SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - German film looks at ties between Rommel and Hitler

By the way if one was interested in some naval facts in regards to the Africa campaign. Rommel was of course highly dependent on the Italian Navy for supplies. They kept telling him to take bigger and more secure ports with Alexandria obviously the biggest of them all in North Africa. He made the lunge for Egypt knowing it was an extremely high risk, high reward mission because taking Egypt and the port of Alexandria would put him in a good position to wage a two front war as he knew the Americans would soon be landing to his west and he would be caught in the middle of two large armies. Egypt would have been the best place in North Africa for him to fight a two front war if he managed to drive the British out and into the Middle East.

The thing is the Italian supply ships kept being sunk one after the other. He was getting desperate for supplies and would ask when the next supply ship is coming in and immediately because the British broke their codes the ships would be tracked and very often sunk. Rommel according to his son had trouble believing the Allied mathematicians were good enough to break the complex code they were using and found it easier to believe at the time that some officer in the Italian Navy had been bribed by the Americans or the British to tell them about the supply ships departing from Italy.

Rommel personally opposed the attack on the Soviet Union and believed Germany should have focused its resources on a Mediterranean centric strategy to knock the British out of the war, which would have included far more resources devoted to the German Navy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Penguin (Post 1962744)

hey jmc, impressive first posts! I actually read through all of it. Also welcome :salute: glad to see there are still people who use this crazy concept of sources. :)

Yes, I read a wide number of sources when learning about a topic and what I have found is most modern books and movies outright ignore the primary sources so very often.

The two biggest issues using primary sources was why did his enemies like him so much during the war and one can't find that out without digging into the primary sources. The other issue is why did something that was known about and totally accepted at the time pre-Cold War that Rommel did want Hitler killed toward the end changed when the Cold War started to he just wanted him put on trial. I mean the surviving members of the July 20th plot who had far from a cozy relationship with him testified in the Nuremberg Trials that he did and the press was unabashed at reporting he did until the Cold War started.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...47/Misc/1b.png

It doesn't make much sense unless one understands how divided Germans were in the early Cold War about the plot to kill their leader. Going with the notion he supported overthrowing the Nazi Party and putting Hitler on trial was a better middle ground option at the time to promote him as a unifying German military figure in post war West Germany.

If future generations want to figure out who Rommel was as a person and a general they are going to have to go back to the primary sources like I did. But, I suspect that won't happen until Rommel as a historical figure becomes less politicized.

Quote:

Can't tell much about the film, as I haven't seen it yet. Just a little personal anecdote. My old neighbor was a vet who first served on the Eastern Front, later served in North Africa and France. He became a pacifist after his WW2 experiences, pretty understandable in my eyes. He never said anything bad about Rommel - though he had much contempt for most of the rest of the leadership.

Its sort of sad, but a man I knew very well at the local gym just died this month who served in Stalingrad and in the West. He was one of the toughest persons I have ever met.

Basically he took the view that ignoring the coup plot Rommel always acted in such a way during the war to try to further the interests of Germany long term so he hoped there might be a Germany after the war even if they lost. That is no small thing in his view as none of the commanders in the East that could have done so had the spine to do so in his view and allowed it to become a very dirty war.

Basically, his view is only a very very few German generals were willing to put what they believed was morally right and good for Germany in the long run ahead of the risks that doing so would bring to them and potentally their family... of course the punishment for treason was the consignment of ones whole family to a concentration camp. But, there was alot the generals in the East could have done short of high treason to keep the war there from becoming so ugly.

By the way to get into a bit about Rommel the man. Lets just say he had a bigger family then commonly known. He had zipper issues of the kind that reciently brought down General Petraeus, but back then lets just say contraception options were far more limited then they are today.

He had an illegitimate daughter Gertude or 'little mouse' as he called her. She lived a significant amount of time with his legitimite family.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...sc/daugher.jpg

That is his wife and illegitimite daughter.

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f1...sc/gutrude.jpg

That is his son Manfred and Gertude above.

She may have been born to another woman, but she was fully accepted as part of Rommel's family by both his wife and his son. Though Manfred had been told that she was his cousin when he was young and only later told she was his half sister.

By the time Rommel was killed he already had a grandson from Gertude. The difference is back then ones private life and ones public life were viewed as seperate things with only his public actions fair game for the media to discuss and that includes the Allied media at the time. Imagine the scandal it would be today in the U.S. for a general or admiral to have an illegitimite daughter living with his family. The media would go wild.