Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

by Butler, Daniel Allen

  By way of a prologue, the first encounter between German and British troops in North Africa occurred on February 24, when an armored car of the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars was captured, along with its three-man crew. The three Englishmen and their vehicle yielded little in the way of useful information about British strength and intentions, but bits and pieces assembled by Rommel’s intelligence section began to create the impression in the Afrika Korps commander’s mind that what Rome and Berlin believed to be the strategic and operational situation in Cyrenaica was very different from the reality. He had been told that he faced two full-strength armored divisions, with at least one infantry division firmly dug in to support them. By the middle of March, though, Rommel began to suspect otherwise: however daunting the British defenses at El Agheila might appear, he was becoming more certain with each passing day that there was little strength behind them.

  On March 18 Rommel flew back to Berlin, there to confer on the following day with Hitler and the O.K.W. about the future of operations in North Africa. Before he left, he directed General Streich to prepare a plan for the 5th Light Division to carry out a strong reconnaissance—essentially a probing attack—of the British position at El Agheila, the jump-off date set for March 24. In Berlin, he was received warmly by Hitler, who personally awarded Rommel the Oakleaves to his Knight’s Cross, awarded in recognition of his leadership of the 7th Panzer Division in May and June of the previous year. Fulsome in his praise for Rommel’s tactical and operational skills, Hitler also made lavish promises concerning the men, tanks, and equipment that would be sent to North Africa in the months to come.

  A follow-on conference with von Brauchitsch and Halder delivered a cold dose of reality concerning the Führer’s assurances of materiel largesse: as he was told when given command of the Afrika Korps, Rommel could indeed expect a second Panzer Divison, the 15th, as well as some additional artillery, antitank, and transport units by the end of May, but beyond that, aside from replacements to make good the inevitable combat losses, he could and should expect very little if anything in the way of reinforcement. Both Halder and von Brauchitsch were explicit in telling Rommel that he was expected to maintain a defensive posture in North Africa: under no circumstances was he to undertake a major attack against the British. As Rommel had no “need to know,” as it were, they could not explain that the O.K.W. was hoarding its resources for the forthcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. To say that he was disappointed by this news would be an understatement; Rommel was convinced that a tremendous opportunity was being squandered, later writing that he was “not very happy at the efforts of Field Marshal von Brauchitsch and Colonel General Halder to keep down the number of troops sent to Africa and leave the future of this theater of war to chance.”

  AT DAWN ON March 24, the curtain went up on Act I, Scene One of Rommel’s great adventure in North Africa, as General Streich sent out a strong reconnaissance in force to probe the British defenses at El Agheila. The tanks and armored cars of the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion charged forward on a front 1,000 yards wide, their numbers augmented by many of the dummy tanks built on Rommel’s orders in the last month. Behind the onrushing armor, the Afrika Korps’ “soft-skinned” vehicles—lorries, gasoline bowsers, water tankers, staff cars and the like, so-called because they were unarmored—deliberately created a massive dust cloud, creating the impression that the attacking force was much larger.

  The ruse worked. The British defenders, the understrength 2nd Armoured Division supported by a handful of infantry battalions, a force less than half the size of that which German intelligence in Berlin had assured Rommel was holding El Agheila, began abandoning their positions and moving northward just as the lead German tanks came into engagement range. The British, though surprised, having become accustomed to Italian passivity, retired quickly but in reasonably good order, withdrawing to Mersa el Brega, 40 miles north of El Agheila. Once there, the British began to dig in, stringing barbwire obstacles and laying minefields. Naturally, the longer they were allowed to work undisturbed, the stronger their position would become, as the terrain created an excellent defensive position: a ridge of low, sandy hills with the Mediterranean Sea on one flank and impassable salt marshes on the other formed a natural defile that all but compelled an attacker to resort to a frontal assault. Swinging wide to the east around the salt marsh in an effort to outflank Mersa el Brega would create more problems—especially supply difficulties—than it solved. If the British were going to stop the Afrika Korps, Mersa el Brega was the place to do it.

