Desmond Young - Rommel, The Desert Fox

by Unknown

  That afternoon friends in Herrlingen warned Frau Rommel by telephone that two suspicious-looking men had been seen near their house, apparently trying to get into the grounds. When approached, they had moved off. Aldinger was able to establish that, about 3:30 P.M., the two men, one of whom wore dark glasses, had taken post in the woods, on the high ground behind the house. He also learnt that they had new passports which described them as engineers from Regensburg. They said that they were employed on war work and had been evacuated to the Herrlingen area. The proprietor of a local inn also reported to Rommel's secretary, Adjutant B”ttcher, who had been with him for some years, that the men had cars parked near his premises.

  In the evening, having learned of Spiedel's arrest, Str”lin took the risk of coming over from Stuttgart to Herrlingen. He found the house guarded and Rommel, distressed and in some degree alarmed, made a sign to him to speak in whispers. An overhearing set might somehow have been slipped into the house, he said. On his desk was a pistol. Str”lin asked him why he wanted it. “I'm not afraid of the English or the Americans,” said Rommel, “only of the Russians-and the Germans.” He then showed Str”lin a copy of the message he had sent to Hitler and they discussed whether there was any possibility of helping Speidel. Rommel explained that he had already telephoned to Army Command but could get no satisfaction. Nor would they even tell him why his Chief of Staff had been arrested. It was the last time Strolin saw Rommel alive. Frau Rommel telephoned soon afterwards to ask him not to come to the house again. She already feared the Gestapo.

  There was another visitor a few days later. This was one Maier, the local Party boss from Ulm. He came ostensibly as a friend and asked Rommel, while they were having tea, whether he could trust his servants. The head of the S.S. in Ulm had told him, he said, that Rommel no longer believed in the possibility of victory and was in the habit of criticising Hitler and the High Command. Even Manfred felt that his father spoke too freely to Maier. “Victory!” he exclaimed, “why don't you look at the map? The British are here, the Americans are here, the Russians are here: what is the use of talking about victory?” When Maier said something about Hitler, Rommel replied, “That damned fool!” Maier begged him to be more careful. “You should not say things like that, Field-Marshal,” he warned him; “you will have the Gestapo after you-if they are not after you already.”

  An Italian journalist has recently produced a story to the effect that Maier went home and wrote a thirty-page report of this conversation, which he took next day to Berlin and handed personally to Bormann. The Rommels do not believe it. Maier, who came from Heidenheim, spent some months with Manfred Rommel in a French prisoner-of-war camp at Lindau and assured him that he had never had any suspicion that his father had been murdered. He later died in an American concentration camp and cannot be questioned. The story may very well be true. The employment of a stool-pigeon was an old Nazi trick.

  A month passed before the next move was made. Rommel was now able to go by car to T�bingen for treatment. He was due to do so on October 10th. On the 7th a telephone message came from Field-Marshal Keitel. Rommel was to be in Berlin on the l0th for an important interview. A special train would be provided for him on the evening of the 9th. Rommel telephoned to Professor Albrecht to put off his treatment, explaining that he had been summoned to Berlin. Both Albrecht and Stock advised him strongly against undertaking so long a journey. Rommel told Aldinger to get on to Keitel personally. The telephone was answered by General Burgdorf, head of the Army Personnel branch. “My husband spoke to him himself,” said Frau Rommel. “Captain Aldinger and I were in the room. He asked him to tell Field-Marshal Keitel that the doctors would not allow him to travel in his present state of health. Then he went on to ask what it was all about and whether it would not be possible to send an officer to see him. General Burgdorf replied that the F�hrer had given orders that Field-Marshal Keitel should see him to discuss his future employment.” Rommel had not expected to be employed again, after what had passed between him and the F�hrer. In any case he could not be fit for an active command for some months. Aldinger formed the impression that he was uneasy, but for once Rommel did not confide in him. Nor did he say anything to his wife, though she had been in fear for him ever since the arrest of General Speidel. Manfred had returned that morning to his A.A. battery.

