The Fox

THE ROMMEL PAPERS (545 pp.)--Edlfed by. B. H. Liddell Harf--Harcourf, Brace ($6).

In the grim winter of 1942, while the Afrika Korps and the British Eighth Army were slugging it out in Cyrenaica, Winston Churchill rose 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." Even before he died in 1944, Erwin Rommel had achieved legendary status among his Anglo-Saxon foes. By now he has a safe niche among those defeated military commanders--Lee and Napoleon are outstanding examples--who rise at least equal to their conquerors in the esteem of the military experts. Brigadier Desmond Young's biography, Rommel, the Desert Fox, sold 300,000 copies in Britain and the U.S., and the movie version, while raising the tempers of those who could not bear the sight of so high a pedestal for a Nazi general, helped make Rommel the best known enemy commander of the war.

The latest addition to the Rommel legend is a book written by Rommel himself. From the time he led his tanks across the French border in 1940, Rommel made copious notes on his exploits. From these, and from Rommel's letters to his wife, Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, British military expert and historian, has put together a first-rate book, amply illustrated with Amateur Photographer Rommel's own shots. The Rommel Papers give the most revealing picture yet of a brilliant commander who lived, fought and died in the Prussian tradition of military ruthlessness.

To Erwin Rommel, the lives of his men and of himself were secondary to the larger matter of military objectives. So, naturally, were the lives of enemies. Rommel tells in his own words of coming upon a "particularly irate" French lieutenant colonel whose car was "jammed in the press" of surrendering French in 1940: "I asked him for his rank and appointment. His eyes glowed hate and impotent fury ... I decided, on second thought, to take him along . . . But he curtly refused to come with us, so, after summoning him three times to get in, there was nothing for it but to shoot him." Four years later, when Hitler bade Rommel poison himself, there was nothing for it but to swallow the poison.

More Than Intellect. Rommel regarded bravery, regularly demonstrated, as a necessary part of the equipment of a successful commander. A general, he wrote, should not fight his battle as a game of chess, but must take personal command in the field. His accounts of the fighting in France and North Africa are filled with such notes as: "To enable me to force the pace, I took the leading battalion under my personal command." This brought him constantly under enemy fire; he missed death by inches; his drivers and aides were killed; he suffered a fractured skull himself when strafing U.S. airmen caught his car in their gunsights in France.

He had the utmost scorn for "intellectual officers" who try to direct battles from an armchair. "The command of men . . . requires more than intellect; it requires energy and drive and unrelenting will." One of his pet peeves was his own quartermaster corps. Quartermasters, he said, "tend to work by theory and base all their calculations on precedent, being satisfied if their performance comes up to standard . . . [They] complain at every difficulty, instead of ... using their powers of improvisation, which indeed are frequently nil."

Powder Barrel. Rommel needed fast-moving quartermasters to carry out his formula for tactical success: hit the enemy first, hit him hard, keep hitting him when he is on the run. "I found again and again . . . the day goes to the side that is first to plaster its opponent with fire. The man who lies low and awaits developments usually comes off second best."

It was the failure of the quartermaster to keep him adequately supplied which Rommel blames for his ultimate defeat beginning at El Alamein. Even in his gallant tribute to the man who beat him, he injects a bitter note on the Eighth Army's superior supply situation: "Montgomery did not leave the slightest detail out of his calculations . . . His principle was to fight no battle unless he knew for certain he would win it. Of course, that is a method that will only work given material superiority; but that he had ... It would be difficult to accuse Montgomery of ... a serious strategic mistake."

Over & over again, Rommel pleaded with Hitler and Mussolini to send him gasoline and ammunition. At one point he noted sadly: "It is sometimes a misfortune to enjoy a certain military reputation. One knows one's own limits, but other people expect miracles, and set down a defeat to deliberate cussedness."

After Montgomery had pushed him back to Tunisia, and the Americans were closing in on him from the west, Rommel flew to Germany to plead with Hitler to permit him to evacuate Africa, save what he could of his forces for the defense of southern Europe. His description of the interview:

"I had expected a rational discussion of my arguments . . . But ... the mere mention of the strategic question worked like a spark in a powder barrel. The Fiihrer flew into a fury and directed a stream of completely unfounded attacks on us ... I began to realize that Adolf Hitler simply did not want to see the situation as it was, and that he reacted emotionally against what his intelligence must have told him was right."

Tears from Adolf. Near the end of The Rommel Papers comes a gripping chapter on Rommel's death, written by his son Manfred. After the German reverses in Normandy, Rommel was convinced the jig was up, advised Hitler repeatedly to end the war. Neither Liddell Hart nor Manfred Rommel makes it clear to what extent the general was involved in the plots against Hitler, but one day in October 1944, Rommel was at his home in Herrlingen recovering from the wounds suffered when his staff car was shot up. At about 12 o'clock, a dark green auto with a Berlin number stopped in front of the house. Two general officers got out, talked privately with Rommel for some minutes. Then the field marshall joined his son upstairs. Writes Manfred of his final meeting with his father:

" 'I have just had to tell your mother,' he began slowly, 'that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour . . . The house is surrounded, and Hitler is charging me with high treason. In view of my services in Africa ... I am to have the chance of dying by poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It's fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family . . . It's all been prepared to the last detail. I'm to be given a state funeral ... In a quarter of an hour, you . . . will receive a telephone call from the Wagnerschule reserve hospital to say I've had a brain seizure on the way to a conference.' He looked at his watch. T must go.' "

Rommel got the state funeral he had been promised. Hitler sent a personal message, dripping with crocodile tears, to Frau Rommel: "Accept my sincerest sympathy for the heavy loss you have suffered with the death of your husband . . ."

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