Erwin Rommel

Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (pronounced/ environment( listen)) (Heidenheim an der Brenz, Kingdom of Wurtemberg, German Empire, November 15, 1891-Herrlingen, People's Free State of Wurtemberg, Nazi Germany, October 14, 1944) was a German military general and strategist. Popularly nicknamed «The Fox of the Desert» (in German, Wüstenfuchs, pronounced/ıvy tombstn/のfьks/( listen)), served as a quarterback at the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Rommel was a highly decorated soldier during World War I and was awarded the prestigious Pour le Mérite medal for his actions on the Italian Front. In 1937 he published his classic book of military tactics, The Infantry to Attack , based on his experiences during the Great War. In World War II he distinguished himself as commander of the 7th Panzer Division during the invasion of France in 1940. His leadership of German and Italian forces during the North African Campaign at the head of the Afrika Korps earned him a reputation as a the most skilled tank commander of the war and the nickname of Wüstenfuchs, Desert Fox. He was also renowned among his British rivals for his chivalry, which is why the North African campaign is also known as "the war without hate". He later commanded the German forces that faced the Allies in the invasion of Normandy in June. from 1944.

Rommel supported the Nazi takeover and Adolf Hitler, although he was opposed to anti-Semitism and Nazi ideology, while his knowledge of the Holocaust remains a matter of debate among historians. Rommel may have been involved in the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt on Hitler. Due to his status as a national hero, Hitler wanted to get rid of him quietly instead of executing him like the others involved. Thus, Rommel was given the chance to commit suicide in exchange for his reputation being kept intact and his family not being persecuted after his death, or else face a trial that would result in the death of him. disgrace and execution of him. He chose suicide with a cyanide pill. The marshal was granted a state funeral and public opinion was told that he had succumbed to injuries sustained in the machine-gunning of his car in Normandy.

Rommel became a true legend in both Nazi and Allied propaganda, as well as post-war popular culture because many scholars described him as an apolitical man, a brilliant commander, and a victim of the Third Reich. However, this likeness has been disputed by other writers as mere myth. Rommel's reputation as the leader of a clean war was put to good use in the rearmament of West Germany and in the reconciliation between former enemies: the United States and the United Kingdom on the one hand and the Federal Republic of Germany on the other. Several of Rommel's former subordinates, especially his chief of staff Hans Speidel, played a key role in Germany's rearmament and the country's NATO integration already in the postwar period. The largest military base of the German army, Field Marshal Rommel Barracks in Augustdorf, is named in his honour.

Birth and early years

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel was born on November 15, 1891 in Heidenheim an der Brenz, a small town about 45 km from Ulm, in Württemberg. He was the second son of Erwin Rommel and Helene von Luz. Both parents professed the Protestant faith, so the young Erwin Johannes Eugen was baptized in it on November 17 of the same year. Both his father and his paternal grandfather were mathematics teachers of some renown, while his mother was the eldest daughter of Karl von Luz, who was the civil governor in Ulm ( Regierungs-Präsident ). His parents were therefore well-known and respected people in his environment, although from the bourgeois class. He had four brothers: Manfred died as a child; Helena also dedicated herself to teaching, in Stuttgart; Karl served in World War I as a pilot and was crippled by malaria while on duty in the Ottoman Empire; and Gerhardt pursued a career as an opera singer with moderate success.

Rommel could be classified during his childhood period as the son that any mother would want to have. «He was a very docile and kind child. Short for his age [...] he spoke very slowly and only after long reflection. He had a very good character, he was friendly and he was not afraid of anything.” In 1898, Erwin Rommel's father was appointed director of the Realgymnasium in Aalen, an important educational center in his time. The young Erwin Johannes began to attend said school as a student, where he showed symptoms typical of a gifted: he was bored in class, he showed no interest in the subjects covered, and yet he passed year after year without any effort. He was reserved and kept his distance from his other classmates.

Erwin Rommel in his youth.

During his teens things changed for the better. His childlike meekness disappears, replaced by the continuous burst of energy that would characterize him for the rest of his life. He began to be interested in all kinds of sports activities, especially skiing and cycling. His grades improved appreciably, managing to graduate with a good grade. Along with a friend of his named Keitel (no relation to the marshal of the same name) he built a life-size model of a glider; He considered the idea of studying engineering, but when opposed by his father, he enlisted in the army. He applied to the artillery and engineer regiments, but was told that there were no places available at both. So he reported to the infantry. During medical tests, he was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia, which he underwent surgery on. After a convalescence of almost four months, on July 19, 1910 he joined the 124th Infantry Regiment "König Wilhelm I" (6th Wurttemberg) in Weingarten with the rank of "aspirant" (cadet).

In the German system, officer applicants had to serve time as a soldier before they were even sent to the officer academy. Rommel was promoted to corporal in October and to sergeant in December. In March 1911 he was transferred to the Kriegsschule (war school) in Danzig. There he met, through a friend of his from the academy, Lucie Marie Mollin, the daughter of a Prussian landowner who was in Danzig studying languages. Completely in love with her, he began a formal relationship with her that would lead to their marriage a few years later, in 1916, during a short leave during the First World War. The marriage caused a lot of discomfort in the bride's family, since they were Catholics and they did not see the link with good eyes.

When Rommel returned to his regiment after graduating in January 1912, they kept in touch by writing almost daily, a habit that Rommel would maintain throughout their subsequent periods of separation. His widow Lucie Marie Rommel managed to keep large quantities of these letters despite looting during World War II.

In 1913 his father died suddenly. Her mother continued to live in the family home, maintaining fluid contact with all of her children until her death in 1940.

In 1928, Erwin and Lucie had their only child, Manfred Rommel, who would later become Secretary of State and mayor of Stuttgart. However, historians John Bierman and Colin Smith state that Rommel had an affair in 1913 with Walburga Stemmer, a young fruit seller from Weingarten. Gertrud Pan would be born from this extramarital affair. According to the authors, Walburga committed suicide in 1928, upon learning of the Manfred's birth

World War I

In the two years that elapse from his appointment as a lieutenant (Leutnant) until the start of World War I, Rommel dedicates himself mainly to troop training tasks, acting as section chief. He stands out especially for his enthusiasm, his didactic ability and his total seriousness. He doesn't smoke, he doesn't drink, he doesn't attend dances or nightclubs and (possibly because he considers himself compromised) he hasn't been known to have a single romantic relationship other than with the beloved Lucie (except for his alleged one with Walburga). His colleagues during that period remember him as a young officer, sociable but reserved, more inclined to listen than to speak, but very independent on an intellectual level.

In March 1914, he was assigned as section chief, in an inter-weapon exchange program, to one of the batteries of the 49th artillery regiment, stationed in Ulm. With the outbreak of World War I, he was ordered to return to his regiment on July 31, 1914, and set out a few days later for the French border.

