The Trail of the Fox

by David Irving

  Rommel’s lugubrious radio signals to Rome and Berlin astonished even the enemy, who were regularly intercepting and decoding them. Perplexed, the joint Intelligence Committee dispatched from London to their Middle East commanders this top secret assessment: “Ever since the battle at El Alamein, Rommel has had the tendency to look over his shoulder. . . . Rommel is again showing signs of nervousness at the danger of a British outflanking movement, and appears to overestimate the British readiness to attack.”

  Rommel’s reluctance to hold on to the Buerat position brought the conflict with Rome out into the open. His Italian subordinates sided with him, particularly Navarrini and General Gervasio Bitossi, the Littorio Division’s commander. They pleaded with him to start transporting the 45,000 nonmotorized German and Italian infantry farther westward while there was still time.

  Still the Italian High Command refused to see things Rommel’s way. To Marshal Bastico he complained, “If I’m supposed to accept the responsibility, then they must leave me free to decide just how I tackle the job.”

  Bastico reported the outburst to Cavallero, and Rommel’s plea really stuck in the Italian marshal’s craw. “I am against giving Rommel any freedom of action at all,” he exclaimed to Kesselring. “Just look how he behaves when he does get it. It’s quite clear that all he wants is to get to Tunis as fast as his legs will carry him.”

  It was now that he first voiced to Kesselring the possibility of repatriating Rommel to Germany and giving the Panzer Army to an Italian general instead. Later that day he took it up with Mussolini too. “We’ve got to get rid of Rommel,” Marshal Cavallero wrote in his diary.

  IT WAS NEARLY Christmas. From all over Germany food parcels and letters poured into Rommel’s headquarters. There were crates of oranges, too; he stacked them in his car and drove out to the front to distribute them: “That’s what I like most of all—driving out to the troops,” he wrote. “It takes your mind off things, and you can see the fresh young German soldiers.”

  In brilliant sunshine he inspected the best present of all, the first of the deadly eighty-eight-millimeter Flak 41s to arrive from the Reich. Hitler had kept his promise. It was the finest gun of its class in the world.

  On Christmas Eve the field marshal drove over to Faschia to inspect the outpost there. “On the way back,” wrote Armbruster, “we at last stumbled on a herd of twenty-five gazelles. C in C and I shot one each. Got back at four P.M., in time for his guard company’s Christmas celebration. The C in C even made a speech, and it was filmed by the propaganda men. Father Christmas had something nice to give each of us; the C in C got a giant cake and Bayerlein a leg of mutton. At eight P.M. the C in C’s inner circle sat down to dine off the gazelles (there were just the twelve of us, until midnight).” Rommel’s own thoughts were in Wiener Neustadt. “Ach,” he wrote to Lucie that day, “when will we ever meet again? My worries are as big as ever.” Among the presents to Rommel was a miniature gasoline can—filled not with gasoline but a pound or two of coffee.

  What Rommel did not know, or refused to believe, was that severe supply problems also plagued Montgomery. In fact, the British could not attack the Buerat line before mid-January 1943. The truth was that Montgomery had such supply troubles that he could only push a small part of his army forward for the attack on Buerat. Which raises the question: would he have risked this thrust if he had not known from the Ultra intercepts that the Nazi field marshal had little intention of making a stand in Tripolitania? Montgomery himself later admitted: “I well knew that if we did not reach Tripoli in ten days I might have to withdraw—for lack of supplies.”

  Kesselring, more comfortable in Rome than was Rommel in his wet and unsanitary bunker, grew impatient at Rommel’s reluctance to hammer Montgomery’s probing fingers. He informed Cavallero that the enemy forces “threatening” Rommel were in fact very weak and off-balance. “Something must be done to raise Rommel’s confidence in his own capabilities.” In the original texts of Rommel’s letters there are certainly many hints of his mental anguish. “Slowly our fate here is being sealed,” he wrote emotionally on December 28. “It will be a miracle if we can hold on much longer. What happens then will lie in God’s hands. We’ll fight on as long as we can. I had forebodings about all this when we last met [in Rome], and I told you the salient points. When the fighting here is all over and you get news about my fate, you must act fast”—and he gave Lucie instructions on where she and Manfred ought to live, if he did not return.

