Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

by Butler, Daniel Allen

  24 February 1943

  Dearest Lu,

  I’ve moved up a step in command and have given up my army as a result. Bayerlein remains my Chief of Staff. Whether it’s a permanent solution is doubtful. I’m tolerably well, although the last few days have been pretty exhausting.243

  Rommel’s health continued to be a source of concern, not only for himself and Lucie, but also for Berlin and Rome as well.

  Now more than ever it was obvious that Hitler and Mussolini needed Rommel in Tunisia—given that no other German general had anything like his experience in fighting the British, it became imperative that he remain there. This point was heavily underscored by the abject failure of von Arnim’s sole attempt at taking the war to the Allies, the appropriately named “Operation Oxhead.” Aside from capturing the town of Sedjenane, in the north, the attack accomplished little save to add to the German casualty lists. Particularly galling for Rommel was that 15 of the 19 Tiger tanks under von Arnim’s command, the same tanks which could have decisively tipped the balance in favor of the Afrika Korps at Kasserine or Thala, were lost in this offensive—not to enemy action, but because they had become bogged down in a marsh. Kesselring, perhaps feeling chastened when it became obvious that the changes he had urged Comando Supremo to make to Rommel’s plan had fatally weakened it, and that he had authorized Oxhead, suddenly began pressing Rommel to take the army group command. Rommel finally accepted the post on March 2, though he did so with little enthusiasm.

  3 March 1943

  Dearest Lu,

  I may have the Army Group now, but the worry is no less. Schmundt has written me a very nice letter. The Führer is worried about me. But I can’t get away for the moment. I’ll just have to go on for a bit. I wouldn’t mind having a different job. I’m dictated to by Rome in every single thing, yet the full responsibility is mine. That I find intolerable. I often think my nerves will snap. One is continually having to take paths which lead very close beside the abyss. If it goes wrong, the consequences will be incalculable.

  It’s spring outside, blossoming trees and meadows, sunshine. The world could be so beautiful for all men. Such infinite possibilities exist to make them contented and happy. There is so much that could be done especially here in Africa with its wide-open spaces.244

  The second paragraph of this letter is fascinating, as it reveals a thought-fulness in Rommel that few outside of his immediate circle ever knew existed. It shows him to be more than just a skilled technician of war, with no horizons outside of strategy and tactics, no sense of a future that held anything but yet another battle. Here is a man thinking, speculating—dreaming, even—of how the world might be once the fighting had stopped. For all of its brevity, this paragraph establishes a sense of the breadth of Rommel’s character. A little more than a year would have to pass before he would be called upon to demonstrate its depth.

  Now that he was well and truly in command in Tunisia, Rommel had to formulate an overall strategy for defending that last Axis bridgehead in North Africa—within whatever constraints were placed on him by Rome and Berlin, of course. The first priority was to buy time, time to allow reinforcements to arrive in Tunis and Bizerte, time to stockpile supplies, time to bring his divisions back up to strength. It was with this objective in mind that he cryptically wrote to Lucie on March 5, saying, “Before I go off on a new and daring operation on orders from above, my dearest love to you and the boy.” The “new and daring operation” would be called Operation Capri, and it would be the very last attack Rommel would lead in North Africa.245

  As Rommel was squaring off against the Americans at Kasserine and the British at Sbiba, Eighth Army had begun a probing attack against the screening units of the 15th Panzer Division in front of the Mareth Line. Even though the Allies had not been thrown out of Tunisia by Rommel’s attack, it appeared that their advance had for the time being at least been checked, and it was now necessary for Rommel to carry out the second part of his strategy: to return to the Mareth Line and conduct a spoiling attack against Eighth Army, with the purpose of disrupting Montgomery’s plans and preparations for his own pending assault on the Mareth position. Rommel’s evaluation of the situation was straightforward: “Our whole enterprise was therefore built on the hope that the British would not have had time to complete the organisation of their defenses in the Medenine area. The decision to make the attack at all was based on the realization that we only had two choices open to us, either to await the British attack in our own line and suffer a crushing defeat, or to attempt to gain time by breaking up the enemy’s assembly areas.”246

