. . . I asked for instructions for such an event. On each occasion I received an answer referring me to the Duce’s order. Everybody in Rome was scared to death of making an independent decision and invariably tried to unload the responsibility on to somebody else. I decided on no account to let up until I had been given an answer which did justice to my question. I had no wish to be the scapegoat for the armchair strategists in Rome.228
The order from Mussolini, which was endorsed by Cavallero, demanded that Rommel “. . . resist to the uttermost with all troops in the German-Italian Army at Buerat.” From Berlin came a message from Göring, expecting that Buerat would be held “at all costs.” Rommel despaired.
I had really done all I could to arouse some understanding of the art of desert warfare in our higher commands and had particularly emphasised that to concern oneself with territory was mere prejudice. The all-important principle was to keep on the move until a tactically favourable position for battle was found and then to fight. In the conditions we were facing, that position was the Gabes line. Nevertheless, orders were once again issued to the troops to “resist to the uttermost.” I immediately wirelessed Marshal Cavallero and asked him what we were to do if the enemy outmarched us in the south and simply chose not to do battle with the Buerat garrison.229
Cavallero’s reply was insulting: if the British did attack, then “the battle should be so conducted so that the Italian troops were not sacrificed again.” Rommel immediately went to Bastico and made it clear that he could save the army or he could hold Buerat, but it was impossible to do both—and he adamantly refused to sacrifice his German soldaten in order to allow the Italian soldati to escape. “If I’m supposed to accept the responsibility,” he told the Italian marshal, “then they must leave me free to decide just how I tackle the job.” Rommel knew that Bastico was in an awkward spot, as he had his own coterie of enemies in Rome who were looking for any excuse to demand his relief. His letter to Lucie written the same day as the army arrived at Buerat summed up his feelings and his appraisal of the situation in a half-dozen sentences:
18 December 1942
Dearest Lu,
We’re in heavy fighting again, with little hope of success, for we’re short of everything. One’s personal fate fades into the background in face of the bitter fate of the army, and the consequences and effects it will have. Bastico was also very depressed yesterday. The situation in the west seems to be no better, particularly in the ports. We are hoping to be able to carry on for a few days yet. But gasoline is short, and without gasoline there’s nothing to be done.230
Ironically, Rommel and his army would remain at Buerat for almost a month, courtesy of Eighth Army and its commanding officer, General Montgomery. The 15th Panzer Division was forced to pull out of Sirte on December 24 when reconnaissance planes caught sight of a large British flanking maneuver to the south of the village, but other German reconnaissance aircraft observed very little traffic on the coast road itself between Sirte and Mersa el Brega: the combination of General Bülowius’ minefields and booby traps along with an ever-lengthening supply line had conspired to reduce the British advance to a crawl. One incident that provided a much-needed bit of comic relief among the officers and other ranks of the panzerarmee came just before Sirte was abandoned, when a flight of eight American medium bombers landed by mistake at a German airfield: they were carrying not bombs but gasoline for Eighth Army. Some of Montgomery’s lead units were running nearly as dry as Rommel’s tanks, so Eighth Army came to a halt just beyond Mersa el Brega after Montgomery’s abortive attack there on December 12; it would be four weeks before he felt that his supply situation as well as his units had been sufficiently tidied up to warrant continuing the advance.
Eighth Army’s difficulties were more-or-less mirrored in the Allies’ situation in Tunisia. Christmastime 1942 brought little if any holiday cheer to the headquarters of the Allied commander-in-chief in North Africa, Lieutenant General Dwight Eisenhower. The results of Operation Torch had been a mixed bag: the landings in Morocco and Algeria were successful, while the lessons learned about amphibious operations for both the naval and land forces would prove priceless; as a consequence of those landings the Vichy regimes in French North Africa were shunted aside; that was all to the good. But the Vichy commander in Tunis, while eventually coming over to the Allies, had taken his time in choosing which way to jump, so that Berlin was able to rush the 10th Panzer Division, the Fallschirmjäger regiments and over 100 Luftwaffe fighters across the Mediterranean to Tunisia before the Allies could react. Part of the Allied planning for Torch had been the hope of taking Tunisia by coup de main—that hope died aborning. Despite a promising start that brought two British brigades to within 25 miles of Bizerte at the end of November, the German resistance stiffened and pushed the British back, while a subsequent series of American regimental- and division-sized thrusts in the center and south of Tunisia were stopped in their tracks. Eisenhower and staff were forced to accept that only coordinated, large-scale, corps-sized attacks, backed by strong air support, were going to crack the German defenses: it would be at least two months before the Americans could be ready for such an undertaking.