  By that date Rommel’s Panzer Army was safely tucked behind the Buerat line. Now—remarkably, in the circumstances—Rome again bowed before Rommel. On December 31, the last day of a momentous year, Kesselring flew in and drove with Rommel up the coastal highway to see Marshal Bastico. All the accounts—in the diaries of Cavallero, Rommel and Armbruster, and in Rommel’s private letters and the records of the Panzer Army—agree that there was a blazing row. Mussolini’s new order, in Bastico’s words, was that if the Panzer Army’s imminent destruction was threatened at Buerat, then it might stage a fighting withdrawal to the next line back: the mountain passes at Homs, to the east of Tripoli. The leaders in Rome had now reconciled themselves to the inevitable loss of Tripoli, but it would take two months to prepare the port for demolition properly; so Rommel’s fighting withdrawal must last at least two months.

  Rommel was uncharitable. “Your orders are that I am not to allow my army to be wiped out,” he snapped. “That alone will be a miracle. Remember the battles we have been fighting recently—each time we only just managed to get our head out of the noose at the last moment.” He pointed out that it would take at least eight days to evacuate the infantry to Homs and that Montgomery was unlikely to wait eight days before attacking.

  Bastico refused to consider evacuating the infantry prematurely. Rommel retorted: “There’s only one choice. Either we get slaughtered here in the Buerat line, or we begin pulling out the infantry immediately. I’m not going to lay myself open to later allegations that I ‘sacrificed’ them.” Bastico challenged him to state his views in writing. Rommel refused: “I must act and act now. I can’t possibly submit written proposals and wait for their approval.” Bastico undertook to radio all this to Rome.

  Two days later, Rommel had his reply. He could start pulling his infantry out of the line, but he was to use his mechanized divisions to prevent Montgomery from reaching the Homs line for three weeks, and to prevent him from reaching Tripoli itself for three more weeks after that. Again Rommel was plunged into despair. “Why attach such senseless deadlines?” he moaned to his staff. “It should be obvious that I will hold out as long as humanly possible.”

  These words would have rung hollow in Italian ears, had they heard them, as Rommel’s retreat toward Tunisia accelerated over the next two weeks to a gallop. But to understand his frame of mind a wider view must be taken. His actions were dominated by one nightmare—that after the loss of Tripoli, the Americans might attack the remaining lifeline, the road bringing supplies eastward from Tunis. Captured American Air Force officers fed this fear when they revealed to Rommel on January 4 that strong forces were massing for just such an attack.

  NOW IN FERTILE Tripolitania, Rommel’s brave “Africans” were in better health and well fed. The troops had fresh meat, and Rommel’s own staff often fed on gazelle. In the evenings they saw movies, read their excellent army newspaper The Oasis, drank, played cards, sang to an accordion and read letters from their womenfolk back home.

  Several ships with supplies for Rommel docked at Tunis in the first days of 1943—Arnim claimed to be trucking 400 tons of supplies a day down the long road to Rommel at Buerat. But little of this was gasoline, so Rommel had no choice but to begin the evacuation of Buerat. The weather was foul—rain, sandstorms, cold nights. The Afrika Korps remained at Buerat, along with one third of the German and Italian infantry.

  On January 6, Cavallero and Kesselring again came to see Rommel and Bastico. Armbruster did a summary: “Four field marshals in confere
nce. Cavallero explains the reasons why they have decided, against their wishes, to abandon Tripolitania. Says Tunisia is more vital for final victory. Kesselring seemed quite hostile toward Rommel. C in C flew into a temper.”

  Kesselring once more urged Rommel to risk a counterattack: “Our air reconnaissance shows that there is only one division of the enemy’s first wave present. And the Luftwaffe has local air superiority at present, because the enemy’s fighter airfields are still too far back for them to escort bombers.”

  Rommel remained unmoved. He had gotten what he wanted. The only bone of contention between the Italians and himself now would be the rate of his retreat to Tunisia.

