Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

by Butler, Daniel Allen

The battle has been won and the enemy is breaking up. We’re now mopping up encircled remnants of their army. I needn’t tell you how delighted I am. We’ve made a pretty clean sweep this time. Of course it s cost us some sad losses here and there. Gause and Westphal have been wounded. Gause will be back in three to four weeks, Westphal in a month or two. My health has stuck it all right. I’ve been living in my car for days and have had no time to leave the battlefield in the evenings. Perhaps we will now see each other in July after all.168

  Rommel wasted no time in launching his attack on Tobruk, determined that there would be no repeat of April 1941—and there would not. Indeed, almost everything had changed from the circumstances which obtained a year earlier. Lieutenant General William Gott, commanding XIII Corps, gave the task of conducting the defense of Tobruk to Major General Hendrik Klopper, whose 2nd South African Infantry Division was already posted inside the fortress. In addition to his own division, Klopper now had the 201st Guards, 11th Indian Infantry, 32nd Army Tank and 4th Antiaircraft Brigades under command. It remains unclear if Klopper thought he could repeat the nine-month stand made by Tobruk garrison in 1941, but in Auchinleck’s opinion the fortress was now more of a strategic liability than an asset, primarily because the Royal Navy was unable to guarantee that it would be able to keep a garrison supplied. Auchinleck and his staff anticipated that Klopper and his men would have to hold out for two months at most, being gradually withdrawn by sea in the same way the Australians had been relieved in autumn 1941. He never imagined that Rommel would take Tobruk in less than two days.

  For that matter, neither did Rommel. His window of opportunity, he knew, was narrow: the Luftwaffe bombers which had been providing close support for the Afrika Korps would soon no longer be available, as Kesselring would have to divert them to the upcoming attack on Malta. That support—or lack of it—could well be critical, so Rommel dusted off the plan so meticulously worked out a year earlier for the attack that had been preempted by Crusader and put it into motion. The orders went out on June 18 and the troops, tanks, and artillery moved into position the next day. Despite the urgency of the moment, Rommel and his staff had a good laugh that afternoon, when his artillery crews found all of their old positions from the previous year sitting empty and intact, often with stockpiles—thousands of shells—still sitting nearby. All that was necessary was to back the guns into place, dig them in, then sight and register them.

  The assault began at first light on June 20, with a furious artillery barrage beginning at 05:30 A.M., followed by wave after wave of Stuka dive-bombers. Once the antitank ditch was bridged, the 15th Panzer Division took the lead through the three defensive lines around the town, Rommel in his Greif half-track following close behind, the rest of the Afrika Korps in his wake. The garrison was taken by surprise, Klopper apparently never having thought that Rommel would strike so hard so soon—the official record is unclear but it seems likely that Klopper believed he would have more time to prepare, expecting Rommel to be far more deliberate and methodical, setting up the sort of set-piece battle that had been planned for November 1941.

  At 5:00 P.M. the 21st Panzer was on the outskirts of the town of Tobruk itself, and Rommel was standing atop a ridge, looking down into the harbor. Fighting continued throughout the night, but at dawn on June 21, Klopper faced reality squarely and ordered a white flag raised above his divisional headquarters; a total of 32,000 officers and other ranks—19,000 British, 10,500 South Africans and 2,500 Indians—were now prisoners of war. Tobruk had, at last, been taken by the Afrika Korps.

  21 June 1942

  Dearest Lu,

  Tobruk! It was a wonderful battle. There’s a lot going on in the fortress area. I must get a few hours’ sleep now after all that’s happened. How much I think of you.169

  There was yet another moment, one that accompanied the capitulation of Tobruk, which showed the character of Erwin Rommel in very stark relief. As the 2nd South African Division was being marched into captivity, the white officers and NCOs began to vigorously protest when they learned that they would be compelled to share the prisoner of war compounds with their black soldiers. In their minds the strict rules of apartheid should be maintained no matter what the circumstances. Rommel, at once amused and infuriated, informed the white South Africans that the “blek” soldiers worn the same uniform and had fought alongside their nominal white superiors: to him they were all the same, and would be treated as equals; the matter was closed.