First Actions: France, 1914-1916

His regiment was attached to the XIII Württemberg Corps, under the command of General von Fabeck. This corps was part of the German Fifth Army, whose mission was to act as the inner end of the "roller" that the Schlieffen Plan hoped to launch into Belgium and France. The zone of action of Rommel's regiment was just opposite the southern Ardennes. These are some of his actions on said front, taken mainly from his memoirs:

Their first war action was in the vicinity of Longwy, on the Franco-Belgian border. On August 22, 1914, his section took up its position at the front. Rommel, after almost 24 hours on horseback acting as liaison officer, goes out exploring accompanied by two soldiers and a non-commissioned officer. He locates a group of fifteen to twenty French soldiers camped some distance from their own positions. He decides to take advantage of the surprise and opens fire on them along with his three companions. He withdraws as soon as they begin to receive fire back, leaving about ten Frenchmen dead or wounded, with no casualties of his own.

On September 24, while acting as a lone liaison, he bumps into a French patrol of five soldiers. He opens fire on them, without hesitation, taking down two before he runs out of ammo. Instead of stopping to reload, he bayonet-charged the remaining three, putting them to flight, albeit sustaining a gunshot wound to the thigh. For this action he received the second class Iron Cross, and would later write a famous phrase in his memoirs: "In close combat, victory belongs to the one who has one more bullet in the magazine."

On January 29, 1915, his entire section infiltrated behind the French lines at dawn, taking advantage of a stretch of wire fence that he had discovered on one of his exploration trips. He manages to capture four French casemates in a surprise assault, and then proceeds to defend them throughout the day against continued counter-attack attempts by a French battalion. He loses one of the casemates, but recovers it in a new bayonet charge by surprise. At the end of the day, when it becomes clear that no other units in his battalion are taking advantage of the gap, he orders a withdrawal. The entire operation cost him only twelve casualties between dead and wounded. As a result, he received a severe reprimand from his commanding officer for taking reckless initiatives on the battlefield, and was later awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class.

In October 1915 Rommel was promoted to Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant) and transferred to the newly created WGB (Württembergische Gebirgsbataillon), where he received command of a company. He spent almost a year without further activity, stationed in the Vosges, during which he married Lucie. He did not live through the worst moments of the war of positions in France, but he already showed great independence in decision-making. Although he would become famous (especially later) for his risky and swift actions, in this period he shows an enormous interest in fortifications and entrenchments, forcing his men to dig trenches as soon as they were stationed anywhere. He understood (and thus he collected it in his memories) that this was the only way in which the infantry in a static position could escape the effect of artillery. His section had the fewest deaths and wounded of his regiment in that entire period.

War on the Move: Romania, 1914-1916

On August 27, 1916, Romania declared war on the Central Powers. The WGB was transferred to that front, integrated into the Alpenkorps. The WGB was not a traditional battalion; it consisted of six rifle companies instead of four, plus six machine gun companies. Being a purely mountain unit, its commanders were expected to be able to operate independently if the situation required, and it had a very flexible formation: it normally did not fight as a single cohesive unit, but was divided into two or more independent tactical groups. (Abteilungen) depending on the circumstances. It was the ideal destination for Rommel, who found himself almost from the start in command of independent groups, sometimes just his own company, sometimes several, on occasion even controlling the entire battalion.

The Romanian army almost always attempted a static defense, placing fortified positions on top of steep ridges or enclosing mountain passes. The response most used by Rommel consisted of infiltrating behind the Romanian lines with his forces, taking advantage of ridges and gorges, laying out a field phone line behind him. If he managed to remain undetected, he would launch a surprise attack at dawn, sometimes coordinated with cannon or machine gun fire. once behind lines, he never hesitated to attack, regardless of numerical inferiority: he affirmed that the surprise and psychological effect of finding the enemy in areas considered safe required high morale and quality from the troops, to recover and stand up effectively, quality which he did not believe existed in the case of the Romanians.

An example of the correctness of his approach is the conquest and subsequent defense of the set of fortified positions around Mount Cosna, from August 10 to 18, 1917. For this action, Rommel received command of three of the rifle companies and two machine guns. During the initial assault on the 10th he was shot in the left forearm, despite which he remained in command until the Romanians ceased their attempts to counterattack. On the 19th and 20th, with the enemy stopped and already totally exhausted, Rommel and his men launched the assault on the last Romanian positions, capturing them.

Italy, 1917-1918

Lieutenant Rommel during the Battle of Caporetto (1917).

Rommel made his debut on the Italian front on October 26, 1917 at the Battle of Caporetto (known to the Germans as the 12th Battle of the Isonzo), in which he played a prominent role. His battalion was assigned as a reserve unit to support a breakthrough by two Bavarian battalions. However, the assault soon became bogged down in front of the Italian lines. Rommel, with two companies, infiltrated behind the lines across the Isonzo and bayoneted the positions of an Italian battery. In the ensuing fighting, Rommel sent notice to his battalion commander, Sprösser, along with more than a thousand Italian prisoners, informing him that he had managed to break through the lines.

Upon receiving the news, his commander sent him four more companies, with the order to hold the breach. Rommel, with six companies under his command, continued his infiltration into Italian territory, ambushing a fresh column on the road to Mount Matajur. Totally surprised, the Italians offered little resistance, some 2,000 men and 50 officers of Bersaglieri's 4th Brigade being captured, with all their weapons and equipment.

Pleasantly surprised by the Italian's lack of combativeness when caught unawares, Rommel decided to continue the advance with a little less than one company, at forced marches for the rest of the day and into the night. At dawn on the 29th, he located a huge camp of the Salerno brigade. Rommel, with two officers and some soldiers, stood in the center of the camp, informing the Italians that they were totally surrounded and had 15 minutes to surrender. Surprised and stunned, the Italian officers were unaware of the deception and surrendered, increasing the prisoner list by 1,500 men and another fifty officers.

His actions in Italy meant for Rommel the coveted Pour le Mérite.

When Rommel finally scaled Mount Matajur (1,643 m asl) and launched the agreed flares to signal his successful advance, he and his exhausted troops had been in over 50 hours of non-stop activity, marching along of more than 19 km in mountainous terrain, capturing in the process some 150 officers, 9,000 men and 81 guns of different caliber, with hardly any casualties of their own. Five entire Italian regiments were wiped out of the order of battle by a force that never numbered more than six companies. This tremendous success led to the award of the highest Prussian decoration, the coveted Pour le Mérite, and promotion to captain (Hauptmann) in October 1917.

Extremely astounded by the low morale of the Italians, he began a furious pursuit of the fleeing enemy forces. He crossed the icy waters of the Piave just a few days later with six men, in the middle of the night, and with these ridiculous forces attacked Longarone, forcing the numerous garrison to surrender. Once the rest of his tactical group had crossed, he scored further successes in the Longarone area, repelling a last desperate night attack by the Italians, in which he was nearly overwhelmed and taken prisoner. On December 31, 1917, Rommel received a new assignment, aide-de-camp in a General Staff (General Kommando 64). Much to his chagrin, he spent the rest of the war in administrative roles.

