Discovering the Rommel Murder

by Charles F. Marshall

  But on May 9 as the Axis forces were surrendering, Rommel received a call to report to Berlin, where a chagrined Hitler, pale and restless, admitted he should have listened to Rommel's earlier entreaties.

  May 10: The flight went quite well. / was called in immediately. / intend to pull all possible strings to get another assignment soon.

  May 11: We are all in a very depressed mood now, for everything is collapsing in Tunisia and we will be able to salvage little. There is hardly any more possibility of evacuation by sea or air. At many places fighting has already ceased. The British and Americans are raving, of course. They act as if they had already won the war.

  May 13: Everything is over in Tunisia now. Von Arnim's headquarters was overrun and captured after it had fought to the last. The curtain for the next act will probably rise soon.

  In July the Allies launched an attack on Sicily. Rommel had months earlier forecast an assault on Italy when he beseeched Hitler to withdraw the African troops. Although the Italians had 300,000 men encamped there and 1,500 artillery weapons among their defenses, they put up only minimum resistance, leaving the island's defense to their Teutonic partner.

  Shortly before the assault a British document had been found on the body of a courier that had drifted onto a beach in Spain. The document was a "plant" and was intended to deceive the Germans into believing that the Sicily landings were only a prelude to the main assault, which would be on Greece. The ruse caused Hitler to rush Rommel off as commander in chief of all Axis forces in that area. There only a day, he received a call from the High Command to return immediately. The whole Italian picture was muddled. Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Italian army chief of staff, had assumed control of the Italian government and Mussolini was in its protective custody. The Fiihrer had a two-fold mission for the Fox. He was to form an army group headquarters in Munich with the aim of defending Italy in the North should the Allies invade, and, since Hitler was not blind to the handwriting on the wall, he was to occupy northern Italy should the Latin power defect. In that event he was to take control of the roads, railways, and vital mountain passes while disarming all Italian army formations. Once the forces in the North were operationally connected with Kesselring's in the South, Rommel was to become supreme commander of all Wehrmacht troops in Italy.

  The Balkan command was given to Field Marshal Weichs instead.

  In a July 29 letter to his wife, Rommel told her it was now easy to see what was in the Italian mind-to cross over to the other side, bag and baggage. But the next day he wrote that he thought there was a chance that the new government would fight on with the Germans.

  In an attempt to clarify the situation, Hitler directed General Jodi and Rommel to see General Mario Roatta, the chief of staff of the Italian Army. Rommel was warned that the Italians planned to use the conference in Bologna to poison his food or take him captive. To foil any such plan, he brought along a company of infantrymen to occupy the conference site and to stand guard opposite the Italian guards. The conference ended in failure when the two sides could not agree on which army would defend the German supply lines and which side would have the supreme command in Italy, the Italians insisting that it would have to be the Supremo Commando and that Rommel would have to be its subordinate.

  While German forces were fighting in the South, there was an ongoing possibility that the Allies might land behind the German lines. Because of its long coastline Italy was vulnerable to further seaborne invasions, either on the shores of the Tyrrhenian Sea or on the other side of the boot, on the Adriatic. The Allied capability was a threat the Germans were never able to ignore. The landings at Anzio, thirty-five miles south of Rome, the following January were, in fact, just such an effort. Had the initial success been exploited more vigorously and with a greater force, it might have had calamitous results for the Germans, namely the quick capture of the Holy City and the severance of their supply lines to the forces in the South. On September 3, Italy secretly surrendered, not confirming the surrender to the world until six days later.

  September 9: Italy's betrayal has now become a reality. We judged them rightly.

  September 10: The events in Italy wereforeseenfora long time, and a situation has now arisen that we wanted to avoid at all cost. In the South Italian soldiers are already fighting with the British against us. In the North the Italian troops are being disarmed and transported to Germany as prisoners. What an ignominious end for an army!