  Eighth Army’s main assembly area was around the town of Medenine, near the southern end of the Axis line; posted there were the 51st (Highland) Division, 7th Armoured Division, 2nd New Zealand Division, and 4th Light Armoured Brigade. The terrain was such that Rommel could not expect to achieve either tactical or strategic surprise, instead he would have to depend on superior tactics and the skill of his soldiers to produce a victory. For this attack he would deploy the 10th, 15th, and 21st Panzer Divisions, along with the 90th and 164th Light Divisions; the Italian infantry under General Messe—who had conducted the defense against Montgomery’s February 20 attack with a skill and determination which Rommel found pleasantly surprising—would continue to hold the Mareth Line itself.

  Once again, however, time was Rommel’s enemy: in the time needed for his panzer divisions to pull out of western Tunisia, refuel, resupply, make whatever repairs were required, and move south to their start lines, more than a week passed, allowing the enemy to bring reinforcements forward to Medenine. Montgomery, forewarned by Ultra intercepts, knew precisely where and when Rommel would attack, and in what strength, even though he did not know the details of Rommel’s battle plan. Thus when the German attack began in the morning fog of March 6, two additional armored brigades had been added to the British units already in place at Medenine, giving Eighth Army a two-to-one numerical superiority in tanks over the Afrika Korps. Even more critical to the outcome of the battle, over 500 British antitank guns had been dug in at crucial points along the approaches to Medinine.

  By 5:00 P.M. it was all over, after nearly half of Rommel’s tanks were knocked out of action, half of those totally destroyed, all of them by the British antitank guns and artillery—the British armor was never committed to battle. It was clear to Rommel that his attack had been completely anticipated by Eighth Army, and the initiative was lost: he called off the attack and ordered the panzer divisions to hold their ground while any tanks and vehicles that could be repaired were recovered. By midnight, he decided that trying to hold the ground gained was pointless, and ordered his panzers to return to the Mareth Line. For Rommel, “the cruelest blow was the knowledge that we had been unable to interfere with Montgomery’s preparations. A great gloom settled over us all. The Eighth Army’s attack was now imminent and we had to face it. For the Army Group to remain longer in Africa was now plain suicide.”247

  Rommel was now determined to make precisely that point to Comando Supremo, Mussolini, the O.K.W., and Hitler himself if necessary. On March 9 he formally handed over command of Heeresgruppe Afrika to von Arnim and flew to Rome. Meeting first with General Vittorio Ambrosio, who had replaced Marshal Cavallero as chief of staff, then with Mussolini, Rommel came away convinced that neither of them truly comprehended that it was impossible to hold Tunisia indefinitely, nor did they understand the value of the soldiers who would be lost to both Italy and Germany when the Tunisian garrison was ultimately forced to surrender. In the course of the conversations, Rommel began to realize that the Italians did not expect him to return to North Africa, believing he would go on sick leave instead. This was something Rommel was not prepared to do, regarding such a course of action as tantamount to deserting his men. There was a surreal quality to these meetings, as if Mussolini and Ambrosio on one hand and Rommel on the other were talking about two entire different fronts in two entirely different wars. Discouraged, Rommel flew to the Ukra
ine the next day, to meet Hitler at the Führerhauptquartier near Vinnitsya.

  If Rommel had been expecting a more realistic appreciation of military realities in Tunisia from Hitler than was offered by Ambrosio or Mussolini, he was sadly mistaken. “[Hitler] was unreceptive to my arguments and seemed to pass them all off with the idea that I had become a pessimist,” Rommel would later write of this meeting. “I emphasized as strongly as I could that the ‘African’ troops must be re-equipped in Italy to enable them to defend our southern European flank. I even went so far as to give him a guarantee—something which I am normally very reluctant to do—that with these troops, I would beat off any Allied invasion in southern Europe. But it was all hopeless.” Incredibly, Hitler insisted that Rommel take sick leave, because he would be needed for operations against the Allies in Casablanca. This startled Rommel, who began to understand from this that Hitler was becoming delusional: Casablanca was on Africa’s Atlantic coast, far beyond the reach of Germany’s ability to launch or sustain operations. Unlike all of his previous meetings with Hitler, Rommel departed with a deep sense of disappointment, despite being awarded the Diamonds to his Knight’s Cross, only the sixth such award thus far in the war. His medical leave would begin the following day.248