The interwar period (1918-1939)

After the German capitulation of 1918, the Treaty of Versailles was signed, by which the Allies tried to prevent Germany from maintaining the ability to rise up in arms again. In the military environment, no one doubted that before the capitulation, defense was still possible. The only enemy troops that had set foot on German soil since the failed Russian offensive of 1914 had been taken as prisoners, and they were of all nationalities. The shock of the virtually unconditional surrender, coupled with the forced demobilization, left a large number of resentful soldiers who soon joined the Freikorps en masse.

That was not the case with Rommel. The demobilization and reorganization plan designed by its commander-in-chief, General Hans von Seeckt, in effect reduced the German armed forces to some 100,000 men led by 4,000 officers. However, the reduction was not random. Any officer who had shown discipline, training, courage and decisiveness in the field was retained in service, as this small army of the Weimar Republic was to become, as soon as possible, the command nucleus of a new German army.. Von Seeckt's secret plan, known and approved by all the officers who remained in the army, was to produce overqualification throughout the entire echelon: to train all personnel in such a way that they could cover the responsibilities corresponding to a rank of at least two. times higher than it held. That way, when the time came, recruiting could be started again, promoting members of the existing army, and quickly organizing a much larger army. Rommel was, in that context, the ideal officer.

After going to look for his wife, sick and isolated in Danzig after the delivery of the "corridor" to Poland, in 1919 he received command of a company with which he was posted to the Ruhr area until 1921, carrying out tasks of order maintenance. From there he was transferred to the 13. er Infantry Regiment, back in Stuttgart. He served as Captain (Hauptmann) until October 1, 1929, at which time he was posted as an instructor at the Dresden Infantry Academy. During his classes he used to use the examples that were closest to hand: his own actions during the war. He dusted off his campaign journals, with a multitude of sketches and hand-drawn maps of his own, and used them in his classes, going over each action over and over again, highlighting the hits and misses, encouraging his students to draw your own conclusions. An incident is well known in which, reviewing the beginnings of the Schlieffen Plan in class, he asked one of his students for his opinion on a certain part of it. When the aforementioned began to recite the response, Rommel interrupted him, saying “I already know what the General Staff thought about it. I'm asking what you think.

Major Rommel with Hitler in Goslar on September 30, 1934.

He continued as a training officer for four years, until on April 1, 1932, he was promoted to major and placed in command of the 3rd.er Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment, a unit of mountain troops. He was in command of this battalion when the first contact between Adolf Hitler and Rommel took place, including a well-known clash between the latter and the Schutzstaffel (SS): During Easter 1935 Hitler had to preside over a military act in which the 3.er Battalion would form in front of the head of state. Rommel received notice that an SS platoon would be formed between his and Hitler's battalion, taking responsibility for his safety. Rommel took it as an insult, claiming that if the Head of State did not feel safe in front of his own soldiers, he had no intention of making them line up. Finally, after the personal intervention of Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, the SS was not formed and Hitler congratulated Rommel on his battalion.

On October 15, 1935, with German rearmament operating at full power, Rommel is promoted to lieutenant colonel (Oberstleutnant) and transferred as an instructor to the Potsdam War Academy. It is a little known fact that, during his time in Potsdam, he was also temporarily in charge of the instruction of the Hitler Youth (in German Hitlerjugend, HJ). He was short-lived in office; His direct boss, Baldur von Schirach, intended to militarize the organization, which Rommel refused. He argued that the goal should be educational, pursuing character building rather than military skill. Receiving Schirach's refusal, he acidly pointed out that if he wanted to train soldiers so badly, he should start by becoming one himself. A few days later, Rommel was relieved of his position as chief instructor of the Hitlerjugend, as expected.

In 1937 he collected his memoirs and the notes of his battles discussed in his classes and published the only book he wrote: Infanterie greift an (The infantry attacks). It was soon repeated in editions, translated into several languages, and became a required reading manual at various military academies around the world. The most influential reader on the fate of its author was undoubtedly Hitler himself. He was promoted to Colonel (Oberst) after the publication of the book. On November 9, 1938, at the end of his three-year tour as an instructor in Potsdam, he received the post of director of the Teresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. However, Hitler selected him soon after to lead the Führer-Begleit-Bataillon, Hitler's personal guard battalion, with the mission of escorting the Head of State. As a result of his new appointment, Rommel would come into almost daily contact with Hitler.

On August 1, 1939, Rommel is promoted to Major General (Generalmajor) and assigned to the Führer Headquarters as Head of Security.

World War II

Poland, 1939

Rommel with Hitler during the Polish campaign.

Rommel's involvement in this campaign was scant in terms of results, but enormously influential in subsequent years. Fulfilling the functions of Chief of Security for him, he spent a lot of time living with Hitler. During it, he saw the positive traits of the Führer's character: self-confidence, personal courage, leadership skills, management skills and a tendency to follow his impulses against what the best minds thought. Conservatives of the General Staff. As short as it was a successful campaign, he did not then come to know of Hitler's irrational obstinacy, his fits of hysterical rage, or his decision to sacrifice anything in order to achieve his objectives, including his soldiers or Germany itself. Until he was able to see it for himself years later (particularly in the aftermath of the Battle of El Alamein in 1942), Rommel unfortunately had a limited picture of who was his commander-in-chief.

At the end of the campaign, Rommel was again attached to Hitler's General Staff. He was very fond of the dynamic general who bore so little resemblance to the Prussian officers, most of noble descent, who were so numerous on the General Staff and whom he despised. One day he asked her in casual conversation what he would like the most. Rommel did not hesitate for a moment: "The command of an armored division."

On February 15, 1940, Rommel took command of the 7th Panzer Division at Bad Godesberg, replacing General Georg Stumme. It was the first time he had commanded an armored unit. He immediately went to work and spent the next few months training intensively with his new unit, getting to know his officers and preparing everyone for the kind of warfare he intended to wage.

France, 1940

Rommel in a military parade in occupied Paris in June 1940.

In 1940, just three months before the invasion, Rommel commanded the 7th Panzer Division, which would be remembered as the Gespenster-Division (the Ghost Division, due to the speed and surprise it constantly achieved, to the point that even the German High Command lost track of where it was), for the invasion of France and the Netherlands. It was the first time that Rommel had commanded a Panzer division. He displayed considerable skill in this operation, repelling a British Army counter-attack at Arras and wreaking havoc on Allied communication, supply and reinforcement columns by attacking in locations deemed safe by the Allies and many miles from the front. The 7th Panzer Division was one of the first German units to reach the English Channel (on June 10) and occupied the vital port of Cherbourg. As a reward, Rommel was promoted and made commander of the 5th Light Division (later reorganized and renamed the 21st Panzer Division) and the 15th Panzer Division, which was sent to Libya in early 1941 to help the defeated and demoralized Italian troops, forming the Deutsches Afrikakorps, at the head of which Rommel achieved his greatest fame.

