"That just proves what a Swabian blockhead I am," chuckled Rommel.
News of the marshal's wounding had brought a flood of messages from all leading figures, including Hitler. But after the first messages no inquiries concerning the progress of his convalescence were received from Hitler or his staff, or from the political and military leaders close to Hitler. This abrupt disinterest perplexed Rommel. He repeatedly commented on it to his wife and aide. Not for three weeks was the public informed of his wounding, and then only by a brief radio and press announcement that he had been injured in an automobile accident. "I also have the feeling," he said, "that I and the visitors to my house, even my mail and telephone, are being watched."
Unfortunately for Rommel, his decision to have himself removed from France was a fateful one. Had he become a PW of the Allies he would have survived the war and no doubt played a role in postwar Germany. But his removal, as it developed, sealed his fate.
A month went by and the convalescent was taking walks in his garden and in the woods adjoining his home. On September 6 he was paid a call by Speidel, who had suddenly and without explanation the previous day been relieved as chief of staff of Army Group B. "Speidel warned my husband," Mrs. Rommel told me, "that Hitler's closest advisers and the head men of the High Command had stigmatized him as a defeatist. He urged him to be careful."
One of the few pictures ever made of the Fox in Mufti, taken during his convalescence in September 1944. Close inspection reveals his damaged left eyelid. At his feet is his wire-haired dachshund, Elbo. Photo from Mrs. Rommel.
Speidel was scheduled to report to Colonel General Guderian, now head of the German General Staff, the following day. Rommel asked him to convey a message to Guderian, whom he trusted. It was, in substance, that the war in the West ought to be ended and all effort then diverted to the eastern front. As soon as he was healthy again, he would be available for any assignment.
Speidel never delivered the message. Early the next morning he was arrested by the Gestapo in his home while still in bed. Refused permission to wash, shave, or even take leave of his family, he was hustled off. In the main Gestapo prison in Berlin his cell mates included, among others, Colonel General Franz Haider, Ambassador Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Dr. Hjalmer Schacht, Dr. Carl Goerdeler, and the hereditary prince of Braunschweig-Lueneburg. The Gestapo had chained the hands of some, both hands and feet of others.
All Rommel's efforts to obtain Speidel's release, or even to learn his whereabouts or even the reason for his arrest were of no avail. Numerous incidents suddenly assumed significance. A week after his arrival home an attempt had been made during the night to get into the air raid shelter, which also had entrance to the house. This was noticed by a guard, who challenged, got no answer, and fired his gun. The intruder fled.
Then there was the tardiness of the press and radio in reporting the strafing of his car, even though the foreign media with less access to German news had reported it promptly. When the story was finally released in August, it was in the form of continuous references to his "automobile injury" rather than to his battle-incurred wounds. This especially irked the marshal, for he detected a significance in the reporting, a campaign to depopularize him. To the German mind particularly, battle wounds connote courage and sacrifice for the Fatherland, whereas an automobile injury is simply a misfortune that could befall anyone.
The day after Speidel's visit, neighbors called the Rommels' attention to two men lurking in the garden of his house. When the men were approached, they withdrew into the woods. "At this time, too," said Mrs. Rommel, "we received a visit from the Party leader of Ulm, who asked us if our servants were reliable. The chief of security police in Ulm had told him that the field marshal no longer believed in final victory and was criticizing the regime. He wanted to warn us."
The Swabian began to draw some conclusions. He no longer dared to go out by himself.
A second month passed and he had almost fully recovered his health. On Saturday, October 7, his aide Aldinger answered a telephone call from Hitler's headquarters in behalf of Keitel, chief of the High Command. Rommel was to come to an important conference in Berlin the following Tuesday. A special train would be sent to Ulm for him Monday night.