  There is no doubt that he had, perhaps unconsciously, bent the facts to suit his case. Earlier, he had claimed to be too weak to stage a counterattack; but when Bastico now tentatively proposed that Rommel should advance one division to Tunisia forthwith, to thwart the threatening American attack, he leaped at the idea. In effect it was a way to speed his retreat. The High Command ruled that he should send his 164th Light, but Rommel decided to contribute the powerful Twenty-first Panzer Division instead.

  This was Erwin Rommel at his most cunning, or most devious. Mussolini fell for the proposal, but not Kesselring. He protested that General von Arnim was quite capable of defending Tunisia without Rommel’s assistance. “Rommel is bent only on retreat,” warned Kesselring. “He’ll use any depletion of his army as a pretext to retreat even faster.”

  The ultimate irony was that Rommel promptly insisted that the Twenty-first Panzer should turn over all its tanks, guns and equipment to him before leaving Buerat; it could reequip in Tunisia. Hitler agreed, so once again Rommel got his way.

  For several days he flew around the countryside in his Storch, getting the feel of the terrain. It was rugged, magnificent country. On January 9 he lunched with the Centauro Armored Division. Armbruster interpreted and put in his diary: “The conversation was very pleasant, as the Centauro’s colonel had fought against the C in C during the last world war and was taken prisoner at Longarone. We all had a good laugh.”

  In Rome there was less good humor. The wheels of jealous intrigue were already whirring. It was openly noised about that Rommel’s days in Africa were numbered, and that an Italian would take over the Panzer Army. Cavallero briefed Kesselring in Rome to advise the Führer that in Mussolini’s—strictly confidential—view Rommel should be recalled. Rommel apparently got wind of this and took countermeasures. On January 10 Lieutenant Armbruster jotted down: “Colonel B [ayerlein] and the C in C came over to us this morning when we were all still firmly in bed. Berndt has to fly to the Führer’s headquarters at once, today.”

  Rommel’s influential aide took off at five P.M. He did not disappoint the field marshal. Two days later he radioed: “Discussion went very well.” When he flew back to Africa he described it all in detail—there is a lengthy record in the Rommel diary. First and foremost, Hitler had assured Lieutenant Berndt: “I intend entrusting to Rommel the supreme command in Tunisia, providing his health is up to it.”

  They had talked in Hitler’s bunker in privacy from 10:30 P.M. on January 12 until two A.M. the next day, although it was the height of the Stalingrad crisis. Hitler had talked of the importance of the Tunis bridgehead. “Only the best will do for Africa. Unlimited quantities of the most up-to-date weapons will be made available. The central issue is unquestionably how to transport them over.”

  Hitler was putting Kesselring in charge of this aspect. “I fully appreciate the difficulties facing your C in C,” Hitler said. “But I too have often had to bow to political considerations, and I hope that your field marshal will do so too, however galling it may be. Please assure Rommel that I have particularly deep trust in him.”

  ON JANUARY 15, unaware that Rommel’s army had all but escaped again, General Montgomery made his next move. “The Tommies are attacking!” wrote Armbruster in his own notebook. “They have 100 tanks in the south and seventy in the north, plus eighty armored cars. Of course we have to fall back with our few tanks. At 1:30 P.M. we shift our headquarters.” Rommel ordered the Fifteenth Panzer Division to deploy its few tanks for a rearguard action, and they brewed up thirty-two Shermans for a loss of only two.

  “We’re on the move again,” Rommel wrote home. “The nervous strain is really severe now and I’ve got to keep a real grip on myself.” Correctly expecting Montgomery to follow through with a major night attack, Rommel ordered his forces in the Buerat line to disengage and withdraw forty miles to the first “interim line.” The next night he continued the retreat to the second interim line, another fifty miles distant. On January 17 he ordered this position abandoned too, rightly fearing that the British were developing an outflanking thrust to Tripoli. Montgomery’s forces were badly delayed by the minefields and demolitions on the Via Balbia and the difficult country inland. Rommel moved fast—disingenuously blaming the tempo of his retreat on “the considerable depletion of our strength caused by having had to give up the Twenty-first Panzer Division.”

  Thus, only three days after Montgomery had opened this battle, Rommel’s army reached the new line, extending from Tarhuna to Homs on the coast, that Mussolini had not expected him to reach for three weeks. But bigger shocks were in store for Rome.

