Discovering the Rommel Murder

by Charles F. Marshall

  In Italy Rome had just fallen. In the East the Wehrmacht troops were being relentlessly pushed toward their border. In the homeland itself fifteen-yearolds were being called up, signalling that the bottom of the manpower barrel was near and that the call-up of the Volksturm or the home guard, was imminent. This consisted primarily of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys, older men, and men previously exempted from the draft for physical reasons. The Wehrmacht, desperate for manpower, would soon be calling on this combination of the young, the lame, and the old for salvation.

  Based on past experience, the Swabian knew that his pleas to Hitler to end the war would likely go unheeded. Therefore on his agenda was to be a request for more planes and for six to eight armored and five to seven motorized divisions to be positioned east of Paris so that a swift counterattack could be launched against the invasion force.

  Low in hope but high in resolution, Rommel, with the blessings of Rundstedt, left La Roche Guyon in his Horch on the morning of June 5 for the long drive to Berchtesgaden. Because of Allied control of the skies, high commanders had been forbidden by Hitler to fly. Intelligence had picked up no indication of an imminent landing, and weather and tidal conditions in the days ahead were not favorable for such operations. So adverse were weather conditions that on the night of June 5 no outpost ship watch was kept.

  ROMMEL NEVER GOT TO sEE THE FUHRER. EN ROUTE, HE HAD BROKEN his journey at Herrlingen to spend the night at home. It was Lucie Rommel's birthday and he was bringing her as a gift a pair of shoes. It was there that his chief of staff telephoned him the news on Allied D-Day, June 6, that Eisenhower had struck, before the Marshal could complete the other twothirds of his defenses.

  About 10:00 the previous night the 15th German Army had intercepted a coded message from which it was possible to interpret that the invasion forces were about to set sail. This, in itself, was not unduly alarming. In prior days there had been other intercepted coded messages with invasion dates, only to be followed with subsequent messages canceling them. The weather in the Channel area had recently been stormy and the seas rough, and this day, too, did not appear conducive to landing operations.

  In the first hours of the morning, however, Speidel received sketchy reports of parachute landings. Despite the uncertainty, the chief of staff, in Rommel's absence, ordered all units to battle stations. Between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M. increasing reports of parachute landings poured into headquarters, followed at 5:30 by the bombardment of the Calvados coast by hundreds of naval guns. And when the skies darkened with the appearance of entire armadas of British and American planes, there was no longer room for doubt. The battle for Normandy was on!

  Reserve divisions were ordered to be ready to move, and Rundstedt's and Hitler's headquarters were told of the massive incursion under way. Their requests for a more detailed overall picture of the situation could not be met. Of the 160 Luftwaffe planes assigned to the defense of Normandy, the few that were not destroyed on the ground could not get into the air for reconnaissance. Their runways had been destroyed. Only a composite of Army ground reports could be supplied.

  The Marshal and his wife with houseguest Hildegard Kirchheim (left) the day before D-Day. On his way to see Hitler, Rommel had broken the journey at Herrlingen to help celebrate his wife's birthday. "His gift, a pair of shoes from France, did not fit me well," said Mrs. Rommel. Photo from Mrs. Rommel.

  This picture of his wife, his son, and his dog was taken by the marshal the day before the Allied invasion of Normandy. Photo from Mrs. Rommel.

  In Herrlingen, Rommel downed a hasty breakfast as Speidel briefed him on the situation and the orders he had issued. Rommel approved, canceled his trip to Berchtesgaden, and raced at high speed to his battle headquarters at La Roche Guyon, 500 miles away. He arrived about 4:30 P.M.

  Before he reached his destination, thousands upon thousands of tons of explosives from the sea and air had rocked the German defenders. Supported by airborne troops and naval and air bombardment, the greatest amphibious force ever to set sail was storming the beaches between Ouistreham and Varreville.