At the time of the call the marshal was out visiting friends in the vicinity. Returning, he tried to get Keitel on the telephone, but General Wilhelm Burgdorf of the personnel office answered. Rommel, convinced that the war was long ago lost and wanting no further part in its prolongation, said that in the opinion of his doctors his health did not permit such a long trip. He asked what the purpose of the conference was to be.
"The Fiihrer has ordered Field Marshal Keitel to discuss your next assignment with you," replied Burgdorf.
"Suppose I send a reliable officer to represent me," suggested Rommel.
"I will call you back tomorrow," said Burgdorf.
There was no call Sunday, and on Monday it occurred to Rommel that Keitel might try to check on his health. He called Professor Albrecht, told him that Keitel wanted him to report to Berlin the next day, and requested Albrecht to say, if asked, that his patient was unable to make the trip. Albrecht agreed to certify him as unfit for travel.
The next day Rommel arrived at Tuebingen University for a final examination. "Yes, Herr Generalfeldmarschall," observed the professor dryly, having just watched the dynamic Fox take the hospital steps three at a time, "you are indeed very ill."
Rommel laughed. "If everybody in Germany were as healthy as L" he said, "Germany would be in much better shape than it is."
The examination showed the Swabian to be completely recovered except for the partial loss of sight in one eye, the lid of which drooped, but which Rommel was trying to correct by exercises. "However," Albrecht told me, "I noticed that he was depressed. He complained vaguely about sleepless nights and backaches. I sensed that he was under a strain of fear. I suggested that he and Mrs. Rommel come for a few weeks to the clinic where he would be away from telephone calls, where he would be less accessible, more difficult to get at. He demurred and then agreed that they would come on October 20."
But on October 14 Rommel was dead.
The previous morning, October 13, his telephone had rung. It was Keitel calling from the Fiihrer's headquarters. General Burgdorf, he said, would arrive the next day at noon to discuss Rommel's new assignment with him. "Very well," said Rommel, and hung up. For long minutes he stared at the phone. With his wife he then drove to the estate of an old friend, Oskar Farny, who in the First World War had been a lieutenant in the same battalion as the marshal. He had been a former Center Party Reichstag deputy and had long been distrustful of the National Socialists. As the war wore on, he had lengthy discussions with the pre-Hitler minister of defense, Otto Gessler, about means to end the war and the Nazi regime. That morning, before the Rommels' arrival, Farny had learned that Gessler had been arrested and was himself expecting to be picked up by the Gestapo momentarily. What transpired that day was related to Speidel and me in a visit to Famy's home in March 1946.
During a discussion of the military situation Rommel expressed the belief that the Fuhrer would soon kill him.
"Me, yes," said Farny, "but not you."
"The same will happen tome," said Rommel, "that happened to Witzleben, Beck, Kluge, and the rest. Hitler wastes no love on generals. To him we are not human beings, only executing organs."
Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben was early engaged in the conspiracy to remove Hitler from power. Had the putsch succeeded, he was slated to command all Germany's armed services. Its failure led instead to his hanging.
Famy protested that Hitler would not dare to take the life of the country's most popular military figure.
"As a politician who fought those bandits," replied Rommel, "you ought to know them better than I. I sent the Fuhrer an ultimatum, a few days later there was the putsch, and now the security police and the Party in Ulm are openly calling me a defe
atist. I am absolutely certain that Hitler will not stop at taking my life. If something happens to me, I beg you to take care of my son.
Later in the day Rommel repeated his forebodings to Mrs. Farny and added, "I keep poison with me all the time." He took a vial out of his pocket. "I won't let them hang me," he said grimly.
Mrs. Farny, a deeply religious woman, was shocked. "You mustn't take your own life!" she cried. "If you do, your soul will die too! You will have no communion with your loved ones!"
Rommel was silent. He looked out the window for a time. "I never thought of it in that way," he finally said, and upon Mrs. Farny's further insistence promised not to take his own life.
