(November 5, 1891–October 14, 1944)

German General

Rommel, the legendary “Desert Fox,” was one of the master spirits of military history. He blazed a trail of glory across North Africa and at Kasserine Pass handed U.S. forces their first major defeat. Afterward, he was entrusted with the defenses of Normandy but was caught up in a conspiracy against Hitler and forced to commit suicide.

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel was born in Hedienheim, Württemberg, on November 5, 1891, the son of a schoolteacher. Although his family lacked traditions of military service, he joined an infantry regiment as a cadet in 1910 and rose to lieutenant two years later. World War I commenced in August 1914, and Rommel accompanied his regiment into France, being twice wounded and receiving the Iron Cross for bravery. The following year he was assigned to the elite Württemberg Mountain Battalion and served in Romania before being transferred to the Italian front. He fought with distinction during the spectacular Battle of Caporetto in October 1917, displaying the reckless courage and consummate skill that became his trademarks. With only 200 men, Rommel stormed an Italian artillery battery, outflanked numerous enemy positions, and captured an astonishing 9,000 prisoners and 81 cannons! For such conspicuous leadership he received the prestigious Pour le Merite—Germany’s highest award—and a promotion to captain. Rommel, much to his disgust, ended the war behind a desk performing staff work.

After World War I, Rommel was retained by the diminished postwar army—the Reichswehr—in which he served as a company commander. In 1929, he was billeted with the Infantry School in Dresden as an instructor and spent the next four years honing his tactical skills. By 1935, he was allowed to attend the prestigious Kriegsakademie (war college), and two years later he published a best-selling manual entitled Infantry Attacks. More than 400,000 copies of this significant text were printed, and it became required reading in military institutions around the world. Among its biggest enthusiasts was a future U.S. general, George C. Patton. Rommel’s growing celebrity soon brought him to the attention of Adolf Hitler, who placed him in temporary command of the Hitler Youth to improve their discipline. Rommel disdained politics and evinced no real enthusiasm for Nazism, but like a good soldier he obeyed. In 1938, he rose to command Hitler’s bodyguard during the 1938 occupation of the Sudetenland and handled his charge with skill and professionalism. After a brief stint as head of the Kriegsakademie, Rommel returned to Hitler’s bodyguard throughout the opening phases of World War II. The general, however, wanted to fight, so Hitler awarded him the command of the Seventh Panzer Division in February 1940. The fact that Rommel was an infantry officer with no prior experience in armor tactics demonstrated Hitler’s confidence in him.

During the ensuing campaign against France in May 1940, Rommel quickly established himself as a tactical virtuoso, one of Germany’s most promising military leaders. Having cleared the dense Ardennes Forest, which most experts considered impassible, Rommel crossed the Meuse River under fire and spearheaded the advance. The Seventh Division moved with such alacrity that it garnered the nickname Ghost Corps. Rommel, in truth, was a general who led from the front. In the course of severe fighting he exposed himself recklessly and was nearly captured twice. His tanks were looming outside the port of Dunkirk, trapping British forces inside, when he received a personal order from Hitler to halt. This interval allowed the British to heroically evacuate their soldiers, but Rommel subsequently distinguished himself in the drive toward Cherbourg. By the time the fighting stopped, his division had netted 98,000 prisoners along with tanks, cannons, and other equipment. Consequently, in January 1941 the young general was promoted to lieutenant general and given command of a new formation, the Afrika Korps.

Since the beginning of the war, the Italian war effort in North Africa had gone badly. Hitler was thus prompted to lend troops and material assistance to his fascist ally, Benito Mussolini. Rommel arrived in Libya in February 1941 with orders to remain on the defensive and allow the Italians to do the fighting. However, he quickly perceived weakness in British defenses and attacked without delay. In a lightning campaign, he ran British forces out of Cyrenaica with such tactical guile that they dubbed him the “Desert Fox.” Both sides paused to rest and regroup until November 1941. Then a determined British counterstrike drove the Afrika Korps back into Libya. Undeterred, Rommel received fresh reinforcements and promptly counterattacked, driving the overextended British from Cyrenaica again. On June 21, 1942, he scored a major victory by capturing the British-held port of Tobruk, a feat that earned him a promotion to field marshal—the youngest in German history.

Never one to waste a moment, Rommel kicked off a drive toward the Suez Canal. He pursued the fleeing British to the very gates of Egypt before encountering superior forces under Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery. The Afrika Korps was by this time exhausted and low on supplies when Rommel departed for Berlin to receive medical attention. Montgomery, meanwhile, continued massing superior numbers of troops and tanks before attacking across the line at El Alamein in October. The Germans under Gen. Fritz Bayerlein fought furiously, but Montgomery slowly forced them back. Rommel, meanwhile, hastily returned and commanded the final days of battle. He conducted a masterful retreat to Tunisia and abandoned Libya to the British—against Hitler’s directives. El Alamein had been a defeat, but thanks to the Desert Fox it was not a disaster.

