| Rommel | General-Feldmarschall Erwin Rommel 1891-1944 | |
| Born in 1891 in Heidenheim, the son of a schoolmaster, Rommel was a
thrifty, loyal and punctual man, with some similarities to Guderian; impatient
with authority and capable of driving his men beyond their normal limits.
In the First World War he led his man into ferocious fighting at Caporetto
in the Italian mountains, and was recommended for the highest Imperial
decoration for bravery, pour le Mérite. In the postwar army
he became an instructor of tactics, using his experiences and sucesses
from the war, and published his lectures as a book: Infanteri Greift
An. This bestseller brougth him fame and fortune and the attention
of Hitler.
In 1936 Rommel was selected for Hitler's escort at the Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg, and had been made General-major in 1939 when he commanded Hitler's escort for the duration of the Polish campaign. Through that association he got command of the Seventh Panzer Division for the attack on France in 1940, although he had no practical experience with tank warfare. He suprised the officers of his division with a "Heil Hitler" greeting and distributed to them copies of his book. |
| His crossing of the River Meusse on May 13th was a tactical triumph, and he began moving out of this bridgehead in the morning of the 15th. Within hours he encountered a French division of Char Bs, who had run their fuel tanks dry in their attemp to reach the battlefield. The 37mm guns were quite unable to make any impression on the armor of the Char B, so Rommel called up Stuka dive-bombers to destroy the French and set off for the west. To break the created Panzer corridor, two British tank regiments broke into the 7th Panzer Division's line of march behind its armored spearhead near Arras on 21 May, inflicting serious losses. Rommel reacted with uncharacteristic panic, but halted the enemy's advance by concentrating the entire sources of his artillery, including his 88mm anti-aircraft guns. He emerged from the campaign with an established reputation as a tank leader with real flair. During the French campaign the 7th Panzer Division earned the title "Ghost Division" as no one knew were it was, including the German High Command. |
 |
 |
|
|
|
| Sent to North Africa in January 1941 to the assistance of the stricken
Italians, Rommel proceeded to win a reputation as a strategist and theater
commander. The "Afrika Korps" consisted of two divisions, the 5th Light
Division which arrived at Tripoli on 14 February 1941 and followed in April
by the 15th Panzer Division. Acting independently of his superior, Marshal
Gariboldi, the Italian Commander-in-Chief, and forbidden by Berlin to take
offensive action before the end of May, Rommel directed every unit of the
5th Light eastwards as soon as it landed. On 24 March he had its first
combat engagement with the British blocking El Agheila, who abandoned the
position. Rommel immediately used the mobility of his division in the best
tradition of Blitzkrieg, spliting his forces into three battlegroups to
drive along the coast and inland. Flying overhead in his Fieseler Storch,
he was able to land frequently beside the heads of the columns to push
his officers further.
It was the Panzerwaffe's sword-and-shield combination of tanks, anti-tank guns (especially the 88mm) and tank-destroyers that won many battles, often resulting in the Germans retaining the battlefield and therefor be able to recover damaged vehicles. Meanwhile the Royal Navy and the RAF wreaked such havoc in the sea lanes that the supplies reaching North Africa were insufficient. Through occasionally overbold, Rommel retained the initiative in the fight with the British until the summer of 1942, when the balance of force shifted decisively in the British favor, and even then he made Montgomery pay a high price for his victory at El Alamein. On 8 November 1942, when the British and Americans landed in Algeria and Morocco, the Afrika Korps had about twenty tanks left, and Rommel was forced to retreat through Libya to Tunisia, a distance of 2400 km, fighting only rearguard actions when absolutely necessary. Yet Hitler was determined to maintain a military presence in Africa, which was only a secondary theatre when compared to Russia, and commenced shipping a steady stream of new formations across to Tunisia. These included the 10th Panzer Division and the Tigers of sPzAbt 501 and 1/sPzAbt 504. Rommel and General Hans-Jurjen von Arnim conducted a vigorous defense of Tunisia against the combined Allied armies, inflicting serious damage, but Rommel was sent on sick-leave before it fell on 12 May 1943. After returning to Germany, he was decorated by Hitler with the highest order of the Iron Cross: Oakleaves with swords and diamonds. |
 |
 |
|
studying the air attack chart |
|
| Next sent to France as commander of Army Group B under Rundstedt in
the invasion sector, he worked vigorously to improve the defences of the
Channel coast. He and Rundstedt disagreed over the location of the armor
for the defensive battle; Rommel, chastened by his defeat in Africa and
his experience with Allied airpower, was in favour of defeating the invaders
before they could establish themselves ashore. Rundstedt and Guderian expressed
the opposite view, that adequate reserves of panzers were to be stationed
far enough inland from the Atlantic Wall, so that they could be switched
easily to the main invasion front once it had been recognised. After the
invasion in Normandy, Hitler continued to believe that the Normandy landings
were a feint and that sooner or later the Allies would make their main
invasion effort near Calais.
Despite losing the argument, Rommel contained the Allied landings and blunted their early attempts at break-out. On July 17th, however, he was strafed in his staff car by a British fighter and severely wounded. Before he had fully recovered, he fell under suspicion of complicity in the Bomb Plot and was offered by Hitler the choice of disgrace or suicide. He chose the latter, was declared to have died of his wounds and buried with state pomp. Though never tested against the Russians, or at the highest level of command, the evidence suggests that Rommel was one of Germany's greatest soldiers. Even the Allies felt a rueful admiration for the "Desert Fox", although a great deal of his success stemmed from a highly developed sense of opportunism which occasionally led into mere gambling. |
 |
 |
|
|
|
