It would be utterly unrealistic to expect that senior German officers, who were entrusted with the safety and security of the Reich, would respond with less alacrity than the general populace to such provocation. And Hitler knew his audience all too well: in perpetuating the sense of impending danger to Vaterland and Volk, he preyed on that peculiarly Teutonic fear of encirclement, an apprehension that first took root in the Germanic tribes of the Teutoburgerwald. It was a fear that became such an inseparable part of the German character that the language itself cast anyone who was not of the Volk into a single, vast collective noun, with all of its subtly dreadful implications—Auslander, outsiders.
The Nazis were an authoritarian regime, true, but the Germans were a people comfortable with, even embracing of, living under an authoritarian government. How could they have been otherwise? The Germans had never known anything but life under authoritarian rule—aside from the brief experiment of the Weimar Republic, the nature of German government changed only in degree, never in fundamental form. The Germans followed—obeyed—Hitler and the Nazis because it was their nature as a people to obey: they had never any example, any experience, to follow in order to do otherwise. Recognizing the truth of the German people’s experience does not exonerate them, for the Nazi regime was history’s greatest exercise in immorality, and morality is—and must be—based on more than experience; but it does explain them, and so makes them comprehensible, if not understandable.
And yet, explanation is not excuse. It was here that the German people willingly deferred to their national, ethnic, and cultural heritage, and in doing so became, as Daniel Goldhagen unforgettably labeled them, “Hitler’s willing executioners.” Historically, though they were neither docile nor stupid, the Germans were a people accustomed to and comfortable with being led. Choosing their own destiny through consensus was unfamiliar to them, they had no tradition of self-determination. The motifs of autorität (“authority”) and its handmaiden obrigkeit (“duty”) ran through every strata of German society, from the Vater ruling his household with a (hopefully) benign paternalism, to the Konzernherr directing his business with a single-minded purposefulness, to the Kaiser, whose title was a Germanic rendering of Cæsar, with all of the authoritarianism that implied. The Reichstag, established by the constitution of 1871, had, for all of its bluster and occasional rebelliousness, been little more than a rubber stamp for Imperial polices; from the day of its founding the German Empire was dominated by the Kaiser and the chancellor, sometimes individually, sometimes in tandem, depending on who sat on the throne and who occupied the office.
It had been Germany’s fortune or misfortune, depending on point of view, that in the first decades of the empire its destiny had been guided by men of powerful character possessed of strong, if sometimes somewhat maleable, moral authority. Its first chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck, was at once a passionate patriot and a consummate practitioner of Realpolitik, who imbued his office with an air of gravitas and dignitas that would wrap around his successors like a mantle, however ineffectual they may have been. Likewise, the first Kaiser, Wilhelm I, was a strong-willed monarch who was unshakable in his belief that he ruled by divine right—with an implicit obligation to rule wisely. He was also no mere figurehead who un-questioningly endorsed his chancellor’s policies, though he has at times been portrayed as such: his disagreements with von Bismarck, though few and far between, were positively Olympian when they did occur. Together these two men, whose leadership was generally sage and, though undeniably ultraconservative, rather tolerant by the standards of the day, set high the bar by which their successors would be measured. Perhaps too high, for none of those who followed would come near to measuring up to their gauge.
Nonetheless, so great was their stature within the Reich that their successors could bask in the reflected glory of the first Kaiser and chancellor and appear to be just as wise and strong. It was a lie, though not a conscious, deliberate one—ironically, perhaps, the German people’s first exposure to the Grosse Lüge, “the Big Lie”—and so the Germans continued to believe that men who were not chosen by the Volk, nor directly (or even indirectly) answerable to them, were somehow naturally imbued with genuine leadership qualities. Disaster came when, with the advent of the Weimar Republic, the German people were expected to choose from among themselves men who possessed such führungsqualitäten: they simply did not know how to recognize them. What could they be expected to do, then, when a man who seemed to be so gifted appeared on the stage of German national politics? Adolf Hitler was not the man they needed, but he convinced them, by playing on their desire to be convinced, that he was the man they wanted.
Thus, when the Third Reich was looming upon them, the Germans never saw it coming. Accustomed as they were to governments that were authoritative in nature but which had always recognized the necessity of some degree of self-restraint, their experience never gave them cause to imagine the malicious abuses of power which an authoritative regime which deliberately abandoned all restraint could commit. Indeed, there was nothing in Germany’s national experience that could have given them reason to believe that such a terrible regime could exist, let alone that they would welcome it with open arms.
