by David Irving
“Did they know about our attack in advance?” “Yes.”
“What do you think of the Mareth line?”
“We’ve done all we can to strengthen it. We’ve laid one hundred and eighty thousand mines. But it’s an old French line, which doesn’t offer good natural antitank defenses.”
“When is Montgomery going to attack?”
“Probably with the next full moon—on about March 15. He’s got about eleven thousand trucks and tanks now. His air power may be less than at Alamein, but his artillery will be just as crushing.”
With great emphasis Mussolini ground out these words: “We must hang on to Tunisia at all costs. It is Europe’s last bastion. If it fails, the balance of world power will perceptibly shift against us.”
Rommel did not disagree, but warned that the present 400-mile perimeter of their bridgehead was too long. “It all depends on the supplies,” he said.
The Duce ended their audience with these words: “I have always been something of an optimist. We may have our problems, but I know that the British and Americans have their problems too. For us it’s basically a question of willpower. Nobody has really lost a battle so long as he refuses to accept that the battle is lost.”
AT 3:15 P.M. THE next afternoon, March 10, Erwin Rommel arrived in the Ukraine. A half colonel drove him from Kalinovka airfield to Werewolf, Hitler’s secret headquarters. From this simple hutted encampment, Hitler had masterminded his great summer offensive into southern Russia, only to see it blocked at Stalingrad. A quarter of a million men had been lost there. But already he was on the counterattack.
When Rommel arrived, the Führer was still visiting Manstein’s forward headquarters at Zaporozhye. Rommel filled the hours in private conversation with his old friends on Hitler’s staff. The Führer’s big four-engined Condor returned at six P.M., and he sent for Rommel. Sipping his pale apple-peel and cinnamon tea, Hitler unobtrusively scrutinized Rommel: the field marshal’s face and throat were covered with desert sores—the throat was bandaged. Hans Jeschonnek, chief of the air staff, described Rommel afterward as “very low in spirit—his nerves are shot to pieces.” Rommel was also eyeing Hitler. The Führer seemed haggard and unwell, still upset by Stalingrad—but, he remarked, after a defeat people always tended to look on the dark side. “This is a dangerous tendency that often leads people to false conclusions,” said Hitler. Rommel knew full well that Hitler was alluding to him. How Rommel hated this “defeatist” label that everybody gave him.
For three days he attended Hitler’s big war conferences. He regularly joined the Führer for tea and once he sat talking with him until 1:30 A.M. He was repelled by the jockeying for Hitler’s favor. Göring’s influence was waning, because the Luftwaffe had failed to prevent the disastrous air raids on Europe’s fine cities. There was better news from Admiral Karl Dönitz’s U-boat force, and the star of the SS was rising too, because in contrast to the regular army units the elite Waffen SS was performing consistently well in the USSR. Rommel himself reported fully on Tunisia, stressing his difficulties with the Italians. (Goebbels dictated into his diary: “Now we understand why Rommel fell ill!”) He again pleaded the case for the far shorter Enfidaville line, but Hitler refused to agree.
On March 11, Hitler unexpectedly sent for him and awarded him the diamonds for his Knight’s Cross—Rommel was the first German army officer to get them. Still Rommel refused to relax his demand for the Enfidaville line. “At 11:20 P.M.,” states his diary, “the Führer invites Reichsmarschall Göring and the C in C to dine with him. Afterward there is a joint conference.”
Rommel stuck to his demand for a reduced line—it was the least he could do for Arnim and his generals. Overnight Hitler pondered that demand, and the next day at noon he sent for him and said he had decided in Rommel’s favor—though only partly so. “The infantry elefarewell africaments of the First Panzer Army are to be transferred into the short line [at Wadi Akarit, much farther south than Enfidaville]. The Mareth line is to be defended [by the armored units], but abandoned if it is in danger of being breached.” This would shorten the Axis front by 160 miles. Moreover, he announced, the navy’s commander, Admiral Dönitz, would himself fly to Rome to put pressure on Mussolini to step up the supplies to Tunisia—at least 150,000 tons per month. Now Rommel was content.
