Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
I Discovery of Mrs. Rommel
II An Emissary and More Field Marshals
III The Early Rommel and His First Panzer Command
IV Arrival in Africa
V Capture of Tobruk
VI Siege and Defeat at El Alamein
VII Long and Bitter Retreat
VIII Inspection of Coastal Defenses
IX The Battle of Normandy
X Failure of the Putsch and Its Aftermath
XI The German Camps after the War
CHAPTER XII Mrs. Reveals Her Husband's Murder 183
XIII Search for Impeccable Sources
XIV The Lost Faith
XV Evaluation: What Rommel Was, What He Was Not
Afterword
Discovering the Rommel Murder
Charles F. Marshall
Stackpole Books (2002)
* * *
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's heroic opposition to Hitler in 1944 cost him his life. In this intriguing, well-paced tale of a journalistic coup, Marshall, the first to discover the real events behind Rommel's death, tells how he learned the facts from Rommel's widow and delves into the great general's background and death. He arrived at his conclusions based on his intimate knowledge of men on Rommel's staff and his access to Rommel's papers, including letters from the general to his wife. Here, for the first time in paperback, is the exciting story of how the world learned about the way the "Desert Fox" met his death.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Photo from Mrs. Rommel.
Charles F. Marshall with an introduction by Martin Blumenson
To Mary Marshall and the loving memory of the late Marian Marshall
We have in Rommel a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.
Winston Churchill, House of Commons, January 1942
Rommel was a military phenomenon that can occur only at rare intervals; men of such bravery and daring survive only with exceptional fortune. He was as brave on the battlefield as Ney, with much better brains; as dashing as Murat, with more balance; as cool and quick a tactician as Wellington. Anyone studying the facts ... will recognize him as a fine character and great soldier:
Among the chosen few,
Among the very brave, the very true.
There has always been some mystery about his end, how it came about....
Field Marshal Earl Archibald P. Wavell
Rommel had a feel for the battlefield like no other man.
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
Foreword xi
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xvii
CHAPTER I Discovery of Mrs. Rommel 1
CHAPTER II An Emissary and More Field Marshals 9
CHAPTER III The Early Rommel and His First Panzer Command 25
CHAPTER IV Arrival in Africa 37
CHAPTER V Capture of Tobruk 55
CHAPTER VI Siege and Defeat at El Alamein 75
CHAPTER VII Long and Bitter Retreat 93
CHAPTER VIII Inspection of Coastal Defenses 113
CHAPTER IX The Battle of Normandy 131
CHAPTER X Failure of the Putsch and Its Aftermath 149
CHAPTER XI The German Camps after the War 159
CHAPTER XII Mrs. Reveals Her Husband's Murder 183
CHAPTER XIII Search for Impeccable Sources 203
CHAPTER XIV The Lost Faith 235
CHAPTER XV Evaluation: What Rommel Was, What He Was Not 245
Afterword 265
THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF FIELD MARSHAL ERwiN RoMMEL's DEATH have been known for many years. Quite simply, Adolf Hitler forced him, toward the end of World War II, to commit suicide. Half a century afterwards, how the facts came to be discovered still exerts a powerful fascination.
What makes the event doubly tragic is the victim himself, Rommel, the soldier and the man. Admired not only in Germany, where his popularity was second to Hitler's, but also in the Allied camp, and particularly among the British, he was a model gentleman who performed dazzling feats on the battlefield. He was no Nazi. His devotion to his wife and young son, revealed in his many wartime letters to his "Dearest Lu," was sincere and deep. His fair play in combat-his refusal to kill wantonly, his strict observance of the rules of warfare-made him widely respected. Beyond all this were his astonishing military victories.
He was a hero as early as World War I. He displayed bravery, audacity, and skill, all enhanced by extraordinary good luck. His greatest exploit occurred on the Austrian front. Commanding a reinforced battalion, he captured a key Italian position and turned the battle of Caporetto into a rout; the Italians lost 250,000 prisoners of war.
Untouched by the static trench warfare of the western front, Rommel became the foremost exponent of mobility in the Second World War. In command of the Seventh Panzer Division, which came to be called the Ghost Division because it showed up unexpectedly, he fought his way, in the spring of 1940, across Luxembourg, through the Maginot Line and northern France, to Cherbourg and eventually to the Spanish border. He made more progress in a single day than any military force before him.
His most notable achievement was North Africa. There he was, as far as the British were concerned, a magician. He turned what was supposed to be a minor defensive action into a major two-year campaign. What defeated him in the end was his lack of reinforcements and supplies. Yet he proved his genius for offensive and defensive warfare.
Finally, in Normandy, although he was unable to prevent the Allied invasion in June 1944, he kept the Allies from expanding their continental foothold. As long as he commanded Army Group B, he held the Allies in check. After he left the battleground, the Allies penetrated the German defenses, then overran much of France, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
A serious injury prompted his departure from the front. An Allied plane strafed his automobile on July 17, 1944, fatally wounded his driver, and sent the car crashing into a ditch. Rommel sustained multiple skull fractures and other injuries. Hospitalized, he miraculously recovered. He was convalescing at home in October 1944, when he was implicated in the attempted assassination of Hitler on July 20, three days after Rommel's automobile accident.
