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Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel | |
|---|---|
 Photo of Rommel, 1942 | |
| Born | 15 November 1891 Heidenheim an der Brenz, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire |
| Died | 14 October 1944 (aged 52) Herrlingen, Free People's State of Württemberg, Nazi Germany |
| Cause of death | Suicide by cyanide poisoning |
| Nationality | German |
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel (15 November 1891 – 14 October 1944), also known as the Desert Fox (Wüstenfuchs), was a German field marshal, career officer, and veteran of both World Wars.
Life
Early Life
Rommel was born on 15 November 1891 at Heidenheim an der Brenz, a town in present-day Baden-Württemberg, the third child of Erwin Rommel, Sr. and Helene von Luz. His father was an army man turned headmaster, and his mother was the daughter of a politician.
First World War and the Interwar Period
In 1910, Rommel joined the Army of Württemberg. From 1914 to 1917, he fought in Romania, Slovenia (then part of Austria–Hungary), and France, earning the Pour le Mérite for his successes against the Italians.
During the early Interwar Period, when there was the real threat of Communist revolution, Rommel put down protests (usually organised by disgruntled soldiers) all throughout Baden via peaceful means. Afterwards he served as an instructor at various military schools in Dresden and Potsdam for the next six years. In 1937, he published a book, Infanterie greift an, discussing infantry tactics and his own experience in the Great War.
Rommel first met Adolf Hitler in September 1934. Whether Rommel did or did not support Hitler and the Nazis is a contentious issue. His son Manfred stated that although Rommel refused to let him join the Waffen-SS, he still turned a blind eye to Nazi antisemitism, and repeatedly pressed for proof that his daughter's Italian boyfriend was of "Aryan descent[1]."
World War II
During the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and the subsequent Invasion of Poland in 1939, Rommel was tasked with leading Hitler's personal escort battalion. In 1940, during the Fall of France, he was appointed commander of the 7th Panzer Division, dubbed the "Ghost Division" (Gespensterdivision) because it moved so quickly that, at times, even the German High Command didn't know where it was.
During the North African campaign of the Second World War, Rommel was put in charge of the Afrika Korps. Contrary to the "war without hate" myth that was propagated by Allied historians after the war, his Afrika Korps were infamous among the local population for plundering homes, murdering innocents (particularly in Benghazi), and deporting thousands of African Jews to Europe (where they were murdered in what later became known as the Holocaust).
In November 1943, Rommel was transferred to Nazi-occupied France to supervise the construction of the Atlantic Wall, a line of defences built along the coasts of Western Europe and Scandinavia, as there was good reason to believe that the Allies might launch a naval invasion in Western Europe. Although most of the German High Command expected such an invasion to take place at the Pas-de-Calais in Hauts-de-France, Rommel thought that a more likely target would be the beaches of Normandy. As such, he began heavily fortifying the beach, setting up concrete bunkers, anti-aircraft guns, anti-tank guns, pillboxes, foxholes, machine gun nests, barbed wire fences, minefields, and more. Over a million 4-to-5-metre poles, designed to injure or kill paratroopers, were also built (these later became known as Rommelspargeln, or "Rommel's asparaguses"). Finally, he flooded low-lying areas such as fields and forests to make it difficult for paratroopers to land there.
Rommel's conviction that the Allies would choose to land in Normandy rather than at Pas-de-Calais was correct. However, Rommel wouldn't be there to witness it, as the day that the Allies chose to launch the D-Day Invasion also happened to be his wife's birthday, placing him in Germany that day.
On 17 July 1944 at around 16:00 in Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery, Normandy, not long after Rommel had visited the 1st SS Panzer Corps' headquarters in Brussels, an RAF fighter plane began strafing his vehicle. The driver was shot in the arm, causing the car to swerve off the road, hit a tree stump, and land in a ditch. Rommel was thrown out of the car as it turned over, knocking him unconscious. Rommel suffered serious, almost fatal injuries to his head from the attack. His aide-de-camp, Hauptmann Hellmuth Lang, and Feldwebel Holke (neither of whom were injured) immediately rushed Rommel's body to a nearby cottage, where it was determined that Rommel was dead. After being briefly hospitalised, however, he awoke, and he returned to his home in Blaustein (then Herrlingen) to recover.
Death
On 20 July 1944, several conspirators within the German military, led primarily by Major General Henning von Tresckow and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben, organised to assassinate Hitler at his headquarters in East Prussia. This plot (later known as the 20 July plot), had it have succeeded, would have made Rommel a potential candidate for Reich President in a post-Hitler Germany, according to a Cabinet list written by Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, yet another prominent member of the plot. During interrogations, Rommel's name was mentioned several times, implicating him, and the decision was made by Chief of the NSDAP Chancellery Martin Bormann and Adolf Hitler to get rid of Rommel.
Rommel was placed under heavy surveillance by the Gestapo. Soon after on 14 October 1944, Wilhelm Burgdorf and Ernst Maisel visited Rommel's home in Herrlingen, informing him of the charges being made against him along with giving him an ultimatum: Rommel could commit suicide or be tried at Roland Freisler's People's Court (which would almost certainly find him guilty). He chose to commit suicide as the Nazis promised to bury him with full military honours and also provide his family with pension payments.
Rommel explained the situation to his wife and son before the SS drove him and Burgdorf out beyond the town limits of Herrlingen. There, Rommel committed suicide by ingesting a cyanide tablet. Officially, Rommel had died of complications relating to the injuries which he had sustained earlier in July. Rommel was given a full state funeral in Ulm and was buried at Blaustein, where his body remains to this day.