5 July 1944
To C.-IN-C. WEST.
HERR GENERALFELDMARSCHALL VON KLUGE.
I send you enclosed my comments on military events in Normandy to date. The rebuke which you levelled at me at the beginning of your visit, in the presence of my Chief of Staff and 1a, to the effect that I, too, “will now have to get accustomed to carrying out orders,” has deeply wounded me. I request you to notify me what grounds you have for making such an accusation.
(Signed) ROMMEL
Generalfeldmarschall293
Knowing full well where von Kluge’s prejudice had likely originated, Rommel had included with his personal letter to the new OB West a copy of the report he had submitted to Hitler on June 17, which detailed the strategic, operational, and tactical details of the situation in France, along with his observations, criticisms and suggestions for properly fighting the battle. It did not take long for von Kluge to discover who was telling the truth and who was spouting fantasy. When it became obvious to him that Hitler and the O.K.W. had knowingly lied about the situation in Normandy—that it was not simply severe, it was an out-and-out crisis—he did a complete about-face and agreed wholeheartedly with Rommel: the battle was lost, which meant that the war itself was lost. The best that they could hope to accomplish was to buy time—but to what end?
Rommel in particular had lost faith in the “wonder weapons.” Initially he had been intrigued by the V-1s, their sheer novelty appealing to the engineer in him. But while the “buzz bombs” might influence Allied strategy in France, they had no effect on the Allies’ ability to wage war there. As for the V-2s, the jet fighters, the rocket bombers, all of them were, in Rommel’s opinion, merely more manifestations of Hitler’s wolkenkuckkucksheim. Manfred once remarked to his father that perhaps the new weapons would turn the tide in Germany’s favor, Rommel replied, “Rubbish! Nobody has any such weapons. The only purpose of these rumors is to make the ordinary soldier hang on a bit longer. We’re finished, and most of the gentlemen above know it perfectly well, even if they won’t admit it. . . .” Von Kluge and Rommel agreed that simply prolonging the war for its own sake accomplished nothing, save for getting more Germans killed and bringing more destruction down on Germany—and, ominously, allowing the Russians closer to the Reich every day. Götterdämmerung was looming, and if “the gentlemen above” refused to acknowledge this to be so and act to ward if off, then other men would have to act as they saw fit to prevent it.294
Rommel put forward one last effort to make the Führer and the O.K.W. see reason, drawing up a report—which von Kluge firmly endorsed—in which he hoped the facts would speak for themselves. It is a remarkable document in its stark, straightforward nature—reflecting its author’s character—stating not only the situation that exists, but also in accurately predicting what is to come.
C.-IN-C. ARMY GROUP B H.Q. 15 July 1943
The situation on the Normandy front is growing worse every day and is now approaching a grave crisis.
Due to the severity of the fighting, the enemy’s enormous use of materiel above all, artillery and tanks and the effect of his unrestricted command of the air over the battle area, our casualties are so high that the fighting power of our divisions is rapidly diminishing. Replacements from home are few in number and, with the difficult transport situation, take weeks to get to the front. As against 97,000 casualties (including 2,360 officers), i.e. an average of 2,500 to 3,000 a day, replacements to date number 10,000, of whom about 6,000 have actually arrived at the front.
Material losses are also huge and have so far been replaced on a very small scale; in tanks, for example, only 17 replacements have arrived to date as compared with 225 losses.
The newly arrived infantry divisions are raw and, with their small establishment of artillery, antitank guns and close-combat antitank weapons, are in no state to make a lengthy stand against major enemy attacks coming after hours of drum-fire and heavy bombing. The fighting has shown that with this use of materiel by the enemy, even the bravest army will be smashed piece by piece, losing men, arms and territory in the process.
Due to the destruction of the railway system and the threat of the enemy air force to roads and tracks up to 90 miles behind the front, supply conditions are so bad that only the barest essentials can be brought to the front. It is consequently now necessary to exercise the greatest economy in all fields, and especially in artillery and mortar ammunition. These conditions are unlikely to improve, as enemy action is steadily reducing the transport capacity available. Moreover, this activity in the air is likely to become even more effective as the numerous air-strips in the bridgehead are taken into use.