  Five days passed and there was no further word from Berlin. On October 11th, Admiral Ruge came to the house to dinner and stayed the night. They talked until after midnight. Rommel told Ruge about the order to go to Berlin and said that he had refused because he did not feel well enough. He added, “I shall not go to Berlin: I would never get there alive.” “I pooh-poohed this at first,” said Admiral Ruge, “but he went on to say, 'I know they would kill me on the way and stage an accident.' I think it was this belief that influenced him two days later.”

  On October 13th came a telephone call from headquarters of War District 5 at Stuttgart. Rommel and Aldinger were out and a soldier servant took the call. He was told to inform the Field-Marshal that General Burgdorf would arrive at Herrlingen next day at noon. He would be accompanied by General Maisel. General Maisel also belonged to the Personnel branch. Since July 20th he had been engaged in investigating the cases of officers suspected of complicity in the plot against Hitler. When Rommel received the message he said very little. To Aldinger he remarked that the two generals were doubtless coming to talk to him about the invasion or about a new job. For the rest of the day he was unusually silent.

  Next morning Manfred arrived on leave by the 6 A.M. train. He found his father already up. They breakfasted together and then went for a long walk. Rommel told his son of the expected visit. “What are they coming for?” asked Manfred. “Is it about a new appointment for you?” “That's what they say,” replied Rommel. Manfred thought that his father seemed worried. However, he pulled himself together and talked to the boy about his own affairs and his future. Rommel wanted him to be a doctor, not a soldier. It was 11 A.M. when they returned to the house.

  At noon precisely General Burgdorf arrived with General Maisel and a Major Ehrenberger, anotherOrdonnanzoffizier. They came in a small green car. The driver wore the black uniform of the S.S. The two generals shook hands with Rommel. Frau Rommel, Manfred and Captain Aldinger were introduced. After a moment General Burgdorf said that he wished to speak to the Field-Marshal alone. Frau Rommel went upstairs to her room. Rommel led Burgdorf into a downstairs room and Maisel followed. As they moved away, Rommel turned to Aldinger and told him to have the papers ready. He had already warned Aldinger to prepare a file of his orders and situation reports issued during the Normandy fighting, for he suspected that he was to be interrogated about the invasion. Aldinger's file was, of course, in order and he remained talking to Major Ehrenberger outside the front door while Manfred went upstairs to continue colouring some maps for his father. It was nearly an hour later that General Maisel came out. He was followed after a minute or two by General Burgdorf. Rommel was not with them. He had gone upstairs to his wife.

  “As he entered the room,” said Frau Rommel, “there was so strange and terrible an expression on his face that I exclaimed at once, 'What is the matter with you? What has happened? Are you ill?' He looked at me and replied: 'I have come to say good-bye. In a quarter of an hour I shall be dead.... They suspect me of having taken part in the attempt to kill Hitler. It seems my name was on Goerdeler's list to be President of the Reich.... I have never seen Goerdeler in my life.... They say that von St�lpnagel, General Speidel and Colonel von Hofacker have denounced me.... It is the usual trick.... I have told them that I do not believe it and that it cannot be true.... The F�hrer has given me the choice of taking poison or being dragged before the People's Court. They have brought the poison. They say it will take only three seconds to act.'” Frau Rommel begged her husband to go before the Court. He had never been a party to the killing of Hitler, nor would he ever have agreed to it. “No,” said Rommel, “I would not be afraid to be tr
ied in public, for I can defend everything I have done. But I know that I should never reach Berlin alive.”