At home that evening over a bottle of wine the general speculated with Aldinger on the new assignment. He could arrive at no satisfactory conclusions. Two days before he had received word that both his cars were to be requisitioned. He suspected there might be a connection. The next hours would prove his suspicion well founded.
May 7 (My diary): The European war is over. At the General Staff Conference, at which I gave the world battlefront situation, the chief of staff reported the receipt of a telegram from Supreme Headquarters announcing the cessation of hostilities in Europe as of tomorrow.
Captain Hersevv, one of the general's two aides, came into the War Room at 4 A.M., while I was on night duty, and insisted ! drink a bottle of champagne with him-which I did-to celebrate the armistice. The General's party broke up too ear/v for him.
Together with Joe Haines [an officer in the G-2 section] I inspected a molybdenum plant and a textile mill, on both of which I rendered reports.
I had expected that the announcement of VE day would be celebrated with riotous parties everywhere. This did not happen at VI Corps Headquarters. The victory had been so long anticipated that the day was anticlimactic and treated pretty much as just another day. My celebration took the form of a snooze in a lounge chair on the hotel porch, where I got a little sunburn. A much-welcomed period of relaxation was setting in.
Our headquarters were now located in the Golf Hotel Iglerhof, a luxury resort in the suburb of Igls, four kilometers from Innsbruck. A brochure pasted into my journal is illustrated with a picture of a typical room, the lobby, the breakfast veranda with its stunning view of the Alps, the tennis courts, and golf links. Other photos show the swimming and boating facilities, the bar, the bridge room, and public rooms. The brochure promises a Viennese orchestra and tells of hunting and fishing grounds and of a cable-railway that will take one to view high Alpine flora.
It practically promised paradise, and in reality, I suppose, it did not fall far short. If one had to while away time while one waited for a recall order to the States, this was certainly the place to be.
Much of the next days were spent inspecting and reporting on factoriestheir type and production capacity, number of employees, condition of each plant, amount of finished and raw material on hand, and how quickly they could be put back in operation should the U.S. Army want to use them. Although the war in Europe was over, the war with Japan was not. It was reasoned that some of this production capability might be of use to us.
May 21: Had my first plane ride. Flew in a captured German plane to Kaufbeuren where I inspected the roadblocks of the 36th Infantry Division.
No one ever forgets his first plane ride, and certainly not if it was anything like mine. When I looked at the map and saw Kaufbeuren was on the other side of the Alps, in Germany, and here we were in Innsbruck, Austria, and it was late in the day, I said, "Colonel, with a jeep going over these winding mountain roads, even if I drive like hell, I won't get there till dark."
"Call the artillery people," was his response, "and have them fly you over."
When I arrived at the airfield, a captured German artillery observation plane, its markings painted over with the American insignia, was warming up with a pilot, a lieutenant, impatiently waiting for me. "Captain," he said. "The weather guys tell me there's a storm coming up. If we fly into it, I've got as much chance of finding that field as I have finding a pimple on a gnat's ass"
He helped me into a parachute and we climbed into a noisy plexiglass bubble on wings. The fragile-looking contraption brought to mind young Rommel's unsuccessful glider flights. Trying to hide my nervousness, but feeling first things come first, I asked, "If we have to bail out, what's the SOP?"
"See that lever on the door?" asked the pilot.
"This?" I asked, motioning to the lever.
"Just put your foot against it and shove it hard."
"And then?"
"The whole door falls out."
"And then?"
"You jump, shit green, count ten, and pull that ring," indicating the chute's ripcord. "Nothing to it."
With that assurance (to him, at least) we taxied up the field a short distance and were quickly airborne. Wafted up and down by sudden mountain drafts, the little plane sometimes seemed to want to fall into the trees. Every few minutes, it seemed to me, if the plane had had an open window, I could have reached out and caught a handful of pine needles.
As we were landing, lightning was forking through the dark clouds racing toward us, and the first drops of the storm, which was to last a couple of days, pelted the plane.
