Rommel Africanus

One early morning long ago, before Hitler was master of Germany, the late Hangman Reinhard Heydrich rushed to see his Fuehrer on a matter of desperate urgency. He tramped through an anteroom to the Fuehrer's bedroom and. with his usual disregard of anything that stood in his way, drove his heavy boot into the body of a man who was lying in front of Adolf Hitler's door to protect him from assassination.

The sleeping bodyguard, a big, tough veteran of World War I, got to his feet. He had two broken ribs. Perhaps it was unfortunate for Heydrich that Hitler was within hearing. Otherwise Heydrich might easily have died, sooner, to be sure, but more quickly and pleasantly than he did last month in Czecho-Slovakia.

The man whose ribs Heydrich had broken was Erwin Eugen Johannes Rommel, now a field marshal of the German Reich. The only man on earth whom Rommel looks up to is Hitler. And he looks down contemptuously on all other men in the entire continent of Africa.

Among military men Rommel is now variously appraised as: 1) a bold and brilliant desert commander who makes mistakes like any other; 2) the best armored-force general of World War II; 3) one of the great military commanders of modern times. The outcome of the battle for Egypt and the Middle East may well settle Rommel's place in history.

Whatever his place, he is such a man as some of the commanders Napoleon assembled around him in his youth: tough, untutored, plebeian, successful. The German radio recently quoted him as saying:

"If you kick an Englishman in the stomach today, in the teeth tomorrow and on his behind the day after, he will be unable to stand it. His command cannot adapt itself to such measures."

The remark was quite in character.

Self-Made General. In common with Hitler, Rommel is no Prussian aristocrat. His father was a schoolteacher in south Germany. Like most German boys who were born in 1891, World War I found him serving in the German Army. He started the war as a humble lieutenant, but his war record was remarkable.

Commanding a detachment of mountain troops in the first battle of Champagne (1915), he captured an important French position, forced a whole French brigade to retire. (Reward: Pour le Merite, highest Prussian military decoration.) In 1917 Rommel distinguished himself against the Italians at the Isonzo. Recently the Germans, with characteristic tact, reminded their World War II allies by stating, in a radio sketch of his life, that Rommel "captured 9,000 Italian troops in less than half an hour."

Yet Plebeian Rommel had no place in the skeleton post-war Reichswehr, and his frustrated longing for war turned him very early to the Nazis. He met Hitler in Wuerttemberg, became a Storm Troop leader, joined a murderous raid against the Socialists and Communists of Coburg, a raid which Hitler, in Mein Kampf, singled out as the turning point in his career. Thereafter Rommel headed Hitler's personal police, the SS, and traveled with the leader and his adjutant, Bruckner, sharing with Bruckner the honor of sleeping in front of Hitler's bedroom door. When Hitler shook off the shackles of Versailles, Rommel went back to the army, wrote a manual, Infantry Attacks, which glowing little Paul Joseph Goebbels last fortnight, ordered into its twelfth edition (TIME, July 6). He also studied the techniques of armored forces.

The invasion of Poland found Rommel a colonel. The invasion of France found him a general, commanding the 7th Armored Division which broke through at Maubeuge and was of great help in the German race to the Channel. The invasion of Egypt finds him a field marshal.

Extemporaneous Art. Napoleon said that if the art of war were that of avoiding risk, glory would be at the mercy of the mediocre. All generals make mistakes. The best generals are those who rectify their own mistakes with the least loss. War, in short, is an extemporaneous art.

Rommel's success in the recent Battle of Libya began with a miscalculation. He sent his tanks south in a wide sweep around Bir Hacheim, to outflank the British line, but his intended surprise was detected, his columns were attacked by superior forces. At that point Rommel was worsted and he began to extemporize. While his engineers cut a gap in the heavily-mined Ain el-Gazala line, he distracted the British with various false movements, ringed his gap with protective artillery, then pushed his forces on through.

The British, as Winston Churchill said (see p. 26) thought the battle was reaching a "wearing-down stage" and the British generals evidently were content to let it do so. But not Rommel. He lined up his 88-mm. guns in ambush. With a light tank force and possibly with false radio orders transmitted to British tanks (said Churchill: "I do not know what actually happened"), he lured the British to slaughter. At the end of the day 230 out of 300 British tanks had been destroyed. The Battle of Libya was lost that afternoon.

Most of the British were not quick enough in retiring; 25,000 of them holed up in Tobruk for a long siege. Rommel did not take even a day to organize and prepare his assault. He organized it, under his hat, in one evening. The next morning, before the British were ready, his tanks stormed the defenses of Tobruk, cut down to the town and began shooting up shipping in the harbor before the British had even begun to evacuate. Rommel had seen that Tobruk was a difficult town to take in an eight-month siege, would be much easier to take in one day-if that day was at once.

