Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

by Butler, Daniel Allen

  Now and then there would be a hard case, such as the steely-eyed lieutenant colonel who, his unit overrun, furiously refused to surrender. Three times Colonel Rothenberg called on the Frenchman to give himself up, three times the brave but foolhardy officer refused—in the end, he was shot. A courageous death, but an unnecessary one; there was literally nothing more the unfortunate Frenchman could have done for his country.77

  At Avesnes, Rommel had reached his assigned objective for the first phase of Fall Gelb: strictly speaking he was to stop now and await further orders, but the quiet little cabal among the panzer division commanders dictated otherwise. Already Rommel was planning to push straight into Landrecies where there was a bridge across the Sambre River, the last major obstacle between the German Army and the Channel coast. The masses of French refugees fleeing the German advance, choking the road from Avesnes, did more to slow the 7th Panzer Division’s progress than did the French Army. At twilight on May 16, Rommel’s tanks rolled straight across the bridge over the Sambre and right up to a French barracks on the far side of the river, where the garrison meekly formed up on the parade ground, laid down their weapons, and marched off into captivity. The lead elements of the 7th Panzer drove west in the darkness, and at dawn on May 17 stopped atop a hill overlooking Le Cateau—60 miles west of where the division had crossed the Meuse River, 175 miles from where the division had started just seven days earlier. In that time, the division had accounted for roughly 10,000 French prisoners of war, had captured 27 artillery pieces, and destroyed 130 French tanks and armored cars. The human cost had been startlingly low: the 7th Panzer had suffered, to that point, only 35 dead and 59 wounded, more than sufficient justification for Rommel’s tactics, expensive in ammunition, but parsimonious of lives.

  The pace was terrific, though, and the strain was beginning to tell. The division was strung out along a narrow, finger-like corridor almost 30 miles long; the 12th Infantry Division, on the left flank, whose troops were mostly advancing on foot, simply wasn’t able to keep up, while the 5th Panzer, on the right, was suffering the consequences of its commanding officer’s uninspired leadership. Communications between individual units within the division were sporadic as atmospheric conditions and equipment breakdowns interfered with radios, the lead elements were beginning to run short of fuel and ammunition, and there were thousands of disarmed French soldiers milling about inside the corridor, gradually being shepherded to the rear. The division was disorganized and running the risk of losing its unit cohesion.

  This was a consequence of Rommel’s free-wheeling style of command. His experience in the First World War (by now everyone was pretty much in agreement that this war was the second such) had taught Rommel that the proper place for a commanding officer was where the fighting was taking place, ready to act and react, a conviction he never entirely shook off even after the introduction of portable radio equipment. The need to be on the spot, to see for himself what was happening and direct the action, caused him to rush from flashpoint to flashpoint, dealing with regimental or even battalion tactics, rather than remaining with his divisional headquarters, where his unit commanders and staff would be able to maintain regular contact with him and he could attend to divisional affairs. Remaining at divisional headquarters worked for other panzer commanders: while the gains of other panzer divisions led by more deliberate commanders might not be quite as spectacular as those of the 7th Panzer, they were still impressive, and wreaking almost equally great havoc on the French. The three divisions of General Guderian’s Panzerkorps, the 1st, 2nd and 10th Panzer, had advanced almost as far as Rommel’s 7th Panzer but were experiencing far fewer command and control problems, especially in resupply.

  Rommel had absolute faith in his style of command, and given his uncanny knack for sensing exactly where a crisis would develop that required his attention, there was merit to his argument. Nonetheless, it was fraught with risk, not merely personal, although there was that: Rommel came under enemy fire almost as often during the campaign in France in 1940 as did any of his men. But it also posed a risk to those same men, whose lives were often dependent on decisions that only their division commander could make. This was a new style of warfare, this “Blitzkrieg,” as the Allies were now calling it, one that seemed well suited to a man of Rommel’s temperament and abilities, but it also had lessons to teach him.

