Desmond Young - Rommel, The Desert Fox

by Unknown

  “We left it that Rommel should try, at some suitable moment, to see Hitler and bring him to reason. If that failed, he should write him a letter setting out the whole situation, explaining to him the impossibility of winning the war and asking him to accept the political consequences. Finally, as a last resort, he should himself take direct action. He thought it over for some time and said at length: 'I believe it is my duty to come to the rescue of Germany.' With that I had no more doubts. He was not a highly intellectual man; he understood no more of politics than he did of the arts. But he was the soul of honour and would never go back on his word. Moreover, unlike most of the generals, he was a man with the cour- age to act.”

  In April, Str”lin found a new ally when General Speidel was appointed Rommel's Chief of Staff. He was already in touch with the conspirators. Thereafter Str”lin was in almost daily contact with him by courier and, through him, with Rommel. Speidel had discussions with his former chief, General Heinrich von St�lpnagel, Military Governor of France, and with General von Falkenhausen, Military Governor of Belgium. In some Rommel took part; about all he was kept informed. St�lpnagel was on the inner ring of the conspiracy. Together he and Speidel worked out the heads of an armistice agreement which they hoped to negotiate with Generals Eisen- hower and Montgomery. If Hitler had not already been removed, it was to be made independently of him. It provided for the evacuation of the occupied territories in the west. In the east a shortened front would be maintained.

  In fact, the western Allies could not have agreed to such conditions. They were pledged not to make a separate peace without Russia. Moreover they had round their necks the “putrefying albatross” of unconditional surrender. Clamped on by their own choice at Casablanca, it “whipped the Germans together under the swastika,” strengthened Hitler, prolonged the war and cost many thousands of British and American lives. Speidel and St�lpnagel, however, supposed that Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt would welcome the chance of keeping the Red Armies out of Western Europe, provided they did not have to make terms with Hitler or the Nazis.

  On May 27th another important meeting was held in Speidel's house at Freudenstadt. It was called at Rommel's re- quest. There were present Speidel himself, representing Rommel, Str”lin and von Neurath, former Foreign Minister of Germany and later Gauleiter of Czechoslovakia. Von Neurath was afterwards sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment at Nuremberg. He must have thought it somewhat ironical that he had already run the risk of punishment far more severe at the hands of Hitler. I sat up with a slight start when General Speidel said casually: “We met around this table; von Neurath had the chair in which you are sitting.”

  With the German passion for documentation, Str”lin had written a special memorandum. It gave, he said, a complete expose of the present position and was intended for Rommel's guidance. “And do you mean to say,” I asked him, “that you put all that on paper?” “Yes,” he replied, “I had it copied in longhand in my office by one of my employees. He was very frightened and burnt the blotting paper afterwards. I don't think General Speidel much liked carrying it either. However, he went off with his copy in his pocket and I brought mine back with me to Stuttgart.” It was like carrying a Mills bomb with the pin out.

  Rommel himself was not as “security-minded” as he should have been. He spoke very freely in the mess about the war and about the F�hrer. Since he could trust his personal staff, this would not have mattered had one of them not been more conscientious than discriminating. ------ kept the war diary, written in the first person as though personally by Rommel, and it was his duty, he felt, to record not merely the happenings of the day but theobiter dicta of the Field-Marshal. He was scrupulous in doing so. Rommel was amused when he saw an entry: “0700 hrs.-had breakfast (omelette), 0730 hrs.--battle of Caen begins.” He was also amused when he read “Went for a walk with Captain ------ and Field-Marshal von Kluge” and “discussed military situation with Captain ------: he agrees with my views.” He was not, however, so much amused when, idly turning over the pages, he came across: “Hitler's orders are nonsense; the man must be mad,” and “Every day is costing lives unnecessarily; it is essential to make peace at once.” “Good God, man,” he said, “you are going to bring me to the scaffold!” Aldinger was instructed to prepare a revised and expurgated version at once.

  Later Manfred and he burnt the original, which Aldinger had apparently intended to keep in his file. This typically German practice of reducing everything to writing and of preserving the most incriminating documents hanged many of the conspirators.

