, Gen. Count Ugo, 155-
6, 157. 15*H), 172, 181-2, 295-7i
3<>5
Cavan, Lord, 39
Chivalry, in war, 173-4
Churchill, Winston, 84, 85, 112,
203, 242
Ciano, 85, 139, 154, 156, 159,
182, 184
Clifton, Brigadier, 168-72, 297-8
Collins, General, 81
Combe, Lieut.-Col. John, 20
Cowan, Admiral Sir Walter, 207
Cramer, Gen. Johann, 161, 186,
260
Cripps, Sir Stafford, 131
Cruwell, General, 122, 134
Cunningham, Admiral, 130
Cunningham, General, 119-20,
122, 123, 152
Cyprus, 107
Czechoslovakia, 65
Dame), Rommel's driver, 229, 230
Darnancl, 86
Danzig 47
de Guingand, Maj.-Gen., 198,
199-200
Defeat m the West (Shulman), 26
Deniz, General, 106, 227
Dietrich, Gen. Sepp, 205, 223,
224, 228, 251
Dimbleby, Richard, 20
Dose, S.S. driver, 259
Dunkirk, 70
Egypt: elation at British success,
16-19; British stock slumps,
19
Ehrenberger, Major, 254-5, 257
Eisenhower, General, 173-4)
.199-200, 216, 218, 244
E) Alamein. Sat Battles
Esch, Professor, 230, 247
Escbeck, Baron von, 64, 144, 145,
146-7, 151, 213, 221, 246-7
Esebeck, General von, 97, 105,
108-9
Falkenhausen, General von, 242
Feuchtinger* Maj .-General, 221
Fortune, Maj.-General, 73, 79,
80
INDEX
{II
France : the " phoney " war and
the campaign of 1940, 6g£,
274; the Resistance Movement
and the German Army, 85-6;
invasion of, 203f.
Franco, General, 86
Freyberg, General, 37, 98, 124,
I38» 149. aoi» *93
Fritsch, Col.-Gcn. Werner von,
93
Fuller, Maj.-General, 118, 120,
«47
Gambara, General, 2G1
Gambier-Parry, Maj.-General, 20
Garibaldi, General, 154, 155
Gausi, General, 134, 205-6, 240
Generals, unknown to ordinary
soldier, 24; Rommel's views on
generalship, 278-80
Gestapo, 86, 233-4, 237, 248, 249,
252, 264, 269-70
Godwin-Austen, Lieut.-General,
Goebbels, Dr., 27, 28, 57, 67, 260,
261
Gocrdeler, Dr., 238, 239, 241,
255*269
Loering, Hermann, 26, 86, 182,
*93-5> 211, 217, 266, 305
Gott, General, 138, 149
Graziani, General, 18, 86, 87,
«75
Greece, British forces sent tp, 20-1
Origg, Sir James, 226
Guderian, General, 191, 227, 250
Gunther, Herbert, Rommel's bat-
man, 143-4
■
Halm, Inspector, 49, 240
Haig, Eail, 24
Haider, , Col .-General, 85-92
passim, 93-4, 100, 140, 181, 20 1,
2 1 3, 308/1.