Yuletide at the headquarters of Panzerarmee Afrika was actually a somewhat festive affair, with Rommel spending Christmas Eve with his officers and Christmas Day among his soldiers. Among the presents given to Rommel was one that delighted him so much that he would remember it for a long time afterward—it was a miniature fuel can, of the type known as the “Jerry can,” which contained not gasoline, but something even more valuable: two pounds of precious ground coffee. Christmas dinner was two gazelles shot by Rommel and his secretary, Leutnant Wilfred Armbruster. The letter he penned to Lucie after returning from the officers’ mess, however, was a curious mixture of familiar warmth and personal trepidation:
24 December 1942
Dearest Lu,
Today my thoughts are more than ever with you two at home. To you, Manfred, once more all the best for your 15th year. I expect you will already have received my birthday letter. And I wish you both a very happy Christmas. God will help us as in the past.
. . . I’m going off very early this morning into the country and will be celebrating this evening among the men. They’re in top spirits, thank God, and it takes great strength not to let them see how heavily the situation is pressing on us.231
Rommel was grateful nonetheless for the comparative inactivity, apart from a few probing raids by the Long Range Desert Group and the Special Air Service, of Eighth Army, as it gave him time to become familiar with the lay of the land between Buerat and Tripoli: if he found himself compelled to fight here, he wanted to know the ground he was fighting on. There was even time for a bit of sightseeing and levity: Rommel spent a day exploring the impressive ruins of the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna, where his Chief of Staff, Bayerlein, had the opportunity to take a photograph of Rommel’s aide de camp, Leutnant von Hardtdegen, who had fallen asleep between two statues of nude females. Even then, though, the unspoken question of when would the British make their next move hung over everything Rommel did, as witnessed by his letter of January 5 to Lucie:
Dearest Lu,
Nothing new to report from here. The enemy still doesn’t risk an attack. I wonder how long it will be? I wrote to Helene and Gertrud yesterday. [Rommel’s sister and his daughter by Walburga Stemmer.] It’s still cold and windy. The only time it gets tolerably warm is when the sun comes through for a bit at midday. That’s something I’m not used to in Africa. I’ve had a letter from [Major Eberhard] von Luepke, who was taken prisoner a year ago. He was in South Africa, escaped and trekked north with another man for four months. Finally, a Zulu handed him over to the British again. There’s very little post coming through at the moment; most of what comes is from November. There’s probably a whole lot at the bottom of the sea. I’m in a slightly better humor again, there being now some hope that we’ll be able to make a stand somewhere.232
&
nbsp; General von Arnim, commander of the Fifth Panzer Army in Tunisia, sent a message to Rommel on January 10, warning of a possible American attack out of Gafsa toward Gabes. Rommel was, of course, unaware of the U.S. Army’s command and supply problems in Tunisia, and so saw the possibility of such an attack as posing a most serious threat: if the Americans took Gabes, they would not only deny Rommel the use of the Mareth Line to make a stand against Eighth Army, but the panzerarmee would finally be well and truly trapped, with no way to escape. Tripoli was useless for an evacuation—even as Rommel was reading the message, German and Italian engineers were preparing the docks and derricks for demolition. When a copy of von Arnim’s message reached Rome, Marshal Cavallero asked Rommel to send a division back to hold the Gabes defile. Rommel agreed to this and three days later the 21st Panzer Division headed northward—but not before Kesselring got wind of what was happening and accused Rommel of using von Arnim’s warning as an excuse to accelerate his own retreat. Rommel neatly turned the tables on Kesselring by ordering the men of the 21st Panzer to leave all of their tanks, artillery, and heavy weapons with the panzerarmee at Buerat; they could, he said, be re-equipped from tank and artillery parks under Kesselring’s command in Tunisia.