  While hungering for another fighting command, during September and October the marshal was given only inspection missions in Italy. He suspected he was out of favor with Hitler and the High Command.

  The Allied bombing squadrons were reaching deep into German air space and wreaking vast destruction. Rommel's home was in Wiener Neustadt, a suburb of Vienna, and near the Messerschmitt aircraft plants. He feared for the safety of his family and arranged with Lucie to move their residence to Swabia in southern Germany. On October 10 he wrote:

  Dearest Lu,

  Now you are back home again and thank God your trip was successful. That you had to experience the air raid in Stuttgart was not so wonderful. I only hope and wish that the move proceeds without problems. Only when you have moved will I be able to rest. Healthwise I am fine. Lots of work. Every second day I travel through my territory.

  To you and Manfred my heartiest greetings and kisses.

  Your Erwin

  Lucie was making arrangements to move the family home to Herrlingen in the suburbs of the cathedral city of Ulm. Some of the family possessions were being sent to the home of Oskar Famy, an old friend of Rommel who lived near the Swiss border.

  Rommel had proposed to reduce the threat of seaborne landings by yielding southern and central Italy and defending a line running through Florence. Kesselring, on the other hand, wanted to defend all of Italy. Hitler came down on Rommel's side and ordered Kesselring to turn his troops over to Rommel. Before the order could be transmitted, he reversed himself, and in early November Rommel relinquished his command of the northern sector to "smiling Albert," as the ever-optimistic Kesselring was known.

  Wrote Rommel to his wife on October 26: "The job was not confirmed. From what I hear the Fiihrer changed his mind after all. Maybe I was insufficiently enthusiastic that the position could be held." The letter goes on to comment about the worsening Russian situation and the visit of the Japanese ambassador: "These people seem to have a high regard for me." It continues with a reference to his trip to the Adriatic coast and his visit to the small state of San Marino. He bought a few stamps in town for his stamp collection and his son's. As he was about to leave he was invited to the castle by the regent, who wanted to be assured that Germany would respect its independence. It had not been involved in a war since 1600, the regent told the general, and had refused Napoleon's offer to give it a port and some guns. It preferred its minuscule size.

  Probably affecting the Fiihrer's decision not to give command of the Italian theater to Rommel was the fact that the Swabian was considered politically unacceptable to the Italians, having been stigmatized as an "Italian hater," an appellation he resented. Although his opinion of the officer corps was low, he felt much could be done with the enlisted men, particularly if they were integrated into the German units.

  Rommel, who was yearning for another combat post, was instead ordered to study the coastal fortifications in the West, from Denmark down to the Pyrenees, and report on their state of readiness to repel invasion.

  Wrote the general to his wife on November 9:

  I am in a depressed mood. I am not sure whether my new assignment does not mean that Ihave been shelved. It is being judged that way in some quarters. I refuse to believe it. The Fiihrer gave me an altogether different impression. But so many people are jealous of me. And yet the times are so serious that there is really no room for envy and quarrel.

  Shortly after writing, he boarded his plane and flew off on his new mission.

  During the fall and winter he inspected the so-
called Atlantic Wall. After all the propaganda about its impregnability, he was shocked by its frailty. "I move about every day," he wrote on December 7, "and what I see on my inspections does not satisfy me very much."

  In Copenhagen, with the limited amount of Danish money German officers were allowed, the marshal bought Christmas gifts for his family and complained that the Danes preferred to sell only to their own people.

  By December 15 he was in France. Delighted by his lovely billet at Fontainebleau, he reminded his wife that it had once belonged to Madame de Pompadour. He admired the spaciousness of the construction and of the old chateau and commented, "We're really provincial in comparison."

  Christmas Eve he telephoned home and learned that Manfred, who would be fifteen the following day, would report for Luftwaffe duty on January 6. The boy, he remarked, would be pleased, but for the parents it was painful. Part of Christmas Day Rommel spent with his staff and the rest with the troops, "though it's difficult to be really cheerful at this time."