  As he flew to Wiener Neustadt, Rommel could only feel a profound sense of failure. “All of my efforts to save my men and get them back to the Continent had been fruitless. . . .” When his sand-colored Heinkel 111 touched down at the huge military airfield outside Wiener Neustadt, Lucie and Manfred were waiting for him. Rommel wrapped his wife in an embrace, then held out his hand to his son. Nothing was said for a moment, then Rommel drew a deep breath and made an announcement.

  “The Führer won’t let me go back to Africa again,” he said. “Von Arnim is taking over the Army Group.”249

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE ATLANTIC WALL

  A good general not only sees the way to victory;

  he also knows when victory is impossible.

  —POLYBIUS

  For nine weeks Rommel would chafe and fret in limbo, wondering if, despite the accolades and praise heaped on him by Hitler and his cronies, he had exited Tunisia in disgrace, and he would ever be given a new command. He occupied his time as best he could with organizing and editing his diaries and notes from North Africa, turning them into what he hoped would become a book to be called Krieg Ohne haas, (War without Hate). Lucie typed up the finished notes into a manageable manuscript, while Manfred, now 14 years old, helped detail the maps.

  Petty slights multiplied. There were no courtesy calls from senior officers, no communications from the Führerhauptquartier. His letters to the O.K.W. urging that the most valuable German experten and officers be evacuated from Africa before it was too late elicited no response. Field Marshal Kesselring, who now made no effort to hide his dislike of Rommel, ordered von Arnim to cease forwarding the regular situation reports which had been going to Rommel since his departure from Tunisia, even though Rommel remained, technically at least, von Arnim’s immediate superior. Especially wounding for a man of Rommel’s vanity was the absence of any mention in the newspapers of his award of the Diamonds to his Knight’s Cross—an incredible oversight, if that’s what it was, for the award was far from common—only 27 men would ever hold the Diamonds. According to Manfred, one of the first things his father said to him on his return from North Africa was “I’ve fallen from grace. I can’t expect any important jobs for the time being.” To all appearances that was true.250

  Then came the unexpected call from Berlin on May 8: Rommel was ordered to report to the Führer the next day. The situation in Tunisia was clearly beyond salvation and the curtain was crashing down on Hitler and Mussolini’s African adventure; it is likely that Hitler, who could never openly admit to an error, was seeking to mend fences with Rommel. Weeks earlier Kesselring, ever the eternal optimist, had contradicted Rommel’s gloomy assessment of the situation, while unconsciously echoing Rommel’s earlier pleas for North Africa when he had assured the O.K.W. that if the forces there were properly supplied, Tunisia could be held indefinitely. Hitler, likewise repeating himself, demanded that what was left of Armeegruppe Afrika fight to the last man and the last round. Now, meeting Rommel on May 9, Hitler balefully admitted, “I should have listened to you before.”

  Even as Rommel and Hitler talked, von Arnim was preparing to formally surrender to Eisenhower. A quarter-million Axis soldiers would become prisoners of war, 150,000 of them Germans. From a military perspective, it was, in some ways, an even greater disaster than Stalingrad. At Stalingrad the Germans lost a battle and an army; at Tunisia, the Germans lost an army group and an entire front. After Stalingrad, the Russians were still 1,100 miles from the Reich itself—after Tunisia, the Allies were less than half that distance away. More ominously for the Axis, the Allies could now establish airfields in North Africa that would bring Italy, southern Austria, and the Balkans within range of the Americans’ heavy B-17 and B-24 bombers. Previously untouchable factories and industrial facilities were now threatened; the Luftwaffe, already overtaxed in its efforts to defend the Reich, would be stretched even further. Hitler had more than sufficient reason to regret not paying heed to Rommel.

