Desmond Young - Rommel, The Desert Fox

by Unknown

  There were one or two omissions. Neither then nor later was there any message from Keitel or Jodl. Heinrich Borgmann, Hitler's adjutant, omitted to add the conventional “Heil Hitler” to his letter. A few days later he resigned his appoint- ment.

  Himmler's condolences came in unusual form. The content was also unusual. Three days after Rommel's death he sent his personal assistant, Berndt, mentioned earlier in this book as joining the Afrika Korps from the Propaganda Ministry, to deliver a personal message to Frau Rommel. The message was that he, Himmler, knew the whole story, that he was horrified and that he would never have had a hand in such a thing. Berndt was now serving with the S.S. He had gone back to the Propaganda Ministry and been thrown out by Goebbels for repeating Rommel's remark that the war was lost. To Himmler's message he added a gloss of his own. Hitler, he declared, was equally innocent. It was the work of Keitel and Jodl. Later he wrote a strange, ecstatic letter from the front before he, too, was killed. There had, he said, been some “higher purpose” in Rommel's death but Hitler was not guilty of it. That is doubtless what he believed, for he was one of those who never lost faith in their F�hrer. But Himmler, if, indeed, he had no hand in it, at least knew that Keitel and Jodl would never have dared to make away with Rommel without their master's orders. Nor were there many important killings about which he himself was not consulted. The responsibility for the arrangements may never be exactly fixed. Even in systematic Nazi Germany, orders for murder at the Field-Marshal level would hardly be put on paper. Rommel's family and friends have no doubt who spoke the operative word.

  The funeral took place on October 18th. It was an elaborate affair. Like the gangsters of Chicago, the Nazis had a mortuary sense. They, too, did not stint the trappings of death and were greater masters of ceremonial. Hitler had ordered national mourning and Rommel was buried with full military honours. All the troops in the neighbourhood were turned out. The coffin was carried from the house, covered with a huge swastika flag, while a guard in steel helmets and white gloves presented arms.

  Thence it was taken to the town hall of Ulm. Here, in a great vaulted chamber used for entertainments and civic functions, Rommel lay in state. The outside of the building had been hung with banners: the pillars inside were crowned with eagles, flags and laurels. On the bier were placed his marshal's baton, his helmet and his sword. The jewels of his decorations, earned in two wars, glittered on a velvet cushion. Four officers, wearing the brassard of the Afrika Korps, mounted guard. They were relieved, as the time for the ceremony approached, by four generals of the Reichswehr. In the square outside were paraded two companies of infantry with a company of the Air Force and, a delicate touch, one of the Waffen S.S. There was a military band.

  Thousands of people thronged the square, amongst them many boys and girls, to whom Rommel was always a hero. They watched the arrival of high officers of all the services, of representatives of the Party, of the Reich and of Germany's allies. Last came Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, the senior serving officer of the German Army. As he entered the hall with Rommel's family, the band played the funeral march from theG”tterdammerung. Field-Marshal von Rundstedt then delivered an oration in the name of the F�hrer who “as head of the Army, has called us here to say farewell to his Field-Marshal, fallen on the field of honour.”

  Von Rundstedt, greatly aged, it was observed, described how Rommel had received his wounds by enemy action in Normandy. “A pitiless destiny,” he continued, “has snatched him from us, just at the moment when the fighting has come to its crisis.” He then recited Rommel's services in the two world wars, dwelling at length upon his campaigns in Africa and upon the esteem in which he was held even by the enemy. Normandy was passed over more lightly, with the comment that he had “worked indefatigably to prepare against the invasion” and, when the battle began, had joined in it without any thought of his own safety.

  The peaks of oratory and of irony were scaled by the Field-Marshal, or the anonymous author of his speech, when he declared that “this tireless fighter in the cause of the F�hrer and the Reich” had been “imbued with the National-Socialist spirit” and that it was this which had given him his force and had been the mainspring of all his actions. He ended the passage with the immortal words: “His heart belonged to the F�hrer.”