Eventually the scales would fall from Erwin Rommel’s eyes and all of the worst of the Third Reich would be manifest to him, but that moment was still years in the future. In early 1936, he was a freshly minted oberstleutnant—lieutenant colonel—the rapid expansion of the Wehrmacht having accelerated promotions for all of the former Reichswehr officers. He was no longer a battalion commander in Goslar: in September 1935, when his promotion was posted, he was transferred to the War Academy in Potsdam, the cradle of German militarism. He exultantly shared the news by letter with Lucie: “I have been earmarked as a full-blown instructor at the new Potsdam school of infantry! Top secret! So make tracks for Potsdam, but keep it under your hat!” There was a delicious irony to this posting, as Rommel had never been invited to attend the academy to supposedly learn the arcana of warfare—now he was an instructor there, assigned to teach those very mysteries to young officers and officer cadets.53
Those young men found Rommel to be as dynamic and entertaining a lecturer as he had been at Dresden. He had a calculated disdain for officers who wore the coveted double crimson stripes of the General Staff, regarding them as mere theoreticians rather than real soldiers—an attitude which endeared him to his students, as soldiers everywhere enjoy seeing pompous superiors taken down a peg, especially when it is done by someone wearing credentials of the sort Rommel displayed with his Iron Cross and Pour le Mérite. As always, he insisted on physical fitness being a top priority—again, the voice of his experience in the Great War, thrice wounded but never evacuated out of his unit, giving an especial validity to this conviction. In keeping with his irregard for General Staff officers, he had little patience for textbook answers to tactical problems posed to his students. He was known to bark out, when someone would begin to quote some long-dead military authority in response to a classroom exercise, “I don’t want to hear what Clausewitz thinks, tell me what you think!”54
Erwin, Lucie, and Manfred lived quietly in Potsdam; Rommel was never much for socializing—again the Swabian in him manifesting itself in his preference for his home life. He spent much of his time riding, shooting, swimming, giving free rein to his passion for keeping physically fit. Always a bit puritanical—the influence of his Lutheran upbringing, no doubt—he never smoked and only occasionally drank alcohol; he was no prude, however: he never demanded that his men adopt his own habits, though he did expect them to accept the consequences and responsibilities that came with whatever lifestyles they chose—just as, in fact, he had done himself. He also worked to keep his mind agile, finally accomplishing what had been one of his childhood goals, memorizing the table of logarithms. The unfulfilled engineer in him would always fuel that passion for mathematics. It was a passion he tried to share with Manfred, but apparently whatever engineering genes Rom
mel had inherited he never passed on to his son. Meanwhile, Manfred, now eight years of age, was beginning to become aware of a larger world around him, which included an imperfect understanding of some aspects of National Socialist dogma. One day while out walking with his father he happened to see a local physician who had a rather large, hooked nose. He innocently asked, “Papa, is he a Jew?” Rommel was, in Manfred’s words, “highly indignant.” To him, Nazi racial theories were so much claptrap; they would always remain so.55
Other ideas put forward by the Party were not so absurd, though not all of them were well executed. One such idea sprang up in February 1937 and Rommel was tapped to put it into action. Someone—it’s unclear exactly who—at the War Ministry proposed that the young men of the Hitler Jugend, the Hitler Youth, be given rudimentary military training as part of their summer educational program. And why not? The Führer himself had declared in Mein Kampf that the army was to be the ultimate school of patriotic education! Hitler, who had a phenomenal memory, recalled having heard that Lieutenant Colonel Rommel was regarded by his colleagues and superiors as an outstanding instructor. Accordingly, he suggested that Rommel take over this new program. Since suggestions from Hitler were tantamount to orders for his subordinates, soon Erwin Rommel and Baldur von Schirach, the director of the Hitler Youth program, were working together to implement the concept.
The results were not happy. Learning who exactly was responsible for the idea’s failure would depend on who was recounting the program’s history. According to von Schirach’s version of events, Rommel wanted to spend an inordinate amount of time on military instruction; Rommel, the son and grandson of distinguished educators, maintained that there was an excessive emphasis on paramilitary instruction and not enough time spent on traditional education. In his opinion, military instruction could wait until these young men were past adolescence; during the formative years of their teens they should be given as much traditional education as possible. Whatever the truth was, Rommel and von Schirach quarreled incessantly for the better part of a year before the whole program was abandoned as a bad job.
The most likely reason why Hitler remembered Rommel’s name was because of an incident that took place some six months before the Hitler Youth scheme was hatched. In September 1936, Rommel was assigned to Hitler’s military escort while the Führer was taking part in that year’s Reichspartietag at Nuremberg (better known as the 1936 Nuremberg Rally). It was a routine, almost boring assignment, until the afternoon when Hitler suddenly announced that he would be taking a drive through the country-side south of the city. Rommel had drawn the traffic control duty that day, and Hitler gave specific instructions that no more than six vehicles be allowed to accompany his Mercedes. Rommel dutifully ticked off the first six cars to pass, then quickly stepped out into the street and barred the way for the rest of the would-be entourage. Senior officers and Party bonzen (bigwigs) alike railed at Lieutenant Colonel Rommel, who remained unmoved and unmoving, faithful to the Führer’s orders. When Hitler returned a few hours later, the furious officials complained vociferously about what they regarded as Rommel’s high-handed behavior; Hitler made a point of coming directly to Rommel and personally commending him for the strict execution of his orders.