  At the May 27th meeting, General Speidel drew the military picture. When he had finished, von Neurath said: “With Hitler we can never have peace: you must tell Rommel that he must be prepared to act on his own responsibility.” That was the feeling of the others also and that was the message which General Speidel took back to the headquarters at La Roche Guyon.

  Meanwhile Rommel's will to act had been fortified from a very strange quarter. Ernest J�nger, author ofStorm of Steel , the frontline soldier who believed, even after 1914-18, that war was the noblest occupation of man, was one of the first to write against the Nazis in an allegorical novel, theMarble Cliffs , which was suppressed. He had now secretly prepared a draft peace treaty, founded on the idea of a Europe united on the basis of Christianity-the abolition of frontiers and the return of the masses to the Christian faith. Only thus could the threat of Bolshevism be defeated. Rommel found it moving and convincing and was anxious that it should be published when the opportunity came. It was now for him to create that opportunity.

  From February onwards Rommel was in perhaps the most extraordinary position in which any general ever found himself. On the one hand he was the chosen defender of the Atlantic Wall, entrusted by Hitler with the task of defeating the invasion on the beaches. As such he was again being publicised in the German Press: as such he was regarded, not only by the Allies but by the German Army. On the other hand he was convinced that the invasion could not, in fact, be defeated and was secretly committed to proposing an armistice to Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery when it suc- ceeded-unless he could first bring Hitler to reason.

  This dilemma he discussed in many long talks with Admiral Ruge. “To continue the war is crazy,” he said. “Every day costs us one of our towns-to what purpose? Merely to make it more certain that Communism will sweep over Europe and bring all the Western Powers down together.” At the same time he recognised that it was no use thinking of trying to make peace independently of Hitler unless and until the invasion succeeded. “In Africa I was my own master,” he said, “and the troops looked to me for decisions. Here I am only Hitler's deputy.” Subjected daily to intensive propaganda and believing implicitly in the mysterious secret weapons, the rank-and-file would have regarded any one who spoke of surrender as a traitor and, with most of the junior officers, would have refused to follow him. Thus an attempt had to be made to defeat the invasion and at the same time preparations had to be made for an approach to the Allies.

  By a remarkable feat of mental balance Rommel contrived to ride these two horses together. As a soldier he did his utmost to arouse the sleeping army of the west and to inspire the troops with the determination to prevent a landing. He also worked night and day to improve the neglected defences of the Atlantic Wall. In his orders he declared that it was, or soon would be, impregnable. The Allied commanders themselves were given an exaggerated idea of its actual strength. When the landing was successfully made, he battled desperately to throw the invaders off the beaches. Had he been completely single-minded, had he believed implicitly in his own predictions, he could not have done more. Nor could any general have more persistently risked his own life. He thus kept faith, professionally, with the F�hrer. He also kept faith with the Army. There was not a hint of irresolution in his leadership. Though he had always hated sacrificing troops unnecessarily, he flung them in in counter-attacks, with what feelings may be imagined. “I have never before sent men
to certain death,” he said to Ruge. His strategy and tactics may be criticised: no one on our side has ever suggested that he “pulled his punches.”

  At the same time he fulfilled to the letter the conditions he had made at his meeting with Dr. Str”lin in February. His situation report of June 12th gave Hitler fair warning that things were “extraordinarily difficult” and that Allied superiority, particularly in the air, left little hope of preventing a break-out. On June 17th at Soissons he had the personal interview which it was agreed that he should seek. He then gave Hitler a military alternative to asking for peace-that of taking up a defensive line behind the Orne. When permission could not be obtained, both he and von Rundstedt broached the question of coming to terms with the Western Powers. Finally, on July 15th, he sent his last message to Hitler. Before he received a reply and thus before he could take the final step of an approach to the Allied commanders, he was wounded. Only in this one particular did the agreed programme remain unfulfilled.