  Rommel’s holy trinity of warfare was “Sturm, Schwung, Wucht”—“attack, momentum, force,” an intriguing variation on Bonaparte’s dictum “Mass times velocity equals impact.” All of his experience in Romania and Italy in the First World War, and in France in the Second, had driven home the lesson that once an enemy began to retreat, he would tend to keep retreating, particularly if a withdrawal route was to hand. Only with his back to the wall, with nowhere else to go, would an enemy turn and fight to the death. Rommel’s natural inclination had always been to exploit that tendency to its fullest, and now he saw yet another opportunity to do so. The British in front of Rommel were far from panicked but definitely a bit off-balance, like a prizefighter caught on the wrong foot when hit by his opponent. They were disorganized by the retreat from El Agheila (no unit of any size in any army ever retreats in perfect order), plagued by equipment problems (most of the 2nd Armoured Division’s tanks hadn’t yet been properly modified for service in the desert), and suffering from the effects of a recently reshuffled command structure (the Western Desert Force had been designated XIII Corps at the beginning of January, only to have the corps deactivated in mid-February, with its units now under direct command of HQ Cyrenaica, all the way back in Tobruk). The very last thing the Rommel could allow the British was time to sort out their problems.

  Accordingly, a plan for a frontal assault, something that Rommel was normally loathe to order, was drawn up, and on the morning of March 31 the 5th Light Division attacked Mersa el Brega. The British fought stubbornly, the Germans only slowly gained ground, and for a time it looked as if the defenders might hold on. But Rommel was once again doing what he did best, leading from the front, and he found a narrow track threading through the eastern edge of the sand hills, where they met the salt marsh, and sent the 8th Machine-Gun Battalion along it in a flanking move that threatened to cut the British line of retreat along the coast road. The British defenders saw this and immediately disengaged, this time somewhat more precipitously than they had done at El Agheila, making for the coastal town of Agedabia, another 50 miles up the Via Balbia. In their haste they left behind 50 Bren carriers—small, hardy, lightly armored, fully tracked infantry transports ideally suited to the desert, and a few dozen lorries, welcome additions to the Afrika Korps’ inventory of vehicles.

  Having taken Mersa el Brega and the British having fallen back to Agedabia, the Afrika Korps stood in what was the “front door” to the rest of North Africa’s Mediterranean coast, but Rommel was now faced with a dilemma: whether or not to immediately press on to Agedabia. He was well aware that his orders from Berlin and Rome, as well as those of General Gariboldi, his nominal superior in Cyrenaica, forbade him to take any major offensive action—including any attack on Mersa el Brega—before the 15th Panzer Division arrived at the end of May. Technically, he was already in violation of those orders, something that, admittedly, had never been much of a hindrance to him when he believed he was faced with an opportunity to deal a defeat to the enemy, and he knew that he had before him a wavering foe, who, with one good hard push might be sent tumbling pell-mell all the way back to Egypt, reversing the decision rendered by Operation Compass only four months previously.

  When he met with Hitler, Halder and von Brauchitsch on March 19, he had been emphatic in his belief that the British in North Africa were more intent on resting and refitting those units that had made Compass’s mad dash across Cyrenaica than on whatever the
Germans and Italians were doing there. He pointed out that Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights had shown that XIII Corps was concentrating its armor near Benghazi, an ideal location for holding the Jebel Achdar, the rolling, fertile highlands of the Cyrenaica “bulge” just to the east of Benghazi. To Rommel, this was a mistake, for he was certain that he could lead the Afrika Korps across the base of that bulge, attacking toward Gazala, simultaneously threatening to strike at Tobruk and cut off the British garrison in Benghazi. To do this he needed the 15th Panzer sent to North Africa immediately, not in May. Halder and von Brauchitsch were adamant in their refusal: Rommel’s second armored division would arrive as scheduled, not a day sooner. When it did, he was authorized to capture Mersa el Brega, strike at Agedabia, and possibly take Benghazi if the opportunity to do so presented itself, but in all events he was to exercise caution and be wary of overextending his forces. Rommel would later recount that he pointed out how Compass had shown that “we could not just take Benghazi, but would have to occupy the whole of Cyrenaica, as the Benghazi area could not be held by itself.” Once back in Africa, Rommel was confident that he could explain away his decision to take Mersa el Brega as fulfilling the spirit if not the actual letter of his orders: the opportunity had presented itself, and he took it. Allowing the British another two months to improve the depth and breadth of their defenses would have made an attack in late May a far more difficult and costly operation, no matter what reinforcement he had received by that time. There was more than a bit of barracks-room lawyering in this rationalization, but it was far from unreasonable, and allowing officers in the field to use their judgment and initiative had been part of the German military tradition since the days of Frederick the Great. Driving on to attack Agedabia, however, was entirely another matter. . . .

