Discovering the Rommel Murder

by Charles F. Marshall

  After the war, General Fritz Bayerlein, chief of staff of the Afrika Korps and later commander of the Panzer Lehr Division in Normandy, was to say that it was highly unlikely that the Allied invasion would have succeeded if Rommel had been assigned to the coastal defense six months earlier.

  Allied air reconnaissance soon noticed the burgeoning German defenses. Whereas two million mines had been laid in the prior three years, Rommel tripled the number laid within three months. To his troops he rasped, "There is no minefield and no block that cannot be made more formidable and stand a little better camouflage."

  Fortunately for the Allies, German production could no longer fill the marshal's requirements. The Todt organization, the immense German engineering arm, which would normally have been involved in defense construction, was so busy at home repairing Allied bomb damage that it could be of little help. A stickler for obeying international conventions to the letter, Rommel issued orders that no French citizen could be forced to work on defense construction but that volunteers would be well paid. Commanders were instructed to inform the villagers that the areas least likely to be invaded were those with the most formidable defenses. The local populace in selfinterest joined in the labor by the thousands. "Let the invasion come," was the Frenchman's attitude, "hut not in my backyard."

  Also fortunately for the Allies, there were shortages of all sorts in France, which precluded Rommel from fulfilling his grandiose plans. But within the limits of the material available, he goaded the work on. Discovering that there were enough captured explosives available to make 20 million anti-personnel mines, the Swabian, ever the improvisor, organized the manufacture of the mines in France.

  As he moved from bastion to bastion searching out flaws and hectoring the commanders to proceed more aggressively, he invariably evinced a deep interest in the problems they were encountering. His solutions and his grasp of the technical often unnerved the technicians. On occasion, to make his orders more easily understood, he attached his own sketches. For all commanders he composed a manual laying out his practical hints.

  When the Allies learned that Rommel was in charge of defending the French coast, they concocted a plot, under the code name Operation Gaff, to either kill or kidnap him.

  As General Eisenhower was to note: "The assumption of command in France by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during the winter of 1943-44 was marked by a vigorous extension and intensification of the defensive work already in progress, and this continued up to the very day on which our landings took place."

  Between Rommel's never-ending inspection trips he sandwiched conferences with air and naval commanders. His first meeting with the Luftwaffe commander in France, Field Marshal Hugo Sperrie, had left him dismayed. To Lucie he wrote:

  Yesterday I was in Paris again and had a conference with Field Marshal Sperrle. The prospects are not very bright over here. After all / have heard / expected much more from that branch of the armed forces. We'll have to make up for that deficiency in some other way. Today 1 am going to see the navy.

  After one such meeting he remarked to his aide that the strength of the impending invasion was being tragically underestimated. All the high military caste who had never personally opposed the enemy in Africa or Italy simply did not understand that when the Western Powers attacked they would have all the men and materiel they needed to carry through their plan. "The American and British commands," he went on, "fight their battles with the certainty of a calculating machine. Here we will meet the two best armies in the world. The invasion battle will be the greatest battle of the war."

  To his old friend, the military historian Kurt Hesse, visiting him at his headquarters in Fontainbleu in March, the marshal remarked, "Our officer corps suffers from an entrenched orthodoxy that has been successful in the past but is no longer adequate to cope with the latest developments in warfare. The infantryman is no longer the determinant of victory. It is now the tank and plane, and the two best armies in the world, which we will meet here, are well supplied with both. If we don't beat off the landings the first day, or at most within four days, the enemy has succeeded and we have lost the war in France.

  "After four days," continued Rommel, "the situation would evolve into an Anzio-like battle of attrition and, as at Anzio, the cards would be stacked in favor of the Allies."

  In January 1944 American and British troops had landed on the beaches at Anzio, thirty-five miles south of Rome. The Germans were unable to dislodge them. A bitterly fought stalemate ensued, ending in May when the German forces were overpowered by superior numbers of tanks, planes, and artillery weapons.

  One of Rommel's proposals at this time was that in the interests of better coordination he be invested with command of all land, air, and sea forces charged with the defense. This was abruptly shot down by the Fiihrer.

  Entering Rommel's life now was Major General Hans Speidel, Germany's foremost expert on the western armies and former chief of the Wehrmacht's Western Section. Speidel had been selected by the High Command to be Rommel's chief of staff. In preparation for his new assignment he was ordered to report to Berchtesgaden on April 1 for a briefing. Questioned whether the Western Powers would attempt an invasion, he said they would. He was promised 1,000 fighter planes should that occur.

  When he asked for instructions on strategy, he was told there was no need for any. In the event of a local landing, the enemy was simply to be driven back into the sea. "It was as though they had never heard of the successful Allied landings at Salerno and Anzio," Speidel told me in an interview.

  I told him I had taken part in the Anzio landings and there was a consensus among my fellow officers that they would have been a greater success had our command pushed immediately and vigorously onto the high ground.