No new forces of any consequence can be brought up to the Normandy front except by weakening Fifteenth Army’s front on the Channel, or the Mediterranean front in southern France. Yet Seventh Army’s front, taken overall, urgently requires two fresh divisions, as the troops in Normandy are exhausted.
On the enemy’s side, fresh forces and great quantities of war materiel are flowing into his front every day. His supplies are undisturbed by our air force. Enemy pressure is growing steadily stronger.
In these circumstances we must expect that in the foreseeable future the enemy will succeed in breaking through our thin front, above all, Seventh Army’s, and thrusting deep into France. Apart from the Panzer Group’s sector reserves, which are at present tied down by the fighting on their own front and due to the enemy’s command of the air can only move by night, we dispose of no mobile reserve for defense against such a breakthrough. Action by our air force will, as in the past, have little effect.
The troops are everywhere fighting heroically, but the unequal struggle is approaching its end. It is urgently necessary for the proper conclusion to be drawn from this situation. As C.-in-C. of the Army Group I feel myself in duty bound to speak plainly on this point.
(Signed) ROMMEL295
On July 16, reading the maps as Corporal Daniel drove the big open Horsch sedan, Rommel motored up to the outskirts of Le Havre, where the Luftwaffe’s 17th Field Division was holding part of the front against the British armor concentrated around Caen. There he met with the divisional staff, including the operations officer, Lieutenant Colonel Elmar Warning, who had for a time served on Rommel’s staff in North Africa and who still proudly wore his Afrika Korps cuffband. Confident that he was in the presence of a trusted friend, Rommel was blunt when Warning privately asked him for the truth about the overall situation in Normandy, because, as Warning put it, “we can count the days off on our tunic buttons before the breakthrough comes.”
“I’ll tell you this much,” Rommel said. “Field Marshal von Kluge and I have sent the Führer an ultimatum, telling him the war can’t be won militarily and asking him to draw the consequences.”
“What if the Führer refuses?” Warning wondered. Rommel’s response came with no hesitation.
“Then I’m going to open up the western front, because there’s only one thing that matters now: the British and Americans must get to Berlin before the Russians do!”296
The following morning, July 17, Rommel, who was clocking as much as 250 miles a day driving between his headquarters at La Roche Guyon and the units fighting at the front, set out for a meeting with Sepp Dietrich, commander of the 1st SS Panzer Corps. While not particularly admirable, Dietrich was an intriguing individual: like Hitler, he was awarded the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd Class, as an enlisted man in the First World War; he joined the Nazi Party in 1928 and became one of the first commanding officers of the Schutzstaffel, the SS, when it was still only Hitler’s bodyguard, later serving as Hitler’s personal chauffeur. Given his history, then, his loyalty to the Führer and the Party should have been total and absolute; yet according to Helmuth Lang, after the purely military aspects of the conference with Dietrich were completed, Rommel had the most amazing conversation with the SS general. Well within earshot of Lang, Rommel bluntly asked Dietrich, “Would you always execute my orders, even if they contr
adicted the Führer’s orders?”