  One of those lessons was driven home on May 19 when Rommel was with the 25th Panzer Regiment just outside of Le Cateau, the remainder of the division strung out behind him for nearly 20 miles. The French were staging one of their local counterattacks, and because his panzers were low on gasoline, Rommel was being hard-pressed. The reason his fuel tanks were running dry was because his Chief of Staff, Major Otto Heidkamper, who was still with the divisional headquarters, had heard nothing from Rommel or Colonel Rothenberg all day: he assumed that the 25th Panzer had been overrun and they had been killed or captured; he refused to send fuel to a unit he was convinced no longer existed. As it happened, the French gave up on their attack, the 25th Panzer Regiment survived, and when Rommel eventually turned up alive, the ensuing row with Heidkamper was spectacular.

  At this point even Rommel, usually impatient at the slightest delay when he was advancing, recognized the need to pause and sort out the division.

  It was now high time that the country we had overrun was secured by the division, and the enormous number of prisoners—approximately two mechanized divisions—was collected. I had kept the division staff constantly informed of our progress, but all messages had been transmitted blind from the [25th] Panzer Regiment’s command tank, and there was no way of telling whether they had been received.78

  There had been a few more uncoordinated local counterattacks on the flanks of the 7th Panzer’s corridor which emphasized the division’s vulnerability—with the following infantry divisions unable to keep up, a strong, determined attack could cut off the 7th Panzer and destroy it in detail. Mechanical breakdowns—trucks and armored cars as well as tracked vehicles—were becoming problematic; all of them needed fuel. The 7th Panzer spent the whole of May 17 replenishing and reorganizing—it would hardly do to call it “resting”—before resuming its westward march. Rommel gave the order: the line of advance was Le Cateau—Arras—Amiens—Rouen—Le Havre.

  As the 7th Panzer advanced out of Le Cateau on May 18, the last remnant of French resistance, such as it was and what there was of it, began to evaporate. The French High Command adhered to the strategic doctrine of the “continuous front”—maintaining an unbroken line of resistance to the enemy; it was France’s distilled experience and wisdom from the Great War. For four years the front had never been broken, save only in isolated local incidents and for brief periods of time. A grand strategic breakthrough by the Germans had never been achieved—the front always held, therefore, as long as a “continuous front” was maintained, it always would hold.

  Army Group A’s panzer divisions, however, had accomplished the impossible—not only was the French Ninth Army’s front broken, it had been essentially obliterated. French doctrine and training—tactical, operational, and strategic—was completely ineffectual in stopping this kind of warfare. French armored divisions were organized and equipped to act as screens for massed infantry formations, but had little capability to launch and sustain attacks of their own. The only hope left to the French Army was that the panzer divisions would be forced to eventually halt through sheer exhaustion, giving the French enough time to rebuild another front.

  The French prime minister, Paul Reynaud, who had replaced Daladier in April, saw the writing on the wall as early as May 15, when the news reached him that the Germans were across the Meuse in force. In a frantic phone call to his British counterpart, Winston Churchill, who had replaced Chamberlain on May 10, he exclaimed “We have been defeated! We are beaten; we have lost the battle!” Churchill flew to Paris the following day, and saw first-hand the incipient panic that was overtaking the French government: it was already prepa
ring to evacuate the capital. Meeting the French commander-in-chief, General Maurice Gamelin, he studied the situation maps and asked bluntly, “Where is your strategic reserve?”

  “There is none,” was Gamelin’s reply, and in that moment Churchill knew that Reynaud was right—the French had lost. In an instant the British prime minister’s priority shifted from trying to stop the German advance to saving as much of the British armed forces in France and Belgium as possible.79

  On May 20 Rommel reached Arras; it was here that he would be introduced to the British Army. On May 19, General John Verecker, Viscount Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, was given explicit orders by General Edmund Ironside, the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, to save as much of the B.E.F. as possible by withdrawing to the southwest, out of Belgium and into France, before the panzer divisions of Army Group A isolated it along with the French First and Ninth Armies; if that proved impossible, then it would be necessary to close on the Channel ports where, hopefully, the B.E.F. could be evacuated. It would not be an easy task, as seven of Gort’s nine divisions were already engaged with Army Group B, the other two standing by as Gort’s strategic reserve. To reach France, the B.E.F. would have to meet the panzer divisions head-on, as their line of advance lay directly across Gort’s proposed line of retreat.