  As he was taking leave of his wife, Manfred entered the room cheerfully, to see what had become of his father. The generals were waiting for him. Rommel said good-bye to his son also. Then he turned and went into the room next door. Manfred followed at his heels. Rommel called for his soldier servant and sent him to find Aldinger. To Aldinger he explained what was in store for him. He was now quite calm but Aldinger could hear Frau Rommel sobbing in her room. Aldinger was not disposed to take it like this. “I told him,” he said, “that he must at least make an attempt to escape. Why could we not try to shoot our way out together? We had been in as bad places before and got away. 'It's no good, my friend,' he said, 'this is it. All the streets are blocked with S.S. cars and the Gestapo are all around the house. We could never get back to the troops. They've taken over the telephone. I cannot even ring up my headquarters.' I said we could at least shoot Burgdorf and Maisel. 'No,' said Rommel, 'they have their orders. Besides, I have my wife and Manfred to think of.' Then he told me that he had been promised that no harm should come to them if he took the first choice. A pension would be paid. He was to be given a state funeral. He would be buried at home in Herrlingen. All the details of the funeral had been worked out and explained to him.... But if he were brought before the People's Court and condemned, as of course he would be, then it would be quite another matter.... 'I have spoken to my wife and made up my mind,' he said. 'I will never allow myself to be hanged by that man Hitler. I planned no murder. I only tried to serve my country, as I have done all my life, but now this is what I must do. In about half an hour there will come a telephone call from Ulm to say that I have had an accident and am dead.' When he had made up his mind, it was of no use to argue with him....”

  Some of the few surviving conspirators feel that Rommel should have insisted on being taken before the People's Court and should there have struck a last blow for Germany by denouncing Hitler. His appearance in the dock, they say, would have shaken confidence in the regime. Had Rommel been more of a fanatic; had he been prepared to sacrifice his wife and child; had he been in better health; had he been sure of reaching Berlin; had he been willing to be branded as a felon and to die on a hook, perhaps without a chance of speaking, he might have chosen differently. His proper course is endlessly debatable: the choice, heroic or not, had to made within an hour.

  Having taken his decision, Rommel went downstairs with Manfred and Aldinger. The generals were looking at the garden. They came over to the car and Rommel got in first into the back seat. Burgdorf and Maisel followed him. Major Ehrenberger had already left to make the arrangements. The car drove off.

  Twenty-five minutes later the telephone rang. Aldinger answered it. It was Major Ehrenberger, speaking from Ulm. “Aldinger,” he said, “a terrible thing has happened. The Field-Marshal has had a haemorrhage, a brain-storm, in the car. He is dead.” Aldinger did not reply. “Did you hear what I said?” asked Ehrenberger. “Yes,” said Aldinger, “I heard.” “Then please tell Frau Rommel that I am coming back to the house at once.” Aldinger walked slowly upstairs to Rommel's widow. He had no need to speak. Half an hour afterwards a car was heard on the drive. Aldinger went to the door. Ehrenberger said that he wished to see Frau Rommel. Aldinger answered that she was unable to receive him. Ehrenberger did not insist. Together he and Aldinger drove, in silence, to the hospital at Ulm. Aldinger was taken to a small room where Rommel's body was lying. “I would have liked to be alone with him,” said Aldinger, “but Ehrenberger would not leave me.”

  Tears ran down his cheeks as he told me the story. For thirty years Rommel had been his friend as well as his hero. It needed an effort to remember that this precise little man, who might have spent his life in some Government office, had been through so many battles in two great wars. Back from the table his plump, pretty young wife wept quietly over her sewing. In this house Rommel would not be forgotten.

  While Aldinger was away, Colonel Kuzmany, commander of the troops in Ulm, came to the house at Herrlingen. Frau Rommel saw him. He was deeply moved, though he did not suspect the truth. Immediately after Rommel had been taken to the hospital, he said, Generals Burgdorf and Maisel had come to his headquarters to announce the sudden death of the Field-Marshal. Then they ordered him to make preparations for a state funeral.

  Later in the afternoon, Aldinger drove Frau Rommel and Manfred to the hospital. The chief medical officer told them that the two generals had brought in Rommel, dead, at 1:25 P.M. On their orders he had given him an injection to stimulate the heart. “There was no reaction,” said the doctor, in a flat voice. Aldinger felt that he was on the point of saying some- thing more but did not dare. He did add, however, that there was to be no post-mortem-on orders from above. Then he led them to the room. “When I saw my husband,” said Frau Rommel, “I noticed at once an expression of deep contempt on his face. It was an expression we had never seen on it in life.” It may still be seen on his death-mask.