Three quarters of an hour later he left Hitler and flew to Wiener Neustadt, where Lucie was waiting. A signal went to Kesselring in Rome: “The Führer has given Field Marshal Rommel leave of absence. . . . This fact is to be kept secret at all costs even from the commanders and troops.” Rommel wrote to Arnim about the satisfactory outcome of his bargaining with Hitler, but added: “Unhappily, the Führer has not granted my urgent request to be permitted to return immediately to Africa, but has ordered me to commence my treatment at once. My thoughts and fears will always be for Africa.”
AMONG MUSSOLINI’s personal papers is the letter from Hitler that Dönitz carried to Rome two days earlier, a ten-page document typed on the Führer’s special large-faced typewriter. “For the time being,” explained Hitler, I have given the field marshal leave of absence to restore his health. This is urgently necessary both in the judgment of the doctors and on the evidence of my own eyes. . . . I must ask you at all costs to keep Rommel’s absence on leave and the present change of command in Africa absolutely secret. . . . Whatever posterity may judge of Field Marshal Rommel, to his troops, and particularly to the German soldiers, he was beloved in every command he held. He was always dreaded as an opponent by his enemies, and he still is.”
Hitler’s use of the past tense leaves a curious taste. Was Rommel now, in March 1943, a has-been? Were those diamonds for his Knight’s Cross his final payoff, before he was shelved forever as the penalty for failure in Africa?
Man in a Gray Homburg
NEARLY NINE WEEKS have elapsed since Rommel climbed into his green and yellow Heinkel and left Africa, flying to Rome and the USSR and then at last landing at Wiener Neustadt and descending the aluminum ladder beneath the fuselage to find Lucie and Manfred waiting for him. The nine weeks have been like a dream, though a haunted one, and now, although he does not know it yet, his rest cure is all but over.
An aide, Lieutenant Schmidt, has been writing Rommel’s war diary during these weeks, and Rommel himself has been working on his memoirs of the war. Lucie has done the typing, and Manfred, now fourteen years old, has penciled in the contour lines of the battle maps. The writing has brought back many memories and raised many questions. Ten thousand Germans, including nine generals, have died in Africa since February 1941. Why in God’s name has it come to this?
During these nine weeks, Rommel has been chafing at the inactivity, already impatient for a new command. Hopefully he sent a fulsome birthday tribute to Adolf Hitler: “May the new year bring you, mein Führer, victory on every front!” On April 28, 1943 he flew off to attend a war conference at Hitler’s Berghof villa, but apparently made no contribution.
His mind is still fixed upon Africa. He had been staying in close touch with Arnim, who still is technically his deputy. Arnim dutifully was furnishing him with daily situation reports. But then Arnim wrote apologetically to say that Field Marshal Kesselring (who has become openly contemptuous of the departed Rommel) had forbidden Arnim to send him further reports. Rommel was anguished. He was burdened with a sense of failure. He was a field marshal on ice, if not in disrepute. Every day he searched the Nazi press for mention of his letter of commendation from the Führer, and of the award of the diamonds in March. Nothing. “I’ve fallen from grace,” he told Manfred. “I can’t expect any important jobs for the time being.”
On the other hand, it was clear from the very newspapers that once had proclaimed Rommel’s triumphs in Africa that catastrophe was looming at Tunis. Rommel did not need newspapers to tell him that. It had been obvious to him for months, and the fate of his generals—Cramer, Buelowius, even Arnim—had tugged at his mind. He knew that Arnim’s position was desperate: he had only seventy tanks
left, and he was distilling fuel from low-grade wines and liquors found in the bombed-out city of Tunis. By letter Rommel had been pleading with the High Command to allow the evacuation of at least the most valuable German experts and officers from Africa. But Kesselring, optimistic as ever, told the High Command that holding Tunis would be no problem if supplies were forthcoming. Hitler had chosen to listen to Kesselring. “Tunis,” he ordered, “must be held by every means.” The army must fight to the last round.
Hitler had sent General Warlimont to Rome, to invite the quivering Italians to use their navy. “Tell them that tanks and divisions are just as nice to look at as warships,” he said sarcastically, referring to the reluctance of the Italians to give naval escort to supply ships bound for Africa. “There are no moral reasons for them not to fight. The only moral act is to fight and win this war. What is immoral is to lose, and then scuttle your ships without having fought.” Warlimont had returned with reassuring news, but the Führer was not convinced. He told Admiral Dönitz on May 7: “The Duce and the Fascist Party are resolved to stand by us through thick and thin. But there is a section of the Italian officer corps that is already longing for peace. Certain influential circles there are quite capable of treachery.”
