What happened after that point remains open to question since the surviving witnesses are less than credible. He became a symbol that was used to reinforce the German public's faith in an ultimate Axis victory. [12][51] The German rearmament was highly dependent on the moral rehabilitation that the Wehrmacht needed. [131] According to Maurice Remy, Rommel should not be blamed regarding strategic matters, considering Hitler and Mussolini had prepared the African offensive strategy from the beginning, despite the warnings of Brauchitsch and Halder regarding the planned invasion of Russia (that Rommel was not informed of). Goebbels supported the decision, noting in his diary that Rommel was "undoubtedly the suitable man" for the task. [21][22], In the spring of 1941 Rommel's name began to appear in the British media. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was a hero of Hitler's Germany, the legendary "Desert Fox" who seized the world's attention with his daring tactics in North Africa from 1941 to 1943. His many honors include the Commander of the British Empire, the French Legion of Honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the third-highest grade of the German federal order of merit. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. Also known as: Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel, der Wstenfuchs, the Desert Fox. , MemCached On. [90][n 11], According to Watson, the most dominant element in the Rommel myth is Rommel the Superior Soldier, the second being Rommel the Common Man, and the last one Rommel the Martyr. As villagers watched, the last gestures of goodbye Rommel could give his son and his old war buddy were quick handshakes. The "Bad Germans" are Nazis, militarists, anti-democratic, and perpetrators of atrocities. Intended as both a planning and a negotiating tool, the document included a key demand for "measures to transform domestic and foreign public opinion" with regards to the German military. Thus, Rommel's participation remains ambiguous, and the perception of it largely has its source in subsequent events (especially Rommel's forced suicide) and the post-war accounts by surviving participants. These show trials usually ended in grim deaths. Theyve only given me 10 minutes.. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! During the height of Rommels success in North Africa, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sang his praises before the House of Commons. He consequently deserves a firm place in the military resistance against Hitler to a greater extent than it has recently been acknowledged in academia and in public. Rommel used the confused structure of the OKW (Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht), the OKH (Supreme High Command of the Army) and the Comando Supremo (Italian Supreme Command) to disregard orders that he disagreed with or to appeal to whatever authority he felt would be most sympathetic to his requests. Erwin Rommel: Hitler's Favorite General Who Conspired Against Him Heinz Guderian | Biography, Rank, Book, & Facts | Britannica Unlike other prominent World War II-era Germans, Rommel has escaped mass vilification. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was a hero of Hitlers Germany, the legendary Desert Fox who seized the worlds attention with his daring tactics in North Africa from 1941 to 1943. Part of his political appeal was his last name. In order to cover up the subsequent forced suicide of the popular general, Nazi officials told the public he had died as a result of those injuries. He attended Hitler's daily war briefings and had opportunities for one-on-one conversations with the dictator, which he proudly reported in letters to his wife. He continued, Federal officials in this country have an aversion to outsiders, and theyre only interested in them for help if theyre in mud up to their ears.. The generals had given the field marshal a choice: commit suicide or face a rigged trial on charges of conspiring to kill Hitler. Over the years, Rommel kept Aldinger on his staff. [133], Others like Stroud, Krause and Phillips opine that even Rommel's recklessness and disobedience during the invasion of France benefitted the German cause, while rescuing Hitler's mercurial objectives and inventing the actual application of Blitzkrieg ("lightning war"), and it was Hitler who downgraded strategic victory to operational victory. These rumours usually ignored his middle-class background and highlighted his connection with the lower classes and his early adherence to National Socialism or Hitler, using several invented anecdotes. No Exit: How Rommel Was Forced To Commit Suicide - HistoryNet Although Rommel would later become known for his bold battlefield tactics, his sister described him as a gentle and docile child.. Throughout summer and early fall of 1944, Gestapo agents and SS plainclothes officers infiltrated Herrlingen. The shadow is too great, he continued. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. An SS driver waited in a car outside. ", Charles F. Marshall: "With the German press showering him with encomiums, rumours about the Swabians past appeared overnight like mushrooms, both in Germany and outside. [70], Meanwhile, Liddell Hart had a personal interest in the work: by having coaxed Rommel's widow to include material favourable to himself, he could present Rommel as his "pupil" when it came to mobile armoured warfare. They chose to confront him at home and threaten his family and friends. [117] Messenger argues that Rommel's attitude towards Hitler changed only after the Allied invasion of Normandy, when Rommel came to realise that the war could not be won. Field Marshal Rommel ignored orders to kill Jewish soldiers, civilians and captured commandos, and was not accused of war crimes. Stream World War I videos commercial-free in HISTORY Vault. Rommel expressed a lingering hope of being sent to the Eastern Front. [12][n 2] In November 1941, Joseph Goebbels (head of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda) wrote about his intention to have Rommel "elevated to a kind of popular hero". Two months later, the Allies kicked the Germans out of North Africa altogether, setting the stage for their invasion of Italy. Rommel's family Rommel's wife, Lucia Maria Morin, came from a middle-class family of polish and Italian mixed race. [162][163] The author and cinematographer Maurice Philip Remy[de] discovered a memo from Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, dating from 28 September 1944 in which the Chief of the Party Chancellery, and Personal Secretary to Hitler, stated that "former General Stlpnagel, former Colonel Hofacker, Kluge's meanwhile executed nephew Lieutenant-Colonel Rathgens and other defendants still alive gave all testimony that Field-Marshal Rommel was indeed in the picture; Rommel agreed that he would be at the new government's disposal after a successful plot". She is currently pursuing a masters degree in military history. [57], The other foundational text was the influential and laudatory 1950 biography Rommel: The Desert Fox by Brigadier Desmond Young. [99], The historians Ralf Georg Reuth, David T. Zabecki, Bruce Allen Watson and Peter Caddick-Adams, state that Rommel was one of Hitler's favorite generals and that his close relationship with the dictator benefited both his inter-war and war-time career. [2] Former military opponents in Britain described Rommel as a brilliant commander and a resistance fighter, the "good German", with one senior military figure comparing Rommel to legendary military leader Belisarius. Speidel had already written in 1946 that he planned to turn Rommel into "the hero of the German people", to give them a positive role model. Herrlingen became Rommels home base during the last year of his life. Furthermore, the SS driver claimed Rommels service cap and Field Marshals baton had fallen from him in the car. North Africa was, in Hitlers view, only a sideshow. Manfred went on to become the three-term mayor of Stuttgart, in southwestern Germany. [123], The historian Geoffrey P. Megargee refers to Rommel as a "talented tactical leader", but points out his playing the German and Italian command structures against each other to his advantage. In World War I, Rommel fought as a lieutenant in France, Romania, and Italy. Manfred Rommel was the mayor of Stuttgart from 1974 to 1996. [6][200] This biography, however, has been criticized by other authors Dowe and Hecht for manipulation and misrepresentation of primary sources, and even invention of verbatim quotations with the aim of portraying Hitler in a better light. Officers implicated in the July 20 plot against Hitler had been hung on meat hooks and strangled with piano wire; their trials and executions were widely publicized to terrorize potential dissidents. Ergo, since Rommel was a clean fighter, he must have been anti-Nazi, and men like him would make good allies of democracy against the Russians. [202] According to Matthias Stickler, attacks on Rommel's integrity and attempts to link him to war crimes, which were started by the "journalist side" in the 1990s, have been largely repudiated by serious research despite having been repeatedly rehashed and refreshed by some authors and their epigones. We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, Churchill declared, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general. George Patton, Bernard Montgomery and other top Allied generals likewise expressed their respect for him, and Rommel responded in kind, saying of Patton that we saw the most astonishing achievement in mobile warfare, and that Montgomery never made a serious strategic mistake.. View this answer. [74][75] These works focused on Rommel's military career, depoliticising it and presenting him strictly as a soldier. However, the exact details of the accusations against Rommeland who betrayed himremain shrouded in mystery. [152] However, around the same time the plotters in Berlin were not aware that Rommel had reportedly decided to take part in the conspiracy. ", "Erwin Rommel stand auf der Seite des Widerstandes", "70. Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel was born on Nov. 15, 1891, to a humble family in southern Germany. By Rommels own admission, the 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy pushed him to his limits. But the house is surrounded and Hitler is charging me with high treason.. [61], The book was not without its detractors. Zabecki notes that Rommel's brilliant tactical moves were logistically unsustainable, which eventually led to a strategic defeat. [174] Rommel classed himself as a traditionalist regarding military ethics and a modernist regarding warfare techniques. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. Rommels father was a teacher, as his grandfather had been, and his mother was the daughter of a senior official. Of course, this is something everyone knows. "To die at the hands of one's own people is hard," Rommel told his 15-year-old son Manfred minutes before he left their house for the last time. Though Rommel was soon removed from the post due to his difficult relationship with Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach, Hitler personally requested that Rommel command his personal escort battalion, which accompanied the fhrer whenever he left Germany. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. In so doing, they portrayed Rommel as a chivalrous combatant, pointing out, among other things, that he apparently never joined the Nazi Party. [76] Fraser's biography remains a work of high reputation,[77][78][79] with Pier Paolo Battistelli praising it for the outstanding handling of the issue of Rommel's myth as well as his life and career in general. [33] General John Strawson notes the same difference in attitudes to war between the leaderships of the two sides. [164], According to eavesdropped conversations between German generals in British captivity, edited by the historian Snke Neitzel, General Heinrich Eberbach, the former commander of the 5th Panzer Army, claimed on 14 September 1944 that Rommel had told him in Normandy, just a few days before the plot, that Hitler and his entourage would have to be killed, if there was any chance for Germany to bring the war to a satisfactory end. ", Giordano: "Another brick is broken out of the mendacious myth of the legendary "Desert Fox" and alleged resistance fighter against Hitler, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel", Controversy over Erwin Rommel as Bundeswehr's role model, "Der Mann wusste, dass der Krieg verloren ist", "Wstenfuchs, Draufgnger, Widerstandsheld? [58][5][n 6] Young had served in North Africa in the Indian Army in a public relations capacity, and was once taken prisoner by Rommel's troops. Walburga Stemmer (March 1892 - October 1928) was a woman who had an affair with German field marshal Erwin Rommel and gave birth to his daughter, Gertrud Stemmer (later Mrs. Gertrud Pan), on 8 December 1913. It was casualty reports, casualty reports, casualty reports, wherever you went. 8 Things You May Not Know About Erwin Rommel | HISTORY [34], The attention of the Western and especially the British press thrilled Goebbels, who wrote in his diary in early 1942: "Rommel continues to be the recognised darling of even the enemies' news agencies". Robert Citino: "His career had been based solely on Hitler's favor, and we might reasonably describe his attitude toward the Fhrer as worshipful. A career as an army officer began to be fashionable, even among middle-class southern Germans, after the establishment of the German Empire in 1871; thus, notwithstanding the absence of a military tradition in his family, Rommel in 1910 joined the 124th Wrttemberg Infantry Regiment as an officer cadet. Its an unbearable burden to be chancellor, his countrys highest office. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. He became deputy finance minister of the state. It was in 1945, about six months after his fathers suicide not when his father killed himself, in 1944. [92] Calder, Duffy and Ricci opine that Rommel's military brilliance provoked a masochistic tendency to romanticise a worthy opponent, that because he was skilled at his profession, he must have been an anti-Nazi hero. All Rights Reserved. [42], In France, a Wehrmacht propaganda company frequently accompanied Rommel on his inspection trips to document his work for both domestic and foreign audiences. [42] Hitler then made Rommel part of his defensive strategy for "Fortress Europe" (Festung Europa) by sending him to the West to inspect fortifications along the Atlantic Wall. Rommel was indeed a daring commander who took huge gambles to bring victory. [65], Writing in The Daily Telegraph, under the title "Rommel: A Flattering and Unconvincing Portrait", the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who had served in intelligence in North Africa during the war, commented that the film represented "a tendency towards collective schizophrenia whereas 'chivalry' towards a captured brigadier is in no wise incompatible with a foreign