Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

by Butler, Daniel Allen

  There were only 10 such divisions in the whole of the German Army, and after the Polish campaign they were considered among the plum assignments of the Wehrmacht. Rommel, having only donned his general’s shoulder boards and collar tabs a few months earlier, was extraordinarily junior to be considered for such an appointment, but Hitler chose to indulge his favorite soldier, and on February 10, 1940 Rommel arrived in Bad Godesberg, headquarters of the 7th Panzer, and formally assumed command five days later. With him he brought 10 copies of Infanterie Greift an, to be given to his regimental and battalion commanders, the better for them to understand how Rommel planned to lead his division. Actually it was not that hard to discern: at a formal dinner in Berlin on February 17, while waiting in the reception line for Hitler to arrive, Rommel found himself standing next to Generalleutnant Rudolf Schmidt, who had been his commanding officer in the Reichswehr’s 13th Infantry Regiment, and led the 1st Panzer Division in Poland. Leaning close to Schmidt, Rommel asked, “General, what is the best way to command a panzer division?”

  “You’ll find that there are always two possible decisions open to you,” Schmidt replied crisply. “Take the bolder one—it’s always best.”70

  The 7th Panzer had only been operational for five months when Rommel assumed command. It had fought in Poland as the 2nd Light Division, one of four hybrid, experimental units that were not quite infantry divisions and not quite fully fledged panzer divisions. A light division had only a single two-battalion panzer regiment on its strength—in this case the 25th Panzer Regiment—unlike a proper panzer division which had two. Combat experience in Poland showed that this left these divisions seriously deficient in firepower, which led to higher casualties. A second panzer regiment (the 66th in this case) was subsequently added to each of the light divisions, though these would have only a single tank battalion, and the units renamed and renumbered as panzer divisions. (Eventually 66th Panzer Regiment’s tank battalion was folded into the larger 25th Regiment, and the 66th was dissolved.) Over half the 7th Panzer’s tanks were the Czech-designed and -built Pzkw 38t model, an agile, rugged, fast vehicle that, while not as heavily armored as the Pzkw III, the German Army’s main battle tank at the time, carried as powerful an offensive punch. The division also included two regiments of motorized infantry, an artillery regiment of three battalions with 12 guns each, an antitank battalion and a pioneer (engineer) battalion.71

  Rommel, who knew better than most division commanders what was to come in the spring, was of the opinion that both he and the 7th Panzer had grown soft in the months of inactivity following the Polish campaign, and set about changing that. He renewed his own dedication to being physically fit at the same time that he started whipping the division into shape. He threw himself into learning everything he could of the day-to-day operations, the “nuts-and-bolts” as it were, of a panzer division; one battalion commander was sent packing less than two weeks after Rommel’s arrival for what the new commanding officer regarded as slackness, and the entire division was instilled with the lessons Rommel had learned in his own four years of warfare. Rommel had learned in Romania and Italy that firepower or movement alone were rarely decisive, but when combined were almost invariably irresistible, a lesson that mostly been lost in the memories of the quagmire of the Western Front—now he taught it to the 7th Panzer. Battalion and company commanders were expected to show initiative in carrying out the division’s overall plan of operations. Robbing the enemy of the will to fight could be more devastating than merely depriving him of the means to fight, and that there was more to victory than gaining mere useless ground. “Don’t fight a battle if you gain nothing by winning it” was one of his favorite maxims; so was his injunction to “Shed sweat, not blood.” To Rommel, the only acceptable definition of victory was an enemy beaten and an objective taken, while needless loss of life was not only the hallmark of bad generalship, it was the height of stupidity. Events would prove that on occasion Rommel would fall short of his own standards—not unexpected, considering that they were set so high.72

