Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

by Butler, Daniel Allen

  The first day of Battleaxe was over, and the British had attained only one of that day’s objectives: taking Fort Capuzzo. The Halfaya Pass garrison was safely bottled up, but as long as Hauptmann Bach and his gunners held their positions within the pass, possession of Halfaya’s upper and lower ends was a hollow victory. The British armored columns had lost close to a third of their strength, and while something like a third of those tanks put out of action were repairable, the ones lost at Bir Hafid had to be written off entirely, as they fell into German hands at the end of the engagement there. Despite the day’s successes, Rommel knew the battle was far from over, writing to Lucie in the early hours of June 16 that

  There was heavy fighting in our eastern sector all day yesterday, as you will have seen from Wehrmacht communiqués. Today—it’s 2:30 A.M.—will see the decision. It’s going to be a hard fight, so you’ll understand that I can’t sleep. These lines in haste will show you that I’m thinking of you both. More soon when it’s all over.127

  The Germans and Italians had suffered serious losses in infantry and among their antitank guns and gun crews at both Capuzzo and Bir Hafid, but the harsh calculus of desert warfare was such that men were more easily replaced than equipment. Rommel, for his part, had played masterfully on British aggressiveness, repeatedly drawing British armored units into range of his antitank guns, “writing down” British tank strength while avoiding a tank versus tank engagement before he had his armor sufficiently concentrated. By sunrise he would have to hand two nearly complete panzer divisions, and he was not about to let them sit idle.

  When Rommel’s intelligence section warned him on the night of June 14 that Wavell’s attack was expected the next day, it could provide only limited information about British strength and intentions. In the wake of Brevity, XIII Corps had, for the time being at least, improved its wireless security, leaving Leutnant Seebohm and his people very much in the dark. Fortune, however, once more smiled on the Afrika Korps, as just after mid-morning on June 15, a complete list of XIII Corps’ call-signs and unit code-names was found in a knocked-out British armored car. Straining to catch every enemy signal they could, Seebohm and his signal boffins used the list to put together a remarkably accurate estimate of British unit strengths and intentions. It was with this information that Rommel first demonstrated his extraordinary tactical sense, what the Germans call fingerspitzegefühl—the “tingling of the fingers,” or tactical intuition.

  With the 7th Armoured Division having for the time being abandoned their effort to take the Bir Hafid ridge and moved closer to Capuzzo, Rommel saw an opportunity to send the 5th Light Division south, almost to Sidi Omar, then turn east until it was southwest of Halfaya Pass. This would put it in position to strike the 22nd Guards Brigade from the rear and relieve the Axis units defending Halfaya. To prevent the Guards from being reinforced, the 15th Panzer Division would launch an all-out attack of its own against Fort Capuzzo, pinning the 4th Armoured Brigade in place around the fort. Seebohm had deduced that the British intended to begin their own operations that day at dawn, so Rommel decided to get his own punch in first, and directed Neumann-Silkow, 15th Panzer’s commander, to begin moving against Capuzzo in the pre-dawn darkness.

  Going the opposite way, Beresford-Peirse decided that, since Fort Capuzzo was already in XIII Corps’ hands, the best plan of action was to maintain Battleaxe’s original objectives. To this end, he ordered the 11th Infantry Brigade to continue its attack on Halfaya Pass while the 22nd Guards Brigade stood in place, ready to respond to any German effort to relieve the Halfaya garrison. At the same time, the 4th Armoured Brigade would reinforce the 7th Armoured Divsion near Bir Hafid, so that when the expected attack from the west by the 5th Light Division materialized, the Germans would be badly outnumbered. If the German armored force could be dealt sufficient losses to cripple its ability to halt or even interfere with British movements, the way to Tobruk would be open. Despite their own losses and tactical setbacks on the first day of the operation, the British believed that they still had an excellent chance of making Battleaxe a success.