  As things turned out, it would have been better had Rommel died of his wounds. Most men would have done so. He showed once again his extraordinary resilience and vitality. Baron von Esebeck, who himself had a narrow escape, since he usually travelled with Rommel and only stayed at headquarters on July 17th to write a “piece” about him, saw him in the hospital at Vesinet about July 23rd. He was sitting on the side of his bed. “I'm glad it's you,” said Rommel: “I was afraid it was the doctor. He won't allow me to sit up. I'm sure he thinks I am going to die,” he added, “but I haven't any intention of dying. You'd better take a picture of me.” With this, he stood up, put on his uniform jacket over his pyjamas and made von Esebeck take a photograph in profile, showing] the right, or undamaged, side of his face. “The British will be able to see that they haven't managed to kill me yet,” he said. He then went on to speak quite normally to von Esebeck and repeated what he had already told him on June 12th, after he had written his report to Hitler, that the war was lost. “He was especially bitter,” said von Esebeck, “about the complete failure of the Luftwaffe. He said nothing about the attempt on Hitler's life.”

  Speidel and Ruge also visited Rommel a few days after he was wounded. They found that he had succeeded in shaving himself! An unfortunate Surgeon-Major-General who told him that he must really keep quiet was severely “bitten.” “Don't tell me what I must do or mustn't do,” said Rommel, “I know what I can do.” Thereafter Ruge visited him nearly every day to read to him. “I read a book calledThe Tunnel by Kellermann,” he said. “It was about building a tunnel from Europe to the United States, exactly the sort of thing he liked. We used to talk about 'after the war.' He had been very much impressed by the enormous rise and fall of tide on the coast of Brittany and said that he would like to be actively inter ested in a project for drawing power from the tides. Anyway, he wanted to do something technical and practical.”

  With Admiral Ruge, Rommel spoke freely about the plot.

  “That was altogether the wrong way to go about it,” he said. “The man is a devil incarnate but why try to make a hero and a martyr of him? He should have been arrested by the Army and brought to trial. The Hitler legend will never be destroyed until the German people know the whole truth.”

  “I was in fear for Rommel,” said Ruge, “and hoped that it might be possible to get him into the hands of the British. But, good friends as we were, I never plucked up courage to suggest it to him. In any case he was bent on going home.”

  On August 8th, in spite of the objections of Professor Esch, chief medical officer at Vesinet, and of Dr. Schennig, of Army Group B, Rommel insisted on being removed to his house at Herrlingen. “He was determined,” said Frau Rommel, “not to fall, seriously wounded, into enemy hands.” Both doctors accompanied him. They put him in charge of Professors Al- brecht and Stock, of the clinic of T�bingen University. Professor Albrecht specialised in brain surgery. When he examined Rommel's injuries he said, “I shall have to revise my lectures to my pupils. No man can be alive with wounds like that.” He added that he would have preferred to have Rommel in his nursing-home at Tubingen “for his own protection.”

  Contrary to all expectation, the wounds mended quickly. Rommel became visibly stronger every day. Meanwhile Frau Rommel found it strange that, of all the high dignitaries of the Reich and of the Army Command, no one took the trouble to telephone to inquire about his condition.

  Had she but known it, the hand of Hitler was already closing over her husband. He would have been suspect, in any case, for the “defeatist” views which he had expressed. But there was a track which led straight to him. On the evening of July 20th, when it was already known that the attempt had failed and that Hitler was alive and giving orders, General Heinrich von St�lpnagel was summoned by Field-Marshal von Kluge to La Roche Guyon. Von Kluge was privy to the plot but not actively concerned in it. Had it succeeded, he would have gone over openly to the conspirators and himself approached the Allies for an armistice. As things were, he was of opinion that there was now nothing to be done. He said as much to von St�lpnagel. Then, to his horror, he learnt that, before leaving Paris, von St�lpnagel had already ordered the rrest of the Gestapo and the S.D., the S.S. security police. Moreover, he expected von Kluge to proceed with the original plan. Von Kluge at once made it clear that he had no intention of doing anything of the sort. After a very strained discussion he told von St�lpnagel to go back to Paris and release the S.D. immediately.