Hitler now believes that Mussolini can survive the loss of Tunis—but not an invasion of the Italian mainland. This is why, on May 8, a telephone call comes from Berlin to Rommel at Wiener Neustadt: “You are to report to the Führer tomorrow, for further orders.”
Rommel flies into Tempelhof airport shortly after noon on the ninth. A half hour later he is with Hitler. Hitler’s face is grim. “I should have listened to you before,” he says to Rommel. Afterward Rommel writes in his diary: “No particular job yet. Field Marshal Keitel hints at employment in Italy if things get tough for Duce there.”
The next day, May 10, Rommel, wearing a long topcoat, with his gray hom-burg pulled well down over his eyes, strolls into Berlin’s famous Tiergarten park. A few people pause as they catch sight of him and turn their heads: Can that be Rommel? Hardly, because Rommel is still commanding in Tunisia, if the newspapers are to be believed. They must be believed; Hitler has decreed that every effort be made to make the enemy think that Rommel is still there.
It is just as well for Rommel that he is not. The situation in Tunis is now beyond salvation.
This very day the Germans have been surrendering there, and although some pockets will hold on a few more days, it will soon be all over—the whole Axis adventure in Africa. About 250,000 troops will march into Allied captivity, about 150,000 of them Germans.
WHAT ROMMEL did not know in May of 1943 was that Hitler had calmly assumed that Africa would be lost ever since the field marshal’s undisciplined flight to see him in November 1942. Hitler had told Warlimont as much the next day. What mattered, he added, was to win time in order to deny the enemy the straits of Sicily as long as possible. So long as the British and Americans were forced to use the long sea route to Africa around the Cape of Good Hope—instead of the Mediterranean—they would have a million tons of extra shipping tied up and this would prevent any early seaborne invasion of northern Europe.
The logical extension of these thoughts shows up in Joseph Goebbels’s unpublished diary on February 22,1943: “The Führer will not withdraw from the Italian mainland under any circumstances. He has no intention of retreating north to the river Po, even if Italy itself pulls right out of the war. It is the supreme principle of German overall strategy to keep the fighting as far as possible from our homeland.”
Delaying the invasion of Sicily was well worth the sacrifices in Tunisia, in Hitler’s view. He boasted in July to his generals on the Russian front: “By hanging on in Tunis we managed to postpone their invasion of southern Europe by over half a year. Moreover, Italy has stayed in the Axis. If we had not hung on, the enemy could have landed in Italy without serious resistance and crossed the Brenner into the Reich at a time when we could not have spared a single soldier because of the Red Army’s breakthrough at Stalingrad.”
From May 9 on, Rommel saw Hitler frequently. All these war conferences revolved around the same anxious topic: What steps should the Nazis take when Italy was invaded? The invasion might come in the next two or three weeks. Rommel warned Hitler and his staff to expect the worst. As Goebbels wrote after Rommel came for tea in his Berlin garden on May 10, “Rommel has only the lowest opinion of the Italians. He’s certain that the moment the British or Americans land in southern Italy the Italians won’t make any show of resistance. . . . He describes the Duce as a tired old man.”
This was as the battle in Tunis was ending. When Rommel saw Alfred Berndt a couple of days later, his former aide handed him the signal that had just been telephoned through to him for Rommel. It was from Hans Cramer, the last commander of the Afrika Korps, sending farewell greetings to Rommel as the first. And to Hitler, Cramer had radioed: “Ammunition spent. Arms and equipment destroyed. The Afrika Korps has fought until it can fight no more, as ordered. The Afrika Korps must arise again. Heia Safari!”
Berndt was now back in his old job as Goebbels’s chief assistant. “He’s in his element now,” Rommel wrote. He sent Berndt a box of cigars as a gift for old times’ sake. He owed a lot to Berndt, one way or another.