  Of the German operational reserve, the two Panzer divisions that the marshal had been allowed to move to the coast, and which he had deployed near Caen, turned out to be properly disposed. The other divisions, however, which he now needed so desperately, had to be moved long distances. Before they reached the scene of battle, the Allied air ann had fractionated and decimated them, as he had predicted. Wheeled units became separated from tracked. It was not until the third day that the remnants that had survived air intervention were committed, and then only piecemeal and without their heavy equipment. By that time they were demoralized and of little effective help. Had the panzer divisions held in reserve by the High Command been positioned where the Fox had wanted them and committed to action in the first hours, the successful establishment of the beachhead might well have been in doubt.

  "Instead," said Speidel, "by the third day the Allies were deeply rooted and had the initiative."

  The luck of the beach defenders was little better. Most coastal divisions were only partly motorized and composed about two-thirds of men under nineteen and over thirty years of age. The best troops had long before been stripped from these divisions and sent to the eastern front. Most of the artillery was booty-a hodgepodge of French, Belgian, Czech, and Polish guns-and mainly static. No transportation had been provided for it. When the positions became untenable, the guns could not be removed from their emplacements and had to be destroyed. By evening the U.S. I st Army and the British 2nd Army had established a bridgehead fifteen miles wide and six miles deep between the Ome and the Vire rivers.

  In the air the Luftwaffe could offer little more than token support. It was a shadow without substance, only a ghost of the power it had been before the Battle of Britain in 1940. As Goering admitted upon capture, the Luftwaffe was too weak to challenge the Allied squadrons. He could do no more than nurse it for night mine-laying off the beaches in an effort to hinder the Allied buildup.

  Writing on June 9, his first letter to his wife after the landings, Rommel said:

  A heavy load weighs upon me, and it will get still heavier. We are doing our best, but the enemy superiority is tremendous in almost every respect. The weather is very bad and that is good for us. / was up in the combat zone yesterday.

  June 10: Our troops must endure bitter fighting. I was upfront yesterday and want to go up again today. The enemy air mastery influences our operations very much. There is just nothing we can do about it. It will probably soon start at another point. Well, we do what we can.

  June 11: Situation rendered very difficult by enemy air superiority, which smashes and paralyzes everything. So far I have always escaped injury during my trips. One has to be very careful.

  The next day the general found no time to write, but on the following day he had already seen the futility of the German defense and was ready to seek a political end to the conflict:

  Our defensive battle is not going well, mainly because of the enemy air superiority and heavy naval artillery. In his materiel the enemy is very much superior to us. In the air the ratio is 27,000 sorties to 300 to 500 of our own. I reported to the Fiihrer yesterday, and Rundstedt is doing the same. It is time now to get diplomacy into the picture. We expect the next thrust, perhaps even more formidable, at another point within the next few days. The long- assembledforces of the two world powers are being committed now. The decision will not be long in coming. We are doing what we can. I think often of you two at home. With heartfelt wishes and the hope that all this will have a tolerable ending.

  June 14: Heavy defensivefighting during which the tremendous superiority of the enemy in the air, naval artillery, men, and materiel makes itself felt. I doubt that the higher-ups realize the gravity of the situation and draw the correct conclusions. The supply situation is getting critical in every respect.

  June 15: Was upfront again yesterday. The situation does not improve. The troops-SS as well as arm
y-fight with remarkable bravery, but even day the ratio of strength and materiel is changing more and more in the enemy's favor. Our own airforce plays only a very minor role over the battle zone. I am fairly well. I must keep my head despite everything, even though many hopes must be forsaken now. You can imagine what grave decisions we shall have to make in the near future, and surely you recall our conversation of November 1942.

  The conversation referred to is one Rommel had with his wife in Rome shortly after the battle of El Alamein. He had been in Italy for a meeting with Hitler and Goering, and afterwards confided to her that in his opinion the war was lost and a political settlement ought to be sought as quickly as possible.

  June 16: Fighting is still very bitter and takes a heavy toll of our forces. The conditions are like those at El Alamein.

  And indeed they were. Within nine days the 5,000-ship Allied armada had disgorged half a million men and tens of thousands of combat vehicles onto the Normandy shores. Although the Germans early captured two copies of the complete SHAEF(Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces) orders for the landings and primary objectives, General Speidel told the author, they were powerless to take advantage of their knowledge of the Allied intentions. The 1,000 planes he had been promised at his briefing at Berchtesgaden only two months before never materialized.