  Rommel being Rommel, he resorted to a tactical subterfuge, this one meant to deceive his own superiors. On April 1, Rommel drove to the 5th Light Division’s headquarters company on the outskirts of Mersa el Brega, there to receive General Streich’s report on the previous day’s action. At one point in their conversation, Rommel asked in a voice that was half-bantering, half-serious, “So, when are we going to meet in Agedabia?” Streich, matching his commander’s tone exactly, replied, “I don’t know—we’ll have to see about that.” Already Streich was learning how to “read between the lines” in his conversations with his commanding officer: no sooner had Rommel left the command post than Streich began issuing orders for the 5th Light to begin moving northward at first light the following morning, its objective the capture of Agedabia.

  For his part, Rommel busied himself with administrative details for most of the morning of April 2, not catching up with Streich until the early afternoon. Seeing the entire division rolling forward in combat formations, he made a theatrical display of being surprised, asking, “What’s going on here?”

  “I thought we ought not to give the enemy a chance to dig in all over again,” Streich replied, “so, I’m moving my whole division forward, and I’m about to attack Agedabia.”

  Rommel nodded sagely. “Those were not my instructions,” he said, “but I approve.” The 5th Light Division took Agedabia that afternoon virtually without a fight.

  The Italians were furious—not at having Agedabia retaken, but at Rommel’s seemingly blithe ignorance of explicit orders from the governor-general, Gariboldi. Seeking out the Afrika Korps’ commander, the portly Italian officer was blunt in confronting Rommel, declaring, “This is in contradiction to what I ordered! You are to wait for me before continuing any advance!” The O.K.W. expression of disapproval was more measured, Rommel being told that “Any limited offensive moves . . . are not to exceed the capabilities of your small force. . . . Above all, you are to avoid any risk to your open right flank, such as is bound to be entailed in turning north to attack Benghazi.”

  Fortune came down heavily on Rommel’s side at this moment, contributing in no small part to his success at Mersa el Brega and Agedabia, as well as the continued relative freedom of action he would enjoy for the next few months. Unknowingly, he had attacked El Agheila and Mersa el Brega at exactly the moment when the British were at their most vulnerable in North Africa. The abortive Italian invasion of Greece had gone so badly that it soon became obvious to the political and military leaders on both sides that Hitler would have to intervene in order to prevent yet another strategic disaster overtaking his ally Mussolini. The Greeks had committed over three-quarters of their army’s manpower to their northwestern frontier, where the Greeks were soundly trouncing the Italians. This left Greece’s northeastern frontier almost denuded of troops, and there the Germans, along with their Bulgarian allies, began massing troops. German planning for this invasion had begun as far back as the beginning of November 1940, just days after a handful of small British detachments arrived in Piraeus. Hitler’s objective was not simply saving Mussolini’s floundering strategic situation, but, more importantly, denying the Royal Navy any possibility of establishing naval bases on the north shore of the Mediterranean.