  The three months between Rommel’s assumption of command of the 7th Panzer and the beginning of Fall Gelb were filled with intensive training and preparation at every level in the German Army. Everyone, Allied and German alike, knew that an attack in the west was coming, especially after Germany occupied Denmark and invaded Norway in late April 1940. Hitler got lucky in Norway, there is no other way to put it. The German objective for the invasion was to secure the Norwegian port of Narvik, which could be used year-round to ship the precious iron ore dug from Swedish mines to the insatiable maws of the Ruhr’s weapons factories—Sweden’s Baltic Sea ports were locked shut by ice for six months every year. But the British, anticipating a German move against Norway, stole a march on Hitler, getting their naval forces into position before the German invasion fleet sailed. Yet, despite inflicting near-crippling losses on the German Navy, the British then bungled the land campaign and the British troops sent to bolster the Norwegian defense against the Germans had to be withdrawn; the Wehrmacht eventually occupied the whole of Norway and set up a puppet government by the middle of June, though the Norwegians never formally surrendered.

  By that time, however, the world’s attention had shifted to France and the Low Countries, where on May 10 the Wehrmacht finally began its offensive. The date had been kept a very close-held secret, Rommel not receiving his orders to deploy the 7th Panzer until the evening of May 9—some of his rifle companies didn’t reach their start lines until 20 minutes before they were scheduled to jump off. Nonetheless, meticulous planning beforehand kept the inevitable confusion to a minimum: army, corps, and divisional boundaries were set, objectives clearly defined, phase lines drawn, roads assigned, and supply and support troops organized, all of their pre-attack movements behind the front lines well-rehearsed. Contingency plans had been drawn up for every major unit, and coordination with the Luftwaffe for close support firmly established. The planning for Fall Gelb was as thorough and meticulous as that of the Schlieffen Plan a generation earlier; while spectacular in execution, that plan had also been a spectacular failure. The Germans were anxious that history not repeat itself: just hours before the offensive began, Rommel had an opportunity to dash off a quick letter to Lucie, where he wrote, “We’re packing up at last. Let’s hope not in vain. You’ll get all the news for the next few days from the papers. Don’t worry yourself. Everything will go all right.”73

  Army Group B, under the command of Generaloberst Fedor von Bock, invaded Holland and Belgium at dawn on May 10, and the French and British obligingly responded by moving the First and Seventh Armies, along with the British Expeditionary Force, eight divisions strong, forward to the Dyle River, exactly as von Manstein had anticipated. Accordingly, Army Group A, led by Generaloberst Gerd von Runstedt pushed through the rugged hills and narrow roads of the Ardennes. There Generalleutnant Hermann Hoth’s XV Corps—the 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions and the 32nd Infantry Division—was positioned on the right flank, where it was to protect the army group should the French or British launch a counterattack from the north while Generaloberst Heinz Guderian’s XIX Corps was forcing a crossing of the Meuse River.

  The decisive moment of the 1940 campaign came on the third day of operations, when Guderian’s three panzer divisions (the 1st, 2nd, and 10th) as well as Rommel’s 7th Panzer all forced crossings of the Meuse River, behind which the French had drawn up their main line of defense. (The much-vaunted—and truly fearsome—Maginot Line was sited to the south of where the battles of France in 1940 would be fought. Built to protect France’s frontier with Germany, it had never been envisioned as extending north along the Franco-Belgian border. Fall Gelb had been planned specifically to avoid any need to attack the Maginot Line directly: properly supported the line would have been all but invulnerable and German casualties catastrophic.) The 7th Panzer had met very little opposition on the first three days of the offensive: roads had been cratered by French and Belgian engineers, and large tree
s felled across roadways to create roadblocks, but few of these obstacles were defended, so that for the first two days of the division’s advance, Rommel’s troops were shedding far more sweat than blood. He quickly adapted a tactic his abteilung had frequently used with success in Romania and Italy, liberally spraying suspected enemy positions with machine-gun fire: this had the simultaneous effect of “knocking” to see if “anyone was home,” while also forcing an enemy to keep his head down. As Rommel’s tanks, half-tracks, and armored cars moved forward, short, sharp bursts of fire were going out left and right. It was expensive of ammunition, but it was also very effective.