  Rommel’s reconnaissance battalion made the first contact with the British as it was trying to force a crossing of the La Bassée canal that ringed Arras; with the help of Luftwaffe dive-bombers, Rommel succeeded, but on the afternoon of May 21, the British counterattack began. The operation was supposed to be carried out by two infantry divisions, comprising about 15,000 men, but in the end just two infantry battalions, 2,000 men supported by 74 tanks—there would be no artillery or air support for them—actually made the attack. The British first ran headlong into the motorized SS regiment Totenkopf: the SS “supermen” watched round after round fired from their standard 37mm antitank guns bouncing like so many spit-balls off the heavy armor of the advancing Matilda tanks, then promptly broke and ran. As they fled, they exaggerated the strength of the British forces and word reached Rommel, who was still south of Arras at this point, that at least five British divisions were attacking from the northwest. Rommel called up the 25th Panzer Regiment, told Colonel Rothenberg to get to Arras as quickly as possible, then rushed forward himself to take personal command of the defense.

  One of our howitzer batteries was already in position at the northern exit from the village [of Wailly, southwest of Arras] firing rapidly on enemy tanks attacking southward from Arras. As we were now coming under machine-gun fire and the infantry had already taken cover to the right, [Lieutenant] Most [Rommel’s aide] and I ran on in front of the armored cars toward the battery position. It did not look as though the battery would have much difficulty in dealing with the enemy tanks, for the gunners were calmly hurling round after round into them in complete disregard of the return fire. . . . The enemy tank fire created chaos and confusion for our troops in the village. . . . We tried to create order. After notifying the divisional staff of the critical situation . . . we drove off to a hill 1,000 yards west of the village, where we found a light A.A. troop and several antitank guns. . . . With Most’s help, I brought every available gun into action against the tanks. Every gun, both antitank and antiaircraft, was ordered to open rapid fire immediately and I personally gave each gun its target. With the enemy tanks so perilously close, only rapid fire from every gun could save the situation. We ran from gun to gun. The objections of the gun commanders that the range was still too great to engage the tanks effectively were overruled. All I cared about was to halt the enemy by heavy gunfire. Soon we succeeded in putting the leading enemy tanks out of action. . . .80

  The crisis had not yet passed, however, as on Rommel’s right flank the 6th Rifle Regiment was still hard pressed and taking heavy casualties. As the SS troops had learned, the Wehrmacht’s standard antitank gun was powerless against the 3-inch thick armor of the Matildas, who in turn were wreaking havoc on the 6th Regiment’s trucks and half-tracks. Weak as in truth it was, the British attack seemed to be on the verge of success. Only a last-ditch effort by the divisional artillery and a battery of 88mm antiaircraft batteries brought the enemy tanks to a halt. When Colonel Rothenberg’s panzers at last reached Arras and caught the British in the flank, the issue was finally decided and the British withdrew.

  The attack at Arras left Rommel shaken on a personal level: while helping rally the artillery, Leutnant Most was shot dead while standing right next to him. This was hardly Rommel’s first encounter with death, nor was it his closest, but he was always upset when good men whom he knew were killed while under his command. He would go on to lose friends and staff members in North Africa, and again in France; to his credit as a man, he never became inured to it.