Throughout the French campaign, Rommel took the new tactic of the Blitzkrieg to the extreme and distinguished himself by leading his men from the front line to get a real-time idea of the situation, assuming numerous risks and being on the verge of dying in combat several times.^{[citation required]}

Africa, 1941-1943

Rommel spent most of 1941 organizing and rebuilding battered Italian troops, who had suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the British Commonwealth, then under the command of Richard O'Connor.

Rommel observing with prismatics from his command vehicle, identifiable by the word "Greif" that looks on the side. Outside Tobruk, June 1942.

In the spring of 1941, it launched an offensive that pushed the Allies out of Libya, but it was barely able to penetrate Egypt and, above all, it left behind its lines the important port of Tobruk which, although surrounded by land by troops of the Axis, was still holding out under an Australian general, Leslie Morshead. Allied Commander-in-Chief Archibald Wavell launched two attacks to lift the siege of Tobruk (Operation Brevity and Operation Battleaxe), but both failed.

After the failure of Battleaxe, Wavell was relieved by Claude Auchinleck, the legendary "Auk" of the Middle Eastern forces, who launched a new major offensive to liberate Tobruk, Operation Crusader, which was successful and allowed the Allies to reconquer Cyrenaica. However, when the offense ran out of steam, Rommel struck back. In a classic Blitzkrieg (lightning warfare ), the «Desert Fox» returned courtesies to «Auk», flanked the British in Gazala, surrounding and reducing the strong nucleus in Bir Hakeim and forced the British into a hasty retreat to avoid being completely defeated. Tobruk, besieged and isolated, was now all that lay between the Afrikakorps and Egypt. On June 21, 1942, after a swift, coordinated and fierce combined attack, the city surrendered along with its 33,000 defenders. Only at the fall of Singapore, a little earlier in the same year, were more British and Commonwealth troops captured. Allied troops had been defeated. Within a few weeks they had been pushed back to Egypt.

Rommel in the African desert in June 1942.

Rommel's offensive was finally halted at El Alamein, just 100 km from Alexandria. Rommel lost the First Battle of El Alamein because the Allies, between a rock and a hard place, had a better source of supplies than the Germans, who were able to decipher secret German communications with the Enigma machine and, as Rommel himself would admit: «The great strategic skill of General Claude Auchinleck, who took direct command of his troops, stopped our advance. By engaging the Italian troops, he forced the German armored divisions to intervene in numerical and material inferiority, which he took advantage of tactically to thwart our attacks ». Auchinkleck was replaced for political reasons and Harold Alexander took his place, naming Bernard Montgomery as commander of the 8th Army. By this time, the supply situation was becoming increasingly untenable for the Afrika Korps, but the audacious Rommel tried nonetheless. to break the enemy lines, for the last time in the battle of Alam el Halfa but he did not succeed.

Rommel overseeing the battlefield on June 18, 1942, during the First Battle of El Alamein.

With the British forces in Malta intercepting his supplies at sea and the great distances to be covered in the desert, Rommel could not hold the position of El Alamein indefinitely. Despite this, it took a major battle, the Second Battle of El Alamein, to defeat the German-Italian forces and force them to retreat. It was then that Hitler intervened and disavowed Rommel for the first time in combat: the Führer revoked the withdrawal order and ordered the German army to remain in their positions and resist to the last man. The order came as a surprise to Rommel, who nevertheless complied with it and called off the withdrawal. However, this meant dooming his army to destruction, so 24 hours later he decided to insubordinate and again ordered the withdrawal. He was not disciplined for it, but a bad impression of his commander-in-chief remained forever in Rommel's spirit.

After defeat at the battles of El Alamein, Rommel's forces limited themselves to ambushing the pursuing British army and did not engage in open fighting again until they reached Tunis. Even there, his first battle was not against the British VIII Army, but against the American II Corps, which had landed in Morocco and Algeria during the previous weeks (Operation Torch). Rommel inflicted a severe setback on the American forces at the Battle of the Kasserine Pass. In this battle, one of the observation officers assigned to his General Staff, Claus von Stauffenberg, was seriously wounded in a bombardment.

Facing the Commonwealth once more at the old French border defenses of the Mareth Line, Rommel could no longer delay the inevitable. Ultra was a powerful factor that precipitated the fall of his forces. On March 6, 1943, after fighting one last battle, Rommel was evacuated. Five days later he was awarded the diamonds of the Knight's Cross. His men would become prisoners of war a few months later.

Erwin Rommel commander Afrika Korps in North Africa.

Italy, 1943

Following his evacuation from Tunisia, Rommel spent time holed up in a villa in Germany. His stay there was a state secret, since the official propaganda kept talking about him as if he were still at the head of the troops in Africa, to maintain his morale.

When the surrender was consummated in Tunisia (May 13, 1943), Rommel was temporarily transferred to Hitler's Headquarters as a "military adviser", without effective command except for a fleeting passage through Greece. The Allied landing in Sicily (July 10) and the overthrow of Mussolini two weeks later convinced Hitler that Italy was about to surrender and prompted him to intervene militarily. The Führer called Rommel to give him command of the new Army Group B, formed around Munich, which began to cross the Alps a few days later.

From August to November, Rommel led what was effectively an occupying army in northern Italy. Rommel has not been charged with any war crimes or crimes against humanity in this difficult pre-civil war period, despite Hitler's orders to brutally repress partisans.

France, 1943-1944

Rommel and a group of officers inspect the defenses of the French coast.

Rommel received in November 1943 the order to transfer his Army Group B to France and was made responsible for defending the French coast. Dismayed by the situation he found himself in and the slow pace of work, knowing that he had only a few months left before the invasion, Rommel reinvigorated all fortification efforts along the Atlantic coast, the Atlantic Wall. Under his command, the pace of work was significantly accelerated, millions of mines and thousands of anti-tank traps were laid, as well as obstacles on the beaches and fields.

After his battles in Africa, Rommel concluded that to hold the Western Front any offensive move would prove impossible due to Allied air superiority. He argued that the tanks should be dispersed in small units and should be kept in well-fortified positions, situated as close to the front as possible, so that they would not have to move too far and not crowd together when the invasion began. He was of the opinion that the invasion should be stopped on the beaches. However, its commander Gerd von Rundstedt decided that it was not possible to stop the invasion near the beaches because of the enormous firepower of the Allied fleet and thought that the tanks should be formed in large squadrons inland near Paris, where they would allow the Allies to enter France and then finish them off. When Hitler was asked to choose a plan, he hesitated and placed the tanks somewhere in the middle. So, the tanks were too far away for what Rommel was advocating, and outside the reach of von Rundstedt's idea. Despite everything, Rommel's plan was about to be carried out.

During D-Day, armored units of the 21st Panzer Division even penetrated to the coast between the towns of Luc-sur-Mer and Lion-sur-Mer, interposing themselves between the British 3rd Infantry Division in the east (Sword Beach) and the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division in the west (Juno Beach), although they were ultimately repulsed. Allied air supremacy greatly hampered the deployment of reserve German armored units intended to counter the landing, such as the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend and the Panzer Lehr Division (130. Panzer-Lehr-Division), partially giving the reason to Rommel's theses on the positioning of armored reserves.