  The 15th Panzer Division “opened the ball” at about 4:00 A.M. when Neumann-Silkow formed his tanks into two columns and closed on Fort Capuzzo in a pincer movement. They didn’t get far: the British had brought forward several 25-pounder field guns during the night, while at the same time digging revetments for the dozen or so Matlidas that remained around Capuzzo. Within six hours two-thirds of 15th Panzer’s tanks were out of action, and it was forced to withdraw, taking whatever crippled vehicles that could be easily retrieved. The good news for the Germans was that, despite the losses, Neumann-Silkow’s attack drew forces away from Wavell’s Coast Force, which made absolutely no progress in its attempt to take Halfaya Pass. It also compelled the 4th Armoured Brigade to abandon its movement westward to reinforce the 7th Armoured Division and instead remain near Capuzzo, sitting idly by while the decisive action of the day would take place on its western flank.

  The 5th Light Division began moving south past the west edge of Hafid Ridge at dawn, shadowed by the armored cars and light tanks of the 7th Armoured Division. From time to time the British cruiser tanks would attempt to pick off the “soft-skinned” German transport. Although these intermittent sallies had some success, they proved expensive for the British in the long run, as when they approached the German columns, the Panzer IIIs and IVs, working in careful coordination, first suppressed whatever supporting artillery accompanied the British armor and then counterattacked, or else feigned a withdrawal with the intent of leading the enemy tanks into a waiting antitank gun ambush. By nightfall, the whole 7th Armoured Division, having lost more than half its cruiser tanks, had fallen back behind the Wire at the Egyptian frontier, not far from where they had begun Battleaxe.

  Rommel accompanied the 5th Light Division when it moved east from Tobruk, but aside from exercising a broad overall command, directing von Ravenstein and Neumann-Silkow as to where and when he wanted their divisions to attack, he had left the tactical decisions to the divisional commanders. Now he took personal command of the battle. Late on the afternoon of June 16 he ordered Neumann-Silkow to leave only a covering force sufficient to contain the British at Capuzzo and bring the rest of the 15th Panzer Division south to take up position on the left flank of the 5th Light. Rommel saw an opportunity to encircle and cut off the 7th Armoured when it began pulling back to the Wire, and at 4:30 A.M., 5th Light and 15th Panzer hit the left flank of the 7th Armoured Division with 75 tanks supported by artillery and antitank guns. Driving straight through the British lines, the panzers almost reached Halfaya Pass before they were stopped. The 4th Indian Division was ordered to withdraw along the coastal road, while the 22nd Guards Brigade was nearly trapped at Fort Capuzzo by Rommel’s bold move.

  Major General Frank Messervy, commander of the 4th Indian Division, ordered the surviving British armor to form a screen to cover the retreat of the infantry formations. The German wireless intercept unit caught a message from Major General Michael Creagh, commander of the 7th Armoured, to Beresford-Pierse, asking for confirmation of that order. “It sounded suspiciously as though the British commander no longer felt himself capable of handling the situation,” Rommel would later remark about this moment. “It being now obvious that in their present bewildered state the British would not start anything for the time being, I decided to pull the net tight by going on to Halfaya.” The British tanks fought a tenacious six-hour battle against the two panzer divisions, ably supported by the fighters and medium bombers of the RAF, but their courage could not change the ultimate outcome of the battle. By midday, the 7th Armoured Division could muster fewer than 40 tanks, and Wavell, who had flown up to Beresford-Peirse’s headquarters the previous afternoon, chose to forego wasting further men and materiel in what was clearly a lost cause, ordering all of his units to fall back across the Egyptian frontier. The tank battle south of Halfaya gradually petered out as the afternoon progressed, and Rommel was distinctly unhappy (�
��furious” was the word he used) that the British had managed to escape, albeit without most of their tanks, believing, incorrectly as it turned out, that the 5th Light and 15th Panzer had reached Halfaya in time to prevent the enemy’s withdrawal.128

  Actual losses in the battle were comparatively light for both sides, the British suffering just under 1,000 killed, wounded, or captured; the combined German and Italian casualties numbered around 1,300 (the Italian records are incomplete). Ninety-eight British tanks were written off as total losses, either destroyed or captured, while only a dozen German panzers were actually destroyed—the remainder of the German tanks knocked out during the battle were eventually repaired and put back into service. An additional boon for the Afrika Korps was the large number of British trucks that were captured, and at least a score of British tanks abandoned on the battlefield were easily repaired and put to work for their new masters. The British had suffered yet another defeat, there was no other way to describe the outcome of Battleaxe. They had no reserves left, Tobruk was still besieged, and the road to Alexandria lay wide open to the Afrika Korps. Only his critical supply situation would keep Rommel from advancing into Egypt.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CRUSADER

  The mark of a great general is to know when to retreat, and dare to do it.