Rommel came to Hitler’s attention yet again in the summer of 1937—and commanded the attention of a good many other Germans as well. While he had been an instructor at the Dresdener Infantry School, Rommel had taken the time to write down and annotate his recollections of his wartime service, adding detail and perspective supplied by official reports from the Army archives; they served as the basis for his lectures on small-unit tactics. While he was at Potsdam, he took these notes, rewrote them to produce a dramatic narrative which he called Infanterie Greift an—Infantry in the Attack—and submitted it to Voggenreiter’s, a local publisher, who further polished the manuscript and turned it into a proper book, illustrated with maps and diagrams in Rommel’s own hand. To Rommel’s surprise, the book not only sold, it sold phenomenally, and went through multiple editions. Rommel was simultaneously flattered and embarrassed by the attention the book garnered for him, remarking to a fellow Potsdam instructor that “It’s astounding the money there is to be made from such books! I just don’t know what to do with all the cash that’s flooding in. I can’t possibly use it all. I’m happy enough with what I’ve got already. And I don’t like the idea of making money writing up how other good men lost their lives.”56
It was a pleasant problem to have, but it was a problem nonetheless. Ostentation had never appealed to Erwin and Lucie, and they had always been happy to live within their means. Now, however, the royalties from Rommel’s book were adding up, and each fresh royalty check added to a new headache: income taxes. Like any good Swabian, Rommel detested paying taxes on the principle of the thing; the added income from Infanterie Greift an simply added to the amount he was obliged to give the government. Careful consultation with the accountants at Voggenreiter’s came up with an ingenious solution, however: every year, the publisher would pay whatever royalties the book earned, up to a total of 15,000 marks. Anything over that number was kept on account by the publisher and earned interest, to be paid out if and when Rommel’s royalties fell below 15,000 marks. It was all legal and above board—and very, very canny.57
The humility Rommel expressed in his confidence to his colleague at the War Academy was far from feigned. False modesty was not one of Rommel’s besetting faults—anyone entitled to wear the Pour le Mérite, the Iron Cross First Class, and the Silver Wound Badge certainly had no call for such posturing. He was possessed of a streak of vanity of near-epic proportions, and he was not at all adverse to self-promotion. But the concern that he was somehow profiting from other men’s deaths or disfigurements was genuine; a reading of Infantry in the Attack is memorable in no small part for the recollections about the casualties suffered during the various actions in which Rommel was engaged. Whenever possible, he mentions them by name and rank, they are not mere faceless ciphers or interchangeable parts to him. The straightforward, matter-of-fact accounting he gives for each man’s demise bestows a dignity on them, and conveys a sense of genuine loss on Rommel’s part. They are the accounting of a man who would never permit the demands of war to overwhelm his humanity.
That the events and incidents described in his book might not, after all, turn out to be Erwin Rommel’s only experience with war seemed to be an ever-growing possibility as Germany passed through the latter half of the 1930s. Events were moving with unsettling speed: on October 25, 1936, a Rome–Berlin Axis was declared between Italy and Germany, the much ballyhooed “Pact of Steel,” the language of which left no doubt that it was directed at France and Great Britain. Germany had already withdrawn from the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933. A plebiscite held in January 1935 in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and conducted under the auspices of the League, returned a vote whereby more than over 90 percent of the people of the Saarland declared their wish to be reunited with Germany. In the same speech in which Hitler decreed the return of conscription and the expansion of the Wehrmacht to a strength of 600,000 officers and men, he also announced that Germany would create an air force—the Luftwaffe—and expand her navy far beyond the limits set by Versailles; the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which permitted the Kriegsmarine a total tonnage in warships equal to 35 percent of that of the Royal Navy was signed on June 18. Versailles was becoming increasingly irrelevant.
At dawn on March 7, 1936, acting on instructions from the Führer himself, 19 German infantry battalions marched into the Rhineland, which by the terms of Versailles was to be kept demilitarized in perpetuity. This was the most blatant challenge yet to the treaty; it was also a colossal bluff: should the French Army units stationed to the west of the Rhineland countermarch and offer the least resistence to the encroaching Germans, those same 19 battalions had specific orders to immediately about face and march right back out again. H
itler himself later confessed that “The 48 hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-wracking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.”58 But the French did nothing, and as the sun set that evening, Versailles was a dead letter. A few months later, Hitler flexed his growing military muscles for the first time by sending German tanks, artillery, troops, and aircraft to Spain to support General Francisco Franco and his Falangistas in the Spanish Civil War. At each new provocation, however blatant, the leaders of the Western democracies, men like Leon Blume and Stanley Baldwin—and later Eduard Daladier and Neville Chamberlain—scowled fearsomely, uttered a few empty phrases about the sanctity of solemn international treaties, issued dire warnings of the consequences should some future violation occur, and then, satisfied that the obligatory motions had indeed been gone through, did nothing more. Hitler was confident that he now had the measure of his opposition: for them, no burden was too heavy, no price too great to pay for peace. In March 1938, Hitler chose to put his conclusions to the test.
CHAPTER FIVE
BLITZKRIEG
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
—WINSTON CHURCHILL
Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel Page 16