Rommel and the plot of July 20, 1944

Contacts with the conspirators

The Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) Rommel in 1943.

Rommel's true involvement in the plot and his views on it have been the subject of intense debate over the years. What is beyond doubt is that the two key men in the July 20 plot, Dr. Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, had set their sights on Rommel for support. They desperately needed a figure of great renown who could counteract to the German people the shadow of any of Hitler's lieutenants who tried to take his place, and they also needed a high-ranking and prestigious military man who could unite the army under his command. confronting the SS if necessary. Rommel was both. Despite his enemies in the OKW, he was a widely respected figure in the army, and even in the Waffen-SS, and was also the most popular figure in Germany after Hitler himself. ^{[ quote required ]}

The conspirators had two contacts with Rommel: one was Karl Strolin, permanent mayor of Stuttgart and Rommel's former friend and comrade-in-arms in World War I; the other, Lieutenant General Hans Speidel, who, already part of the plot, had been appointed Rommel's chief of staff in France. Strolin visited Rommel in February 1944 to inform him of the conspiracy. He also revealed to him at that time the existence of the extermination camps. Strolin would later declare that Rommel was unaware of the intention to assassinate the Führer and believed that what would be done with Hitler was to capture him and lock him up to be tried. subsequently. On May 17, Rommel attended a meeting of senior Western Front military officials where the Generaloberst von Stülpnagel spoke openly of the plot to kill Hitler. According to numerous testimonies (mainly from Speidel and from Lucie, Rommel's wife), Rommel opposed the assassination, preferring a milder action whereby Hitler resigned or was deposed but not assassinated.

The success of the Allied landing on June 6 definitively convinced Rommel that it was impossible for Germany to win the war. On June 12 he met with Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt and explained to him that the war in the West could not be won militarily. On June 26, he met Hitler in person for the last time. That same day Claus von Stauffenberg began preparations for the attack on July 20.

On July 9, the conspirators made one last attempt to win Rommel over to their cause. César von Hofacker, von Stülpnagel's emissary, informed the marshal of the imminent attack against the Führer. There are conflicting opinions as to whether Rommel finally gave an affirmative answer or whether he preferred not to get involved. In any case, on July 13 Rommel drew up an expanded and updated version of his June 12 report on the failure to win the war against the Western Allies and sent it to Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge, substitute for von Rundstedt. Von Kluge would not send him to Berlin until days after the attack, which would increase the rumors against Rommel.

Rommel out cold

Since the Normandy landings began, Rommel had been in charge of Army Group B, visiting one headquarters after another in order to directly coordinate the actions of each commander. On July 17, 1944, he visited the headquarters of the 276th and 277th Infantry Divisions in the morning. At noon he met Sepp Dietrich at the headquarters of the II SS Panzer Corps and at about four o'clock in the afternoon he headed back to his own headquarters. Despite avoiding the main roads, bombed and overcrowded with refugees, his car was strafed by a pair of RAF Spitfires (the attack is officially attributed to the C F squadron leader of 412 Canadian Squadron).

The car was struck by one of the gusts, injuring its driver, and it crashed off the road, ending up face down in a nearby irrigation canal. The driver, Private Daniel, died a few days later. Commander Neuhaus suffered a broken hip. Captain Lang and Sergeant Holke came out with minor bruises. Rommel was thrown from the vehicle and lay in the center of the road, unconscious. He suffered a quadruple skull fracture, injuries to his face caused by fragments of the windshield and a huge swelling that closed his left eye.The successive doctors who treated him were very pessimistic about his survival expectations. Most of the time he was unconscious. He would wake up sporadically, but he was unable to move and could barely speak.

Thus, when three days later Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Hitler with a bomb, Rommel was hovering between life and death in an operating room where Dr. Esch, one of the best neurosurgeons from Germany, was struggling to rebuild his shattered head. And he got it. To everyone's surprise, Rommel survived the operations with his left eye totally closed, completely deaf in his left ear, and with terrible transient headaches, but alive. It was the sixth wound he had received in the line of duty.

Statements against him

Destroyments caused by the 20 July 1944 attack that attempted to end the life of Adolf Hitler.

In the investigations that followed the attack, several of the detainees ambiguously implicated Rommel. Generaloberst Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel was urgently called back to Berlin. Knowing that he would be arrested upon arrival, he attempted suicide en route by shooting himself, but misplaced the pistol to his temple, only managing to gouge out one eye and nearly miss the second. According to what the doctor who treated him told the Gestapo, he repeated Rommel's name while he was convalescing under the effects of a sedative. He was then taken under arrest to Berlin, tortured for several days, and tried, convicted, and hanged in record time. The execution took place on August 30, 1944, and it is not known with certainty what else he came to declare under torture. It is considered possible that he was executed with such urgency due to the precarious state of health in which he was left after his failed suicide attempt and the subsequent torture.

Speidel, his chief of staff, was also arrested. Taken to Berlin and subjected to continual interrogation by the Gestapo (but surprisingly not to torture), Speidel managed to get through this phase of the investigation without denouncing any of his fellow conspirators. However, he did admit to stating that when he found out about the plan to attack Hitler from Stülpnagel and others, he brought it to the attention of his direct superior, Rommel. With that he left the marshal in a very bad position, since it implied that he was either openly in favor of the attack, or else he was guilty of omission by not reporting it.

Martin Bormann, one of the most powerful Nazi hierarchs, wrote a report on these interrogations in which he compiled the testimonies that denounced Rommel. Specifically, he accused Rommel of having made himself available to the government that took power after the attack. However, historians consider that Bormann is not an impartial source because he was an outspoken opponent of Rommel.^{[quote required]}

Lastly, the fact, circumstantial according to all those involved, also played against Rommel that von Stauffenberg had been an assistant at the Afrika Korps Headquarters.

Other signs of his involvement

Rommel was convinced that Germany should make peace with the Western Allies and also knew that they would not accept unconditional surrender as long as Hitler remained in power. There are indications that in the months of June and July 1944 Rommel changed his initial position against killing the Führer . According to his his son Manfred his, Rommel planned to surrender his Army Group B to the Allies so that they would advance to Berlin and thus end the war.

Bruno Ceppa, one of Rommel's staff officers in France, claims that in the July 17 interview between Rommel and Sepp Dietrich, the marshal asked the SS if they would be willing to obey his orders even if they contradicted the orders. orders from Hitler himself. Dietrich replied that Rommel was his boss and it would be his orders that he would follow Dietrich's support was essential for Rommel because he commanded the most powerful army corps of the three that made up Rommel's forces.

Another indication of Rommel's positive opinion of the plot comes from Melcior von Schlippenbach, a staff officer who visited him during his convalescence and who states that Rommel asked him: "Don't you think it would have been better if the Would the attack on July 20 have gone well?" In any case, all sources agree that Rommel was aware of the plans against Hitler and that he decided not to expose the conspirators.