  —ARTHUR WELLESLEY,

  1st Duke of Wellington

  Ironically—and disappointingly, from Rommel’s point of view—hardly had the world become aware of the defeat he had handed the British in so thoroughly blunting Battleaxe than it was forgotten. A mere five days after Wavell called off the attack, the titanic offensive known as “Barbarossa,” the Wehrmacht’s invasion of the Soviet Union, jumped off in the predawn hours of June 22, 1941, and for most of the world, the war in North Africa was immediately relegated to the status of a sideshow. Gripping though it had been, with tens of thousands of men fighting across hundreds of miles, it was quickly superceded in the popular imagination at the time—and largely thereafter—by the spectacle of millions of men locked in mortal combat across a front of thousands of miles. Hence it was not readily apparent at the time, and has often been overlooked as such in the histories of the Desert War that would appear in the decades to follow, that Battleaxe was the watershed event of the Desert War. It compelled Churchill and the British War Cabinet to rethink Great Britain’s entire grand strategy, and triggered the process by which North Africa and the Mediterranean would for the Allies become a major theater of operations and for the Axis become a major strategic liability.

  For Rommel, his victory in Battleaxe—the Germans would know it as the Sollumschlact, the Battle of Sollum—was transformative. Battleaxe was his first real battle, one of fire and movement, where he was variously required to defend, maneuver, or attack, as the tactical and operational situation dictated, fighting against a determined, disciplined, and organized enemy who possessed his own sound plan of operations. Up to this point it could be fairly said that, no matter how spectacular his achievements, Rommel as a commanding officer had been something of a glorified military opportunist, at heart still the young company commander exploiting the assault on Mount Matajur at Longarone, albeit now writ overly large. Battleaxe was his first true test as a corps commander, which he passed with full marks; after Battleaxe, Rommel would deploy and move his units with far greater assurance and aplomb than he had previously displayed.

  Battleaxe can rightly be said to also mark the beginning of the legend of the Desert Fox. Rommel’s letters home to Lucie and Manfred were nothing short of jubilant, mirroring the mood of the officers and men of the Afrika Korps. In a letter written on June 18, he said “The battle today has ended in complete victory. I’m going to go round the troops today to thank them and issue orders.” Five days later, he told her how he had “been three days on the road going round the battlefield.”

  The joy of the “Afrika” troops over this latest victory is tremendous. The British thought they could overwhelm us with their 400 tanks [Rommel’s intelligence section had overestimated the strength of the 7th Armoured Division]. We couldn’t put that amount of armor against them. But our grouping and the stubborn resistance of German and Italian troops who were surrounded for days together, enabled us to make the decisive operation with all the forces we still had mobile. Now the enemy can come, he’ll get an even bigger beating.129

  Rommel’s mention of the Italians is noteworthy, especially in light of his caustic remarks about their courage and utility—or lack thereof—in action around Tobruk just six weeks earlier. Rommel knew that the gravest problem with the Italian units was not the raw material of their soldiers, but rather the Italian officers, whom he regarded as incompetent, indolent, self-indulgent and unmotivated; they were given command of better men than they deserved. As Bach demonstrated in defending the Halfaya Pass, Italian troops could fight with skill and determination when led by competent officers and NCOs. While they might never be the world’s best soldiers, the Italians could be good soldiers, and Rommel knew how to use good soldiers.

  Inevitably, Leutnant Berndt, the Propaganda Ministry officer assigned to the Afrika Korps and whom Rommel employed as an aide, made the most of Battleaxe. Handsome, articulate, and victorious, Rommel was every propaganda officer’s dream; Berndt, who had become a thoroughgoing soldier in his service with Rommel, was still, at heart, a public relations flack, and very good at it, too, so naturally he waxed somewhat overly lyrical in praising Rommel to the German people. Nonetheless, his comments are worth consideration, as they exerted a strong influence on not only how Rommel was perceived by the German people at the time, but also how he would be regarded outside Germany after the war ended.

