World War II: The Desert Fox

Erwin (Johannes Eugen) Rommel

The Desert Fox / Der Wustenfuchs

Erwin Rommel was born on November 15th of 1891 in Heidenheim an der Brentz near Ulm in the state of Wurttemberg. His father was a schoolteacher and his mother was a daughter of a former president of the government of Wurttemberg. Rommel planned to be an engineer but joined the army in July of 1910.He enlisted with his local infantry regiment, the 124th (6th Wurttemberg) Infantry Regiment as an officer cadet. After three months, Erwin Rommel was promoted to the rank of Corporal and after six to Sergeant. In March of 1911, he went to the officers' military school in Danzig (Gdansk). In January of 1912,Rommel was commissioned and returned to his regiment in Weingarten. While he was in Danzig, Erwin Rommel met and fell in love with Lucie Maria Mollin and they became formally engaged in 1915 and both were married in 1916. On Christmas Eve of 1928, their only child, Manfred was born. Since 1912, until the outbreak of World War I, Erwin Rommel served as regimental officer in charge of recruiting at Weingarten. On August 2nd of 1914, Rommel's regiment marched out to war and Rommel joined them few days later because he had to stay behind in Weingarten. Since the beginning of his military career, Erwin Rommel showed signs of bravery while attacking the enemy against the odds. In September of 1914, Rommel was wounded in the leg when, he charged three Frenchmen with a bayonet because he run out of ammunition. After returning to the frontlines in the Argonne area, in January of 1915, Erwin Rommel received his first decoration for bravery - Iron Cross Class I. In September/October of 1915, Rommel was transferred to the mountain unit for training. In late 1916, Erwin Rommel was posted to the Eastern (Carpathian) Front, in the area of Siebenburgen, where he was to fight with Rumanians. In May of 1917, Erwin Rommel was transferred to the Western Front, in the area of Hilsen Ridge, and in August back to Carpathian Front, where he took part in the assaults on Mount Cosna and Caporetto. For his outstanding action at Caporetto, Erwin Rommel was awarded the "Pour le Merite" and was promoted to the rank of Captain. Rommel was one of few junior officers awarded the "Pour le Merite", which was reserved for generals. Shortly after, Erwin Rommel was posted away to a junior staff appointment, where he remained to the end of the war. In mid December of 1918, Captain Erwin Rommel was reposted to his old regiment at Weingarten. In the summer of 1919, Rommel was sent to Friedrichshafen to command internal security company and in January of 1921, to Stuttgart where he commanded and infantry regiment. Erwin Rommel remained in Stuttgart until October of 1929, when he was posted as an instructor to the infantry school in Dresden. At the time, Rommel wrote and published his book "Infantry Attacks" ("Infanterie greift an"), which was based on his experiences during World War I.

Early life and career.

Rommel's father was a teacher, as his grandfather had been, and his mother was the daughter of a senior official. A career as an army officer began to be fashionable, even among middle-class southern Germans, after the establishment of the German Empire in 1871, and thus, notwithstanding the absence of a military tradition in his family, Erwin Rommel in 1910 joined the 124th Württemberg Infantry Regiment as an officer cadet.

In World War I Rommel fought as a lieutenant in France, Romania, and Italy. His deep understanding of his men, his unusual courage, and his natural gift of leadership quite early showed promise of a great career. In the Prussian-German army, a career on the general staff was the normal avenue for advancement, yet Rommel declined to take that road. Both in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic and in Hitler's Wehrmacht, he remained in the infantry as a front-line officer. Like many great generals, he possessed a pronounced talent for teaching and was accordingly appointed to posts at various military academies. The fruit of his battle experiences in World War I, combined with his ideas on training young soldiers in military thinking, formed the main components of his military textbook Infanterie greift an ("Infantry Attacks"), originally published in 1937, which received high initial esteem.