  These first days had been the nightmare that Erwin Rommel had foreseen if the landings could not be beaten off. "Up to now Hitler's strategy had consisted of defending every inch of ground," Speidel told me in one of our many meetings after the war. "The Fuhrer had a penchant for calling any area to be defended a 'fortress' even though there was no semblance of a stronghold. His directives were filled with admonitions to defend this fortress or that fortress. The terminology was intended to inspire greater effort in its defense and to inculcate in its defending commander a greater sense of Hitler's displeasure should it be lost. There was no elasticity to his strategy."

  "Didn't he learn anything from Stalingrad?" I asked.

  "No," said Speidel. "He ignored Frederick the Great's maxim that he who defends everything defends nothing. In war the cardinal rationale is to destroy the enemy army, not to defend ground. He was a dilettante surrounded by toadies."

  Repeated pleas by Rommel and Rundstedt that Hitler visit the front, get a grasp on the situation, and possibly make adjustments in his strategy had been ignored. Then, on the evening of June 16 there was a phone call directing Rommel and Speidel, plus Rundstedt and his chief of staff, General Blumentritt to report to Battle Headquarters "W II" at Margival, five miles northeast of Soissons, at 9:00 the following morning.

  The order left the four officers disgusted. They had expected Hitler to come to the front to see the scene for himself. Instead, after returning at 3:00 A.M. from a twenty-one hour tour of the front, Rommel had to immediately take off for the 140-mile trip to the rear.

  It was at this meeting, as Jodi testified at Nuremberg, that Rommel had said, "My Fuhrer, have you actually imagined the continuation of this war?" Hitler grew very angry and said very shortly, "That is a question that is none of your business! That is a question that I will decide!"

  The conference was held in an edifice that had been built in 1940 and was intended to serve as the command post for the invasion of Britain. The summoned officers found it sealed off by Hitler's SS escort troops. Inside, the Fi hrer's quarters contained a large conference room, a bedroom with bath and rooms for his adjutants, plus comfortable air raid shelters.

  The reporting officers found the Fuhrer, who did not look well, hunched on a stool, fiddling nervously with his glasses and some colored pencils.

  "Hitler greeted us curtly and coldly," Speidel told me, "and then in a loud voice berated us bitterly for our failure to halt the Allied landings. He went into a litany of recriminations. Rundstedt, after a few words, turned the discussion over to Rommel, who, with a ruthless honesty, pointed out that the struggle was hopeless against the overpowering Allied superiority in the air, at sea, and on land, ignoring several interruptions by Hitler.

  "Particularly galling to Rommel was Hitler's refusal to acknowledge the decline in the relative strength of the German troops vis-a-vis those of the Allies, especially after Rommel's pointing out that Eisenhower had already landed twenty-two to twenty-five divisions and another two or three were debarking each week. A demand by Hitler that the 'fortress' of Cherbourg be held particularly exasperated Rommel, since this would tie down many men and further restrict his ability to maneuver.

  "The Fi hrer doubted the shocking picture that Rommel painted of the enemy's destructive power," continued Speidel, "and this irritated Rommel, for he was a man given to the realistic appraisal of battlefield situations. He was particularly incensed by Hitler's expressions of disbelief in the demoralizing effect of yourcarpet bombings. Of the troops who survived, even among those who were not wounded, many were incapable of further fighting.

  "The rate of psychoneurosis was very high," the general went on. "And for the others, those who could still fight, these bombardments by air, land, and sea, shattered morale among the best. The troops suffered tremendous trauma, and many were simply unfit for further combat, which Hitler, in spite of Rommel's repeated explanations, refused to believe. Some lost control of their bodily functions."

  "That I know," I said, "based on an experience I had at Anzio where I was sometimes engaged in special-purpose interrogation. Another officer named Cap worked at an adjoining desk. Finishing with a prisoner, Cap called for the next one and in came a corporal smelling not exactly like a rose.