  "Ibe Allies learned much from those landings," said Speidel, "and no one on Rommel's staff had any doubt that that experience would be incorporated in further landings. It is an astonishing fact and an eloquent testimonial to Hitler's military dilettantism that he actually did not believe at that time that there would be an invasion of France!"

  On the evening of April 15 Speidel reported forduty with Rommel. Having recently served in Russia, he brought the marshal up to date on the deterio rating eastern front and gave him a summary of the Berchtesgaden briefing and the leadership's unrealistic assumptions. Although the two men had never served together and hardly knew each other, they rapidly learned to trust one another, and each respected the character and skills of the other. They found that they were in accord regarding the conduct of the war and the political situation. Both were Wuerttembergers and when alone together would often switch from high German to the Swabian dialect.

  No recounting of Rommel's last year and a half could be complete without continual reference to Speidel. The work of the two men and their fates were intertwined. Tortured by the military and political prognosis, the marshal and his chief of staff racked their brains in the coming weeks for a way to save Germany.

  But they were only two of many. There were numerous groups seeking a means to get rid of Hitler and the Nazi state. Some were composed of professional men, others of church and labor leaders, and still others of men in government positions. On the eastern front the fall of Stalingrad had resulted in the capture of several generals-including the distinguished Walther von Seydlitz-who were smuggling letters to their former associates pleading that they cease further operations, that continuation of the war made no sense.

  Rommel and Speidel with sector commanders and engineering officers survey a section of the coastal area defenses in May 1944. The engineering officers were chagrined by the extent of Rommel's engineering knowledge and his rapid, often unorthodox solutions to their difficulties. Photo from General Speidel.

  The capture of Seydlitz and his appeal to his fellow generals to forego further operations caused the Fuhrer great unease. In German military history few ranked in fame with this officer's forefather, General Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, who had distinguished hi
mself under Frederick the Great as one of the greatest cavalry commanders in history. To have a Seydlitz in opposition was unnerving.

  The leader and coordinator of the activities of the various army groups was Colonel General Ludwig Beck, who had resigned in 1938 as Chief of Staff of the German Army in protest of Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia.

  Coordinating the clandestine work of the civilian group was Dr. Karl Goerdeler, the former mayor of Leipzig. He had borne a smoldering hatred for Hitler ever since the Fuhrer, upon coming to power, had removed him from office for refusing to tear down the city's monument to the composer Mendelssohn, a Jew. The previous winter he had asked Dr. Karl Stroelin. the mayor of Stuttgart and also in the civilian cabal, to contact Rommel and persuade him that Hitler had to be eliminated for the Fatherland to survive.

  In February Stroelin had come to Rommel's home for an exchange of views. They agreed there had to be a change in the government leadership before the Allies could be approached for an armistice.

  As late as April 14, the day before Speidel was due to report for duty with Rommel, Stroelin, on behalf of Goerdeler, had met with Speidel to brief him on the civilian contingent's progress in coordinating the plans of Hitler's enemies in the East with those in the West. Another item on the agenda was to urge Speidel to arrange a meeting between Rommel and the former foreign minister, Constantin von Neurath, whose foreign affairs expertise might be of use. Neurath had been ousted from office in 1938 for his opposition to National Socialism and the policies Hitler was following, which he considered a high wire act that sooner or later must lead to a fall.

  At a subsequent meeting, to deflect possible Gestapo suspicions, a secret method of communication between the civilian group and Rommel's command post was worked out, and the group was informed that Rommel was ready to act at a moment's notice.

  What still remained unsettled was how to dispose of Hitler. On this point there was no unanimity between the groups or even within the groups. Most of the army conspirators favored assassination, while many of the civilian cabal favored arresting him and bringing him to trial before the German people. The latter was Rommel's choice. He was afraid assassination would make a martyr of the Fuhrer. General Beck, leader of the Anny faction, and Mayor Stroelin, a prime mover in the civilian faction, foresaw the danger of a civil war should he be left alive.

  Gradually the headquarters at La Roche Guyon became a locus for the civilian and army conspirators desperately seeking a way to wrest power from Hitler. At La Roche Guyon they could talk freely without fear of the Gestapo. During the past winter political commissars had begun being assigned to higher headquarters staffs, but Rommel had been able to circumvent the appointment of an SS officer to Army Group B.

  Happenstance, there was strategically placed at this time in important and delicate positions in the West a group of military leaders who wished to unseat Hitler. Governing Belgium and northern France was General Alexander von Falkenhausen, one of the most highly respected men in the German officer corps, who had been subtly sabotaging Hitler's orders and softening the severity of the occupation.

  The Military Governor of France was General Karl Heinrich von Stuelpnagel, a man of philosophical mind and a great talent for strategy. His friendship with Rommel went back to the days when they both taught under Falkenhausen at the infantry school at Dresden.

  And, of great importance too, in the strategic city of Paris the commandant was General Hans von Boineburg, pledged to the cause.

  As for the theater commander, Field Marshal Rundstedt, it was assumed he would offer no opposition. Rommel, Falkenhausen, and Stuelpnagel had kept him abreast of their plans. It was known that he disdained the Fiihrer. He had long spoken privately of him as "the Bohemian corporal" and never called him directly on the phone, although by rank he had that privilege.

