Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel
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Once there, he was greeted with the news that the detailed plans for the defenses of Tobruk—which just a week previously General Gariboldi had categorically stated were unavailable—had suddenly materialized at Afrika Korps headquarters. They arrived too late, of course, to be of any use to the nearly 2,000 German and Italian soldiers killed or wounded in the Easter attacks. Rommel was always convinced that Gariboldi had deliberately withheld them in the hope that Rommel’s initial assaults on the fortress would fail—revenge for Rommel’s defiance of Gariboldi’s orders back in February to not advance beyond Mersa Matruh. Rommel’s already low opinion of Italian senior officers—as opposed to Italian soldiers—plummeted further.
Examining these plans, Rommel immediately saw that the defensive lines protecting Tobruk were far more complex and sophisticated than he had originally believed, and that the individual strongpoints had been constructed with such skill and ingenuity that his original plans for breaking through those positions had been hopelessly optimistic. He also realized that taking Tobruk was a task which might exceed his resources, reporting to Berlin that the “Situation in Bardia [and] Tobruk [grows] graver day by day as British forces increase,” and making the observation that the “Italians are unreliable,” although this particular comment may have been directed more at the Italian Comando Supremo and General Gariboldi than at Italian troops as a whole. Then came a shopping list of requirements and demands: the immediate expansion of the 5th Light Division into a full-strength panzer division; the expedited arrival of the entire 15th Panzer Division; increased German and Italian submarine activity along the North African coast to interdict British reinforcements being sent into Tobruk; and an enormous increase in the number of Luftwaffe squadrons committed to the support of the Afrika Korps.
What stands out in these messages is their agitated and pessimistic tone. They are in marked contrast to the communications of the cool, confident commander who just weeks earlier had airily dismissed the instructions of the O.K.W. and followed his own lead, certain of his strength and ability to sweep the whole of the British Desert Force before him all the way to Alexandria and the Suez. While such a lapse of self-confidence was a rarity in Rommel, the interlude during the third week of April 1941 serves to illustrate that the fox had not yet fully come to terms with the desert.
Naturally, he put on a very composed face in his letters to Lucie (and, as always, understanding that he might indirectly be writing to a larger audience), telling her on April 21 that “Things have quieted down and I’m at last able to collect my thoughts after three weeks on the offensive. It’s been very hectic for the last few weeks. We’re hoping to pull off the offensive into Tobruk very soon. . . . At the moment we’re lying in a rocky hollow, widely dispersed because of very active British aircraft. . . .” He went on to say that he was pretty sure Tobruk’s defenders were being steadily reinforced, but he gave Lucie no reason to believe that he was anything less than fully confident of the outcome of the next attack. Aside from the passing reference to the “very active British aircraft,” no mention was ever made about the strafing attacks. After all, a good husband didn’t worry his wife with things over which she had no control.116
A few days later he provided more details for Lucie:
23 April 1941
Dearest Lu,
Heavy fighting yesterday in front of Tobruk. The situation was highly critical, but we managed to restore it. There’s little reliance to be placed on the Italian troops. They’re extremely sensitive to enemy tanks and as in 1917 quick to throw up the sponge. Newly arrived German units have now made the situation rather more secure. I had a meeting with Gariboldi and Roatta yesterday. . . . I was ceremonially awarded the Italian Medal for Bravery; I am also supposed to be getting the Italian Pour le Mérite. What a trivial business it all is at a time like this. I’ve been able to have my sleep out during the last few days, so now I’m ready for anything again. Once Tobruk has fallen, which I hope will be in ten days or a fortnight, the situation here will be secure. Then there will have to be a few weeks pause before we take on anything new. How are things with you both? There must be a whole lot of post lying at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
25 April 1941
Things are very warm in front of Tobruk. I shan’t be sorry to see more troops arrive, for we’re still very thin on the long fortress front. I’ve seldom had such worries militarily speaking as in the last few days. However, things will probably look different soon. . . . Greece will probably soon be disposed of and then it will be possible to give us more help. . . . The battle for Egypt and the Canal is now on in earnest and our tough opponent is fighting back with all he’s got.117
Still clinging to the idea that a successful attack at Ras el Madauar, in the southwest, would open up the quickest, most direct route to Tobruk’s harbor, the ultimate objective, Rommel began planning an attack that was more methodical and systematic than any of his previous attempts at taking the town. The start date was set for April 30. In the meantime, the Axis forces did their best to increase the pressure on Tobruk’s defenders. Most of the Royal Air Force’s strength in the Middle East was deployed to support the Allied withdrawal from Greece, and by April 25, all the remaining British fighters in Tobruk were withdrawn to Egypt, leaving the bombers and fighters of Fliegerkorps X free to bomb the town and harbor daily practically unopposed. Up at the Egyptian frontier, a hodgepodge of German and Italian units were contesting control of Fort Capuzzo with the British, while increasing the pressure on the defenders at the eastern end of Halfaya Pass, which the British were forced to abandon on the night of April 26, falling back another 20 miles to the coastal village of Buq-buq.