For his complicity in the plot to overthrow Hitler and his Nazi government, then to make peace with the western Allies, Hitler gave Rommel two choices. He could stand trial on charges of high treason, in which case he would no doubt be found guilty and be executed by hanging. Or he could commit suicide, in which case the state would take no action against his wife and son.
Although Rommel must have wondered whether Hitler would keep his word, he chose suicide. An official funeral took place, and great care was taken to hide from the German people that his death was not a natural one. His wife and son survived the war.
How the truth came to be known was due to Charles F. Marshall, an intelligence officer in the VI Corps headquarters. Fluent in the German language, he often served as an interrogator of prisoners of war. After the conflict, he helped organize camps for various groups and spent a great deal of time separating Nazis and other criminals from those who could be and were released from custody.
Operating in the area where Mrs. Rommel lived, Marshall called upon her in search of materials that might be relevant to the war effort. After several visits and upon the end of the war, Mrs. Rommel revealed the astounding news of how her husband had died.
Marshall narrates the course of this friendship. He describes how intelligence was carried out. He details meetings and discussions with German military dignitaries, especially Hans Speidel, Rommel's chief of staff in Normandy, and they are his
torical vignettes.
What gives Marshall's book a special value is the picture of military life in the particular milieu during the latter months of the war and the early months of the occupation. Captain Marshall thus presents another dimension to his account of how he discovered and revealed the truth of Field Marshal Rommel's death.
Martin Blumenson
THE COMETLIKE STREAK OF FIELD MARSHAL ERWIN ROMMEL ACROSS the skies of history during World War II spread his name far and wide. The little factual information known about him at the time on the Allied side was smothered by the torrent of propaganda circulated by the Germans. Was the resulting legend built on myths or was it grounded in fact?
In October 1944, four months after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the German press and radio reported that Rommel had died of the wounds he had suffered there. In the course of my work as a captain in the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Service, however, I had occasion in the closing days of the war to become acquainted with Rommel's widow and to learn from her and others that the Fatherland's most brilliant army commander had not died of his wounds but had instead been murdered upon Hitler's order.
This book is the story of a year spent looking for the truth about this legendary figure. What was he like as a youngster? As a fledgling officer? As a battle-hardened veteran of the First World War? Why was he singled out to lead the Afrika Korps and later to defend the Atlantic Coast against the assault of the Western Powers? What were his political beliefs? Was it true that he was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi and his slavish adherence to Hitler accounted for his unprecedented swift rise to field marshal? And if so, why did the overlord order his murder?
As for his role as a husband and father, the evidence is incontrovertible. It is found in the letters Rommel wrote to his wife and that I, in line of duty, sequestered from her at our first meeting.
With the approach of the fiftieth anniversary of his death, it seems a fitting time for another appraisal of this remarkable man, a military genius whose strong social conscience cost him his life.
THE ORIGINAL RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK WAS DONE IN 1945 AND 1946. The manuscript that resulted was submitted to various publishers, all of whom found it a fascinating story but unanimously felt it was too soon after the end of World War II with its still bitter memories to publish a book "glorifying a German general," as one put it.
In 1950 I was contacted by the senior military historian for the European Theater of Operations, Colonel S. L. A. Marshall (no relation to the author), whose help had been requested by the British military analyst B. H. Liddell Hart. Hart was engaged with the Rommel family in collecting Rommel's papers. Conspicuously absent were the letters Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had written to his wife from the battlefield. As an intelligence officer of the United States Army I had requisitioned these letters from Mrs. Rommel shortly before the war ended. After translation and editing, they had been forwarded to Washington.
In the course of my correspondence with Colonel Marshall I mentioned that I had written a book about Rommel but was unable to find a publisher. He offered to help and asked to see the manuscript. I sent it to him only to learn that he had been called back to duty and had left for Korea before receiving it. I put the manuscript out of my mind and, years later, reading of the Colonel's (now General's) death I considered the manuscript lost. True, I had a carbon copy, but I no longer had the wonderful photographs Mrs. Rommel had given me in the course of my research and which accompanied the manuscript.
While reworking the manuscript for this book, I began a search for the original in the hope of recovering the photographs. The trail eventually led to James Douglas Marshall, a grandson of Colonel Marshall, to whom I am indebted for the information that his grandfather's papers reposed in the S. L. A. Marshall Military History Collection at the University of Texas in El Paso.
Pointed in that direction, I wrote to Thomas F. Burdett, curator of the collection, who soon after answered "that miracles still do happen." The manuscript with its pictures, lost for over forty years, had been found and was being returned to me. Thanks to Mr. Burdett many of these pictures are reproduced herein.
To the folks at the Rommel archives in Herrlingen, Germany I owe thanks for their answers to occasional questions. To my wife, Mary. I owe much for her criticism and ever-persistent vigilance that the book be intelligible for the reader not versed in the military. To my son Charles, Jr., I am grateful for his constant interest and comment. My son John and son-in-law Mark Larson must be credited with teaching me the mysteries of the computer and, in my fits of frustration with the electronic marvel, chaining me to it with their sympathetic determination that even this old dog could be taught a new trick.