  Of larger consequence to the current campaign in France, the action at Arras sent shock waves running up the German chain of command, all the way to Hitler’s headquarters, where the Führer ordered a temporary halt in place for the panzer divisions while he, the O.K.W., and his army and corps commanders sorted out the situation. It was a moment of considerable mutual over-estimation by the Wehrmacht and the B.E.F.: Hitler and his generals were alarmed by the possibility that the British were significantly stronger than previously believed, which would necessitate a revision to the operational orders already issued to the panzer divisions; General Lord Gort was now convinced that his forces lacked the strength to drive through the German armored units and decided to fall back on the Channel ports where the B.E.F. would, hopefully, be evacuated.

  The decision to halt the panzer divisions’ drive to the English Channel was one of the most controversial of the entire war, as it would later be claimed that in doing so the Wehrmacht was denied the opportunity to take the Channel ports, trapping the encircled B.E.F. and compelling its surrender. At the time, however, it seemed to be military prudence: the panzers had been driven hard for two weeks, with breakdowns and equipment failures becoming more than problematical. The extent of the morale collapse of the French Army had yet to be fully appreciated at higher headquarters, so the threat of attacks on the still-vulnerable flanks of the armored thrusts west from the Meuse and Sambre Rivers seemed far greater than in fact it was. Balancing risks against opportunities, Hitler and his generals chose to minimize the risks: the order went out for the panzer divisions, wherever they were, to halt and take up defensive positions.

  The stand-fast order from Hitler’s headquarters thus afforded a few days of much-needed rest to the 7th Panzer Division and its commanding officer. While tank, vehicle, and artillery crews caught up on equipment maintenance and replenishing fuel and ammunition stocks, Rommel was able to resume his correspondence with Lucie.

  23 May 1940

  Dearest Lu,

  With a few hours’ sleep behind me, it’s time for a line to you. I’m fine in every way. My division has had a blazing success. Dinant, Philippeville, break-through the Maginot Line, and advance in one night 40 miles through France to Le Cateau, then Cambrai, Arras, always in front of everybody else. Now the hunt is up against 60 encircled British, French, and Belgian Divisions. Don’t worry about me. As I see it the war in France may be over in a fortnight.

  26 May 1940

  A day or two without action has done a lot of good. The division has lost up to date 27 officers killed and 33 wounded, and 1,500 men dead and wounded. That’s about 12 percent casualties. Very little compared to what’s been achieved. The worst is now well over. There’s little likelihood of any more hard fighting, for we’ve give the enemy a proper whacking. Food, drink, and sleep are all back to routine. . . .81

  Some of Rommel’s comments to Lucie are intriguing for their prescience. The French government would seek an armistice with Germany on June 17, for example, just six days off from Rommel’s prediction; likewise, there would be only two more incidents of hard fighting for the 7th Panzer before the French capitulation. The observat
ion that a casualty rate of 12 percent in two weeks was “very little” sounds far more callous out of context than it truly was. Given how far and how fast the division had advanced—nearly 200 miles in less than two weeks, while taking thousands of prisoners of war and destroying nearly two divisions’ worth of enemy tanks, vehicles, and guns—such losses were indeed light, especially when remembering that the German expectations, as were those of the French and the British, had been conditioned by the experience of the Great War, when tens of thousands of lives had often been sacrificed for incremental, indecisive gains.

  The next letter Lucie received brought her the news that her husband would be adding to his already-impressive collection of medals: for his leadership under fire on May 13 at Dinant, a clasp to his Iron Cross Second Class; for the action on May 15 at Philippeville, a clasp to his Iron Cross First Class; and in recognition of what he had accomplished in leading the 7th Panzer Division, the award of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. He was the first divisional commander to be so honored during the campaign.

  7th Panzer Division

  Adjutant

  25 May 1940

  My Dear Frau Rommel,

  May I be permitted to inform you that the Führer has instructed Lt. Hanke to decorate your husband on his behalf with the Knight’s Cross.

  Every man of the division—myself particularly, who has the privilege of accompanying the General—knows that nobody has deserved it more than your husband. He has led the division to success which must, I imagine, be unique.

  The General is up now with the tanks again. If he knew that I were writing you, gnädige Frau, he would immediately instruct me to send you his most heartfelt greeting and the news that he is well. . . .