  Next evening, the 15th, they went to the station to meet Rommel's sister, whom they had summoned from Stuttgart. Aldinger had been ordered to report to Military Headquarters in Ulm and they took him there on the way. “While we were waiting outside,” said Frau Rommel, “General Maisel suddenly appeared. He came over to the car and began to offer me his sympathy. I turned away from him without speaking and pretended not to see his outstretched hand.” Aldinger said that Maisel had asked him where Frau Rommel was and “how she was taking it.” “In the car outside,” said Aldinger, “and how do you suppose?” When Rommel's sister saw her brother's body she, too, remarked at once on that look of contempt which the others had noticed the evening before.

  They had not yet told her how he died.

  Rommel's body was taken back to the house, where it lay beneath a swastika flag, the face uncovered, in the room in which the interview with the generals had taken place. Under orders from Ulm, two officers mounted guard over it with drawn swords.

  Generals Burgdorf and Maisel went off to Berlin. After they had left, Aldinger discovered that Rommel's cap and Field-Marshal's baton were missing. Characteristically, he telephoned to General Burgdorf and demanded that they be returned, together with any papers taken from the body. The cap and baton were recovered. Rommel's message of July 15th, a copy of which Aldinger knew had been in his breast pocket, was not returned. Burgdorf was killed in the last days' fighting in Berlin. Maisel is still alive in the American zone.

  To a German denazification court before which he appeared in Frankfurt two years ago Maisel said that the car had been stopped a few hundred yards away from the house on the Blauberen road. He and the driver were ordered by General Burgdorf to get out as he wished to be alone with Rommel.

  “Approximately five minutes later we noticed that General Burgdorf had left the car and was walking up and down in the road alongside it. After another five minutes he waved to us. When we approached we saw the Field-Marshal leaning lifelessly against the back seat.” The S.S. driver, Dose, said that Rommel was doubled up and sobbing but practically unconscious and obviously in his death throes. The S.S. were good judges of such matters. Dose sat him up and put on his cap, which had fallen on the floor.

  Maisel also told the Court that he had not wanted to believe that Rommel, a special favourite of Hitler, had had anything to do with the attempt on his life. But when General Burgdorf read his statement from two typewritten sheets, Rommel's demeanour was such that “I got the impression that the accusing statements were absolutely correct.” His story was not challenged. Frau Rommel had been invited to give evidence but refused, not wishing to see General Maisel again, even in the dock. The case was adjourned for further evidence. In the summer of 1949 General Maisel was pronounced an offender in Category II of the denazification law. The conviction carried with it a sentence of two years' imprisonment. Since Maisel had already been in custody for more than two years while his case was being investigated
, this sentence will not be served. Burgdorf was described to me as “a drunken, foul-mouthed butcher who should never have been a general.” Of Maisel, a general of his acquaintance said: “If there was any dirty, underhand work going on, you could be sure that Maisel was somewhere at the bottom of it.”

  “I would like to get my hands on General Maisel,” said General Johann Cramer of the Afrika Korps.

  With the public announcement of Rommel's death began the flood of telegrams and letters of condolence. Hitler sent a not very effusive telegram on October 17th:

  “Please accept my deepest sympathy on the loss of your husband,” it read. “The name of Marshal Rommel will always be linked with the heroic fighting in North Africa.” It will be observed that neither Normandy nor wounds were mentioned. Dr. Goebbels and his wife also expressed their deepest sympathy. Joachim von Ribbentrop said that he had been very much moved to hear that Rommel had died “as the result of his serious wounds in France.” He assured Frau Rommel that “his successes belong to the history of this great period.”

  Kesselring wrote later that “there were times when I did not always agree with him, just as he did not always understand me.... [But] I was very glad when he was appointed to an important command in the West because I knew that his experience of fighting against the British and Americans would be of the greatest value.... His energy, his inspiring personality and his intuition would have prevented many things that might have been prevented.” General Gambara, one of the best of the Italian generals, wrote that “he will always live in the hearts and minds of those who had the honour to see him, as I did, always calm and fearless under fire.” Field-Marshal Model, von Kluge's successor as Commander-in-Chief West, published an Order of the Day in which he referred to him as “one of the greatest of German commanders... with a lightning power of decision, a soldier of the greatest bravery and of unequalled dash.... Always in the front line, he inspired his men to new deeds of heroism by his example....”