There was more bad news for the Germans. In the fall of 1942 U.S. forces under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower landed in Algeria and headed west for Tunisia. Montgomery, meanwhile, cautiously advanced along the coast from Egypt. This placed the Afrika Korps between two rapidly closing jaws. At length, Gen. Albert Kesselring, the German overall commander, authorized an offensive against U.S. forces in the vicinity of Kasserine Pass. It was hoped that the Americans could be eliminated as a threat by smashing the II Corps before Montgomery arrived in Tunisia. Rommel, always eager to attack, embraced the plan, but Gen. Hans-Jurgen Arnim, commanding the Fifth Panzer Army, only sullenly cooperated. On February 14, 1942, Arnim commenced his attack at Sidi bou Zid, and the raw, inexperienced Americans were routed. Rommel enjoyed similar success two days later, and for a time it appeared that the entire II Corps could be surrounded and destroyed. However, this required reinforcements from the Fifth Panzer Army, which Arnim refused to supply. It took a personal visit and a direct order from Kesselring before the recalcitrant general complied. Arnim then dispatched men and equipment to Rommel as ordered but defiantly withheld badly needed tanks. At length, U.S. resistance stiffened and Rommel’s attack petered out. For the loss of 1,000 men, the Germans had inflicted six times that number, along with several hundred tanks destroyed. The Americans had come off poorly in this, their first brush with the veteran Wehrmacht, and Eisenhower shook up his entire command structure. Consequently, leadership of the II Corps was passed to little-known Patton, whose rise the Germans came to regret.

Within weeks the Americans recouped their losses and, in concert with the British Eighth Army, closed in on Tunisia. Rommel, sick again, was evacuated before Arnim finally surrendered in May 1943. Rommel next received temporary command of troops in Italy before transferring north to France. There he served under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and oversaw defensive preparations to repel the anticipated cross-channel invasion from England. Rommel, who had firsthand experience fighting the British and Americans, felt that they must be defeated at the beach and not allowed to proceed inland. Allied control of the air, he feared, would pin the reserves in place before they could advance. He therefore wished to place his hard-hitting panzer forces as close to the front as possible. However, this strategy brought him into conflict with Rundstedt, who sought to lure the Allies inland before destroying them in a classic panzer attack. Both were overruled by Hitler, who moved all armored forces to the rear, from which they could be moved only with his express permission. This was the worst possible arrangement, so Rommel redoubled his efforts to make the beaches as costly to Allied landings as possible. Fortifications and gun emplacements were erected at threatened points, and more than 4 million mines were laid. “The war will be won or lost on the beaches,” he warned. “We’ll have only one chance to stop the enemy and that’s while he’s in the water struggling to get ashore.”

When the Allies finally and unexpectedly landed at Normandy on June 6, 1944, masked by poor weather, Rommel was reposing at home. He conferred with Hitler about strategy, strongly suggesting that the Führer consider a negotiated peace settlement while the German army was still intact. Hitler grew enraged at the mere suggestion; Rommel’s standing was greatly diminished in Hitler’s eyes. Once back at the front in July, Rommel observed how the Allies were bottled up in rough country surrounding the beachhead. Enemy aircraft and naval gunfire negated all German efforts to crush the foothold. On July 17, 1944, while returning to the front, Rommel’s car was attacked by British airplanes, he was wounded, and he returned home to convalesce. Three days later, disgruntled officers staged a failed bomb attack against Hitler, who ordered the immediate arrest of all suspected collaborators, including the Desert Fox. Although Rommel’s complicity in the scheme was dubious, a pair of generals arrived at his home to inform him of a choice between suicide or a trial before a people’s court. To spare his family further retribution if he were tried, Rommel chose the former course, dying on October 15, 1944. His cause of death was publicly announced as a heart attack, and he received a state funeral. Thus closed the career of one of history’s legendary generals, a man so talented, heroic, and chivalrous that he was revered by friends and enemies alike. The Desert Fox remains the epitome of initiative and boldness on the battlefield.

Bibliography

Barnett, Correlli, ed. Hitler’s Generals. New York: Grove Weidenfield, 1989; Chant, Christopher, ed. Hitler’s Generals and Their Battles. London: Salamander Books, 1977; Cortesi, Lawrence. Rommel’s Last Stand. New York: Kensington, 1984; Fraschka, Gunter. Knights of the Reich. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1994; Fraser, David. Knight’s Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. New York: HarperCollins, 1993; Irving, David J. Rommel: The Trail of the Fox. Ware, Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1999; Kuhn, Volkmar. Rommel in the Desert: Victories and Defeats of the Afrika Korps, 1941–1943. West Chester, PA: Schiffer, 1991; Livesey, Anthony. Great Commanders and Their Battles. New York: Macmillan, 1998; Lucas, James S. Hitler’s Commanders: German Bravery in the Field, 1939–1945. London: Cassell, 2000; Lucas, James S. Hitler’s Enforcers. London: Arms and Armour, 1996; Marshall, Charles F. Discovering the Rommel Murder: The Life and Death of the Desert Fox. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994; Mitcham, Samuel W. The Desert Fox in Normandy: Rommel’s Defense of Fortress Europe. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997; Rommel, Erwin. Rommel: In His Own Words. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1994; Watson, Bruce A. Exit Rommel: The Tunisian Campaign, 1942–1943. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.