  There was always a streak of showmanship in Rommel, but he was never given over to elaborate theatricality. Orders of the Day were the exception rather than the rule in Panzerarmee Afrika—Rommel considered them bombastic and pretentious. Yet there were certain moments when one was not only appropriate, but the occasion all but demanded it, and the capture of Tobruk was one such moment for Rommel and his men. Accordingly, on June 22, he issued a special Order of the Day to his panzer army:

  Soldiers! The great battle in the Marmarica has been crowned by your quick conquest of Tobruk. We have taken in all over 45,000 prisoners and destroyed or captured more than 1,000 armored fighting vehicles and nearly 400 guns. During the long hard struggle of the last four weeks, you have, through your incomparable courage and tenacity, dealt the enemy blow upon blow. Your spirit of attack has cost him the core of his field army, which was standing poised for an offensive. Above all, he has lost his powerful armor. My special congratulations to officers and men for this superb achievement. Soldiers of the Panzer Army Afrika! Now for the complete destruction of the enemy. We will not rest until we have shattered the last remnants of the British Eighth Army. During the days to come, I shall call on you for one more great effort to bring us to this final goal.

  ROMMEL.170

  The speed with which Tobruk had been taken astonished everyone, and especially dismayed the British. Churchill experienced a severe political setback, as he had earlier expressed his certainty that no matter what the outcome of the battle of Gazala, Tobruk would stand resolute and defiant, just as it had done in 1941. Instead, the number of soldiers captured at Tobruk constituted the second largest capitulation by British forces in the entire war, exceeded only by those lost in the surrender of Singapore. In the House of Commons a vote of “No confidence” in Churchill’s conduct of the war was called; if the motion passed, he would no longer be prime minister. The motion failed, but the message was clear: there must be no more such disasters for Great Britain.

  All of Germany was jubilant at the news, of course. Dr. Göbbels and his henchmen immediately set about extracting the maximum propaganda from it, while Hitler, casting about for a way to show his esteem for one of his favorite soldiers, promoted Rommel to the rank of feldmarschall. At the age of 49, he was the youngest field marshal in the German Army, and one of the youngest in the entire history of German arms. Naturally, the promotion was meat and drink to Rommel’s vanity, but at the same time it was something of a hollow honor. Despite the hopes he expressed in his letter to Lucie, it would be September before he could return to Germany and so be able to receive his marshal’s baton from Hitler’s hands. When he did so, after the presentation ceremony, his only comment to Lucie would be to murmur, “I would rather he had given me one more division.”171

  CHAPTER TEN

  AFRICAN APOGEE

  Never let the enemy pick the battle site.

  —GEORGE S. PATTON, JR.

  The victory at Gazala followed by the capture of Tobruk was absolutely exhilarating for Rommel, and electrified the whole of Panzerarmee Afrika. There were still battles to be fought and much work to be done, however, and Rommel, being Rommel, was not about to let any desert scrub grow under his boots. While the temptation to pause, to linger a moment and savor the triumph was strong, the reality of the situation was that the Eighth Army was on the run, and the need to maintain the pressure was paramount. The British could be given no opportunity to pause, catch their collective breath, and reorganize themselves. On June 24, Axis tanks rolled through Sidi
Barrani, down the coast road, and across the frontier; two days later a two-pronged attack by the Afrika Korps and the Ariete Division was surrounding the coastal town of Mersa Matruh even as the British were evacuating the fortress there.

  Mersa Matruh, roughly 100 miles inside Egypt and sitting astride the coastal road as it ran along the Mediterranean shoreline, was the position to which General Ritchie had ordered the Eighth Army to fall back when the Gazala Line fell apart. The border itself was, in his opinion, indefensible: there was too much room to maneuver, and while Rommel’s panzers had suffered serious losses in the Cauldron, the Eighth Army’s armored formations had been reduced to just a few score running tanks, not enough, in Ritchie’s opinion, to conduct a proper defense across a broad frontage—whatever infantry was actually holding the ground would be defeated in detail. Worse, the Eighth Army had been forced to leave behind hundreds of tanks and trucks that had been knocked out but were repairable—or could at least supply spares for other vehicles under repair—meaning that the Eighth Army could not turn to its repair shops to make good some of the losses: whatever tanks Ritchie had to hand were all that he would have, period. The other side of that coin had all of those abandoned vehicles now in German and Italian hands: the panzerarmee was exceedingly grateful for this, as by now almost half its transport was British-built.