While all this was happening, Rommel was momentarily distracted—and considerably annoyed—by the latest antics of Dr. Göbbels’ Propagan-daministerium. Seeking to exploit Rommel’s popularity with the German people by openly associating him with the Nazi regime, a featured article appeared in an early April issue of the government’s newspaper Das Reich ostensibly presented the officially sanctioned version of Rommel’s life story. In it, he was depicted as the son of a master mason, and was said—quite incorrectly—to have joined the NSDAP in the late 1920s. A copy appeared in Rommel’s command van, and he promptly scrawled “Unsinn!” (“Nonsense!”) across it before confronting Leutnant Alfred Berndt, his chief aide in North Africa and, not entirely coincidentally, a deputy Reichspresschef who reported directly to Göbbels. A fiery letter to the editorial staff of Das Reich quickly followed, in which Rommel made it clear that he was highly displeased at the falsehoods presented in the article. The editor of Das Reich replied, “Wenn es auch nicht stimme, wäre es doch gut, wenn es stimmen würde” (“Even were it not correct, it would nevertheless be good if it were,” or more colloquially “Even if it is not true, it ought to be!”), sort of a Teutonic variant of “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Rommel was not mollified by this in the slightest, and demanded a correction be published. Das Reich complied, but grudgingly, and, in the time-honored tradition of newspapers everywhere, buried the retraction in an obscure section, on an inside page.
Alfred Berndt was a curious, intriguing individual. Unlike Rommel, he was a dedicated member of the Nazi Party and a firm believer in the National Socialist cause. He had been drawn to the Nazi movement while still a teenaged boy, largely due to Hitler’s loud and repeated assurances that once in power he would right the wrongs done to Germany and her people by the Treaty of Versailles: in 1920 Berndt and his family had been forcibly dispossessed and expelled from their home in Prussia by the Poles when the new state of Poland was created by the terms of that treaty. Thirty-one years old when he became Rommel’s aide, tall, powerfully built, with a strong jaw and a mass of wavy dark hair, he was intelligent, educated, literate, and personable. He was also every bit as blunt and outspoken as his commanding officer, and possessed a moral courage which Rommel admired; the two men instinctively liked one another. Berndt would fill much the same role for
Rommel in North Africa as did Karl Hanke in France, that is, he was Rommel’s publicist; after the war, Berndt would become widely regarded in Germany as the creator of the “Desert Fox” legend. He would also prove useful to Rommel in other ways: although only a mere lieutenant, because he had originally joined the Nazi Party in 1923, and was Göbbel’s deputy, he was afforded an access to Adolf Hitler envied by many officers of vastly greater rank and seniority. Throughout the course of the entire North African campaign, whenever there was something to be said directly to Hitler which circumstances did not permit Rommel to say himself, Berndt would go in his stead to the Führerhauptquartier, bearing the message.