Two days after von Arnim’s warning arrived, the Desert Air Force began increasing the intensity of its bombing attacks on the Axis army, the prelude, Rommel knew, to another move by Eighth Army. This was confirmed by the Afrika Korps’ wireless intercept section, which also was able to deduce that the British attack would begin on January 15. Rommel immediately issued the orders that got the army moving, the non-mechanized German and Italian infantry going first, back to an intermediate position at the village of Homs, 40 miles west of Buerat and halfway to Tripolil; by nightfall, before Eighth Army could come to grips with the panzerarmee, all of Rommel’s troops were on their way to the new line in the sand. His letter to Lucie that day makes it clear that Rommel was pushing himself to his limits.
15 January 1943
Dearest Lu,
Our movement has begun. How fast it will go will depend on the pressure. I’m not feeling too good, for obvious reasons. Berndt has been away again and is expected back to-morrow. Physically I’m well so far. Of course the nervous strain is particularly severe just now and I have to keep a real grip on myself.233
The letter is also noteworthy for the mention of Leutnant Berndt being away: Berndt had by now developed a strong personal loyalty to Rommel, and had gone to Berlin on an urgent mission to meet personally with Hitler in order to save his commanding officer’s job.
Just before the Buerat line was abandoned, Rommel became aware that Mussolini and the officers of Comando Supremo were planning a coup d’état of sorts, by creating a new Italian First Army once the panzerarmee reached the Mareth Line: this would remove the Italian troops—who made up two thirds of Rommel’s numerical strength, and who had, by his own admission, been fighting with admirable tenacity when called upon during the retreat from El Alamein—from Rommel’s direct command. It would also have the effect of making the Afrika Korps and any other German units under Rommel subordinate to an Italian senior officer. This was to be expected—the Italian generals and marshals in Rome had always been hostile toward Rommel, unlike the Italian generals who actually fought in North Africa, men like Ettore Navarini, who commanded the XXI Italian Corps, or Gervasio Bitossi, Littorio’s commanding officer, or even Marshal Bastico, who had come to recognize that Rommel’s refusal to stand and fight was not cowardice, but a hard-headed realism dedicated to saving his army.
But now Kesselring was conspiring—there can be no other word for it—with Cavallero to have Rommel dismissed from command of what was now styled the German-Italian Army Group. Tunisia was, in his opinion, simply not big enough for two prima donna German field marshals, and unlike Rommel, Kesselring was prepared to pour honeyed words into the ears of his Italian colleagues in order to have himself named overall ground commander of all Axis forces there. Cavallero, who had long detested Rommel for being as bluntly—even rudely—outspoken as he himself was dissembling and evasive, agreed. “It’s quite clear that all he wants is to get to Tunis as fast as his legs will carry him,” Cavallero told Kesselring. “We’ve got to get rid of Rommel.”234
Matters came to a head once Rommel got the army back in good order to Tripoli; again General Bülowius’ infernal devices persuaded the British to be circumspect in their advance, buying the time necessary to evacuate the infantry from Homs while the mechanized units acted as a rearguard should the British become unexpectedly daring. But the halt at Tripoli would last only long enough for the army to figuratively catch its breath while the German and Italian engineers finished wrecking the port facilities in Tripoli in order to deny its use to the Allies. Mussolini, however, demanded that German-Italian Army Group stand at Tripoli and hold the port for at least three weeks—three meaningless weeks in Rommel’s opinion, as the ultimate outcome of the retreat out of Tripolitania was, as he saw it, inevitable. Thus the stage was set for Rommel’s supersession.
On the morning of January 20, Cavallero sent Rommel a message, endorsed by Mussolini, stating that Rommel’s earlier decision to withdraw from Homs and move to Tripoli, was a direct violation of the Duce’s instructions. Cavallero was on his way to North Africa to discuss the situation with Rommel in person. That afternoon, four field marshals—Rommel, Kesselring, Cavallero, and Bastico—had a bitter, contentious meeting at Rommel’s headquarters outside the village of Azizia. Cavallero, supported by Kesselring, demanded that a stand be made at Homs; Rommel, in turn, demanded to know why—what purpose would it serve when Tripoli was already being wired for demolition? Cavallero offered a vague excuse to the effect that if the army did not stand at Homs, there would not be enough time to finish preparing the Mareth Line, then fell back on the argument that the Duce had given an order, therefore it must be obeyed. Rommel would have none of it, telling Cavallero once again: “You can either hold on to Tripoli a few more days and lose the army, or lose Tripoli a few days earlier and save the army for Tunis. Make up your mind.”
