Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel

- Daniel Allen Butler

In the early years of Second World War historiography, characters such as Erwin Rommel assumed a prominence as “Good Germans” they did not always deserve. Part of this was for political reasons - drawing a line between the supposedly clean-handed Wehrmacht as opposed to the bloody-handed SS, a divide that existed only in the minds of people who promoted the myth for political purposes - but also to explain British and later American defeats at the hands of a handful of remarkable generals who served an evil cause. Rommel was very much the beneficiary of both reasons, at least partly because he fought a reasonably clean war that could be admired, in stark contrast to German officers who served Hitler loyally and profited accordingly, all the while turning a blind eye or actively encouraging the atrocities that came to mark the eastern front as one of the most brutal battlefields in human history. Rommel also had the advantage of being implicated in the plot to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944, which gave him a glamour no other German officer could match.

The myth of Rommel’s combination of military skill and willingness to take a stand against the Nazis, therefore, has remained very pronounced, even with the benefit of more modern scholarship. The only other person who can claim to have been mythologized on such a scale is Robert E. Lee and Lee, at least, could be charged with costing his side the war. Rommel cannot be so accused. But it is a myth. The real Rommel was a very different man. In this book, Daniel Allen Butler has set out to separate the myth from reality.

In his retelling, Rommel was a common-born soldier who had a surprisingly controversial life prior to his service to Adolf Hitler. Among other escapades, he cheated on his fiancée with another woman and impregnated her, then – somehow – convinced his soon-to-be wife to allow that woman and his bastard daughter to live with them, apparently in harmony. This was the only moment he was unfaithful to her, and he remained very close to his wife (often writing to her every day) until his death. The unfortunate woman, forced to pose as a close relative (a not implausible story) eventually died; it was suspected she committed suicide, although the truth will never be known for sure.

It was the First World War that was the making of him. Unlike many other German officers who would serve on the Western Front, Rommel spent much of his career in the Romanian and Italian campaigns, giving him a different experience and insight into what technology and audacity made possible. Rommel took immense risks, but they often paid off. He was later described as pioneering Blitzkrieg, although that wasn’t true and he paid little role in the development of the concept. At the time, he was still a very junior officer.

Rommel’s attitude to the Nazis was complicated. On one hand, he regarded them as pretentious and flatly refused to allow his son to join the SS. He was not amused by their conduct, and thought the rank-and-file fools. On the other hand, his personal relationship with Adolf Hitler was warm and friendly, at least until the Mediterranean campaign turned him permanently against the Axis. Both Rommel and Hitler were essentially enlisted men turned good, giving them something in common that was missing in their relationships with the old guard of generals, most of whom came from the military aristocracy. They clearly bonded, and Hitler took a certain degree of interest in Rommel’s early career. Rommel, it seems, had nothing but respect for Hitler even as he scorned the Nazi Party.

The arrival of the Second World War gave Rommel a chance to prove what he could do. He played a major role in the conquest of France, then was given command of the Afrika Korps in the wake of Italian defeats that threatened their empire and - more importantly, from Hitler’s point of view - Germany’s soft underbelly. Rommel had orders to stand on the defensive, orders he gleefully ignored. The Afrika Korps went on the offensive at once, tricking a seesaw series of battles that raged back-and-forth until El Alamein. If Rommel had been given the supplies he needed, it is quite likely he would have reached Cairo and the Suez Canal. In reality, his logistics were a constant nightmare, permanently on the verge of being cut once and for all. He came very close to losing everything more than once, including his life.

His relationship with his Italian allies was a mixed bag. Rommel respected the average Italian soldier, but not the leaders or their equipment. He managed to get on good terms with some of them, yet never formed close relationships with their superior officers. He was frequently clashing with the Italian High Command and Mussolini, particularly after the latter lost much of his influence in this country. His own superiors saw him as something of a maverick, although he was good at convincing visitors he knew what he was doing. However, as the tide of the war turned against the Axis, Rommel started to slip out of favour. To him, it was increasingly clear that the war might well be lost - and Hitler didn’t seem to realise or care.