A distinctly more significant distraction for Rommel appeared on April 25, with the arrival at the Afrika Korps’ headquarters of Generalleutnant Friedrich Paulus, the Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Franz Halder’s right-hand man. The O.K.W.’s cautious, conservative, highly traditional Chief of Staff was openly contemptuous of Rommel and his undeniably cavalier conduct in North Africa, confiding in his personal diary that “Rommel has not sent us a single clear-cut report in all these days, and I have a feeling that things are in a mess. Reports from officers returning from his command . . . shows that Rommel is in no way equal to his command. . . .” Halder had complete trust in Paulus’ judgment, remarking that “He’s probably the only man with sufficient personal influence to stop this soldier gone raving mad.” Paulus’ task was to provide proof of Halder’s suspicions which the Chief of Staff could take to Hitler and with it demand that the Führer replace the maverick general in North Africa.118
But there was more to Paulus’ mission than simply Halder’s suspicion and envy of Rommel. It is worth noting that there is, in fact, a wealth of evidence in Halder’s personal papers that he was, in varying degrees, naturally suspicious and envious not only of Rommel but of any German general not named Franz Halder. Paulus had been dispatched by the O.K.W. with the specific purpose of discovering exactly what was happening in North Africa: Halder’s pettiness aside, Hitler and his generals were concerned about the dramatic shift in the tone of Rommel’s signals to Berlin which followed the failure of the April 15 attack at Ras el Madauar. Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, was set to begin in less than two months, and the O.K.W. had to be certain that a debacle was not developing in North Africa that could only be redeemed through the diversion of men and materiel already assigned to that mammoth undertaking. Then there were the political issues—it would hardly enhance Germany’s prestige if the general sent to North Africa with the mission of salvaging Italy’s crumbling fortunes there in turn had to be rescued himself. Consequently, Paulus arrived in Africa with the full authority of the O.K.W. to approve or forbid any operation Rommel was planning or had already begun.
Paulus and Rommel had known each other for almost 15 years, both having been company commanders in Stuttgart in the late 1920s, although how well Rommel remembered Paulus from their days as company commanders in Stuttgart is unknown—certainly there was no evidence of any close friendship then or later. Given the fundamental differences in personality and temperament, it is hardly surprising: Paulus was an officer who led through the authority of his office, Rommel was a commander who led through the power of his personality; Paulus was the quintessential staff officer, Rommel the equally quintessential combat commander; Paulus viewed orders as inviolable and compulsory, Rommel saw them as mutable, subject to being modified or outright discarded on the basis of the knowledge and experience of “the man on the spot.” In any event, Rommel was well aware of Paulus’ purpose in North Africa, and made him familiar with all of his plans for the attack on Ras el Madauar; Paulus reserved judgment for the moment and allowed Rommel to proceed with his preparations.
Paulus could not fail to be aware of the tensions that were running high between Rommel and his senior officers, especially between Rommel and Streich. The Afrika Korps’ commander was doing his best to continue to be the useful subordinate, while Rommel continued to treat him with something approaching contempt. At a planning conference on April 25, Streich, dubious about the terrain around Ras el Madauar, tried to offer some pertinent—and pointed—comments about the proposed nighttime advance on the Australian defenses there, and was pointedly ignored by Rommel; two days later, at another planning session, Streich remarked “A few days ago some of my officers and I had a look at the ground southeast of Tobruk. It is level and offers an excellent opportunity of moving our soldiers forward at night, right up to the fortifications; they can then attack at dawn.” Rommel’s reply was “I don’t want to hear any of your plans; I want to hear how you intend to carry out my plan.” As if this open rebuke wasn’t a sufficient display of Rommel’s displeasure with Streich, on April 27 General Heinrich Kirchheim, another newcomer to North Africa, was placed in command of the attack, now scheduled for April 30. At this, Streich knew beyond all doubt that his days in command of the Afrika Korps itself were numbered; the thought caused him little distress however, for the once-cordial relationship he’d shared with Rommel just two months earlier was irretrievably broken: Rommel’s personality was, for Streich, simply too abrasive for the two men to work together in harness any longer.119
At dawn on April 30 a half-dozen artillery regiments, German and Italian, opened fire on the Australian positions in front of Ras el Madauar, their fire plan having been drawn up based on the Italian plans of the Tobruk defenses. At 8:00 P.M., the shelling shifted to targets further back from the front line of fortifications, and two kampfgruppen (battle groups), formed around the armored regiments of the 5th Light and 15th Panzer Divisions and a pair of panzergrenadier battalions, moved forward, breaking through the first line of defenses and overrunning the Australian bunkers and dugouts, driving nearly 2 miles into the Australian lines. As darkness settled, the attack continued, the Germans pressing forward well into the night until just after 2:00 A.M. on May 1, when a fog settled in around Ras el Madauar. Both sides worked to consolidate their positions, as around 8:00 A.M. the fog lifted and the Germans renewed their attacks. It stalled when the German tanks and half-tracks ran into a previously undetected minefield (yet another product of General Morshead’s planning and preparations), which was covered by a combination of 2-pounder antitank guns and British tanks. A dozen Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs were knocked out, a heavy loss for the Afrika Korps, as the stricken tanks were too far forward to be recovered and later repaired.