Indications of Rommel's non-involvement

Rommel and Hitler in 1942.

On July 24, the convalescing Rommel wrote to his wife saying he was surprised by the attack on the Führer and glad he had survived. Rommel's wife always maintained that her husband had not was implicated in or at least did not support the plot to assassinate Hitler.

According to Admiral Friedrich Ruge, Rommel told his naval liaison staff—with whom he was openly friendly—at the hospital while he was convalescing, referring to the assassination attempt: "That's a bad way to settle things.". That man is the incarnation of the devil. Why make him a hero and a martyr? It would be better to let the army arrest him and try him. We will not destroy the legend of Hitler until the German people know the truth."

According to one of the generals sent by Hitler to force Rommel to commit suicide, he would have said in the last minutes before finally leaving his home: «I loved the Führer and I still love him».

Controversial denialist historian David Irving argues that some high-ranking Nazis, notably Martin Bormann and Hermann Göring, wanted to frame Rommel in order to get him off their hands. This would have led them to offer Speidel to spare him from death in exchange for accusing testimony about Rommel. The fact is that Speidel was the only recognized conspirator that he was not executed, although it is also possible that this is because he was not expelled from the army. Indeed, he received the support of Von Rundstedt and above all Heinz Guderian, who had been appointed president of the courts of honor that expelled all those involved, placing them in the hands of Roland Freisler's People's Court.

Death of Rommel

Marshal Rommel tomb in Herrlingen Cemetery, Blaustein.

Rommel spent his convalescence from the accident at his home in Herrlingen. His son Manfred, enlisted in a Wehrmacht air defense unit, received special permission to accompany him. His wife Lucie, Captain Aldinger, and an orderly were also in the house. At first Rommel also had a sentry service at the garden gate, provided by a nearby Wehrmacht barracks, but as the days passed, this service was withdrawn 'by superior order'.

Rommel had already claimed for months that he knew that his enemies in the High General Staff were conspiring against him in Hitler's ear, but according to what his relatives later declared, he did not begin to suspect that he was being accused of something much more serious until after Speidel was arrested by the Gestapo on September 7. Since then, he began to go out during his daily walks carrying his service pistol in his pocket, and on one of those same walks with Manfred he made him notice two men in uniform who were watching them from afar, saying to his son: "It's been days we are under surveillance.

Official account of Erwin Rommel's death in the newspaper Bozner Tagblatt, p.1, October 16, 1944.

Over the next few days, Rommel, still suffering from occasional painful headaches, made various efforts to free Speidel, even going so far as to submit a letter of complaint to Hitler through Sepp Dietrich. Friends and acquaintances of the Rommels informed them of the presence of strangers hanging around their house and asking questions among the neighbors.

On October 7th Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel telephoned Herrligen ordering Rommel to come to Berlin on the 10th for "an interview about his future". Rommel refused, claiming that he did not have medical permission to make such long trips. In confidence, he told his son and Aldinger that he did not believe he would be allowed to reach Berlin alive if he undertook such a journey. Rommel made it a point to make these kinds of comments when his wife was not around, knowing that she had lived in constant terror ever since Speidel had been arrested.

On October 8, Manfred rejoined his battery until the 14th of the same month. The day before, October 13, Rommel received a call from Central Headquarters advising him that the next day he would receive a visit from Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Ernst Maisel, from the General Staff. Burgdorf was the army chief of staff and Maisel acted as his deputy. Both presented themselves at noon on October 14, in an official Wehrmacht car driven by a chauffeur in SS uniform. Manfred had arrived in the morning and was already at the house.

State role in Ulm, 18 October 1944.

While retreating to a room to speak alone with both generals, Rommel asked Aldinger to have the folder with the papers ready: he suspected they were going to charge him with negligence of some kind, so since the landing began he had been accumulating documentation on all the orders and reports he had sent and received. About an hour later Maisel left the room, followed after a few minutes by Burgdorf, and they both went to wait by the car. Rommel went upstairs and entered her wife's room, where he talked with her for a few minutes. Rommel's wife narrates that when she entered her husband declared to her, after looking at her for a while in silence: «I come to say goodbye. In a quarter of an hour I'll be dead. They suspect that I took part in the attempt to assassinate Hitler. Apparently, my name was on a list made by Goerdeler in which I was considered the future President of the Reich... I have never seen Goerdeler... They say that Von Stülpnagel, Speidel and Von Hofacker have denounced me. It's the same method they always use. I have answered that I did not believe what they were saying, that it had to be a lie. The Führer gives me the choice between poison or being tried by the people's court».

Rommel's funeral commission in Ulm on October 18, 1944.

He then went downstairs to talk to Aldinger and his son, who were waiting for him downstairs, and told them the same thing. As they both recounted later, Rommel became more and more determined as he ruled out, with absolute calm, all other possibilities. Although he claimed to be innocent, he did not count on getting out alive if he faced trial. The streets (Burgdorf and Maiser had told him) were manned by SS patrols and all their weapons were Rommel's and Aldinger's pistols, with very little ammunition available. In addition, they had threatened to take reprisals against his family and against all the members of his General Staff, plus their respective families, if he did not commit suicide. The other condition was that the whole matter had to be kept secret. No one could know that his death was an ordered suicide. If his relatives or friends spoke, they would be tried and executed for treason. "First of all, I must think of my wife and Manfred."

Memorial Stone Erwin Rommel at the place of suicide in Herrlingen, Blaustein.

Having made his decision, he said goodbye to everyone, grabbed his cap and marshal's baton, and climbed into the car where Burgdorf and Maisel were waiting. As both Maisel and Dose, the driver, later stated, they headed down the highway in the direction of Ulm for a few minutes. Burgdorf then called a stop on the shoulder and ordered them both to walk down the road, away from the car, while Burgdorf stayed in the car with the marshal. After a few minutes Burgdorf also came out and called to them. As they approached, they claimed to have seen Rommel hunched over and lying in the back seat, with his marshal's cap and baton on the floor of the vehicle, in the last moments of his agony.

Half an hour after he left, Aldinger received a call notifying him that Rommel had suffered a fatal stroke. The body was taken to Ulm hospital, where the legally required autopsy was strictly prohibited. After the wake, the body was cremated and the ashes buried in Herrlingen after a state funeral on October 18 and the declaration of a day of national mourning. Von Rundstedt, who had been removed from office for contradicting Hitler's opinion and who was known to detest the Nazi party, delivered a funeral elegy in which he stated that Rommel was "imbued with the principles of National Socialism, the motor of all his acts", and that "his heart belonged to the Führer". During it he never once looked at the widow or Manfred, blundered and stuttered several times, and then left the place without attending the cremation. Ruge, who did not know the truth, later stated that von Rundstedt's behavior was the first indication he had that Rommel's death had not been natural, although von Rundstedt himself has denied this, stating that had he known, would have refused to participate in such a spectacle.