  “In the name of Adolf Hitler” he then placed a magnificent wreath at Rommel's feet, while the band played “Ich hatt' einen Kameraden,” perhaps the most moving of all tributes from one soldier to another. Hitler was ever a sentimentalist. From the town hall the coffin was taken on a gun-carriage, dragged by one of those huge infantry half-tracks, to the crematorium. In this case no evidence was to be left which an exhumation might reveal. In the seats of the half-track, young soldiers sat bolt upright, their hands folded. The guard presented arms again, the band played, the generals and the Party leaders stood stiffly to attention, there were more speeches, Rommel's decorations were carried before him on their velvet cushion, the F�hrer's wreath was to the fore.

  Admiral Ruge, brought down by special train from Berlin, represented the German Navy. He did not know the truth but he suspected something from von Rundstedt's manner in the town hall and from the fact that the Field-Marshal 'did not come to the crematorium. Amongst the mourners were also Frau Speidel, Str”lin and von Neurath. It needed courage on their part to attend that ceremony. Frau Speidel could hardly expect to see her husband alive again for the doors of the prison in the Albrechtstrasse seldom opened outwards. She and her children were in deadly danger. Str”lin had guessed the truth as soon as Frau Rommel had telephoned to him on the evening of the 14th that her husband was dead. Each morning since he had waited at dawn for that heavy knocking that had aroused the Speidels. Was it not he who had set Rommel's feet on this path? Von Neurath, too, was deeply involved. The Gestapo were certain to be present. There they were, indeed, a little withdrawn, suave young men in civilian clothes, watching from behind the wall. It is no wonder that Frau Speidel seemed afraid to reply to Str”lin's greeting. Arrests at this moment would, however, have been out of place. The producer had decided that this last act must be played on a note of dignity and sorrow. “Deep respect for the dead Field-Marshal” was the stage direction.

  Next day Rommel's ashes were brought home to Herrlingen. Lying in a narrow valley with wooded hills rising steeply on either side, Herrlingen is a pretty village of white houses with red-tiled roofs and window-boxes. A clear, fast-running stream flows through it. It looks at its best in the spring, when the gardens are full of blossom, or, as then, in the autumn, when the leaves have turned to golden-brown. The white church, too, has charm, with its steep, barn-like roof of weathered slate and its square tower, surmounted by a faded green cupola. Restored by the first King of W�rttemberg in 1816, it contains monuments dating back to the fourteenth century. Cottages cluster round it. The churchyard, shared by Catholics and Protestants alike, though the church is Catholic, slopes in terraces to the road, beyond which runs the river. In the spring the graves are a mass of pansies and wallflowers. In front of the tombstones of their parents are small wooden crosses, miniature replicas of those one sees in military ceme- teries, commemorating the young men of Herrlingen who fell in Africa, at Cassino, at Riga, at Bjelgorod or, more often, simply “in dem Osten.” The churchyard is enclosed by a white wall, against which have been planted flowering shrubs. Here, in an angle of the wall, was the plot reserved for Rommel.

  From it only the church behind, the tops of the trees beyond the road and, to the left, the grassy slopes of a bare hill, as steep as Monte Matajur, are visible. It is a peaceful spot. Here, in the presence of his friends and family, all that could die of Rommel was lowered into the grave.

  Though it is not an easy thing to question a woman about her feelings as she stands by the graveside of her murdered husband, I came to know Frau Rommel well enough to ask her whether she had not been tempted to make a scene and publicly to denounce his murderers. “It was hard not to,” she said. “In the
town hall, when Field-Marshal von Rundstedt was speaking, I longed to call out that they were all acting a lie. But what would have been the use? They would have hushed it up somehow or else my husband would have been publicly disgraced. In any case he was dead.... And I had to think of Manfred. I did not care any more for myself but you must know what they did even to distant cousins of those who were executed after July 20th... Manfred would have been killed. They counted on all that: they were very clever. No, it was my husband's decision and I could not change it after he was gone.”