  The commander of the S.S., General Oberg, was prepared to try to hush things up and pretend that von St�lpnagel's orders for arrest had been merely an exercise. Next day, however, there came a message for General von St�lpnagel to report to Army Headquarters in Berlin. He set off by car. At what moment in that long drive he determined to take his life, no one can tell. Perhaps it was as he neared Verdun, where he had fought with distinction in the bloody battles of the first war. That, at any rate, was the spot he chose. He made his driver take the car to the banks of the Meuse canal and leave him. Wading in, he drew his pistol and shot himself through the head. He succeeded only in destroying his eyes. The driver heard the shot, found him and pulled him out of the water.

  He drove him, unconscious, to the hospital in Verdun. An operation was performed and an eye removed. As he began to recover consciousness, von St�lpnagel called out repeatedly, “Rommel!” According to Colonel Wolfgang M�ller, it was the surgeon who communicated with the Gestapo in Paris. According to General Speidel, the S.S. and Gestapo were already standing around his bed. The discrepancy may be merely one of time. The Gestapo heard, at first or second hand. It was in the company of the Gestapo that General von St�lpnagel completed his journey to Berlin. There he was tortured. No one knows what he said, if, indeed, he said anything more. In his delirium he had already said enough. Having been tortured, he was tried and hanged. Speidel says that he was a brave and honourable man, “chevalier sans peur et sans reproche.” It is a pity that he was not more accurate with his pistol.*

  [* He is not to be confused with Otto von St�lpnagel, who com- mitted suicide in a French prison while awaiting trial for crimes against hostages. I have not heard of any such charge against Heinrich.]

  When, on August 18th, Field-Marshal von Kluge, also summoned to Berlin, decided to follow the same path, he took poison and made no mistake.

  At Herrlingen the weeks passed quietly, the only events the visits of Professor Albrecht. He was delighted with his patient's progress. Rommel was able to get up and to sit in the garden in the sunshine and soon to go for walks. There was only one rather strange incident during his early convalescence. In the middle of August, not long after his return home, a man tried to get into the house by a subterranean passage which led to the air-raid shelter. When challenged and fired on by the guard, he fled. No great attention was paid to this affair. There were many queer characters, deserters, escaped prisoners-of-war and foreign labourers, on the run in Germany during the summer of 1944.

  On September 6th, Rommel ha
d another unexpected visitor. General Speidel came to the house to tell him that he had been suspended the day before from duty as Chief of Staff to Army Group B. To-morrow he was to report to Berlin to General Guderian, now Chief of Staff to the Army Command.

  “He told us,” said Frau Rommel, “that Keitel and Jodl had been talking of my husband as a 'defeatist' and warned him to beware of them. Because of his state of health he told him no more. My husband imagined that they were looking for someone to blame for the military situation in the west. He thought that this explained why the German press and radio had spoken of his 'accident' and not of an enemy attack and why they had been so slow in publishing the news that foreign papers came out with it several days before.”

  General Speidel was not given the chance to report to Berlin. Perhaps it was feared, from a misreading of his character, that, like Field-Marshal von Kluge, Generals Beck, von St�lpnagel and others, he would try to take the easier way out. At 6 A.M. there was a heavy knock at the door of his house in Freudenstadt. It was an S.S. officer with an armed guard. General Speidel was to accompany him immediately. In such haste was he that he did not stop to search the house. Frau Speidel was able to remove a photograph of General Beck which hung (and still hangs) in a place of honour in the sitting-room. She was also able to hide certain papers. Her husband was carried off by car to Stuttgart and thence by train, closely guarded, to Berlin and the Gestapo prison on the Prinz Albrechtstrasse. His personal assistant telephoned later in the morning to Herrlingen and informed Rommel of the arrest. It was never officially communicated, though Rommel was still nominally in command of Army Group B. Rommel wrote a letter of protest to Hitler personally, which he sent to Sepp Dietrich, asking him to forward it to the F�hrer. If it was forwarded, Hitler sent no reply.