“You are my superior officer, Herr Feldmarschall,” Dietrich replied, offering Rommel his hand, “and therefore I will obey all your orders, whatever it is you’re planning.”297
With that, Rommel’s business at Dietrich’s headquarters was complete, and within minutes he was on his way back to La Roche Guyon. Dietrich suggested that, given their proximity to the front, Rommel and his men take an ordinary kübelwagen rather than the big, conspicuous Horsch, but Rommel waved off the idea—kübels were cramped, uncomfortable, and slow. He did accept the SS man’s recommendation to stay on side roads rather than the main highways, the better to avoid roving Allied fighter-bombers. Just past 4:00 P.M., Corporal Daniel roared away from St Pierre sur Dives; Rommel sat in front as usual, Captain Lang, Major Neuhaus, and Feld-webel Hoike (who had been brought along specifically as an aircraft spotter) taking their places in the back. As they traveled south, they never went more than a mile—often no more than a few hundred yards— without passing the strafed, often burned-out wrecks of Wehrmacht and SS trucks, tanks, and armored cars that had been destroyed by British or American aircraft. Near Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery, Hoike spotted a formation of Allied fighters that appeared to be lining up for a strafing run on the road ahead. Rommel ordered Corporal Daniel to take a side road that ran through the village of Sainte-Germaine-de-Montgommery, and it was there that a pair of Royal Air Force Spitfires suddenly appeared. Daniel zigzagged desperately to throw off the British pilots’ aim, but a burst of 20mm cannon fire walked across the road and into the car, seriously wounding Daniel, who lost control of the big Horsch. The car skidded for 100 yards before it nosed into the ditch alongside the road, struck a tree and rebounded into the roadway again; everyone in the car was thrown clear by the initial impact. Lang was all but unhurt, Neuhaus and Hoike suffered minor injuries; but Daniel’s wounds were fatal—he would lapse into a coma and die a few hours later. Rommel, who had turned to his right to watch the approach of the enemy fighters, was thrown violently against the windscreen pillar, fracturing his skull in three places and suffering massive injuries to the left side of his face before being tossed onto the roadway. Unconscious and bleeding heavily, Erwin Rommel had come to the end of his war.
THREE DAYS LATER, at 12:42 P.M., July 20, 1944, a bomb exploded in the room at the Führerhauptquartier at Rastenburg in East Prussia where Adolf Hitler was having his daily military briefing.
Aside from burns and a perforated eardrum, Hitler survived the blast uninjured—others were less fortunate: four men were killed and two were seriously injured; another five suffered lesser wounds. Predictably, within hours of the bomb detonating, as soon as it became clear that the assassination attempt—the German word is attentat—was part of an attempted coup d’état, a putsch, by German Army officers, the witch hunts began. The Führer had, with good reason, long been suspicious of the German officer corps—there had been assassination plots and attempts, some of which Hitler had been aware, some of which he knew nothing, concocted by various senior officers as far back as 1938. Hitler and the German offizierkorps had always regarded each other as the means to an end; both considered the other as being expendable when those ends were achieved. For Hitler, the tacit approval and cooperation of the offizierkorps had provided a cloak of legitimacy and an underpinning of authority as he consolidated his power in the early days of his regime; for the officer corps’ part, Hitler resurrected the Germany Army from irrelevance and restored it to a position of international power and prestige. It had been a deal sealed in the blood of the Night of the Long Knives, but neither party to it had any delusions about its permanence; the war prolonged the bargain, but ultimately undermined it. The officer corps viewed Hitler as the rankest of amateurs who after a few strokes of good fortune in the early years of the war was now leading Germany—and more importantly the Army—to defeat, while Hitler saw his senior officers as hidebound reactionaries who were obstacles to his brilliance and hence to victory. The time had come, in the summer of 1944, for Führer and officers alike to be rid of each other.
Enter Claus von Stauffenberg, count, colonel, and Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army. Handsome, intelligent, urbane, educated, aristocratic, and a graduate of the General Staff College, von Staufenberg was not only the complete antithesis of Adolf Hitler, he embodied everything about the German Army Hitler despised most. Von Stauffenberg was also a man highly disillusioned, badly wounded in body and soul, who chose to take action against Hitler when most of his fellows involved in the “German resistance” were content with endless nattering. It was von Stauffenberg who placed the bomb in the Führer’s conference room and who, convinced that the monster had died in the explosion, returned to Berlin to lead the putsch against the Nazi government apparatus. For this, the young Wehrmacht colonel, who would be executed in Berlin by a makeshift firing squad barely 12 hours after the failed attentat, has become widely honored, almost revered, for his courage and determination to take action where other men had hesitated and failed.