While “possession of the field” has always been one of the physical as well as psychological measures of victory in a battle, in the Libyan desert it offered a significant material benefit as well: tanks and vehicles that had only been put out of action, but not actually destroyed—broken tank treads, damage to engines, transmissions, or suspensions, or even hits which had done serious injury to the crew but had not done catastrophic damage to the vehicle itself—could be recovered, repaired, and returned to action by whichever side retained possession of the battlefield after the action. For the Afrika Korps in particular, which suffered from a chronic shortage of tanks, this could be a significant advantage—or handicap—depending on which way the battle had gone.
That evening, the Australians counterattacked but were thrown back with heavy casualties. But the Afrika Korps’ attack had stalled, nonetheless, and rather than taking Tobruk as he had expected to do, Rommel had a salient 2 miles deep and 3 miles wide in the Australian lines, at a cost of over 1,200 killed and wounded, and the loss of almost half the armor committed to the attack. (Of 81 Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks engaged, 35 had been knocked out and could not be recovered.) Rommel was convinced that the Italian infantry had failed to do their job, remarking that
The Italians had acquired a very considerable inferiority complex, as was not surprising under the circumstances. Their infantry were practically without antitank guns and their artillery completely obsolete. Their training was also a long way short of modern standards, so that we were continually being faced by serious breakdowns [of moral
e]. Many Italian officers thought of war as little more than a pleasant adventure and were, perforce, having to suffer a bitter disillusionment.120
A sandstorm kicked up on May 2, effectively making any offensive action impossible. The next day, the Australians counterattacked again, this time striking directly at the Italian infantry that had moved up the previous day to bolster the German troops in the salient. Expecting the Italians to easily crumble and break, the Australians were unpleasantly surprised when the Italian infantry fought with skill and determination, losing only a single bunker to the Australian assault. In this action, many of the Italian troops were fighting under the direction of German junior officers and senior NCOs, giving weight to Rommel’s earlier opinion that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the average Italian soldier, but that he was too often let down by incompetent officers.
Meanwhile, Generalleutnant Paulus had seen enough. On the morning of May 4, he formally instructed Rommel to cease any further attempts to take Tobruk by direct assault, and instead lay siege to the town. Since Paulus’ orders had the authority of an O.K.W. behfel, and his presence “on the spot,” as it were, deprived Rommel of any chance to claim that distance had created a false or distorted impression in the collective mind of the General Staff, or any opportunity to creatively “intepret” those orders, Rommel had no choice but to comply. Paulus then departed North Africa, and once back in Berlin made his report to Halder. While it was hardly complimentary to Rommel, it was far from the scathing condemnation for which Paulus’ chief had been hoping. Rommel was indeed, he said, a willful, arrogant officer, self-confident to a fault. At the same time, North Africa was and would remain a sideshow—there was no need to be over-concerned that it would become a distraction from Barbarossa, let alone a major theater for the Axis. Though not precisely what Halder wanted, Halder found Paulus’ report reassuring—Rommel, mad or not, would remain properly sidelined. Intriguingly, it has been said that at some point Paulus considered suggesting that Rommel be relieved of command, with himself to be Rommel’s successor, but that Paulus’ wife, an incurable social-climber, persuaded him that North Africa was not the place where a senior general could make his reputation.121