  Thus all passed off according to plan. Only a hypercritical observer would have asked why Marshal von Rundstedt stumbled in reading his speech, as though it had been given to him only a few minutes before. Why did he make no attempt to speak to Frau Rommel? Why, on passing Str”lin and von Neurath, did he raise his eyes and give them so queer a look? “He knew or guessed,” said Strolin, “and hated the part they had made him play.” He must also have disliked his lines. For von Rundstedt was a soldier and a gentleman, with a long-standing contempt for Hitler and the Party.*

  [* F. M. von Rundstedt has since assured me that he had no such suspicions and that, had he had, he would have refused to take part in the ceremony. I accept his word unhesitatingly, but I have let the passage stand because it reflects the feelings of Str”lin and others and the under-currents of the day.]

  There was a soldier of another sort who also had his doubts. “What was the matter with that funeral?” asked an S.S. officer of Str”lin's acquaintance. “Somehow I had a feeling that there was something not quite right about it.”

  Such doubts were not general. Outside the inner circles of the Party and of the High Command the great mass of Germans believed that Rommel had died of his wounds and mourned him sincerely, even in the midst of their own troubles. I asked Captain Hartmann from Heidenheim whether he had had any suspicion. “None, at first,” he said. "Then, a few days after the funeral, I was out for a walk with a friend.

  Suddenly he turned to me and asked if I knew anything, as it all seemed rather queer. I began to think. I had seen Rommel after his death and he looked perfectly peaceful. There were no signs of violence, no trace of gunshot wounds or anything of that sort. But I had also spent a whole day with him at Herrlingen three weeks before. He had then almost completely recovered from his wounds and was mentally absolutely fit. We talked about the first war and he could remember every name and date. He did not seem to expect to be employed again, because Goering and the OKH were against him. He was also convinced that the war was lost. But he never said anything to suggest that he had any fears for his own safety." Hartmann continued to wonder whether, perhaps, there was not indeed something rather queer. But it was not until April, 1945, when Frau Rommel told him, that he knew the facts.

  Meanwhile life was resumed in the lonely house on the hill with such courage as might be. There was one change in the establishment. Frau Rommel had been given an old soldier servant to help with the housework. He was almost completely crippled, for most of one foot had been shot away. He had also been severely wounded in the chest by a shell splinter. Amongst his light duties he often answered the telephone. He did so on October 13th, when the message came that Generals Burgdorf and Maisel were arriving. Shortly after the funeral, Frau Rommel was ordered to send him back to duty. In spite of her protest that he could hardly hobble, he was sent off and into the line near Prague. By telephoning to an influential friend at Army Headquarters she managed to get him back again. He had only been in Herrlingen a short time when he was again ordered to report for duty with his regiment. Soon afterwards he was reported killed. It may all have been due to the man-power shortage or to the fact that Frau Rommel, now only the widow of a Field-Marshal, was no longer entitled to a soldier-servant. She still feels, however, that higher authority was strangely interested in the fate of a crippled private soldier.

  Otherwise she was unmolested. The two S.S. men whom she discovered one night in her garden may have been there with no sinister intent. At any rate they went away when she challenged them and demanded to know what they were doing. “I was not nervous,” she said, “ though I quite expected that they would come for me, particularly towards the end when they were killing off so many people who knew too much. I was always nervous for Manfred. It would have been so easy to report him killed in action.”

  Manfred put his hand on her shoulder. “I was nervous for you and for myself as well,” he said. “I also knew too much, and they might have thought that because I was young I was likely to talk. The C.O. of the battalion to which I had been transferred from my flak battery was a keen Nazi and I used to think he had his eye on me. That may have been my imagination. Anyway, I made up my mind in April to get myself taken prisoner as soon as the Americans were in Ulm and I knew that my mother was safe.”