Hargest, Brigadier, 172
Hart, Captain Liddcll, 147, 179,
210, 222, 288
Hartmann, Captain, 41-4, 53, 266
Hascldon, John, ni-12
Hassell, Ulrich von, 61, 67, 91
Hess, 26
Himmler, 57, 92, 162, 205, 211,
237, 261-2, 270
Hindenburg, 58
Hitler: and the YVehrmacht, 58-9;
Rommel on his character, 63-5,
67-8; liking for Rommel, 71,
92-3; and the failure to invade
Britain, 85; spite against von
Thoma, 86-7; sends reinforce-
ments to N. Africa, 87-8; and
Malta, 108; promises rein-
forcements for Rommel, 184-6;
stormy scene with Rommel
after El Alamcin, 193; sees
Rommel after fall of Tunis,
200-1; and the Atlantic de-
fences, 220-1, 223; conference
with Rommel and Rundstedt,
224-5; summons Rommel to
Berchtesgaden, 225-6; Rom-
mel's and von Kluge's letters
to, 230-2; the plot against,
238k; telegram to Frau Rom-
mel, 260; other references, 21,
26-7, 48, 50, 55-7, 77, 84-5,
93"4> 109-10, 140, 199, 201,
261, 262, 282, 299, 304, 305
Hidcr Jugend. See Hitler Youth
Hitler Youth, Rommel and the,
60-2, 221
Hofacker, General von 255, 269
Holke, Sergeant, 229-30
Hospital ships, Rommel and,
171-2
312 INDEX
Hossbach, Colonel, 93 Kuzmany, Colonel, 258
M
Indians, Rommel's opinion of,
159
hijanterte Greijt An (Rommel's
manual), 33, 39, 54, 62
Italy: Rommel's opinion of, 84-5;
defeat in N. Africa, 87; the
Italian armies and Rommel,
153-9* 275, 282, 295, 304-5;
negotiations and the surrender,
203-4. See also North Africa
Jackson, A. N. S., 33
Japan, 130 215
Jews, persecution of, 237, 239
Jodl, Col.-General (later Field-
Marshal), 85, 91, 92, 108, 109,
110, 140, 174. 203, 221, 226,
236, 250, 261, 269
Jungcr, Ernst, 40, 244
Kcitel, Field-Marshal, 30, 85, 91,
9 2 > 93. 94> lo8 > ,0 9> l 4°» 201,
221, 222, 226, 236, 250, 253,
261, 269
Keitel (Rommel's friend), 30
Kennedy, Brig.-Gen. " Kid," 43
Kennedy-Shaw, Major, 1 1 1
Kesselring, General, 108, 139,
155, 181-2, 184, 205, 236, 2C0,
284, 290, 295, 2975 3°5
Keyes, Major Geoffrey, 1 1 1-12
Keynes, J. M., 47
Kleist, General von, 227
Klopper, General, 138-9
Kluge, Field- Marshal Gunther
von, 230, 231-2, 248-9, 250
Kocnig, General, 136
Koniev, Marshal, 71
Lang, Captain Heimuth, 228-30,
243
Lcttow-Vorbeck, General, 86
Lloyd George, D., 66
Leofller, Dr., 198
Longarone, 39, 42, 52
Ludendorfl, 46, 67
Luz, Karl von, 28
Maicr, Nazi Party local boss, 251
Maisel, General, 254-5, 256, 257,
258, 259, 260, 267
Maletti, General, 19
Malta, 106, 107, 108, 130, 131,
13a, 287
Mansiein, Field-Marshal von, 87
Marmarica, Rommel on British
positions in, 287-9
Martcl, LieuL-Gen. Sir Giffard,
118
Meissner, Dr., 27
Messe, General, 195
Mcsservy, (General, 136, 145
Meyer, Kurt, 60, 221
Milch, Field-Marshal, 108-9
Mines, in Western defences, 213-
Model, Field- Marshal, 261
Mollin, Lucie Maria, 31, 32, 35.
See also Rommel, Frau Lucie
Maria
Monte Matajur, capture of, 37-9
Montemuro, Major, 154
Montgomery, General: and the
battle of El Alamein, 113, 186-
93; analyses Rommel's anti-
invasion plans, 219-20, 221;
Rommel on his caution, 306-7;
other references, 19, 24, 39, 44,
INDEX
5i » 78, 95-6> »75, I78» 183,
196, 197, 201, 213, 214, 244.
