Irwin Rommel fought for the bad guys. The regime he served was evil. By that standard alone, he was a villain.
On the other hand, he was a soldier fighting for his country. In the end, he opposed Hitler and it cost him his life.
Hero, or villain? What do you think?
Actually, on instant reflection after hitting “submit”, this is a simplistic question that probably does not deserve answering. The first sentence alone implies that all German soldiers were villains, which they were not.
Please disregard.
Didn’t Rommel commit suicide after his role in the plot to kill Hitler was found out? In that case, was he really fighting for the bad guys?
Well, I don’t know that one would call it suicide, precisely. The alternative to cyanide wasn’t anything any rational person would have accepted. Here is an account of Rommel’s death as witnessed by his son. He was going to die one way or another, and he chose the way which spared his family.
Hero in my book. After all these years of course. Had you asked me in 1943 however…
Your second post was my initial thought, Johnny.
To the common soldier, from at least 42 and on, the war was about survival as a nation, and 90%+ of the soldiers had nothing to do, personally, with any sort of nazi policy - they were just soldiers fighting for their country. As such, in my book, just serving in their army doesn’t make them a villain by default.
Hero, definitely. What SenorBeef said, he was just fighting for his country, like everyone is taught to do. In the end, he questioned Hitler’s policies, saw the evil, and attempted to rid the world of Hitler, at unimaginable personal risk. Hero.
Erwin Rommel was a very hard-bitten guy and by all accounts a brilliant general. (According to one military historian I’ve read, Rommel was the only true military genius to emerge from WWII.) By being a good soldier, he served the Reich, but from what I’ve read his service to the Reich was nonetheless relatively “clean” – i.e., not directly involved with Nazi war crimes per se. I don’t know what his personal opinion of the Einsatzgruppen units was, or if he banned them from operating in his theatre (as did General Von Paulus did at Stalingrad).
Rommel’s frustration mounted throughout the war, since his vision of the potential of the Mediterranean/North African campaign was at odds with that of the many brownnosers in the Army General Staff. Some historians have argued that if Hitler had allowed his more perceptive generals (like Rommel) to pursue a more aggressive and more astutely run campaign in the Mediterranean and North Africa – e.g., taking Malta instead of Sardinia, and better supplying Rommel before Patton could help to shore up the Allied presence in North Africa – then Germany conceivably could have run the Brits out of Egypt and disrupted Allied supply and transport lines through the Suez Canal/Red Sea shortcut (while forcing the Brits to reorganize defensively to protect India), prevented the Allies from shoring up the North African theatre, and eventually could have pressed on through Iran to secure crucial oil fields, while cutting off Allied supply lines to the U.S.S.R. Rommel understood better than only a very few others the true potential of such a campaign, had it been pressed aggressively and early ('40-'41); incredibly enough, Hitler never did.
In addition, Rommel was repeatedly denied the men, tanks, materiel and fuel he needed to achieve the limited military objectives that had been approved for him. It has been argued, for instance, that had Rommel been given just one more tank battalion at the right moment (when he was screaming for just that), he could have driven the British out of North Africa.
While Rommel’s early victories had brought him great favor with Hitler early in the war, but his [impolitic] outspokenness [and rage?] and determination to argue for his favored war strategy undermined him politically with Hitler and the insiders in Berlin. His early invincibility may have also worked against his interests by encouraging the war planners to take his abilities for granted, to push his capabilities to the max, and to not supply him with quite enough of the men, materiel, etc. that he needed.
Rommel had become involved with a group of military officers who were making discrete inquiries (with the Brits, I think) into the possibility of striking a separate peace. [I don’t remember when this was supposed to have taken place; summer/fall '44? Or as early as '43?] Some believe that Rommel had also become involved in a rather vague plot to assassinate Hitler, but I believe that most historians reject that view.
When Hitler learned (or at least became convinced of Rommel’s involvement in) the separate peace scheming, he presented Rommel with a dire choice: to either subject himself and his wife and their only son to the judgement of a Nazi “People’s Court,” (a kangaroo court that would very likely return guilty verdicts, and capital punishment, for all three), or to take the gentleman officer’s way out, through suicide, which he was promised would protect his family.