The next day Rommel began seeing to it that the remainder of the British Army was not allowed to rest and recoup by retiring. In a week he drove the British from Half`aya Pass, from Sidi Barrani, from Matruh, from Fuka. Only at El Alamein, 70 short miles from Alexandria, were Rommel's men and tanks so exhausted that he had to pause to reform.

He had performed no miracle. At every stage of the battle he had merely fought intelligently, fought hard, seen what the next thing was to do, done it today, instead of tomorrow. He had merely shown what can be accomplished by common battle sense and the energy to begin the next tough job before its predecessor is finished.

Hothouse Training. When Hitler decided in 1940 to put Rommel in charge of the Afrika Korps and send him to strengthen the stumbling Italians in Libya, Rommel began to train the kind of army that could fight a successful desert war.

Before the war, Rommel had traveled over the desert as a "tourist" and studied the terrain thoroughly. But he had no desert battle experience. So he established a training ground on the Kurische Nehrung, a sandy Baltic peninsula where UFA had filmed many a desert scene. His carefully picked soldiers lived in overheated barracks, learned to get along on dried food and vitamins, little water. Wind machines blew up artificial sandstorms. Rommel acclimated himself in a private hothouse.

Once his men were in Africa, Rommel made them as comfortable as possible. Each man got his own green bivouac tent, with a floor, and a pack containing a camp stove, solid fuel, eye lotion, mouthwash, body powder, washing sets, flashlight, billfolds. Rations included beer, coffee, tinned and fresh meat, lemons, potatoes, onions. Hospitals were never short of anything. At the rest camps in the rear there were beer gardens, brass bands, playing grounds, movies.

Rommel never tells his men that the British are pushovers. He tells them that the British are tough-and that they, the thin, hard young elite of Germany, must be tougher.

As a successful man, Rommel is vain, arrogant and autocratic, for when he makes war nowadays he takes all the responsibility, all the blame, all the glory. When things go awry in battle, he flies into volcanic rages that produce results. He showers everyone around him with a stream of vituperation, usually beginning with "Schweinehunde!"

At other times Rommel is polite but ironic. In the order of the day with which he started this campaign he referred to King Vittorio Emanuele as the "Emperor of Abyssinia."

His men as well as his officers, fear and look up to him. Dashing about by car and motorcycle in the forward zones of action, he sees his men and they see him. Sometimes they have to bear the lash of his wrath, but they admire him. They have coined a new word: they say that a fallen British stronghold is gerommelt. He is also not above playing on them with false propaganda. Last winter, when Rommel had overstretched his supply lines and the British were rolling him back to Bengasi, he signaled his soldiers: "Don't let our men in Russia down. They have just taken Moscow." Last month, when Bir Hacheim held out longer than he expected, he rode among his tanks and infantry, bellowing: "Men of the Afrika Korps, be of good heart. Our glorious Fuehrer informs me that his forces have overrun Sevastopol."

At night-when he is not busy plotting the next day's action-Rommel often turns teacher, assembles a quorum of tank officers, lectures them on the beauties of Naziism, the art of getting things done in wartime. Correspondent Harold Denny, who was captured by Rommel's forces last year, reported on his release that Rommel liked to lecture captured British officers on the fallacies of their tactics.

One lesson that many British generals (who have not profited by lectures in captivity) have yet to learn from him is adequate reconnaissance. Rommel, like all good generals, leaves nothing so important as reconnaissance to others, if he can help it. Personal reconnaissance has paid him big dividends. At the risk of his life and of capture, he haunts the front lines at night. When he makes decisions they are based on facts.

Production Men. While the British went on trying one commander after another in Africa, Rommel went on learning other things-simple, sense-making military things that are as important on the field of battle as know-how on a production line. His repair cars now come right up to battle zones, often work on disabled tanks during battle. His huge salvage wagons, with their cranes, lumber up as soon as night falls, pick up wrecks-British as well as German-and carry them back to workshops housed in blacked-out tents.

When Rommel rolled the British back from Bengasi last February, he picked up a lot of supplies which the British had left in dumps. Since then he has had little use for the dump system. His truck convoys-nearly every truck towing a trailer-come up to the forward zones at night and restock the fighting columns there. Water, gasoline and food are brought up at night-if necessary, by air. And everything captured from the British-a truck or a can of gasoline-is promptly put to Rommel's use. Even British tanks, captured one day, go back into action the next, with fresh swastikas printed on their turrets.

Like most production men, Rommel is tough about his trade. He demands results from those who work for him and he lets them understand that he doesn't care what the results cost them. A new aide-de-camp (fifth in a few months) recently arrived to report to him. "Let me wish you luck," the Marshal snapped. "Your four predecessors were killed."

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