  For almost three months the Greek and British governments dithered in negotiations about the size and scope of British assistance until mid-February, when it was finally decided that a force of at least three divisions, including one armored, would be sent to Piraeus, and from there northward to the Bulgarian border. All three were drawn from Wavell’s Middle East command; the Western Desert Force was particularly hard hit, giving up half its strength when the 1st Armoured Brigade, 6th Australian Division and 2nd New Zealand Division were tagged to be withdrawn to Alexandria and from there sent to Piraeus. Thus his enemy’s strength had been almost halved by the time Rommel attacked El Agheila, and many of those units that remained were new to the desert, suffering equipment and acclimation problems. Rommel’s attack had caught the British out of position, flatfooted, unable to stage an effective riposte.

  What would become an essential but sometimes overlooked element of the war in North Africa now came into play as Rommel moved north to Mersa el Brega, one which had no small part in how poorly the British were able to anticipate and prepare for Rommel’s strike north. As the Axis forces began pushing up the coast of Cyrenaica, a shadowy, three-cornered, all-but-invisible intelligence battle was taking shape, one that began almost the same day that Rommel arrived in North Africa, steadily growing in intensity. For all that it was relatively bloodless, it was nonetheless waged as fiercely as any of the tank and infantry battles fought by the German, Italian, and British troops in the heat of the desert sun. It was a war of mostly, but not solely, signals intelligence, as radio operators, analysts, and cryptographers, along with spies in locales as distant and disparate as Lisbon, Rome, Cairo, and the suburbs of London, worked around the clock to provide their superiors with bits and pieces of information which, when properly pieced together, could produce operational and strategic advantages which could—and often did—prove decisive in the see-saw campaign in the Libyan desert.

  Part of this shadow war of signals intelligence was Ultra, the British code name for their ultrasecret system of decrypting Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe radio messages sent via the Enigma device, an encryption machine that the Germans believed impossible to “crack,” that is, once a message was encyphered by an Enigma machine, only someone possessing a similar machine with the proper settings could decypher and read it. In what was one of the two best-kept secrets of the Second World War (the other being the Manhattan Project), the British intelligence community was able to construct a machine that could do just that, however, and in early 1941, the radio traffic between Rome, Berlin, and Afrika Korps headquarters, intercepted and “unbuttoned” by Ultra, led the British to believe that Rommel would remain on the defensive at least until the arrival of the 15th Panzer Division in May. When Rommel advanced out of El Agheila, Churchill was convinced, based on the orders from Berlin that had been decyphered by Ultra, that it was not a serious threat, cabling Wavell with the jocular comment, “I presume you are only waiting for the tortoise
to stick his head out far enough before chopping it off.” Wavell replied that, from his own reading of the Ultra intercepts, he was certain the Germans and Italians had no plans for any sort of major offensive, proof that he was, as he later admitted, “very much in the dark as to the enemy’s real strength or intentions.” Likewise, on March 30 Wavell informed Lieutenant General Phillip Neame, the General Officer Commanding-in-Chief and Military Governor of Cyrenaica and hence the commanding officer of the Western Desert Force, that Rommel would stay put in El Agheila for at least a month. Little did they know their man, nor would this be the only time when Rommel would choose to do exactly the opposite of what O.K.W. orders directed. Consequently, Rommel’s panzers were rolling toward Benghazi even while the British in Cairo and London were still convinced that he was not yet ready to attack Mersa el Brega.96

  Each morning for the next six weeks the cry would go out in the predawn darkness, “Aufsteigen!”—“Mount up!”—and the panzer crews, having made whatever early breakfast they could, began to clamber into their tanks, prepared to advance and, if need be, fight yet another day. In the desert more than anywhere else in the world, the tank dominates the battlefield. A roaring, smoke-belching, flame-breathing steel box on treads, a tank is a remarkable combination of awesome power and surprising vulnerability. In the Panzer IIIs and IVs that were the fighting backbone of the Afrika Korps, five men served to crew each tank. The gunner, loader, and tank commander would, with a litheness born of long practice, slide through the hatches on the sides and top of the gun turret, while the driver and radio operator (who did double-duty by manning the hull-mounted bow machine gun if the tank was engaged by enemy infantry) took their places via hatches on the top deck of their machine.