  January 3, 1944: The French, Belgians, and Dutch have not suffered much from the war. They earn a lot of money, pay no reparations, and wait to be liberated from us. Moreover, their cities are intact and spared by the enemy. It's almost cause to be angry. Especially when one considers how hard our nation has to fight for its survival.

  After inspecting the coastal defenses in Denmark, Rommel's mission next took him to France, which was Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's bailiwick as Commander in Chief West. Since Rommel's instructions from Hitler were not clear cut, friction quickly developed between the two field marshals, the one Germany's oldest, the other the youngest, as to their respective areas of responsibility. After some heated discussion it was agreed that the younger man would assume operational control of the main stretch of the anticipated invasion area, namely between the Loire Riverand the Dutch-German border, and on January 15 Rommel assumed command of all tactical troops on the coast facing England. His intention of annihilating the enemy on the beaches was approved by Hitler, and he was given widest powers to accomplish the mission, including permission to flood the countryside.

  Guenther, his orderly, was sent to the marshal's home in Herrlingen to pick up his brown civilian suit, a coat, and a hat: "I want to go out once in a while without a marshal's baton," he wrote.

  His relentless inspections continued and he found the job "veryfrustrat- ing. One continually comes up against bureaucratic and inflexible people who resist everything new and progressive."

  His reports to the High Command severely criticized the defense installations and stated his dissatisfaction with the number of troops and planes available. Without air supremacy and greatly strengthened defenses, he repeatedly emphasized, landings could not be prevented. His letters home during the next three months covered mainly his inspection trips and his preparations for the pending Allied invasion. The theme running through them is typified by this comment in his letter of April 9: "An endless amount of work must be done around here in order that we are 100 percent ready when the battle starts. Many weak points will have to be strengthened by then."

  April 26: I don't think it will take very much longer before the enemy launches his main assault. Every day we get some heavy air raids. The damage inflicted, however, is extremely slight. Very often the British and Americans drop bombs on dummy installations, of which we intend to build many more and with all the trimmings.

  April 27: It seems as though the British and Americans won't come in the immediatefuture. This is of immense value to us because we are getting stronger every day-at least on the ground. In the air that is not the case.

  Rommel and Rundstedt had widely divergent views concerning some aspects of the defense plan, and the differences were not easily reconcilable.

  "Simply put," General Hans Speidel, Rommel' s chief of staff, told me after the war, "Rundstedt held that the long coastline could not be made impregnable, that an invasion could not be prevented, and that the Allies would have to be beaten through offensive warfare after they had landed but before they were firmly based. If that failed, then they would have to be defeated in the depths of France. This accounted for his lackadaisical efforts at coastal fortification.

  "Rommel's view," continued Speidel, "was that the Allies could not be permitted to gain footholds on the shorebecause their air and naval supremacy would prevent the Germans from dislodging them. Therefore the most strenuous efforts had to be made to create impregnable defenses. Once beachheads were established, the game was over in the West and the outcome of the war was chilling to contemplate. 'Therefore,' said Rommel, the first twenty-four hours will be decisive.' He recalled his African experiences, the devastating air attacks only a pinprick compared to what the Wehrmacht would be facing here."

  In consideration of their dissimilar concepts of the best defense strategy, it was not surprising that the two marshals had diametrically opposite plans for the deployment of the operational reserves. The differences could not have been more stark.

  Rundstedt wanted the reserves stationed south of Paris. Rommel disagreed. He argued that when these troops were needed, Allied air mastery would not permit a quick approach over distances of 100 to 150 miles. He had learned that, he said, at El Alamein. Movement by day would be impossible. To move by night would be equally impossible because the night hours in summer were much too short to cover the distances by blackout driving, and even during those short hours the enemy aircraft would be busy, aided by flares. In addition, the fuel situation was so serious that it was doubtful if these reserves, consisting mainly of Panzer divisions, would find the gasoline for long approach marches. To transfer them to the battle area by railroad, he went on, was also out of the question. The railroads were already widely destroyed, and once the beach assaults were in progress they would be under continual attack. A certain amount of reserve troops in the Paris area was desirable, he conceded, but he insisted that the operational reserve be most providently placed at the Channel coast, no more than twenty-five to forty miles behind the probable points of landing.