  It was Ritchie’s considered judgment that at Mersa Matruh, where the rough terrain to the south significantly reduced the frontage his forces would have to cover, could be held, presenting Rommel with an obstacle the Panzerarmmee’s commander could neither bypass nor overrun. In the 1930s, Mersa Matruh had been developed into a strong defensive position, something of a British reply to Tobruk; there were minefields, antitank obstacles, barbwire entanglements and a ring of strongpoints and bunkers surrounding the coastal town. Ritchie was confident that, even despite having fewer than 100 tanks, he would be able to stop the Axis army, itself steadily weakening, once and for all. Now, however, as the Rommel’s two panzer divisions, along with the Ariete, Brescia, and Trento Divisions pushed forward, a confusion of orders caused some British units to stand fast, while others rushed pell-mell eastward, and for a few hours chaos reigned as Allied and Axis units became hopelessly intermingled. British, Indian, and New Zealand infantry battalions, artillery batteries and tank regiments wove around, behind, and sometimes through their German and Italian counterparts in a mad dash toward a railroad siding 60 miles west of Alexandria, the spot where the Eighth Army would make its last stand, identified on the maps as El Alamein.

  That the British weren’t stopping at Mersa Matruh as originally planned was due to Auchinleck’s decision to relieve Neil Ritchie of command of the Eighth Army on June 25. Ritchie’s appointment as commander of the Eighth Army was supposed to have been temporary, but in the wake of Crusader, he was allowed to retain his post. His plans and deployments on the Gazala Line had been intelligent and realistic, but ultimately needed someone more dynamic to make them successful: at the critical moment in der Hexenkessel, Ritchie decided that not losing the battle was more important than winning it, failing to press home a crucial attack in favor of protecting Tobruk. When Prime Minister Churchill publicly declared the loss of Tobruk a “disgrace,” time had run out for Ritchie as the officer commanding, Eighth Army.172

  Rommel, meanwhile, was bristling with energy. This was Matajur all over again, on an epic scale! He had a numerically superior but demoralized enemy on the run, while not 100 miles distant lay the greatest strategic prize in all of North Africa—Alexandria. With “Alex” in the bag, Cairo and the Suez Canal would be as good as taken, and with its loss the entire British strategy for the Mediterranean would come crashing down. In his letters to Lucie during these days, the sense of restlessness, of the need to “get on with it,” is unmistakable.

  23 June 1942

  Dearest Lu,

  We’re on the move and hope to land the next big punch very soon. Speed is the main thing now. The events of the past weeks lie behind me like a dream. Gause is back again. He still looks thoroughly exhausted, but he just couldn’t stick it any longer back at the rear. I’m very well, sleeping like a log.

  26 June 1942

  Dearest Lu,

  We’ve made a good move forward in the last few days and are hoping to launch our attack on the enemy remnants today. For days now I’ve been camping out in the car with Gause. Food has been good all the time but washing has suffered. I’ve had my headquarters by the sea for the past twenty hours and went swimming yesterday and today. But the water doesn’t refresh, it’s much too hot. A lot to do. Cavallero and Rintelen are coming today, probably to put the brakes on, so far as they can. These beggars don’t change!

  27 June 1942

  Dearest Lu,

  We’re still on the move and hope to keep it up until the final goal. It takes a lot out of one, of course, but it’s the chance of a lifetime. The enemy is fighting back desperately with his air force.

  P.S. Italy in July might still be possible. Get passports!