Rommel took the poison offered him and died in his jail cell. His family was protected, as promised.
A first-rate tactician serving in a strategic atmosphere slightly less sophisticated than an angry mob, working wonders for a fourth-rate lunatic bent on setting the world alight. Rommel is neither a hero nor a villain, only a very brilliant man in very troubled times, who ended up fighting on the side of the trouble.
A quibble, Trucido – Hitler was a fourth-rate military strategist, but a first-rate lunatic.
Basically Rommel has sevral things going for him that allows his reputation to stay intact to this day:
He was commander in the North Africa theatre, which was free from much of the atrocities (and most importantly the holocaust) that were seen on the Eastern front and was all in all a much more gentlemanly affair.
He was involved in the plot to assasinate Hitler which cost him his own life.
He was a brilliant commander and retains the respect for this.
There are also several other of high ranking German Officers who come out of WWII as ‘heroes’ such as the leader of the plot to assasinate Hitler (IIRC committed suicde or was shot by a soldier after his plot failed) who also led the anti-Nazi resistance in the German Army and opposed the Nazis from the early days.
Rommel didn’t die in a jail cell. He was taken out in a car and offered the cyanide. He came back a dead man.
He chose to die dignified, and was accorded a hero’s funeral.
Looking over this thread, I daresay Rommel is the Robert E. Lee of World War 2.
Rommel, in my opnion, was a professional soldier of exceptional talent. He carried out is military assignments as ordered by his superiors without regard to large issues of morality. Such things as doing the best he could in Africa and building up the so-called “Atlantic wall” were done to the best of his ability. He only turned against the Nazi government and Hitler when it became obvious to him that Germany was being led to disaster.
So I would say that Rommel was an amoral, German patriot who did the best he could for Germany regardless of the morality of the regime in temporary charge. As long as that regime was successful for Germany he supported it, when the tide turned he opposed it. In that sense I would say that he was neither a hero or a villain. He was just a talented guy doing his job, which he conceived as defending Germany the best way he knew how.
It’s a difficult question… especially concerning military personel. A lot of it depends on which side you were on…
General Sherman: Hero or Villain?
General Westmoreland: Hero or Villain?
General Hindenberg: Hero or Villain?
General Petain: Hero or Villain?
General Vo Nguyen Giap: Hero or Villain?
At the very least they were all responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Villains?
They were patriotic men engaged in the defence of their country. Heroes?
Scrivener, I was unaware most historians doubted the existence of the plot to assassinate Hitler, or Rommel’s involvement in it. I thought it was quite well documented. If not true, then I’d change my opinion and say he was neither hero nor villain, but simply a military genius.
I’ve never heard any doubt about the plot to off Hitler, I’d like to see a cite for it.
From what I’ve read, Rommel was only involved in some surreptitious peace feelers (treason enough in Hitler’s view). While there remains some difference of opinion re. his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, it appears that that’s a minority view – more speculation than documented fact.
There’s no question, though, that Rommel was on the outs with Hitler and his toadies re. how to prosecute the war, to the extent that Hitler was losing all patience with him.
My mistake about the circumstances of his poisoning, though.
One more thing: there were several plots to kill Hitler, although not all were acted upon. The most famous (and nearly successful) was probably the Von Stauffenberg plot, where said officer planted a briefcase bomb under a conference room table. Hitler was wounded; the plotters were rounded up and hung on meathooks.
As for the “plot” that Rommel was supposedly involved with, it’s hard to tell exactly who was involved because no attempt was actually made on Hitler’s life. The accused conspirators were rounded up, etc. etc. Given the climate of paranoia and absence of standard legal procedures in these things, who knows? As for Rommel, he was already under suspicion and in a politically weak position due to his pattern of disagreeing with Hitler and his inner circle (his “defeatism”). His “association” with the alleged plotters may well have been trumped up.
A very able soldier working for a very evil and crazy man.