ROMMEL

Erwin Rommel was born on November 15, 1891 in Heidenheim, Germany. His father, Erwin, was a headmaster at a secondary school and his mother, Helene, was the daughter of a local wealthy family. Erwin had three siblings, Karl, Gerhard, and Helene.

When World War I started, Rommel joined the Alpen Korps. He fought on the front lines of campaigns in France, Italy, and Romania. During battle, he was wounded on three occasions, but continued to fight valiantly. One of his most successful battles was the Battle of Longarone, where he and other soldiers captured Mount Matajur and over 7000 Italian soldiers. Only a few months into World War I, Rommel won the Iron Cross Second Class for bravery in the field when he was injured in the leg after running out of ammunition.

His first great strategic triumph was the disastrous defeat he helped inflict on the Italian Army at Caporetto in which he captured 150 Italian officers, 9,000 soldiers, and 81 guns. Captain Rommel was awarded the decoration Pour le Merite (Prussia's highest commendation for military service and a medal reserved only for senior generals). He was promoted to Major in 1933 and later to Colonel in 1937 while teaching at the War College. He spent of the 1920s serving as commander of various battalions in the German Army. In 1929, he was chosen as an instructor at the Dresden Infantry School, serving until 1933. In 1935, he was chosen to teach at the Potsdam War Academy.

In 1937, he published his diaries from WWI as "Infanterie greift an" and they subsequently became a military textbook. The release of the book managed to attract the attention of Adolf Hitler, then chancellor of Germany, who placed Rommel in charge of training the Hitler Youth in 1937. He spent much of his free time studying the military strategies of past leaders, including Stonewall Jackson and Nathan Bedford Forrest, who were able to consistently fight back larger forces. In 1938, he was given command of the War Academy in Wiener Neustadt, where he wrote his second novel, "Panzer greift an".

During WWII in 1940 he commanded the 7th Panzer Division in the advance into France. In June 1942, he was made the youngest field marshal in the German Army, in recognition of his successes in Egypt He was admired by friends and enemies alike; for example, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the House of Commons (England's legislative body) that Rommel was "a very daring and skillful opponent and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general." On May 24, 1942, Rommel ordered his forces to attack the Allied forces. The resulting blitzkrieg allowed his forces to flank the Allies in the cities of Gazala and Bir Hakeim. The Allies quickly retreated, leaving Tobruk to the mercy of Rommel and his Afrika Korps. He attacked the city on June 21, 1942 and its 33,000 strong force of defenders surrended. He was then promoted to the rank of Field Marshal. Although he fought for Germany during WW II, he was said to have despised both Hitler and Hitler's beliefs. Upon receiving the Commando Order, which dictated that any Allied troops found operating behind enemy lines or captured parachutists were to be shot, he simply burned it. While he was in North Africa, Hitler gave him an order to kill any of the British LRDP soldiers. In the presence of his aide de camp, he tore the order apart and let the wind carry it away. While in France, Hitler ordered Rommel to round up the Jews in France; yet another order that refused. Several times, he wrote letters protesting the treatment of the Jews. Those letters ended up in the hands of Heinrich Himmler and ultimately, coupled with his refusal to carry out orders that were morally wrong, the first nail in the coffin had been hammered.

His sense of valor and chivalry were the stuff of King Arthur's knights, but it was his "boldness, use of surprise, readiness to accept risks" and above all his "intuitive sense of the battlefield" that made Rommel one of the greatest generals in military history. "Brilliantly successful in attack and remarkably resourceful in defense, “the” Desert Fox raced his armies through France in 1940 and then repeatedly outwitted the British in North Africa Throughout the 1930s, Rommel develops a close working relationship with Hitler, whom he initially comes to admire for progressively thwarting the Versailles Treaty and restoring Germany's strength. He is seen more and more by Hitler side. He accompanies Hitler into the Sudetenland in October 1938 and then into Prague in March 1939.
But Rommel is anything but a Nazi. In fact, early on he starts to harbor "serious reservations" about the Nazi regime In North Africa, Rommel's "brilliant quick-thinking, opportunism, and leadership" on the battlefield outwits the "slow, ponderous, and remote" British chain of command despite logistical inferiority. In June 1942, Rommel defeats the British 8th Army at Tobruk destroying more than 260 tanks and bagging 30,000 prisoners of war. At 49, he attains the rank of Field Marshal - the youngest in the Wehrmacht. But as Germany's fortunes wane, Rommel repeatedly pleads to Hitler for permission to evacuate his Afrika Korps from North Africa while there is still time and to use this force to beef up fortress Europe. In the face of Hitler's constant refusals, Rommel confides increasingly to his wife about his loss of faith in Hitler's sanity.

On the l7th of July, 1944, Rommel was driving in his large, open Horch motorcar (rather ike a grand-touring sports car) behind the front lines, when a British Spitfire came down out of the clouds and machine-gunned the road. His driver was killed, the car ran off the road into a ditch, and then crashed into a tree. Rommel was knocked unconscious. Rommel came to a day later, in a French hospital being looked after by a French medical team. They feared for his life: he had suffered a quadruple skull fracture on the right side. A couple of days later, Rommel was evacuated to a rear hospital.

Winston Churchill said in 1942, at a time when things stood very darkly for us -- we had lost Singapore, we were losing the whole of our empire in the East -- Churchill stood up in the House of Commons and said, "We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general”. During the confusion caused by the Crusader operation, Rommel and his staff found themselves behind Allied lines several times. On one occasion, he visited a New Zealand Army field hospital that was still under Allied control. "Rommel inquired if anything was needed, promised the British medical supplies and drove off unhindered."

Churchill again, on hearing of Rommel's death:
"He also deserves our respect, because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this, he paid the forfeit of his life. In the sombre wars of modern democracy, thereis little place for chivalry.”

During the North African Campaign, Rommel often cut the water rations of his troops, so that the prisoners of war could survive.