  Rommel’s lead unit reached the towns of Dinant and Houx on the Meuse River the afternoon of May 12, hoping to take the bridges there “on the bounce,” but the French blew up them up just as the lead panzers were beginning to cross. Rommel came forward and saw that his infantry was about to attempt to cross the Meuse using inflatable rubber boats, but the French defenders were well concealed, and heavy, accurate shellfire was falling on the Germans. Improvising—he had no smoke generators with him—Rommel ordered several houses sitting upwind on his side of the river to be set afire, creating a smokescreen that allowed his infantrymen to paddle across the river and begin firing into the French right flank. The divisional artillery was called in, while several Panzer IVs were brought forward to provide close support. The defenders were still determined to make a fight of it, and the German infantry company which had crossed the river at Dinant was now pinned down by heavy small-arms and artillery fire. (At one point in the battle for Dinant, Rommel was shot at by a trio of French soldiers who had only moments before surrendered. They all missed, and a burst of machine-gun fire cut them down.) A platoon of French tanks came up to support the defenders, but a flurry of small-arms fire drove off the enemy armor, who apparently imagined the German force on the west bank of the river to be much stronger than it was. To the north, Rommel’s 7th Motorcycle Battalion had successfully crossed the Meuse at Houx, but was making only slow progress clearing the French off the west bank. The French were fighting with such a degree of skill, and their defensive positions had been so well prepared, that Rommel eventually decided that the issue was not going to be decided by the infantry: more tanks were brought up and eventually their fire silenced the French. (One tank commander, Leutnant Karl-August Hanke, a rabid Nazi whom Göbbels had foisted on the 7th Panzer, brought his Panzer IV so far forward that he was firing at French positions at the near-point-blank range of 50 yards. A few weeks later, Hanke, who believed that his Party membership exempted him from strict army discipline, was relieved for insubordination and sent home by Rommel, who also rescinded a recommendation for Hanke to be awarded the Iron Cross First Class.)

  After nearly 24 hours of continuous fighting, with a bridgehead across the Meuse secured, Rommel now showed his true colors. Without bothering to inform anyone in the 5th Panzer Division, he appropriated that unit’s portable bridging equipment and added it to his own, then embarked on a monumental act of insubordination. While the finer details of Fall Gelb were being worked out, Franz Halder, who imagined himself to be a far greater general than he was, and whose gifts for spite exceeded his military talents, had tinkered with von Manstein’s plan in such a way that its most aggressive elements were muted—or eliminated altogether. (Halder and von Manstein personally detested one another; Halder’s pettiness was such that he was prepared to abet the failure of a major German offensive if it meant blackening von Manstein’s reputation.) The daring armored thrusts to the English Channel had been reduced to mere reconnaissance in force, the whole operation being then reduced to the same foot-slogging pace that had doomed the Schlieffen Plan in 1914.74

  But General Guderian, rightly known as the father of the Panzerkorps for his vigorous and visionary advocacy of armored warfare in the 1930s, along with Army Group A’s other panzer leaders, tacitly agreed to adhere to von Manstein’s original planning and once they had broken through the French defensive lines, drive their panzers as hard and fast as they could straight for the Channel. This was meat and drink to Erwin Rommel, with his thrusting, aggressive style of command, and he readily agreed. Now, having purloined his neighbor’s bridges, he took dead aim on Calais. The commanding officer of the 5th Panzer Division, Generalleutnant Max von Hartlieb-Walsporn, protested Rommel’s high-handed action to General Hoth, to no avail. Hoth understood that Rommel would know what to do with such equipment, while von Hartlieb-Walsporn clearly did not. A diffident man who made an excellent peacetime general but who was sadly out of place commanding a panzer division in wartime, von Hartlieb-Walsporn would be relieved two weeks later and would never lead combat troops again.

  As soon as a bridge was in place on May 14, the 7th Motorized Rifle Regiment, under command of Colonel Georg von Bismarck, pushed forward, moving west of Dinant, where strong French forces were mustering for a counterattack. Rommel went forward with his tanks to reinforce von Bismarck and so had his first bit of excitement in the campaign. Unexpectedly coming under enemy antitank fire, Rommel’s panzer was hit twice and knocked into a ditch, where it sat canted steeply on its right side, with bullets and shells flying about from all directions. More panzers moved up and Rommel was able to extricate himself from the disabled vehicle and commandeer another, following behind the commander of the 25th Panzer Regiment, Colonel Karl Rothenberg, to where von Bismarck’s regiment was fighting. The 7th Panzer Division was now 65 miles beyond its start line.