Notes of condolences poured in from all over Germany, with two curious exceptions: Keitel and Jodl. Neither of them sent their condolences to the widow or made an appearance at the funeral. Himmler sent Rommel's wife a note in which she stated that she knew the details of her husband's death and stated that she was totally horrified by what had happened, adding that she would never have given herself up to such a thing.

La mortuary mask of Rommel at the German Tank Museum in Münster.

Burgdorf committed suicide during the fall of Berlin. Maisel survived the war, suffered the corresponding denazification trial and was released in 1949, dying in 1978. During the trial he declared the reality of Rommel's death, then publicly confirmed by his widow, his son and Aldinger. This had a strong impact on German public opinion, especially among the veterans who served with Rommel. One of them, General Hans Cramer, told Desmond Young that "I wish I could get my hands on that Maisel."

Rommel is the only member of the Third Reich to have a museum dedicated to him.

Personality

General Rommel helping to free a car from the mud in January 1941 in North Africa.

Rommel's character was, according to his family and friends, that of a typical Swabian (the complete opposite of his Bavarian neighbor): quiet, calm, respectful, down-to-earth and little given to sentimentality or big effusions, although with a point of poet. Careful with money, bordering on stinginess.^{[citation needed]} On a personal level, he had a great passion for the countryside and sports related to it, such as horse riding, mountaineering, rowing and skiing. He was also passionate about motorcycles and mechanics: after disassembling and reassembling his first motorcycle piece by piece, he took his wife with her on a trip through northern Italy to show her the places where he had fought. Apart from his family life, he didn't seem to have any interest in life other than his profession, to which he devoted all his energies. General Speidel, his last chief of staff, stated that he did not believe that Rommel had ever read anything other than books on military tactics and letters from his wife and son. However, he also had a great sense of humor. and he used to joke with the troops whenever he had the chance.

Erwin Rommel always considered himself a professional soldier. On the few occasions when he spoke to his wife and son about his campaign time, he always said that war was "a stupid and brutal occupation", to which he nonetheless devoted himself with passion.. Totally devoted to his men, he enjoyed continuous training and was considered a tough and demanding boss, but always close and responsible. In fact, he used to be more liked by the troops than by his officers. ^{[citation needed ]} He was decidedly not a typical Prussian soldier with noble ancestry, but an officer of the troop of bourgeois origin. He was never part of the clique of officers that led the German General Staff, with which he earned a multitude of enemies in that environment, which would prove fatal to him in his last days.

He was one of the generals who best understood and assumed the concept of Blitzkrieg, precisely because he had already practiced it since the First World War as a result of his own reflections.^{[citation required]} It is enough to see his war actions during that period, including those that earned him the Pour le Mérite, to realize that during the Second World War he did nothing more than repeat the same concepts as in the First, with better material and more troops. The kind of surprise reaction and quickness of decision required by mobile offensive warfare were the foundation of Rommel's character and ethos.^{[citation needed]}

Rommel's bust at the Battle Museum of El Alamein, Egypt.

Tactically he was a leader like no other, endowed with what the Germans called Fingerspitzengefühl: a tactical intuition that seemed to emanate from his fingertips, the ability to "read" the terrain, both with the naked eye and through a map, anticipating the adversary's plans and maneuvering at will.^{[citation needed]} Crowd circulates^{[citation required ]} of anecdotes about that almost supernatural ability, recounted by veterans who coincided with him in some campaign. According to Captain Hartmann, Rommel's comrade on the Italian front, it was said in the division that "the front is where Rommel is".

He was humble and direct in dealings. He detailed all of his plans in a methodical and concise manner. When transmitting them, he always did it in a didactic way, giving the pertinent explanations and repeating the most important parts in order to emphasize them.^{[citation needed]} He always had the tendency to take directly the control of operations when he believed it necessary; even as a field marshal, it was not uncommon to see him in command of a battalion leading an advance.^{[citation needed]} This palpably improved his relationship with the troops, which he admired the example set by "his" general, but it was seen not infrequently as an interference by the temporarily displaced officers.

Despite this humility, Rommel became known to both his own troops and his enemies. Interestingly, during his time in Africa, both British and German soldiers referred to him as "that bastard Rommel" and also called him "the Boss", both with the same tinge of admiration and envy. The extraordinaryness of his achievements, coupled with the innate sense of fair play that the British always boast of, led Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck to issue, in 1941, an order calling on all officers of the British Expeditionary Force in the Middle East, among other measures, to never refer to Rommel. He did not do it out of a lack of respect or disloyalty towards him, since there was mutual respect and admiration between them. With this measure he intended to reduce the image of "invincible general" that the "Desert Fox" was creating.

Rommel himself was well aware of the value of image and renown and used his often to pressure his direct superiors in an attempt to get the supplies he needed. The same aggressive tendency that brought him so many victories in battle made him skip the normal chain of command many times, taking advantage of his special contact with Adolf Hitler. That brought him few advantages and turned a large part of the German High General Staff against him, who saw him as an egocentric with a desire for prominence.

In some biographical publications, which appeared at the end of the 1940s, it is incorrectly stated that Rommel belonged to the Freikorps, that he was a member of the Nazi Party almost from its foundation, that he was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler and one of his first lieutenants, who had been a policeman during the Weimar Republic, who was a founding member of the SS, or who studied Law at the University of Tübingen in the interwar period.^{[citation required ]} The origin of most of these falsehoods comes from an article published in 1941 in Das Reich, the newspaper controlled by Joseph Goebbels.^{[quote required]} Rommel read the article while in Africa and was so outraged by the biased image it portrayed that he wrote to his wife saying that he had filed a formal complaint with the Ministry of Propaganda, demanding explanations about it.^{[citation required]}

Rommel's “myth”

A firm defender of the concept that the military should not meddle in politics, he had no contact with the Nazi party throughout his career, although he was required on several occasions to register with it. Rommel's wife only remembers hearing her husband talk about the Nazis before 1939, saying that they seemed to her “a gang of street thugs. It's a pity that Hitler has to be associated with them.” ^{[citation needed ]} In fact, Rommel initially admired Hitler for his qualities as a leader. It was not until the beginning of the collapse of the Afrika Korps in 1942 that he began to criticize the Führer for his lack of strategic vision, and even timidly at first, assuring that "it must be wrong informed of what really happens here"..^{[citation required]}

Over the years, however, this romantic vision that is popularly held of Rommel as an exemplary soldier, apolitical, patriotic and oblivious to Nazi atrocities, magnified by his "martyrdom" due to his alleged participation in the plot against Hitler, has been questioned by some historians.

Although Goebbels had already begun to exploit the image of the "Desert Fox" for propaganda purposes in 1941, to divert attention from the Reich's military failures on the British and Soviet fronts, his performance in the campaign in North Africa earned him to be admired and respected even by the press of the allied countries. Therefore, at the conclusion of the war, the prestige of the late Rommel played a fundamental role in the moral rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht as a military force in the service of its motherland, but completely unrelated to the Holocaust.