  Such was his almost boyish exuberance that even those who came to him with unhappy tidings were infected with his optimism. On June 26 Field Marshal Kesselring and Marshal Cavallero came forward to meet Rommel, the German airman to inform his colleague that, with Tobruk having been taken, the Luftwaffe’s air support for the panzerarmee would be drastically curtailed as Fliegerkorps X readied itself for the coming invasion of Malta; Cavallero was there to inform Rommel that Mussolini had expressly forbidden him to take Italian units across the Egyptian border. Rommel heard both men out, then dismissed their concerns, not with contempt but with an air of assuredness, telling them, “If my Panzer Army succeeds in breaking through the enemy’s line today, by June 30 we’ll be in Cairo or Alexandria.” So certain did he seem that both Kesselring and Cavallero came away convinced of it. Nor was this merely wishful thinking on Rommel’s part, as he had sound intelligence to back up his optimism: one of the last “little fellers” Rommel would receive made it clear that a something very near to panic was overtaking Alexandria. Embassies were being evacuated, coding machines and communications equipment were being destroyed, official documents which could not be removed in time were being burnt, and all non-essential soldiers and civilians—with probably a leavening of essential ones as well—were trying to get out of Alexandria and Cairo.173

  Rommel wasn’t having it all his own way, however. On June 24, just as his division was entering Sidi Barrani, General Ettore Balsassare, one of the few senior Italian officers Rommel truly admired, because the man was a determined fighter and an efficient leader, was killed during a Royal Air Force bombing raid on the town. With the Germans and Italians overrunning its airfields during the battle of Gazala, the Desert Air Force had been rendered pretty much ineffectual, but now that its fighters and medium bombers were operating from airfields inside Egypt, and with the Luftwaffe’s attention being increasingly diverted to Malta, the Royal Air Force was making its presence felt once again. The speed of the advance was also taking a toll on the men and machines of the Afrika Korps, along with the handful of Italian motorized units. Of more concern was the dwindling number of tanks and fit men available to him. When Mersa Matruh was taken, the whole of Panzerarmee Afrika had 47 serviceable tanks; there were fewer than 2,500 men fit for duty.

  Ultimately even more detrimental to Rommel’s fortunes was the degree of his own success. The fall of Tobruk had knocked the Axis strategy for the summer of 1942 into a cocked hat. In March, when Rommel secured Hitler’s permission for a summer offensive against the British, he had been adamant that, concurrent with any attack on Tobruk, there had to be an invasion of Malta, so that the single greatest threat to the panzerarmee’s supply line from Italy could be eliminated once and for time. In this he was firmly seconded by the Luftwaffe commander for the whole of the Mediterranean, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. Kesselring’s endorsement was of no small significance, for while he and Rommel were often able to work together in something akin to
harmony, there was no love lost between the two men personally. Kesselring thought Rommel too impulsive and moody, Rommel felt Kesselring to be ambitious and somewhat malleable morally. Both men were, of course, right. But given this background, with Rommel and Kesselring in agreement, Hitler was nearly persuaded; when Grand Admiral Karl Räder, who was still commanding the German navy, added his endorsement to the idea, Hitler had no real option but to agree. Thus Operation Hercules—Unternehmen Herakles—was born.

  Similar in concept to the abortive Operation Sea Lion, Hercules was to begin with the Luftwaffe neutralizing the island’s air and naval defenses. Then the 7th Fallschirmjäger (Paratroop) Division would secure landing areas for one German and two Italian infantry divisions and a small contingent of tanks. Hitler, though, was never too keen on the entire concept, having been unsettled by the high casualties suffered by the 7th Fallschirmjägers during the invasion of Crete. He repeatedly made excuses to put off authorizing Hercules, even though Kesselring and his staff had already completed the planning and the troops designated for the assault had begun training for it. Rommel and especially Kesselring continued to press for the operation to go forward, however, citing the strategic necessity of removing this British threat sitting right astride the shipping lanes between Italy and Tripoli.

  But the speed with which the British had been tumbled out of the Gazala Line and Tobruk was taken, coupled with an offhand remark by Rommel to the effect that he had captured enough fuel and supplies to take Panzerarmee Afrika all the way to Cairo, convinced Hitler that there was no longer any need to invade Malta; Kesselring’s bombers hammered the island, briefly reducing it to near-impotence, but Operation Hercules never materialized. It would prove to be an enormous blunder, for a few months hence, at one of the most critical moments of the entire North African campaign, Allied air- and sea-power based on Malta would intervene to cripple Rommel’s panzers.