  The division reached Philippeville and continued westward through Avesnes and Landrecies on May 15. This day was the tipping point for the French Army, for it never again fought as well or as hard as it did at Dinant and Houx. A gaping hole 60 miles wide had been torn in the front of the French Ninth Army, and in order to restore the situation, a general order to retire was issued by the French commander, General André Corap. Materially, doctrinally, and above all, mentally, the Allies were neither equipped nor prepared to deal with the German panzer divisions. It was not a matter of numbers—the Allied armies actually fielded more armor than did the Germans, 3,400 Allied tanks compared to 2,500 German panzers—rather it was their inability to use them as effectively as the Germans. Tank for tank, most Allied vehicles were equal or superior to their German counterparts, but even in those Allied units that were styled as “armored” divisions, the prevalent tactical and operational doctrine was to use them to support the infantry, while German doctrine held exactly the reverse. This meant that the Allied generals thought in terms of operations defined by the speed at which a foot soldier moved, while the German generals thought in terms of operations conducted at the speed at which their panzers moved. It was a difference as fatal—to the Allies—as it was profound.

  In the north, the Allies began to fall back, even though they outnumbered Army Group B, as General von Bock’s three panzer divisions were wreaking havoc of their own, forcing the French First Army to fall back, which compelled the British to follow suit, or else leave their right flank dangling in the open. In the south, the French Army began to unravel, as Corap’s order to withdraw—meant to reestablish a solid front against the Germans, a sensible operational necessity—was seen by the average poilu as something akin to an admission of defeat. When Rommel realized just how fragile was French morale, the effect on him was like blood in the water to a shark. Possibly the most enduring and deep-seated lesson he had learned in the Great War was the need to attack an enemy’s will to fight: rapid movement, flanking attacks, concentrated firepower, surprise—all of which Rommel was a past master—conspired to amplify the erosion of an enemy’s will that inevitably accompanied the noise and stench of combat, the killing and maiming. Rommel found neither glory nor satisfaction in the destructiveness of war: he was a professional soldier, not a mindless killer; his job was to attain objectives, not take lives. Anything that could expedite accomplishing the first without needless resort to the second would be his preferred method of waging war.

  Philippeville was to
have been one of the strongpoints on a new French “stop line”—a collection of bunkers, dugouts, and entrenchments that the men of the 7th Panzer mistakenly thought were part of the Maginot Line—where the German advance was to be contained. Rommel simply had his tanks and armored cars roll straight through the town without a halt, advancing with turrets traversed alternately left and right, spraying any suspected enemy positions with machine-gun fire, an occasional 75mm shell from a Panzer IV being thrown in for good measure. On the way into the town Rommel had already seen the road littered with trucks, gun tractors and artillery pieces abandoned by the French at the approach of the German tanks, clear evidence that the morale of the Ninth Army, at least, was collapsing. Leutnant Braun of the 25th Panzer Regiment, commanding one of the Panzer IIIs, memorably described his unit’s arrival in Philippeville:

  General Rommel orders me to take the lead and in a village square, where I have a feeling there must be Frenchmen, I shoot into houses with my pistol and yell, “Soldats français, venez!” and on that command the doors of every house open and a great crowd of Frenchmen, perhaps several companies, flock into the square with their hands up!75

  On the way to Avesnes, Rommel and his men encountered more of the same, scores, sometimes hundreds, or even thousands of French soldiers surrendering without so much as a shot being fired.

  Soon we began to meet refugee columns and detachments of French troops preparing for the march. A chaos of guns, tanks, and military vehicles of all kinds, inextricably entagled with horse-drawn refugee carts, covered the road and verges. . . . The French troops were completely overcome by surprise at our sudden appearance, laid down their arms and marched off to the east beside our column. Nowhere was any resistance attempted. . . . Hundreds upon hundreds of French troops, with their officers, surrendered at our arrival. . . .76