  After much debate Rundstedt submitted to Rommel's view. Also converted was the Inspector of Panzer Troops, Colonel General Guderian, Germany's earliest and leading proponent of tank warfare and the commander of all Germany's tank troops. Supported by the senior marshal, Rommel promulgated his plan at the Fuhrer's headquarters, where it was rejected because Colonel General Jodi, chief of the Wehrmacht's operations section, was opposed. Jodi maintained that the reserves had to be kept in the rear as defense against paratroopers, and so that withdrawal would be facilitated if the landings could not be beaten off. Rommel refused to yield, and a compromise plan was finally effected. Only a portion of the troops was sent to the coast, resulting in the paradox of a commander responsible for the defense of an area in which he was not permitted to deploy his forces as he wished.

  In March, upon being assigned the command of Army Group B. comprising the anti-invasion forces, Rommel took immediate measures to bolster the coastal defenses. The job ahead was daunting. He had earlier explained his views to his engineering commander, General Wilhelm Meise. The enemy could only be beaten if he was destroyed at the beaches where he would be most vulnerable. Therefore he wanted a six-mile-wide, thick-ribbed stretch of mines and obstacles running along the entire Atlantic Wall. He wanted astronomical numbers of minefields and underwater obstacles. Spikes, concrete dragon's teeth, and steel tetrahedrons were to bristle along the beaches. Some roads were to be mined, others barricaded, and still others both mined and barricaded. Timber stakes capped with Teller mines were to be used in great numbers. To discourage glider landings poles were to be planted in otherwise inviting fields.

  To better get his ideas across to Meise, the marshal resorted to his sketching skills. Taking pencil and paper he portrayed with a few cleft strokes how he visualized sections of the belt should be defended. Along the entire strip old minefields were to be thickened, coastal guns casemated, and camouflage improved. There were to be mines i
n the waters to sink ships and landing craft. Antipersonnel and antiparatroop mines were to be lavishly employed. Dummy minefields were to be situated where tactically desirable and steps taken not to allow grazing cows to give them away. He wanted minefields designed to prevent enemy tanks from crossing them and yet not deter his own infantry. Some mines were to be set off by trip wires and others manufactured to be proof against enemy minesweeping. Still others were to be detonated by remote control.

  The Fox's battles at Bir Hacheim and Tobruk, where the British had used minefields of great depth, had taught him the defensive value of this impedimental weapon, and in France he was determined to use it to the utmost.

  His ingenuity expressed itself in various ways. He proposed a "nutcracker mine," which consisted of a stake resting in a concrete housing in which there was a large explosive. When a landing craft struck the stake, it would, acting as a lever, push the fuse and set off the explosive. Instead of pile-driving stakes, he suggested getting them into position by means of water jets. This technique was to prove so effective that it dramatically speeded up the operation. To further frustrate the invading troops, he wanted floodlights on the beaches shining out on the water: They would blind the invaders while simultaneously lighting them up as targets for the defending forces. Artificial reefs were to be constructed with the aim of stopping shore-bound landing craft or staving in their bottoms.

  General Meise, the veteran engineering expert, listened, transfixed. Taking out his own pencil and paper, he calculated that the mining program the Swabian had in mind would require 20 million mines to complete the first two stages of mine laying and 200 million for the complete minefield defense that the Marshal envisioned and that he was convinced was needed to counterbalance the superior enemy air, land, and sea power. Twenty years later he was to write that apart from Rommel's greatness as a soldier, he was the greatest engineer of the Second World War. "I could teach him nothing. He was my master."