All the same, because of this willingness to act when others only talked, von Stauffenberg has been the subject of a great deal of idealizing, even romanticizing, in regard to his character, motives, and objectives in his determination to kill Adolf Hitler. He was not, for example, the passionate anti-Nazi he is frequently depicted to be: though he never formally joined the National Socialist Party, von Stauffenberg was among the Reichswehr officers who publicly celebrated Hitler’s ascension to the chancellorship in January 1933, and openly embraced the Nazi ideals of militarism, socialism, and totalitarianism. Moreover, he did not view the elimination of Hitler and the senior Nazi hierarchy as the first great step to ending the war. Rather, he had concocted a list of demands to which the Allies would be required to accede before Germany would make peace with them—this in spite of the declaration at Casablanca by Churchill and the American president, Roosevelt, that only unconditional surrender by Germany would be acceptable to the West. Von Stauffenberg expected that Austria and the Sudetenland would be retained as part of of the Reich, while Germany would simultaneously be allowed to annex most of the Italian Tyrol; Alsace-Lorraine would become autonomous—under close German supervision—while the border with a reconstituted Poland would be redrawn to along the pre-1914 frontiers; and there would be no occupation of Germany in any form by the Allies. In short, von Stauffenberg and his clique of conspirators were prepared to withdraw the German armed forces from southern Italy, France, and the Low Countries in exchange for having removed Hitler and his inner circle of senior Nazis from power.
It is difficult to imagine a concept for a peace settlement more out of touch with the realities of mid-1944. That von Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators imagined such an offer being palatable to the Allies owed more to their view of themselves and their place in Germany and the world at large than it did to any realistic political and military calculus. Von Stauffenberg held to a near-mystic self-view, that of a latter-day crusader, the embodiment of Christian ideals (he was a devout Catholic, which was the root of his deepest conflicts with National Socialism and its neo-paganism), a Teutonic warrior-poet who, Germany’s savior, would usher the Fatherland into a new future which would mystically meld with the myth and legend of Germany’s past, racially pure and morally cleansed, guided by the noble paladins of the offizierkorps. The great irony of Claus von Stauffenberg was that he sought to abolish Hitler and the Nazis, but not National Socialism: according to his brother, Berthold, Claus “basically approved of the racial principle of National Socialism, but considered it to be exaggerated and excessive.”298
On some level, and all the evidence indicates that this was not a conscious decision, Rommel understood and rejected all of this. He was never approached by von Stauffenberg directly, although they encountered each other in their professional capacities from time to time in late 1943 and early 1944. Moreover, Rommel was too much the pragmatist to be seduced by von Stauffenberg’s romantic nonsense; had the count co
nfided his intentions and ambitions to the field marshal, Rommel would have been quick to chastise the younger man (von Stauffenberg was 36 at the time of the assassination attempt) for being so unrealistic.
In point of fact, von Stauffenberg himself should have known better: by July 20, 1944 he was the veteran of almost four years of combat and had been severely, almost fatally, wounded in an Allied air attack while serving as a staff officer with the 10th Panzer Division in Tunisia in the spring of 1943. Losing his left eye, his right hand, and two fingers on his left hand, von Stauffenberg was invalided back to Germany, where after his recovery he was appointed the Chief of Staff of the Ersatzarmee, the Replacement Army (the central reserve of the Wehrmacht, where new units were created and old, exhausted formations were reconstituted and replenished), which gave him access to the contingency plans for an operation called Valküre (Valkyrie), which served as the basis for his own planning for the putsch he would lead once Hitler was safely assassinated and thus out of the way. Rommel, had he been sought out by von Stauffenberg, would have queried as to what exactly the younger man saw that would lead him to believe that the British and the Americans, who had already thrown the Axis out of North Africa, were handily winning the Battle of the Atlantic, and whose bomber fleets were daily and nightly raining down destruction on the Reich itself, would suddenly simply quit if offered the opportunity to do so through a change of regime in Berlin. Whatever it might have been, Rommel himself saw no trace of it.
Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel Page 62