  With the invasion on the horizon, the conspirators came to some conclusions that they planned to submit as proposals to Eisenhower and Montgomery in hopes of an armistice agreement.

  In the West they would evacuate the occupied western territories and withdraw all German troops behind the West Wall in return for the immediate halt of the bombing raids over Germany. There would be no unconditional surrender as had been demanded by Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca in January 1943, but an armistice to be followed by a peace whose purpose would be to achieve order, prevent chaos, and encourage the beginnings of a framework for a United States of Europe. The German people would be appealed to by all radio stations in the western command, detailing the true military and political situation and Hitler's criminal conduct of state affairs.

  Within the Fatherland, the National Socialist rule would be overthrown by force and Hitler arrested and held for trial by a German court. There would be no military dictatorship. Temporary executive power would be held by General Beck, Goerdeler, and Wilhelm Leuschner, the former Hessian minister of the interior.

  In the East the fight against Russia would continue, which the conspirators felt would be in the British and American interest with Germany acting as a bulwark to keep the spread of Communism from sweeping to the West.

  "Do you still think," I asked Speidel, "that at that stage of the game there was a possibility of an armistice in light of the fact that the Allies had vowed to force Germany into an unconditional surrender?"

  "Yes," said Speidel. "Remember, nations have interests that determine their actions. First, a canceled invasion would have spared you all the lives and treasure spent in its execution."

  "True," I said.

  "Secondly, it was our belief that when the chips were down, the British and Americans would realize their interests lay with joining us against the westward spread of Communism. Germany would act as a bulwark. We believed the alliance with Stalin was an unnatural one; the only glue holding it together was their common enemy. Once Hitler and his imperial ambitions were removed, what purpose did it serve the Western Powers to weaken Germany, the bulwark against the westward spread of Communism?"

  "None," I said, "that I can see."

  "In fact," continued Speidel, "there must have been similar thinking on the other side, because there was an American effort to contact Rommel on May 10, less than a month before the landings."

  According to the general, an American colonel named Smart had been shot down over Vienna and during his interrogation in Oberursel, outside Frankfurt, had said he wanted to get in touch with Rommel to arrange for an end to the war. Rommel never became aware of this, and Speidel had learned of it only after the war's end. He maintained a copy of the report had gone to Goering, another to the Air Ministry, and a third to Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo. Speidel believed in the veracity of the report but was unsure whether this was an official mission or whether this was the colonel's personal endeavor akin to Rudolf Hess's flight to Scotland in 1941. Hess was at the time Hitler's closest confidant and second in succession to the dictatorship. The most widely accepted explanation for the flight was that he carried German peace proposals. This the German leadership denied, and the British government responded ambiguously.

  Speidel did not know the American airman's first name or anything else about him. I told the general that upon my return to the States I would check this out with the War Department. Later, back home, my efforts at the War Department came to nought.

  The Desert Fox was now astride two horses. On the one hand, he was engaged in the conspiracy to be rid of Hitler so as to come to terms with the Western Allies, forestall the invasion, and eliminate the further bombing of his beloved homeland. On the other hand, he was struggling to make the coast invasion-proof. The two efforts, while perhaps at first impression dichotomous, were in reality not. Each day the invasion was delayed by Rommel's increased preparedness was another day to coordinate the measures for the anti-Hitler revolt. Time was of the essence.

  May 21: Dearest Lu: We stand on the eve of heavy fighting, the most decisive battle of the war. Extraordinary things have been accomplished during the last
months and weeks, and yet we are not as prepared as I would like to be. We still need more mines, more obstacles in the water and against airborne troops, still more artillery, antiaircraft, and rocket projectors.

  May 29: Yesterday there was no letup in the Anglo-American round-the-clock bombing. The French particularly suffer from it. Three thousand killed among the civilian population within fortyeight hours. Our casualties are generally very low. Many dummy installations are attacked.

  As General Eisenhower was putting the finishing touches to his plans, the German troops, whipped on by the marshal, labored to bolster their defenses, which still fell far short of the impregnability Rommel hoped to achieve. To his soldiers Rommel talked victory and tried to believe it himself. But ever the realist, he knew better. Through Hitler's chief adjutant, General Schmundt, the same man who had accompanied him on his first flight to Africa and with whom he had maintained a friendship, and through whom he was able to circumvent Keitel's and Jodl's blocking of his direct access to Hitler, Rommel had arranged for a personal interview with the Fiihrer. He desperately wanted to present his view of the military and political picture.

  And bleak it was. Politically the Fatherland was isolated. By sea it was hermetically sealed off from receiving food and supplies by the Allied air and sea arms. So successful was the blockade that "blockade mutton" had come into fashion. This was the nickname his countrymen had given to dog meat, whose sale was legal and which could be found in butcher shops.

  In the skies over Germany flights of 2,000 and 3,000 British and American bombers daily were pulverizing the Fatherland's cities.