Cavallero, however, was resolved to be irresolute: he replied by telling Rommel to hold on as long as possible, but that in the end the army must be preserved. The very next day Eighth Army attacked yet again—had Rommel kept the army at Homs, it would have been encircled and cut off, just as he had predicted. That, however, was not good enough for Cavallero, who returned to Rome determined to rid himself of this turbulent German field marshal.
Meanwhile, Leutnant Berndt returned from Berlin with tidings of great joy: Hitler’s faith in Rommel had apparently been magically restored, or at least so Hitler said, assuring Berndt of his unbounded confidence in Rommel. The Führer also promised to resolve the command issues in North Africa by creating a new army group, Heeresgruppe Afrika, with Rommel placed in overall command. The only condition Hitler placed on these promises was that Rommel had to be in sufficiently good health to take on the new responsibilities. Before any of that transpired, however, Kesselring and Cavallero’s intrigue to have Rommel removed from North Africa entirely came within a whisker of succeeding.
The attack on Homs that began on January 21 was in fact a major thrust by the now reorganized and resupplied Eighth Army, one which carried it all the way past Tripoli. Rommel gave the order to begin the demolitions and abandon the port on January 23; the British entered the city the following day. But once again Rommel proved cannier than Montgomery: 95 percent of all the supplies and stores stockpiled in Tripoli had already been spirited westward to the Mareth Line, and the Axis army once again escaped. The British victory was symbolic—it had been exactly three months since Montgomery opened his offensive against Rommel at El Alamein—but it was largely hollow in what it achieved materially. By January 26 the whole of the German-Italian Army Group was across the Tunisian frontier, on its way to Mareth.
That same day a signal arrived at Rommel’s headquarters informing him that due to his ill-health he would be re
lieved of command of the army group upon its arrival at Mareth. The exact date he would relinquish command was left to his discretion, but his successor, General Giovanni Messe, a tough-as-nails officer who had commanded the Italian Corps on the Russian Front where it had fought well, was on his way to North Africa. Rommel was not inclined to argue: as he put it, “After my experience during the retreat, I had little desire to go on any longer playing the scapegoat for a pack of incompetents and requested the Comando Supremo to send General Messe to Africa as soon as possible, so that he could be initiated into his new command.” Two days later he broke the news to Lucie:
28 January 1943
Dearest Lu,
In a few days I shall be giving up command of the army to an Italian, for the sole reason that “my present state of health does not permit me to carry on.” Of course it’s really for quite other reasons, principally that of prestige. I have done all I can to maintain the theater of war, in spite of the indescribable difficulties in all fields. I am deeply sorry for my men. They were very dear to me.
Physically, I am not too well. Severe headaches and overstrained nerves, on top of the circulation trouble, allow me no rest. Professor Horster is giving me sleeping draughts and helping as far as he can. Perhaps I’ll have a few weeks to recover. . . .235
Over the next two weeks, the entire Axis command structure in Tunisia would undergo a dramatic change—but it was not Rommel’s head that rolled. Bastico was recalled to Rome on January 31, to be relieved as governor-general of Libya, inevitably, as Libya was no longer an Italian colony; the very next day, though, Cavallero was dismissed as the Chief of Comando Supremo. On February 12, the second anniversary of his arrival in North Africa, Rommel decided that he would not give up command of the Afrika Korps or the First Italian Army until and unless directly ordered to do so by the Führer, and so informed Berlin. That prompted the O.K.W., acting on Hitler’s instructions, to authorize the creation of a Heeresgruppe Afrika—Army Group Africa—which would include the Afrika Korps, the First Italian Army, and the Fifth Panzer Army, all under the command of a single officer who, as an army group commander, would report and be directly subordinate to the O.K.W.. The administrative work was completed in short order, but the army group was not formally activated and no commander officially designated—yet.
Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel Page 52