282
Moorehead, Alan, 44, 96, 118,
135, 184, 213
Morgan, Brig.-General, 51-2
Morshead, General, 138
Muiler, Colonel Wulfgang, 249
Mussolini: and Rommel, 156-8,
287, 301 ; other references, 18,
87-9, 108, 139, 154
Napoleon, 52, 149, 150, 288
Neame, Lieut.-Gen. Philip, 20
Nehring, General, 134, 183
Neuhaus, Major, 229
Neumann-Si lkow, General, 123-4
Neurath, von, 242, 244, 1164, 266
New Zealanders, Rommel's
opinion of, 160, 161, 170, 293
Nicolson, Harold, 47
Norrie, Lieut.-Gen. WUloughby,
"5» «>7
North Africa : von Thoma opposes
German- campaign in, 86-7;
Italian defeat in, 87; Hitler
sends reinforcements to, 88-9;
German General Staff dif-
ferences, 90-2; chequered for-
tunes in, 95-6; speed of first
German campaign, 100-1;
Tobruk and Halfaya, 102-5;
French help for Germans, 105-
6; Rommel's strategy and
tactics, 106-7; German High
Command minimizes impor-
tance of, 108; British deter-
mination to hold Tobruk, 109-
10; Operation Crusader, 112;
Rommel's losses, 128; Eighth
Army driven back to £1
Alamein line, 129-30; fall of
Tobruk, 132, 137-9; Eighth
Army halts and refits, 175; pre-
liminary actions to El Alamein,
176. 182-4; German supply
problems, 179-81; Hitler
promises reinforcements, 184-6;
battle of El Alamein, 186-93,
298-305; battles in Tunisia,
195-202; Rommel's written
opinion of campaign in, 274
Noske, Hcrr, 48
Nye, General, 131
Oberg, General, 2.19
O'Connor, Lieut. -Cieneral Sir
Richard, 19, 20
Operations, German concept of
military, 282
Otto, Lieut. -Colonel, 112
Patton, General, 71, 191
P6tain, Marshal, 81, 82
Ptenaar, Maj.-Gen. '* Dan," 124
Plumer, Viscount, 24
Plunkett, Randall, 175
Poland, 47, 66-8, 274
Prisoners of war: the Afrika
Korps and, 162-4; Hitler and",
165; Rommel and, 166-72
Professional soldiers, 33
Queen Elizabeth, H.M.S., 108
Raeder, Admiral, 84, 108
Ravens tein, Countess von, no
Ravcnstein, General von, 97-9,
105, 106, 109, no, 118, 119,
121, 123, 150, 172-3, 221
Reid, Major-Gen. Dennis, 117
INDEX
3H
Resistance Movement, French,
85-6
Ribbentrop, Joachim von, 86, 260
Rintelen, Colonel von. (later
General), no, 186, 299-300
Ritchie, General, 95, 122, 124,
J3*» «34> !35> 136, *37, »38,
*39> 285, 288, 289
Roatta, General, 203
Roehm, 26, 56, 59
Rommel, Erwin (father), 28-9
Rommel, Field-Marshal: Auchin-
leck's letter on, 23; a phenome-
non, 24-6 ; dislike of publicity,
27-8, 213-14; birth, early years,
and education, 28-30; joins
army, in 124th Infantry
Division, 30-3 1 ; in K riegsschule
at Danzig, 31; receives com-
mission and rejoins regiment,
31-2; independence of mind,
32, 34-5; first actions in World
War 1, 33-5; his Inj'anterie Greijt
A*> 33» 39» 54» 62; posted to
new battalion, and marriage,
35; early reputation, 37; cap-
ture of Monte Matajur, 37-9;
awarded Pour le M6rite, and
promoted captain, 39; staff
' appointment, 39-40; Capt.
Hartmann on, 42-3; Capt.
