The Death of Field Marshal Rommel

[pieter]

[pieter]

Erwin Rommel



Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944) was a German general and military theorist. Popularly known as the Desert Fox, he served as field marshal in the Wehrmacht (Defense Force) of Nazi Germany during World War II, as well as serving in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the army of Imperial Germany.

Rommel was a highly decorated officer in World War I and was awarded the Pour le Mérite for his actions on the Italian Front. In 1937 he published his classic book on military tactics, Infantry Attacks, drawing on his experiences from World War I. In World War II, he distinguished himself as the commander of the 7th Panzer Division during the 1940 invasion of France. His leadership of German and Italian forces in the North African campaign established his reputation as one of the most able tank commanders of the war, and earned him the nickname der Wüstenfuchs, "the Desert Fox". Among his British adversaries he earned a strong reputation for chivalry, and the North African campaign has often been called a "war without hate". He later commanded the German forces opposing the Allied cross-channel invasion of Normandy in June 1944.


Desert Fox Rommel in the North African desert


Field Marshal Rommel, second from right, in North Africa in 1941


Field Marshall Erwin Rommel inspecting the beach defenses in Normandy, 1944


Field Marshal Erwin Rommel inspects the readiness of the artillery of the Wehrmacht in France, 1944.


Field Marshal Erwin Rommel inspects the readiness of the tank corps. France. 1944


Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the German anti-invasion forces, inspecting German defences on the Atlantic Wall.


Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, commander of the German anti-invasion forces, inspecting German defences on the Atlantic Wall .


Headquarters of Army Group B – 1944; Wehrmacht general Alfred Gause (right), Chief of Staff of the 6th Panzer Army, with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (left) and Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt. Colonel and Chef der Führungsabteilung on the western sector Bodo Zimmermann is in the background

Rommel supported the Nazi seizure of power and Adolf Hitler, although his reluctant stance towards antisemitism, Nazi ideology and level of knowledge of the Holocaust remain a matter of debate among scholars. In 1944, Rommel was implicated in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Due to Rommel's status as a national hero, Hitler desired to eliminate him quietly instead of immediately executing him, as many other plotters were. Rommel was given a choice between committing suicide, in return for assurances that his reputation would remain intact and that his family would not be persecuted following his death, or facing a trial that would result in his disgrace and execution; he chose the former and committed suicide using a cyanide pill. Rommel was given a state funeral, and it was announced that he had succumbed to his injuries from the strafing of his staff car in Normandy.



Rommel has become a larger-than-life figure in both Allied and Nazi propaganda, and in postwar popular culture, with numerous authors considering him an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of the Third Reich although this assessment is contested by other authors as the Rommel myth. Rommel's reputation for conducting a clean war was used in the interest of the West German rearmament and reconciliation between the former enemies – the United Kingdom and the United States on one side and the new Federal Republic of Germany on the other. Several of Rommel's former subordinates, notably his chief of staff Hans Speidel, played key roles in German rearmament and integration into NATO in the postwar era. The German Army's largest military base, the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks, Augustdorf, is named in his honour.

[pieter]

Hans Speidel, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied NATO Land Forces Central Europe from 1957 to 1963 inspects the Nortold Royal Air Force Airbase in the United Kingdom on Wednesday, June 5, 1963.

Hans Speidel



Hans Speidel (28 October 1897 – 28 November 1984) was a German general during the Second World War and the Cold War, who served as Supreme Commander of the NATO ground forces in Central Europe from 1957 to 1963.

Speidel served as Generalleutnant (Major General) and chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the Second World War. Speidel was a Mussolini-style fascist and nationalist who agreed with the Nazi invasions and territorial aspects of the Nazi regime's policies, but like Benito Mussolini, strongly disagreed with their racial policies. This led him to participate in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, after which he was jailed by the Gestapo. At the end of the war, he escaped from Nazi prison and went into hiding.

During the early Cold War, Speidel emerged as one of the leading German military figures, and played a key role in German rearmament and integration into NATO. He is thus regarded as one of the founders of the Bundeswehr. He was the first officer to be promoted to full General in West Germany and served as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Land Forces Central Europe from 1957 to 1963, with headquarters at the Palace of Fontainebleau in Paris. Speidel was also a historian by training and wrote several books. He received the Grand Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1963.

He was the father of Brigadier General Hans Helmut Speidel and the father-in-law of European Commissioner and liberal politician Guido Brunner.

[Jaga]

Pieter, thanks for bringing the subject of gen. Rommel. In spite of being on the other side of the front he was respected on all fronts. I just could not understand why he decided to support Hitler initially, maybe he just wanted more work for himself in the military. I watched the fragment from the movie and then the parts of his death on official German media. It was dramatic. Frankly I did not know that he was forced to commit a suicide.

[pieter]

Jaga,

There are a few characteristics, personal traits, mentality elements, a typical mindset and way of doing things by Germans which characterises them in the eyes of other Europeans, Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, South-Africans (one English minded white English South African female family member was very anti-German, in the way you had anti-Germanism in the early 20th century in White Anglo Protestant America), Israeli's, Africans (who experienced the Germans in Namibia and Northern Africa, the Arguin island off the western coast of Mauritania, the Brandenburger Gold Coast (todays Ghana), the African Great Lakes region, which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, and the mainland part of Tanzania. And probably people from the Middle-east and Southern-America too, where a lot of former Nazi's were advisors for rightwing Military Junta's.

That German characteristics and mentality as seen or observed, witnessed and felt by non-Germans is a 'collectivist mindset', 'state' (Etatist) thinking, strict loyalty to authorities, punctuality (Gründlichkeit), disciplined (Disziplin), Obedient (Gehorsam; in the sense; "Befehl ist Befehl ["an order is an order"]), being extremely (too) serious, systematic, structured, stubborn, dominant, arrogant, egocentric and ethnocentric in the past (Always the interest of the Teutonic Knights, the Prussian rulers and the German Reich First -first the Kaiser and after that the Führer -Adolf Hitler-), and difficult for others with other ways of doing things and other mentalities.

This strictness, discipline, punctuality and loyalty to hierarchy and Superior orders (Handeln auf Befehl) is sometimes hard to understand or follow by a more individualistic, flexible or pragmatic Pole, Dutchman, Dane, British person or French person, and maybe also Americans. I have to say that I have most often positive experiences today in the Free and Democratic and tolerant Europe with German speaking people from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. They don't subscribe to the old stereotype of the Prussian German who speaks like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess or Julius Streicher, nor like an East-German strict Prussian Saxon Communist.

Cheers,
Pieter

Nazi speech


Communist German speech

[Jaga]

Pieter,

I remember reading the history book about differences between Polish, German and Russian societies - with German and Russian towards absolute power and Polish towards anarchy explaining that the density of population in Germany (dense, the need to build commmunities with the ordered structure), Polish - less dense, helping independence.... and Russian - with the low density which has to be organized towards absolute power from above.
I am not sure there is a simple explanation, but German nation built on Prussian heritage was oppressive.

I agree with you that German people are great when without this oppressive structure.... I know plenty of great people. German communities in the US did not develop the oppressive cultures like in other countries.

Let's hope this would never happen again...to such extend.