Never having flown before, and not knowing how my stomach would react, I had taken the precaution of putting in my pocket a small rubberized folding travel bag. But in the air, apprehension had been supplanted by exhilaration. So absorbed was I in the flight that I forgot about my stomach altogether. And when I pictured our antiaircraft guns popping away at this cub plane as the pilot and his observer sought to guide the German artillery fire, I mentally took my hat off to the crew. They had earned their nightly Bier and Bratwurst or whatever.
After I finished my inspection, I spent the night at Division Headquarters, planning to fly back to Innsbruck in the morning. In the morning, however, it was storming badly. I borrowed a jeep and drove over three hours through the rain to return to Corps Headquarters. There, after the bitterly cold and nasty trip, I found a message telling me to report the next day to Seventh Army Headquarters with my team. No longer was I a member of VI Corps Headquarters, and my residence in its heavenly haven had come to its end.
That evening General Brooks had a farewell dinner and party for the staff and in an excellent speech thanked us for the support we had given him, particularly singling out Colonel Langevin and his crystal ball, by which he meant the colonel's ability to predict the enemy's moves. The occasion offered me a last chance to talk to the general. I congratulated him on his speech and apologized again for introducing Field Marshal List to him as Field Marshal Rommel. "Son," he laughed, patting my shoulder, "it didn't lose us the war, did it?"
May 20: Curious thing about the Russian slave laborers. Very few want to leave Germans', in spite oftheir relative/v bad treatment. Proves how had Communism must be.
Some weird arrangements emanated from the agreements with Stalin. In the weeks and months ahead when we were to come into contact with large contingents of displaced persons, my staff and I could only shake our heads when we discussed the injustices that resulted from the rules we were obliged to follow. Close to eight million men and women from nineteen countries had been merged into the German labor force as slave laborers.
To return Soviet citizens to their homeland after hostilities ended, in compliance with the Yalta agreements, force often had to be used. Many of these displaced people refused to return home. The U.S. Army's humanitarian benevolence was preferable to what they could expect to find in their homeland. In the British sector, I heard, the Tommies sometimes had to resort to killing some of these people to induce the others to return to Russia. Numbers of these Soviets had fled Communism and sought political asylum. When returned, the Russians executed many of them on the spot. Knowing the fate awaiting them, some hanged themselves and others committed suicide in other ways.
On one of my visits to a displaced persons camp, one Russian told me throug
h an interpreter that he would take his own life before returning to Russia. He wanted, he said, to live in a country where the light came from the roof (electric light from a ceiling fixture) and the water came out of the walls, meaning water ran when a faucet was turned on. Most of the Russian slave laborers were unbelievably simple people who were ignorant of modern plumbing, often using toilet bowls as wash bowls.
The displaced persons were for the army a major problem that could not be ignored even in the heat of battle. About half of the seven million refugees who had escaped from eastern Europe ahead of the Soviet winter offensive of 1944-45 had flooded into the Allied-occupied areas. Half of that half were primarily Russians and became an unanticipated long-term problem for the occupation troops. They needed much care and supervision. Without jobs or homes, with no change of clothing or even blankets, ignorant of both English and German and seemingly basic sanitation, they were elated at being set free but dreaded the future. Some were restless, others apathetic. Filthy and infested with lice, they continuously scratched themselves.
For the occupation forces, they were an exasperating headache and a health hazard. Many of these people emanated from certain regions where typhus is endemic. The disease, spread by lice, can infect large numbers of people quickly, wiping out whole populations. Napoleon's army in Russia was said to have suffered more deaths from typhus than from combat. In Europe it is the most feared epidemic disease since the bubonic plague, so it behooved our medical personnel to keep a sharp eye out for it. Fortunately dusting with DDT proved highly effective against it and by the end of May the typhusfinding-and-dusting teams had deloused a million persons with fifteen tons of DDT.
Discovering the Rommel Murder Page 19