Aldinger on, 43-4; repostcd to
original regiment, 48-9; com-
mands internal security com-
pany, 49; and von Seeckt, 50-2;
at Stuttgart, and visit to Italy,
52-3; forms Old Comrades
Association, and birth of only
child, 53 ; instructor at Infantry
School, Dresden, 53*4; with the
Jaeger battalion, 54-5, 56; and
Hitler's advent to power, 55-6;
and National Socialism, 56-7;
instructor War Academy, Pots-
dam, 57; respect for Hitler, 59;
and the Hider Youth and von
Schirach, 60-1 ; commands War
Academy, Wiener Neustadt, 62,
65; appointed c,o. Hitler's
battalion, 62; on Hitler's char-
acter, 63-5, 67-8; promoted
major-general, 66; commands
7th Panzer Division in France,
70; Hitler's liking for, 71, 92-3;
receives Knighthood Cross, 75;
disliked by Haider and General
Staff, 90-1; appointed to com-
mand in Libya, and rela-
tions with Schmundt, 92-4;
chequered fortunes in N. Africa,
95-6; recaptures Cyrenaica,
ioo-i; Tobruk and Halfaya,
I4 >3-5; strategy and tactics,
106-7; determination to attack
Tobruk, and difference with
Jodl, 109-10; in Rome, 1 10-18;
and Operation Crusader, 112;
severe losses in N. Africa, 128;
drives Eighth Army back to El
Alamein line, 1 29-30 ; promoted
field-marshal, 142; fitness for
desert war, and habits, 143-7;
leadership in battle, and in-
fluence on Afrika Korps, 147-
53; character of, 152-3, 206-7;
and the Italians, 153-9, 274,
282, 295, 304-5; and Mussolini,
156-8, 287, 301; opinion of
Indians, Australians, N. Zea-
landers, British, 159-61, 170,
291 » 293-4, 298, 303*4; and
prisoners of war, 166-72; and
Brigadier Clifton, 168-72, -279-
98; and hospital ships, 171-2;
before El Alamein, 176, 18 1-4,
293-7> supply problems, 179,
INDEX
81, 280-1, 383, 30a; return to
Germany, and promises by
Hitler, 184-6; battle of El
Alamein, 186-93; stormy scene
with Hitler after El Alamein,
193; and Goering, I93-5J
supreme commander, Army
Group Africa, 195-6; battles of
Kasserine Pass and Mcdcnine,
197-9; 8068 Hitler after lall of
Tunis, 200-1 ; commands Army
Group B in Italy, 203-5; and
the S.S., 205; special mission
to inspect Atlantic defences,
205-1 1 ; receives independent
command in the West, 21 of.;
activity over mines, 2 1 4-7 ; anti-
invasion plans, 217-24; con-
ference with Hitler and Rund-
stedt, 224-5; summoned to
Berchtesgaden, 225-6; air attack
on his car, 228-30; letter to
Hitler, 230-1; disillusioned
about Hitler, 236-7; and the
plot against Hitler, 238!'.;
wounded in Normandy, 246;
choice of poison or the People's
Court, 255-7; funeral of, 262-
4; proposed monument of,
270-1 ; on rules of desert war-
fare, 274-80; on Allied air
supremacy 280- 1 ; on battles of
1942, 282f.; plans for Tunisia,
305-8
Rommel, Frau Lucie Maria, 49,
52, 55 6 5» 7 2 » 8o> 94» IIO » J 94»
195, 200, 234, 239-40, 248-61
passim, 265, 266-7, 270-1. See
also Mollin, Lucie Maria
Rommel , Gerhard t ( brother) ,
28-9
Rommel, Manfred (son), 53, 70,
72, 80, 153, 159, 160, 200-1,
315
2 35> 2 43> 2 5 2 " 8 /«uww. 267-8,
273
Roosevelt, President, 242
Rothenburg, Colonel, 72-3, 80
Rugc, Vice-Admiral, 206-15 pas-
sim, 222, 244., 246, 247, 2,-,3,
264
Rundstedt, Field- Marshal von :
and Keitel, 221; conference
with Hitler and Rommel, 224-
5; relieved of command, 230;
oration at Rommel's funeral,
263-6; other references, 121,
191, 210-11, 218. 220, 231, 246
