World Battlefronts, THE ENEMY: Death on the Downgrade

Trim, broad-faced Erwin Eugen Johannes Rommel rose with Hitler from the street brawls of pre-Nazi Germany. He rocketed upward with the National Socialists through the conquest of Germany, the conquest of Europe, the conquest of North Africa, almost to the conquest of Egypt.

Then both he and Hitler’s Nazi war machine began their slow, bitter descent.

No Junker but a schoolteacher’s son, Erwin Rommel fought with distinction in World War I, emerged into the chaos of postwar Germany a well decorated captain. Lost, he found Hitler. He became the ranting Führer’s bodyguard, military adviser and top-drawer hooligan. When Hitler rang up the curtain on World War II Erwin Rommel was a colonel, commanded an 55 division that fought in the battle of Poland’s Vistula bend. By the time France was invaded, Rommel was a major general; he led the 7th Armored Division in the breakthrough at Maubeuge.

Hitler, who sometimes knew a good soldier when he saw one, gave Rommel a free hand with the “Plan Sud”—the Rommel scheme for securing an African-Middle Eastern German empire. On the Baltic shores Rommel simulated desert conditions, trained the Afrika Korps with superheated barracks and artificial sandstorms. By March 1941 he went to Libya, to pull the faltering Italians out of defeat.

Arrogant, autocratic but a resourceful, daring tactician, he restored the art of bluff and ambush to modern big-scale war. In one day he lured 300 British tanks into almost total destruction. In another day he overwhelmed the British stronghold of Tobruk. He tied up much of Britain’s military strength and leaders for nearly two years and at his peak he stood at El Alamein, 65 miles from Alexandria.

Trail of Defeat. Then Rommel and his Afrika Korps began the downhill trail which many a good general has trod. He was soundly defeated at El Alamein by an even abler general—Sir Bernard L. Montgomery—and by a superiority of power. Even so, his 1,500-mile retreat across North Africa to Tunisia was masterly. Had his career ended then, he might have been one of military history’s heroes.

The Germans were still convinced he was a topnotcher: his arrogance, his color gave him an appeal that other generals of possibly more ability (e.g., Rundstedt, Kesselring) completely lacked. At 52, resoundingly defeated in Africa, Germany’s youngest field marshal, he took command of an army group in France.

Against the overwhelming power of the Allied landing in Normandy, Rommel and the German Army were swamped. Historians must still decide whether Rommel was hog-tied by his superior. Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt, whether Allied sea and air superiority covered any possible German move, or whether the Desert Fox, for once, was hesitant and bumbling.

At any rate, by July 17 it was clear that in Normandy as in North Africa Rommel was again a defeated commander. That day, as Rommel sped down a French road in his staff car, an Allied fighter pilot dipped down for a burst. The car smashed up, Rommel was wounded. This week Berlin announced that he was dead.