policy of perfidy and the brutal disregard for all the elementary decencies of civilised behaviour". These are the kinds of soldiers we need. As mayor, Mr. Rommel angered his constituents in 1977 by allowing convicted terrorists to be eulogized and buried in the municipal cemetery. He died on Thursday in Stuttgart at 84. Instead, he sent two generals to Rommels home to offer him the choice to commit suicide rather than face a public trial (and possible repercussions to his family). [91], Historian Sandra Mass considers the Rommel myth a hero cult, a synthesis of old and new hero cults and traditions culled primarily from Germany's largely imaginary colonial past, in particular the proletarian hero cult originally represented by Carl Peters and the bourgeois one represented by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Erwin Rommel | Biography, Death, & Facts | Britannica Manfreds response to the Nazi horror was to emphasize the unity of Europe rather than German patriotism. [108], Searle argues that Rommel not only "found favor with the Nazi regime, but was delighted with the preferential treatment he was receiving", including access to Hitler during the 1939 invasion of Poland. Neurath and Strlin suggested opening immediate surrender negotiations with the West, and, according to Speidel, Rommel agreed to further discussions and preparations. [192], John Pimlott writes that Rommel was an impressive military commander who richly deserved his reputation as a leading exponent of mobile warfare, hampered by factors he could not control, although he usually accepted high risks and could become frustrated when forced on the defensive. In May 1943, to ensure that the inevitable defeat in Africa would not be associated with Rommel's name, Goebbels had the Supreme High Command announce that Rommel was on a two-month leave for health reasons. In the Prussian-German army, a career on the general staff was the normal avenue for advancement, yet Rommel declined to take that road. The Time reviewer concluded that the book was "just this side of hero worship". As long as they live well, they are very selfish. With such a weak force, he came to depend on an automaticity (that required constant successful attacks) that ceased to function once he gradually lost equipment superiority, air cover and good intelligence (which, in combination with good leadership, allowed the possibility to offset numerical inferiority to some extent). True, French resistance was almost at an end then, but Erich was entitled to his decoration, too. [82] In contrast, German biographies, such as by the journalist Wolf Heckmann, were far less sympathetic. Rommel's unprofessional conduct was noted by his fellow officers and added to his growing reputation as one of Hitler's favoured commanders. newsletter for the best of the past, delivered every Wednesday. However, postwar interviews collected by U.S. Army intelligence officer Charles Marshall and British historian Desmond Young revealed that the Nazis took these two items as trophies and later kept them on a desk at Hitlers headquarters. [88][n 10] The leading German news magazine Der Spiegel describes the myth as "Gentleman warrior, military genius". He became a liberal voice in postwar West Germany, supporting the rights of immigrants, backing civil liberties and strengthening the citys Jewish population. [196] She comments that she would not describe Rommel as a resistance fighter, although he did support the assassination attempt. The present mayor of Stuttgart, Fritz Kuhn, announced the death without giving a cause. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Reuth argues that "Rommel was neither one nor the other. Updated: January 7, 2022 | Original: October 29, 2009. [99][100] Remy dated Rommel's support for Hitler as 1935, noting a speech in which Rommel praised Hitler for restoring the Germans' self-respect and establishment of the way towards an honourable and righteous peace, as well as efforts in alleviating the disadvantaged people's problems. They claimed Rommels death was induced by war wounds and staged a speech promoting Hitler as the eulogy. [106] Rommel showed particular resentment towards the SA and later, the SS, for their brutality and absorption of resources and personnel. During the invasion battle in Normandy, Rommel was seriously injured in an air attack on his car by British fighter-bombers on July 17. He angered Hitler by urging a negotiated surrender on the Western Front. He also disregarded an order directing German generals to execute Allied commandos caught behind enemy lines. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. [179] Some modern authors, such as Storbeck, are more sympathetic. The journalist and historian Basil Liddell Hart, an early proponent of these two interconnected initiatives, provided the first widely available source on Rommel in his 1948 book on Hitler's generals, updated in 1951. She has written numerous military history books, articles and book reviews and is also an award-winning author.