Russia, 21
Rust, Dr., 61
S.S., the, 86, 162, 204, 205, 233-4,
237, 248-9
Schamhorst, 52
Schenntg, Dr., 247-8
Schirach, Baldur von, 61
Schmundt, General, 93-4, 236
Sea Lion, Operation, 84
Sccckt, General Hans von, 50-2,
55, 161
Shuhnan, 179
Sidi Rezcgh. See Battles
Singapore, 130
Slim, General, 191
Smuts, General, 64
Soden, General von, 53
Solium, 20
Speidel, Frau, 250-1, 264
Speidel, Gen. Di. Hans, 45, 154,
226-8, 230, 234, 235, 241-3,
244, 247-55 passim, 268-70
Sponeck, Gen, Graf von, 201
Sprdsser, Major, 38
Stock, Professor, 248, 253
StroJin, Dr., 234, 235, 238-40,
241-3, 246, 251, 264, 266, 268
316
Sttilpnagel, Gen. Hcinrich von,
227, 242, 248-9, 250, 255, 269
Stumme, General, 71, 186, 187,
*95» 299-3°°
Syria, 107
Tassigny, General de, 268
Thoma, General von, 71, 86-7,
100, 139, 185-6, 190
Thomas, General, 65-6
Tilsit, Treaty of, 52
Tobruk: importance of, 102-3,
109; fall of, 132, 137-9, 274
Todt organization, 208-9
Tschimpke, Oberleutcnant, 27
Tuker, Lieut.-Gen. Sir Francis,
214
Tunisia: the battles in, 195-202,
284; RommeI*s plans for, 305-8
INDEX
Valiant, H.M.S., 106
Versailles, German
Treaty of, 47-52
evasions of
Vi, V2, 214, 216
War, German and British atti-
tudes to contrasted, 40-2
Warlimont, Gen. Walter, 59
Wavell, General : victory in 1 940*
1, 18, 19; difficulties and super-
session of, 22; miscalculation in
N. Africa, 100-1; Tobruk and
Halfaya, 102-5; decision to
hold Tobruk, 109; Rommel's
high opinion of, 160-1; other
references, 26, 87, 130, 201,
282
Wehrmacht. Sa Army, German
Wellington, Duke of, 24, 149
Wessels, Wilhelm, German war
artist, 96-7
Westphal,Lieut.-Col. (later Gen.),
t2i, 165-7, 291
Williams, Brigadier, 10 1-2
Wilson, President, 47
Wingate, Orde, 37
Wolf, Corporal, 300
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DESMOND YOUNG
48. Rommel
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ALSO AVAILABLE IN F&NTANA BOOKS
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W P' M 1 " " i ii i
GEORDIE
David Walker
Geordie is one of those gems of writing which will leave an
impression on your memory as bold and lasting as the original
was slight and elusive. It is a gay, happy tale of how a " wee
Highland laddie "* took a correspondence course in body-
building and became the Champion of the World at putting the
weight. His triumphs in America nearly estrange him from his
childhood sweetheart, but not even his friendship with Helga, a
Norwegian athlete, could keep him away from the simple world
and the people of his native glen.
THE WHITE TOWER
»
James Ramsey Ullman
J'he White Tower raised its savage and sublime immensity high
febove a Europe torn by war. In the years of peace this great
"mountain had challenged the most experienced climbers of every
^nation — but none had succeeded. The tides of war left in remote
Kandermatt six oddly-assorted people who desired above all else
I j climb the White Tower, each for a private reason.
- In writing the heroic story of five men and a woman against
4 mountain, James Ramsey Ullman has combined, in a rare and
potent mixture, the suspense of physical danger and the haunting
motives which lie below the surface of thought and action.
wft sr^TT^r^r sr^reift,
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48. Rommel
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