In 1938, after Austria's annexation by Germany, Colonel Rommel was appointed commandant of the officers' school in Wiener Neustadt, near Vienna. At the beginning of World War II he was appointed commander of the troops guarding the Führer's headquarters--not a very satisfying post for an enthusiastic front-line soldier. Rommel's chance to prove himself came in February 1940, when he assumed command of the 7th Panzer Division. He had never commanded armoured units before, yet he quickly grasped the tremendous possibilities of mechanized and armoured troops in an offensive role. His leadership in the German drive to the French channel coast in May 1940 provided the first proof of his boldness and initiative.

Commander of Afrika Korps.

Less than a year later, in February 1941, Rommel was appointed commander of the German troops dispatched to aid the all but defeated Italian army in Libya. The deserts of North Africa became the scene of his greatest successes--and of his defeat at the hands of a vastly superior enemy. In the North African theatre of war, the "Desert Fox," as he came to be called by both friend and foe because of his audacious surprise attacks, acquired a formidable reputation, and soon Hitler, impressed by such successes, promoted him to field marshal. He found it difficult, however, to get along with his Italian allies; basically, the British were more to his liking. He was an avid reader of the book on warfare written by Sir Archibald Wavell, the first Allied commander in chief of the Middle East and Rommel's opponent in North Africa.

Rommel had difficulties not only with his Italian allies but with his own supreme command as well. North Africa was, in Hitler's view, only a sideshow. Nonetheless, despite the increasing difficulties of supply and Rommel's request to withdraw his exhausted troops, in the summer of 1942, Hitler ordered an attack on Cairo and the Suez Canal. Rommel and his German-Italian army were stopped by the British at El-Alamein (al-'Alamayn, Egypt) 60 miles (96 km) from Alexandria. At that time Rommel won astounding popularity in the Arab world, where he was regarded as a "liberator" from British rule. At home, the propaganda ministry portrayed him as the invincible "people's marshal" (Volksmarschall).

But the offensive against Egypt had overtaxed his resources. At the end of October 1942, he was defeated in the second Battle of el-Alamein and had to withdraw to the German bridgehead in Tunis. In March 1943 Hitler ordered him home. In 1944 Rommel was entrusted with the defense of the French channel coast against a possible Allied invasion. The master of the war of movement then developed an unusual inventiveness in the erection of coastal defense works. Nevertheless, his recommendation to prevent the enemy by all possible means from establishing large bridgeheads, his insistence that strong forces should be kept in reserve immediately behind the coastal defense line for counterattacks, and his prophecy that, unless the enemy could be successfully driven back into the sea, the fate of the invasion battle would be decided on the first day all fell on deaf ears.

Conspiracy against Hitler.

As early as the fall of 1943, Rommel, a purely professional soldier whose judgment was not swayed by political predilections, had been convinced that the war could no longer be won and that Hitler was prepared neither to face that fact nor to draw the inevitable conclusion--the necessity of making peace with the Western powers. In the spring of 1944 some of Rommel's friends who had joined the clandestine opposition to Hitler approached Rommel and suggested to him that it was his duty to take over as head of state after Hitler had been overthrown. Rommel did not reject the suggestion, but the men who wanted to extricate Germany from the war never revealed to Rommel that they planned to assassinate Hitler. They knew that Rommel did not accept the idea of murder for political ends; he had invariably disregarded any execution orders given by Hitler. When the invasion began, Rommel tried on several occasions to point out to Hitler that the war was lost and that he should come to terms with the Western powers. On July 17, 1944, at the height of the invasion battle, Rommel's car was attacked by British fighter-bombers and forced off the road. It somersaulted, and Rommel was hospitalized with serious head injuries. In August he had recovered sufficiently to be able to return to his home to convalesce. In the meantime, after the failure of the attempt on Hitler's life on July 20, 1944, Rommel's contacts with the conspirators had come to light. Hitler did not want the "people's marshal" to appear before the court as his enemy and thence be taken to the gallows. He sent two generals to Rommel to offer him poison with the assurance that his name and that of his family would remain unsullied if he avoided a trial. On October 14 Rommel took poison, thus ending his life. He was later buried with full military honours.