  This was the last defense line before Tripoli itself, but little work had been done on it. Rommel did not expect to stay long. He told Bastico’s chief of staff, “We can’t really expect to hold off the enemy in the Homs line for more than two days.”

  Berndt had now arrived back from Hitler’s bunker and tried to cheer Rommel up: “The Führer says he’s quite satisfied with you.” But to all his staff the field marshal’s agony was clearly perceptible. They could see the old symptoms of depression returning. They saw to it that Professor Horster, his doctor, was never far away.

  “We’re outnumbered eight to one,” Rommel wearily wrote on January 18. “And supplies, particularly gasoline, are low.” The day after that, January 19, was even worse. “The toughest day since we left Buerat,” recorded Armbruster. “We drove several times to the Afrika Korps. We stood aloft on a ‘warlord’s hill,’ watching the enemy divisions forgathering for the attack. We had never seen anything like it before. When we were visiting the Twentieth Corps, their heavy artillery— fifteen-centimeter guns—was already shelling the road and us. It stank, and I didn’t like it at all. We just got out at the last moment.”

  Rommel trained his binoculars on the huge dust cloud thrown up by the enemy’s advancing tanks. He put their number at 200 or more. A black despair again clutched at him. “As I already told you in November [in Rome], times are getting very, very grim—in the east as well,” he gloomily informed Lucie; on the Russian front, an entire German army was facing annihilation at Stalingrad. “Total mobilization of every last German for the war effort is coming, without regard for place of residence, status, wealth or age. Take a look around in good time for something suitable for yourself. Manfred will probably soon also have to work behind a lathe or man an antiaircraft gun. It is a matter of life and death for the German people.”

  With skillful artillery fire, Rommel halted the tank attack. He instinctively knew that this was only a holding attack, designed to divert him while a greater evil was afoot elsewhere. Sure enough, at two P.M. an air reconnaissance report reached him about the hill country farther inland, which he had been assured was impassable to tanks. Now the planes had spotted a big enemy force—as many as 1,400 trucks and tanks—sweeping westward across that very terrain. Montgomery’s strategy seemed quite clear to Rommel, and at four P.M. he ordered Tarhuna to be abandoned. Shortly, the Ninetieth Light telephoned him: “Secret documents have been found on a high British officer. They show that the enemy’s strategic objective is Zauia.” Rommel glanced at a map; Zauia was thirty miles beyond Tripoli, on the coast road.

  At this, his nerve snapped—the British were driving farther than he thought and threatening to encircle him. He ordered the Tarhuna-Homs
line abandoned too. These facts he conveyed to Berlin by Enigma code at 11:35 P.M. that day, January 19. No amount of verbiage could conceal his intention to abandon Tripoli—just five days after leaving Buerat.

  Montgomery evidently deduced the abandonment from the Ultra intercept, because the next morning, January 20, he reversed his original strategy and decided to make his main thrust along the coast road, instead of overland.

  By having given Montgomery Tripoli—that magnificent port and harbor—on a platter, Rommel saved him from real embarrassment. Montgomery had decided that if he was not in Tripoli within ten days of attacking Buerat, he would have to call off the attempt.

  All night long mighty explosions rocked the countryside as the Italians began blowing up their installations in Tripoli. Scarcely less noisy were the rebukes that were flung at Rommel all the next day, January 20, from the commanders in Rome and Marshal Bastico. The latter scolded him in a telegram: “In my view the danger of an outflanking of the right wing of your Panzer Army is neither as imminent nor as serious as you assume. I request you to reconsider the orders you have issued as they threaten to turn the retreat into a rout.” Cavallero flew from Rome to Tunis—where Arnim expressed horror at the speed with which Rommel’s retreat was bringing the enemy air force, like an attendant epidemic, ever closer—then sent an urgent letter to Rommel by courier: “The Duce has stated that the orders you issued yesterday evening for a resumption of the retreat to the west are a direct contravention of his directives to you. In the Duce’s opinion the situation as known yesterday evening and as shown by today’s air reconnaissance does not justify your action.”