  Meanwhile, the Führer had no immediate assignment for Rommel, though Field Marshal Keitel dropped not-so-subtle hints that Rommel might soon be needed in Italy. It was evident to everyone in the German High Command that things were becoming very dicey indeed for Mussolini; unlike Hitler, he was not an absolute dictator, and he was becoming increasingly unpopular within the Italian government as a consequence of Italy’s disastrous showing in this war. If the Allies invaded Sicily—or the Italian peninsula itself—there was a very real possibility of the Duce being toppled from power and the Italians making a separate peace with the Allies. Delaying either of those eventualities for as long as possible had been, in Hitler’s mind, sufficient justification for the sacrifice of 250,000 German and Italian soldiers; now with the invasion of Sicily expected in a matter of weeks, and of Italy sometime in late summer or early autumn, the questions of what to do with the Italians became a pressing issue.

  Rommel suddenly became something of a fixture at the Führer’s headquarters for the next three months, where Hitler freely and frequently drew on his military expertise. He was present when, on May 15, Hitler rambled through a two-hour monologue that detailed his appreciation of the Allies’ intentions, the Italians’ likely reactions, and what steps the Germans would take when Italy was invaded. Rommel, who still held deep-seated suspicions of having been betrayed in North Africa by the Comando Supremo and Mussolini’s government (he was shortly to discover how valid were those suspicions) repeatedly warned that the Italians would offer little if any resistance when the British and Americans landed in Italy; this time round, his counsel was heeded very carefully.

  Hitler announced that four panzer and eight infantry divisions would be withdrawn from the Russian Front to be redeployed in Italy—regardless of the Italian government’s wishes—when an invasion began; this would be Operation Alarich. Two days later Rommel was told to begin assembling a staff for a new army group headquarters, designated “Army Group B”; Rommel immediately sent for Alfred Gause, his health now much improved, as his Chief of Staff once again. He also met with Fritz Bayerlein, who had stepped in as Rommel’s Chief of Staff after Gause had been invalided out of North Africa. Bayerlein was now a generalmajor and serving as chief of staff to General Hans Hube, who would command the defense of Sicily, the Allies’ next target for invasion. At one point Rommel held forth on what direction he imagined the war would take, saying, “You know, Bayerlein, we’ve lost the initiative, there’s no doubt about it. We’ve just learned in Russia that dash and high hopes are not enough. . . . For the next few years there can be no thought of resuming the offensive either in the east or in the west. So we’ll have to make the most of the advantages that normally accrue to the defense. . . . A few days ago the Führer told me that by th
e beginning of next year we’ll be turning out 7,000 aircraft and 2,000 tanks a month. I no longer see things as blackly as I used to in Africa.” It would seem that some of Rommel’s old optimism was returning, tempered by a caution born of experience, that is, until he remarked, “but total victory is now hardly possible, of course.”251

  Privately Rommel said as much to Hitler, painting a realistic picture of Germany’s true strategic situation as he did so: there could be no doubting that everywhere the Third Reich was now on the defensive. “Hitler listened to it all with downcast eyes,” Rommel later told Manfred. “Suddenly he looked up and said that he, too, was aware that there was very little chance left of winning the war. But the West would never conclude peace with him—at least not the statesmen who were at the helm now. He said that he had never wanted war with the West. But now the West would have its war—have it to the end.” Rommel did not then take the time to consider the implications of those last words, but later their significance would loom large for him, leading him to make dangerous, even fatal, decisions.252

  Meanwhile, Rommel was quickly reverting to form, becoming more like his old self—bluff, opinionated, outspoken, brash and sometimes needlessly blunt. He was making enemies at O.K.W. and within the Nazi heirarchy—aside from the curious friendship with Dr. Göbbels, motived in large part by the Propaganda Minister’s efforts to promote and burnish Rommel’s public image, for otherwise there was little in common between the field marshal and the Third Reich’s poison dwarf—none of the senior Nazis liked Rommel. The hostility between Rommel and Göring, for instance, was an open secret at the Führerhauptquartier, particularly after the 40mm shell incident. Even two years earlier, such animosity might have been fatal to Rommel, as Göring had once been the second most-powerful man in the Third Reich, but now the Reichsmarschall’s star was beginning to wane, so that while Rommel could not openly show his contempt for “Fat Hermann,” he no longer had to pretend it did not exist.