As he came to personalise the battles in North Africa, to the point of being mentioned by name by Winston Churchill, it is fair to say Rommel fought a relatively clean war (although it should be noted that the opportunity for atrocities was often lacking). He was lucky in his opponents - the best British general of the time, Richard O’Connor, was captured fairly early on and escaped too late to have any major influence on desert war - and also in weaknesses hardwired into the British military machine. However, this changed when he was forced to fight a battle on the enemy’s terms, which ended badly at El Alamein. Rommel was driven back into Libya, then French North Africa (where he bested the Americans at Kasserine Pass), and finally recalled to Europe, where he helped plan the defence of Italy before finally being sent to command the German defences in France.

By this point, Rommel was thoroughly disenchanted with the Nazis and Hitler himself. The dictator meddled, all the while constantly veering between insane optimism and pessimism, driven by a complete lack of awareness of modern war. Rommel apparently believed the war was lost, not least because American and British airpower would cripple any German response to the coming landings. He rarely expressed his doubts, however, and had little contact with plotters against Adolf Hitler. Indeed, as bad luck would have it, he was in the hospital after an air attack when the plot to kill Hitler went into operation. Unfortunately, it failed.

Rommel’s exact involvement is difficult to establish. The author believes he was largely uninvolved. He had the misfortune to be named by a conspirator who was being tortured and might well have been innocent of any involvement, contrary to the myth. (If Rommel had been involved, and he had been able to get over his reluctance to assassinate his political leader, it is hard to believe the aftermath of the bomb plot would have gone so badly.) For various reasons, Hitler chose to bully Rommel into committing suicide in 1944, on condition his family were spared. Surprisingly, after Rommel took poison, Hitler kept his side of the agreement. But then, it would have been terrible for German morale if a hero like Rommel turned on the regime. The Nazis may have been the original source of the Rommel myth.

Rommel has been taken to be a rare hero of the German military, a warrior untarnished by Nazi atrocities. This is not wholly accurate. Rommel apparently chose to turn a blind eye to a number of atrocities, possibly including shooting prisoners. He also never had to decide if he wanted to let the Einsatzgruppen into Cairo and Palestine, a decision that would have cost the lives of countless Jews and Muslims. But then, he did not ever have to make that decision and he would probably have been overruled if he said no. It’s unlikely the Nazis would have honoured his decision.

He might have grown disenchanted with the regime, and Hitler himself, but he made no concentrated attempt to do anything about it. In that, he is one with a long and dishonourable list of German officers who did nothing about the monster they served.

The book also highlights a number of potential points of divergence, for alternate history fans.  Rommel could have been side-lined permanently after trying to get the Hitler Youth subordinated to the Wehrmacht. He could have been passed over for the coveted post that put him close, alarmingly so, to Adolf Hitler.  He could have easily been killed or captured quite a few times, during the Desert War, and he could have had a free hand in preparing the defences of France against Operation Overlord. (He was pessimistic about Germany’s chances, but hasty counterattacks on the bridgeheads might have smashed the landings before airpower took its toll.) And he could have avoided being fingered during the interrogations after the bombing plot, leaving him alive to keep fighting for Germany.  This would not have saved the regime, but Himmler – apparently – saw the much-respected Rommel as a potential conduit to negotiate a surrender with the western allies.  It is unlikely this would have worked – at this point, Germany had nothing to bargain with – but it remains a possibility. And the prospect of Rommel surviving into the 1950s, after the war, might force the Germans – and everyone else – to come to terms with the myth, and their role in perpetrating it.

Rommel was, the book concludes, a complex character who was more than just the admirable Desert Fox. He served an evil cause, and was lucky enough not to have to grapple with the grim realities of Nazi Germany. He was also lucky enough to have a free hand and opponents who couldn’t match him and his troops, giving him a chance to achieve results far out of proportion to his resources. But much of the myth is nothing more than a myth. Rommel was not directly involved in the bomb plot, or any other attempt to assassinate Hitler, and the inevitable end result of a Nazi Victory – or even a compromise peace – would have been misery on a scale beyond imagination.

Overall, Field Marshal is a very interesting read. And well worth your time if you want to understand the man behind the myth.