When Hitler returned to his Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia, Rommel followed. Lacking any army commander in chief—he had sacked Field Marshal von Brauchitsch in December 1941—Hitler was happy to draw on Rommel’s combat experience at the war conferences. He showed the field marshal the latest weapons—huge tanks, new assault guns and the portable antitank bazooka called Blowpipe. “The Blowpipe seems very good for close-cover terrain,” Rommel noted in his diary. (In the open desert, of course, troops could not get close enough to enemy tanks to use it.)
The growing crisis threatening Italy overshadowed everything. At the end of the war conference on May 15, Hitler delivered a secret two-hour speech analyzing the enemy’s likely moves. According to handwritten notes taken by a naval officer, Hitler warned: “In Italy, we can rely only on the Duce. There are strong fears that he may be eliminated or neutralized in some way. The royal family, all leading members of the officer corps, the clergy, the Jews and broad sectors of the civil service are hostile or negative toward us. . . . The Duce is now marshaling his Fascist guard about him. But the real power is in the hands of others.” He continued that he had decided to strip the eastern front of eight panzer and four infantry divisions to rush to Italy if an enemy invasion began; he would move these forces into Italy whether or not the Italian government liked it. Rommel would be the ideal commander for such a force. “The next one or two weeks will be crucial,” Hitler proclaimed.
Two days later he formally ordered Rommel to assemble a skeleton staff for a new army group headquarters for the task. “I am absolutely delighted with the new job,” wrote Rommel. Since it amounted to preparing an armed occupation of Italy (under the code name “Alarich”), his pleasure at being able to settle old scores was genuine. He felt better already—in fact his troublesome sores suddenly disappeared. One by one he briefed his staff and sent them down to Vienna to set up shop. He himself would have to remain in Munich, for security reasons—he must not be identified outside Africa.
On May 21 Hitler returned to his Berghof villa on the Bavarian mountainside; Rommel went with him, and checked into the luxury hotel the Berchtesgadener Hof. The next day Hitler signed the secret directions for the new job. Rommel spent the following days drafting plans and timetables for the stealthy infiltration of northern Italy by four divisions, to be followed by at least sixteen more to be under his personal command, when the word was given by Hitler. Hitler meanwhile was laying the foundations for his big strategic counterattack in Russia, Operation Citadel, but he was afraid to trigger it off lest Mussolini’s generals suddenly stage a mass defection in Rome, or the enemy launch their invasion. He did not have enough forces to execute both Alarich and Citadel, that was the problem. “We talk ab
out everything under the sun,” wrote Rommel on May 30. “We’re waiting in suspense to see if the next weeks bring the big battles everybody’s talking of. Perhaps nobody wants to make the first move.”
Rommel had secured Alfred Gause as his chief of staff once again. It was obvious to both that Rommel’s job would hinge on keeping open the mountain passes between Italy and the Reich. Even under Mussolini, the Italians had worked steadily at improving their frontier defenses against the Reich. Rommel had noticed this every time he took the train over the Brenner Pass: bunkers were being built, demolition chambers installed in key rail and road bridges. If these mountain passes were blocked by Italians or anybody else, it would seal the doom of any German forces on Italian soil. Hitler ordered that German antiaircraft batteries be supplied to protect the passes. If the Italians rejected them, then “British air raids” were to be faked, using captured bombs. Throughout June, Rommel planned the necessary countermeasures, consulting with German army experts on signals, mountain warfare and paratroop operations.
Every noon he presented himself at the Berghof for Hitler’s war conferences. They were held around a long table surfaced with red marble in the tapestried great hall of the villa. The hall had a huge picture window looking out over the valley, a vista Rommel found breathtaking every time he saw it.
Two years later he was to reminisce about the conferences: “I was there as an adviser, as a sort of acting commander in chief of the army. That was the idea, but not much came of it because the circle of participants was always much too big to tackle problems squarely.”
Once, however, Rommel did corner Hitler in private and challenged him about Germany’s future, reciting the morbid signs. Italy’s collapse seemed inevitable, Rommel said, and Admiral Dönitz had told him privately that they were now losing over thirty U-boats a month; soon they would be facing the entire material strength of the British Empire and the United States, of which the fire raids destroying one German city every night were only a grim foretaste.