To my neighbors, Professors Aurelia and Kenneth Scott, the late historian, I am indebted for years of nudging me to write this book.
And last, but also of significant importance, I am thankful to my editors, William C. Davis, Sylvia Frank, and Ann Wagoner, for their suggestions, guidance, and encouragement.
Field Marshal General Rommel died as a result of the severe head injuries he sustained in an automobile accident while commander of an army group in the West. The Fuhrer has ordered a state funeral.
German radio on 15 October 1944
IN GERMANY AND THE ALLIED WORLD THIS NEWS WAS ACCEPTED AT face value. It was known that the dashing "Desert Fox" had been wounded in the Normandy fighting. The Allied press had reported it, and a few days later the German media had confirmed it.
Not until six months after Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's death was it known to more than his widow, his son, his aide, and a handful of the political and military hierarchy that Germany's most colorful field commander of World War II had been executed upon the direct order of Adolf Hitler. Not until the details of the execution were revealed by Rommel's widow was there reason to doubt the story of the German press and radio. To match the perversity of this murder one would have to go back five centuries to those committed by Cesare Borgia during his unification of the Papal States.
The secret murder of some of its greatest war heroes was one of the most curious anomalies of the National Socialist regime. Documents found by the Russian forces at Seddin near Berlin shortly after the war disclosed two other such victims to have been Werner Moelders, a top-ranking Luftwaffe pilot credited with destroying 125 Allied planes, and Guenther Prien, a daring Uboat skipper whose spectacular foray into Scapa Flow early in the war resulted in the sinking of the British battleship Royal Oak. Except fora death certificate found by the British authorities in Austria a few months after the war's end, no documents have yet been unearthed concerning the assassination of the highest-ranking and most popular of these figures, Field Marshal Rommel. This certificate gives the date of his death but no cause, stating only that Rommel died in an ambulance en route from Herrlingen to Ulm-a falsity.
Only on April 27, 1945, after the American troops of Major General Edward V. Brooks's VI Corps had captured Herrlingen and forced a crossing over the Danube at Ulm, did the true story of Rommel's death begin to unfold. Two days earlier, on April 25, I had received a telephone call from one of our antiaircraft battalions: While looking for a location for their command post, they had discovered the widow of the legendary commander of the Afrika Korps, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Did we care to do anything about it?
I certainly did!
As the officer in charge of the captured documents unit of the intelligence (G-2) section of VI Corps Headquarters, I was responsible for the interrogation of captured high-ranking officers and distinguished personages, so I was very interested in speaking to Mrs. Rommel. I doubted that she would have any information or documents that would be of value to the prosecution of the battle then going on because Rommel had been dead for six months, but I thought she might have some of his other papers, papers that would have long-range intelligence value and might shed some light on this soldier who had captured the attention of the world.
After supper I jeeped the five miles to Herrlingen, a pictur
esque little Swabian village near Ulm that had escaped damage during the war. With me was Staff Sergeant Thomas S. Greiner, a native German who had moved to New York, a graduate of the Army's military intelligence school, and a highly qualified specialist on the German Army.
I told Greiner that when we interviewed Mrs. Rommel, we would pretend that I did not speak German, so that I would have more time to think about her answers and to formulate my succeeding questions. This technique served us well, but in several lengthy visits alone with Mrs. Rommel in the months ahead, she never failed to rib me about my "inability" to speak German. "For someone who does not speak German," she would say, a twinkle in her eye, "for someone who needs an interpreter, you do very very well, Captain Marshall. Did you learn the language yesterday?" Upon my laughing she would join in heartily. It was clear that she had forgiven me my duplicity but nevertheless enjoyed twitting me. We were to develop a fine rapport.
When we arrived in Herrlingen, a lovely village split by a clear, fastflowing stream, we found the Rommel home at 13 Wippingerstrasse. A small, attractively landscaped villa amid white houses with red-tiled roofs and blossoming window boxes, it afforded a pleasant view of the hilly country side. It had been rented from the city of Ulm the previous autumn when the family had moved from Wiener Neustadt, a suburb of Vienna.
The Rommel villa. In the fall of 1943, when thousandplane Allied raids were penetrating German air defenses and bombing aircraft plants, the marshal worried about the close proximity of his home in Wiener Neustadt to the Messerschmitt aircraft plants. He moved his residence to this modest villa tucked away in the sleepy village of Herrlingen, a suburb of Ulm. Photo from Mrs. Rommel.
Mrs. Rommel was not home at our arrival, so we asked the young woman who admitted us, and who introduced herself as a niece, to show us through the house. The rooms were tastefully furnished, neatly arranged, and, as one might expect in a middle-class German home, punctiliously clean. Among the many books in the marshal's large study, which were almost exclusively on military subjects, we noticed a translation of General George C. Marshall's Infantry in Battle. Nowhere, however, was there any sign of the graft or lavish living so often associated with Nazi leaders and also attributed by Allied propaganda to Rommel.
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