  He was lucky not to be killed in the process. While making his way towards the French at Riedlingen on the Danube he ran into an S.S. patrol. The S.S. were then engaged on almost their last assignment. It was their duty and, no doubt, their pleasure to apprehend any German soldiers whom they found out of the line with no valid excuse and summarily to hang them from the nearest tree. The uniformed corpses dangling from the trees in the Black Forest and elsewhere must have puzzled our troops. They were, in fact, amongst the last emblems of the Nazi regime. Manfred was stopped and questioned. He had, however, prepared his story.

  He had almost fallen into the hands of the French a few minutes before but had escaped. He was now hastening to find his company commander. The French were in that village over there. The S.S. let him pass. Soon afterwards Manfred was indeed a prisoner. He was well treated. When General Ide Lattre de Tassigny learnt that he was his father's son he gave him a job as orderly-interpreter and took pains to get news of his mother.

  Aldinger, who knew as much as any one, was, strangely enough, not interfered with, though he, too, spent some anxious hours before the surrender. Str”lin also escaped arrest. In his case the explanation seems to be that the Gestapo Intelligence work was inefficient and that the trail never led directly to him. He was also so greatly respected by the people of Stuttgart and so well-known abroad that it may have seemed wiser to leave him alone. Perhaps also his friend the ex-Commissioner of Police may have had something to do with it. To Str”lin himself it remains a mystery.

  General Speidel's escape was as nearly miraculous as anything can be which is the result of keen intelligence and iron self-control. It shows how well-armed is the philosopher against a brutish and irrational world. When the Gestapo questioned him in their prison on the Albrechtstrasse they were convinced that he was guilty. He must certainly have been on Dr. Goerdeler's list. Moreover, Goerdeler gave way under torture and it is known that he mentioned many names. Why, then, was General Speidel not hanged out of hand? “I think it was,” he told me, “because I remained perfectly calm and argued everything out with them on a completely logical and unemotional basis. I made them feel that I was concerned, not with my own fate but with the facts. It was a bad moment when they confronted me with Colonel von Hofacker of General von St�lpnagel's staff, for I had heard that he had been drugged or tortured into talking. But I managed to catch his eye for a second and he pulled himself together and said that they could not have taken down his evidence correctly.”

  General Speidel survived two major “interrogations” in the Albrechtstrasse and many minor questionings. He was never for a second caught off his guard. He cannot possibly have persuaded the Gestapo that he was innocent but he was so greatly their intellectual superior that he inspired a doubt. He even made them feel slightly silly. He thus saved his life-for the moment. What is more, he very nearly succeeded in convincing them that, in his own words, “It was absolutely impossible that Rommel should have had anything to do with the events of July 20th, 1944.” It was an exercise in dialectics, conducted without passion and apparently without anxiety. He could not save Rommel because Hitler's own passion and resentment were aroused. He wante
d to kill Rommel, it would seem, not so much for being a traitor as for being right when he and Keitel and Jodl were wrong, over Africa and again over Normandy. For that he had come to hate him and hatred in his case had only one form of expression. Speidel had not attracted his hatred. It is possible that Hitler may also have felt that the execution of Rommel's Chief of Staff would arouse suspicions about the elaborate farce which he had staged to cover the removal of Rommel himself.

  For seven months, then, General Speidel, or Dr. Speidel the philosopher, defeated the ends of Nazi justice. He was not, of course, set free. The Gestapo did not surrender their victims so easily and may still have hoped that the incontrovertible evidence would turn up. In the last weeks of the war Speidel was still in custody with other suspects at Urna, near Lake Constance. There was a special guard under an S.S. officer and Speidel had little doubt that his orders were to see that they did not fall into the hands of the Allies alive. The military side of his brain now came into action. With the connivance of the commandant of the prison, who was friendly, he forged a telegram purporting to come from Himmler himself. It instructed the S.S. officer to be ready to move the prisoners to a safer place. He was to telephone to Himmler's head- quarters for further instructions. The telephone in the prison was out of order. The S.S. officer had, therefore, to go elsewhere to telephone. While he was away, the commandant of the prison permitted the prisoners, General Speidel and more than twenty others, to escape. They took refuge with a Roman Catholic priest, who concealed them. Before they could be found, the Allied troops had overrun the area.