  He [Rommel] is a master of deception and disguise, and always does what one least expects. If the enemy believe we are particularly strong at one place, then you can be sure we are weak. If they think we are weak and venture close to us, then we are strong. “With your general we just didn’t know where we were!”—that’s what one British prisoner complained. If he stages attacks coupled with feint attacks, then the enemy virtually always think the wrong one is the real one. If the enemy act on what they regard as the typical signs of feint attacks, then next time it is different and they are wrong again.130

  What Berndt never spoke of, lest it tarnish the image of Rommel as le chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, was Rommel’s volatile temperament, his exacting, if sometimes vague, standards of conduct for his officers, and an apparent pettiness, or retributive streak, toward those who angered or crossed him. His dismissal of Streich was regarded by many of his fellow officers as a grave injustice, and indeed, it blighted Streich’s career. Rommel believed that Streich had repeatedly been insolent, something which a commanding officer should not and cannot countenance from anyone. And perhaps Streich was insolent, particularly in the actions around Tobruk in April and May—the remark he made to Rommel after the death of von Prittwitz about killing both his divisional commanders in the same day certainly was. Some sort of disciplinary action had to be taken, if only for appearances’ sake, but Rommel should have recognized that this was not an instance of a wisecracking private mocking his platoon sergeant in barracks. Streich was an experienced combat officer, who had lashed out in the midst of battle at what he regarded as a patently absurd situation. Rommel should have taken counsel of the kernel of truth in what Streich had implied: that his own rashness was getting good men killed for no purpose. Instead, Sterich went home in disgrace; the harshness of the punishment far exceeding the degree of the offense.

  And there were others: General Kirchheim, Colonel Olbricht, Major Köhn, all of them subjected to courts-martial or dismissal for little more than challenging one of Rommel’s tactical decisions or operational judgments. Oberstleutnant Count von Schwerin asked to be transferred out of North Africa because he could no longer work under Rommel’s command. General Bodewin Keitel, commanding the army’s Personnel Department, would record “It is remarkable that in the case of one offi
cer, a battalion commander of the Fifth Panzer Regiment, a recommendation for the Knight’s Cross, a cowardice charge, and his dismissal followed one another in the briefest of intervals.” Just as it had been in France, not only was Rommel’s temper volatile, it was mercurial: at one point he threatened General von Kirckheim with dismissal, then just hours later denied ever having done so. The number of formal complaints reaching Berlin in regard to Rommel’s behavior toward his subordinate reached such a point that von Brauchitsch felt compelled to reprimand Rommel, in the bluntest possible language, informing him that he was threatening his own professional future. “I think it my duty to tell you all this, not only in the interest of the Afrika Korps, but in your own personal interest, too.”131

  The source of Rommel’s ill temper is difficult to pin down. Not all of the officers who lodged formal complaints against him with O.K.W. can be written off as whiners or overly sensitive souls whose feelings had been hurt. Some allowance can be made for the fact that Rommel was not particularly quick to acclimate to North Africa, and that he felt the effects of the heat more than many other officers. Of course, the reason why that was so stemmed from his own vanity. It would be months after his arrival at Tripoli that he would concede to practicality and begin wearing short trousers and working in his shirtsleeves. Thus for those first months his daily uniform consisted of jodhpurs, riding boots, and a wool uniform jacket (complete with all of his decorations) worn over a uniform shirt, all the while surrounded by men working far more comfortably in shirtsleeves and cutoff trousers. The heat of Rommel’s temper may have originated in the fact that he was cooking inside that uniform, a victim of his own ego. Nonetheless, he still had a responsibility as the senior German officer to be more judicious and exercise more wisdom in his relationships with his subordinates. As it was, the Afrika Korps’ command structure underwent a thorough housecleaning in the weeks after Battleaxe, after which Rommel pronounced himself satisfied with the performance of his officers.