It was the British who forged the so-called «Rommel myth», at the initiative of Winston Churchill. By exalting him as an example of a "good German" (Good German ), it was avoided demonizing the entire German people before an international community horrified after the discovery of the Holocaust, in order to achieve rapid reconciliation between victors and expired. But the true intention of the Western powers was to accelerate the rearmament of Germany (Wiederbewaffnung) in order to have a powerful strategic ally with a view to a —practically inevitable— confrontation with the Soviet Union. One of the founding texts of the myth is Rommel: The Desert Fox (Desmond Young, 1950), a biographical book that served as inspiration for the film Rommel, the Desert Fox (1951) and which, in the opinion of historian Patrick Major, practically "borders on hagiography". The other important book in the manufacture of the myth is The Rommel Papers (1953), a compilation of texts written by Rommel himself and posthumously edited by Basil Liddell Hart, who compares the strategic genius of the marshal with that of Lawrence of Arabia.

According to historian Robert M. Citino, Rommel admired Hitler and always maintained a position of loyalty to the dictator, aware that he owed the success of his military career to him. Alaric Searle argues that Rommel was extremely flattered to be one of the regime's favorite generals, to the point of "losing touch with reality". For his part, Charles Messenger writes that although Rommel's admiration for the Führer had strengthened after the invasion of Poland, it began to wane after the Allied landing in Normandy, when he realized that the war was lost. Messenger also casts doubt on Rommel's legendary strategic ability, a view shared by General Klaus Naumann, the Bundeswehr chief of staff during the Kosovo war. Finally, it is stated that Rommel was an ambitious man who gladly agreed to put himself at the service of Nazi propaganda and that he appreciated the British for having helped him feed his own legend while he was alive.

There is consensus that Rommel, despite his loyalty to the Third Reich, never committed war crimes. According to his son Manfred, Rommel had been aware of the mass murders of Jews since 1943, but preferred to turn a blind eye in order to rise through the military ranks, despite not having ideological sympathies with the Nazis. reopened after the premiere of the television film Rommel, directed by Nikolaus Stein and broadcast on November 1, 2012 by the German channel ARD. The telefilm, which recreates the last months of the marshal's life, shows him as a weak man, ambivalent with respect to the Nazi dictatorship and aware that he served a genocidal regime.

Service Sheet

Erwin Rommel gave indications in June 1942, during the African campaign.

• 19-7-10/3-10-15 124.o infantry regiment
• 1-3-14/31-7-14 49.
• 4-10-15/10-1-18 Wurttemberg Mountain Battalion
• 11-1-18/19-8-18 Staff of the 64th Army Corps
• 29-7-18/19-8-18 4.a company of the sixth regiment
• 20-8-18/8-9-18.♪ Landsturm heavy artillery battalion of the XX Army Corps
• 21-12-18/24-6-19 124 infantry regiment
• 25-6-19/31-12-20 25. infantry
• 1-1-21/30-9-29 13.♪ Stuttgart infantry regiment
• 1-10-29/30-9-33 Dresden infantry school
• 1-10-33/14-1-35 3.♪ 17th battalion regiment Goslar hunters
• 15-1-35/21-1-35 Ministry of National Defence
• 25-1-35/14-10-35 3.♪ Goslar Hunter Battalion
  

  Members of the Free Indian Legion inspected by Marshal Rommel in 1944.
• 15-10-35/10-11-38 Wiener Neustadt war school director
• 23-8-39/14-8-40 deputy head of Hitler headquarters
• 15-2-40/14-2-41 Chief 7th Armoured Division
• 15-8-41/21-1-42 Chief Afrika Korps
• 22-1-42/24-10-42 Senior Chief of the African Army Group
• 25-10-42/22-2-43 commander-in-chief of the Italian armoured army
• 23-2-43/13-5-43 Senior Head of African Forces
• 14-5-43/14-7-43 supervisory Atlantic wall
• 15-7-43/3-9-44 Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B
• 4-9-44/14-10-44 at the disposal of the highest headquarters

Battles in which he served as Supreme Commander

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

Rank Promotion Dates

• Fähnrich (sargento), 19 July 1910
• Leutnant, second, 27 January 1912
• Oberleutnant, first, 18 September 1915
• Hauptmann (capitán), 18 October 1917
• Major (May), 1 April 1932
• Oberstleutnant, 1 October 1933
• Oberst (coronel), 1 October 1937
• Generalmajor (general), 1 August 1939
• Generalleutnant, 9 February 1941
• General der Panzertruppe (General of Panzer Troops), 1 July 1941
• Generaloberst (general), 24 January 1942
• Generalfeldmarschall, Field Marshal, June 21, 1942

Related games

The figure of Rommel and his campaigns are part of numerous games throughout the world, for example:

• Blitzkrieg Burning Horizon, real time strategy game in which you take command of Rommel forces in Africa.
• Patton vs. Rommel, computer game created in 1986.
• Advanced Tactical Series: Advanced Tobruk, board game whose stage is the arrival of Rommel to Africa.
• Rommel in the Desert and The fox of the desert, board games on the World War II North African Desert Campaign created in the 1980s.
• Field Commander Rommel, solo board game that represents 3 of the campaigns of Rommel (Division Fantasma, Africa and Day D).
• The computer game Desert Rats vs Afrika Korps is based on the African campaign.
• Nabuko Generals and Conquerors It is a card game that includes great generals and conquerors of universal history; Rommel shares the stage with Alejandro Magno, Atila, Washington, José de San Martín, Patton and many others.
• In the game Call of Duty 2Activision, the first three parts of the British campaign are developed in North Africa, in which the British fight against the Afrika Korps led by Rommel.
• In the game Battlefield 1942Electronic Arts, in which you can fight with or against the Afrika Korps, mentions Rommel in numerous battles.
• In the main campaign of the game R.U.S.E.From Activision, Rommel is mentioned as a tactical adversary in numerous battles, in which he must fight against his troops in North Africa and South Italy as General Joseph Sheridan.
• In the real time strategy game of empire building Empire EarthRommel appears in the second part of the German campaign as the leader of the German troops during Operation Marine Lion. It also appears as the "strategic hero" by default of the Atomic Age - World War II.
• In the game Codename Panzers: Phase one appears as an NPC during the first mission of the invasion of France in the German campaign, meeting with the hero of the campaign, Hans von Gröbel.
• In the game Hearts of Iron IV Erwin Rommel is available to be established as a high command military

Cinema and music

• Five Graves to Cairo (1943) Directed by Billy Wilder.
• Rommel, the Desert Fox (1951). Directed by Henry Hathaway and starred at James Mason.
• The Night of the Generals (1967). Directed by Anatole Litvak, paper represented by Christopher Plummer. This film represents the version of the death of the General machine-gunned by a couple of RAF Spitfires and their involvement in the attack of July 20, 1944.

Rommel (2012). Directed by Nikolaus Stein von Kamienski and starring Ulrich Tukur.

In 2008 power metal band Sabaton referenced Erwin Rommel and the "Ghost Division" In the song Ghost division from their fourth album The Art of War