  "'Corporal,' said Cap, 'did you shit in your pants?' The soldier, at attention, stiffened even further.

  "'Herr Hauptmann,' he replied, 'if you had been in my foxhole and the bombs dropped all around you, you, too, forgive me, please, would have shit in your pants."'

  Speidel smiled slightly at the picture. "During your carpet bombings, I am sure that was not uncommon."

  Hitler kept accusing Rundstedt and Rommel of mistakes in leadership and expressed disbelief in the paralyzing effectiveness of the Allied weapons as outlined by the marshals. Rommel, supported by Rundstedt, demanded enough reserves of all three arms to at least stabilize the situation. He also demanded that the V-1, which had just been fired against England, be fired into the beachhead if it was as good as the press reports claimed.

  The Fiihrer called in General Erich Heinemann, who was in charge of Vweapons production. Heinemann said the jet-propelled bomb was not accurate enough for use against troops. When the marshals suggested the weapon be used against the ports in southern England, where supplies and personnel for the invasion forces were transshipped, Hitler declared that he needed it to bomb London and "make the English willing to make peace."

  Rommel's protestation that the policy towards France needed major revision, especially the role of the secret police of the SS, was given short shrift, as was his denunciation of the Sauckel program, a slave labor draft operation requiring the administrations of the occupied countries to send to Germany a periodic quota of people for incorporation into the German labor force. In France opposition to this measure took the form of many young men disappearing into the ranks of the Maquis, the underground French resistance forces.

  "After more accusations of failures in generalship," Speidel went on, "and after more refusals to believe in the powerof the enemy arms, Rommel sharply replied that he formed his impression from daily visits to the front, pointedly remarking that neither the Fiihrer nor anyone of high rank from his headquarters, from the High Command, the Luftwaffe or the navy had come to the front to see the situation for himself, to see the effect of the Allied weaponry, and to see the hopelessness of the overall tactical situation.

  The atmosphere in the room was electric with anticipation of Hitler's next charge and Rommel's rebuttal. A duel was in progress.

  "Hitler," added Speidel, "then accused Rommel of permitting the German troops to be surprised by the landings. He said that according to th
e British radio some were captured in their underwear. This accusation also had no foundation in fact. Our radio intercept people had decoded British radio messages indicating the time of the invasion to be between June I and June 10. Later intercepted messages indicated that the invasion might be postponed until after June 15 because of bad weather in the Channel. But the troops had nevertheless been alerted."

  Still looking for a peg on which to hang his troubles, the Fiihrer next claimed that the German troops lacked courage. "This charge Rommel refuted in unmistakably forceful language," said Speidel, "and renewed his demand for reinforcements. Hitler promised to withdraw several panzer divisions from Italy, plus the High Command reserve in Germany. In addition he promised us a thousand jet-propelled planes immediately."

  Rommel never received these planes, most of which existed only in the Fiihrer's imagination, and the reserve in Germany was rushed to the eastern front a few days later when the Russians made a big breakthrough on both sides of the Moscow-Minsk road. Eventually a few units from Italy reached France, but most were destroyed before they arrived at the battlefield.

  "At one point in the heated exchange," said Speidel, "Rommel exclaimed, 'You demand our confidence, but you do not trust us yourself!"'

  "What did Hitler say to that?" I asked.

  "He flushed," said Speidel, "but remained silent."

  Air raid sirens went off at this point and forced the conference to move to the Fiihrer's air raid shelter, large enough only for Hitler, his adjutant Schmundt, the two field marshals and their chiefs of staff.

  "With the conference now reduced to this small group," said Speidel, "Rommel seized the opportunity for a thorough critique of the whole military and political situation. The Normandy front was bound to collapse, he said, and invasion of Germany itself was imminent. The front in Italy would also collapse, Rome having already been lost on June 4, and he doubted if Germany had enough forces to hold the Russian front, especially now that American supplies were reaching it in great quantity. Germany was politically isolated, he pointed out, too weak to go on, and concluded with an appeal to end the war.'.