[jmc247]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

Thanks for the welcome again. I long like to play cat and mouse games between u-boats and warships.

My feeling about the movie can best be summed up by this reviewer who points out not only Rommel's family was enraged, but one of the historians hired for the film resigned in disgust over the film relying so much on the history written by a Holocaust denier.

Rommel - Do We Really Need to Deconstruct Him?

Was Germany's Second World War general, Erwin Rommel, really the chivalrous "Desert Fox" commander of legend who is reputed to have plotted against Hitler? Or was he a deeply convinced Nazi and anti-Semite driven by an egotistical desire for fame?

German viewers will get an opportunity to make up their own minds on Thursday evening when Rommel, a controversial television drama about the celebrated wartime general, will be broadcast. The production has infuriated the surviving relatives of the general who committed suicide in 1944. Its authors stand accused of relying on the works of the discredited Holocaust-denying British historian David Irving. A German historian involved walked out in disgust.

http://warreview.blogspot.com/2012/1...construct.html

As one can guess my main focus is learning and teaching history. It was nice to be able to include a picture of a guided missile destroyer in construction in my first post on a historical matter. Here was the finished product... it met its end in 1999 after a few decades of service.



Obviously, its hard for people living today who have only a general view of the things Rommel did during the war to understand the man and why he isn't a post war creation and a 'myth' as the makers of this film and other people today say he was.

His biggest contribution to Germany though failing to end the war in 1944 under more favorable conditions for his country was he treated the French very well as occupation commander at a very critical time compared to German occupation commanders elsewhere. Becase he refused to treat the French as slaves and made a massive stink to prevent future massacres like the SS carried out against the French in 1944 killing over 600 civilians he avoided a French uprising at that critical time like the Poles did in 1944. German forces in response would have followed Hitler's orders to burn down French cities and the relationship between France and Germany would have been cold as ice for decades after the war. The French would probably delay the creation of West Germany for many years and then do all they can to veto West Germany being allowed to have a military. It would have effected French and German relations for generations.

Instead you have a military occupation commander who actually was nice enough to the French people after his car was shot up the French resistance found him and brought him to a French doctor who saved his life... at least for a couple months until he was suicided by his own government.

After his death even in the middle of the most ugly war Europe has had since the 30 years war the Western Allies from Churchill, to American commanders, to Rommel's main British opponent paid tribute to him publicly.



The problem people in Germany and elsewhere have today with him is they unlike the people then didn't see the things Rommel was doing throughout the war to protect civilians and to keep it from becoming a war with hate like the war in the East became by burning Hitler's illegal orders and doing everything he could to minimize and leash the number of Waffen SS forces in his areas of operations.

Its hard from a modern context to understand how a man who got his Iron Cross in WW1 for out of fear of his troops being boxed in leading a fanatical bayonet attack on French forces, personally bayonetting two soldiers, shooting two others with his side arm and then getting shot in the leg running away could also be fanatically opposed to killing POWs and civilians. The only way to think about it in my view is that he had an iron clad sense of what is right and wrong in war and was not going to let anyone get him to do things he didn't believe were morally acceptable in a time of war. His reaction to recieving Hitler's Commando Order is an example of that.

Rommel was one of the 12 recipients of Hitler's infamous, illegal Commando Order issued on 18th October 1942. This order to senior commanders ordered the immediate execution of all Allied Commando troops irrespective of circumstances of combat or capture. On receipt of the order Rommel called his Staff Officers together and invited them to each individually read the order. He then took it and instructed them that under no circumstances was this order ever to be put into effect by men under his command, he then burnt the order in front of them commenting as he did so - "And thus, in such a fashion is infamy dealt with".

The other 11 recipients of the had no problem with following it. And, that sums up the difference between Rommel and other German commanders during the war. He did what he could to keep it a clean war against the Americans and British unlike the Generals in the East who followed Hitler's illegal orders and helped to turn it into a very dirty war. He also did what he could to protect Jews and civilians in general in his area of operations and he did care more about Germany and its future then his own life. Rommel being too liked by the Anglo-Americans helped Himmler convince Hitler that he was a traitor who needed to die so he paid a high price for being too nice.



So what was he a hero or villain? I think people should view him as just a man who served his country in two World Wars and tried to do what he thought was best for his country and what he believed was honorable and right during two horrible world wars no matter what the cost to himself.

Right now I feel bad for Manfred Rommel over this whole conflict with the film. The man served his country all his life in and out of politics, he knew what kind of man his father was and was told all his life no matter where he went be it England, France, the U.S., or even Israel about how his father treated them and their POWs or civilians with honor during the war and protected them. Now at the end of his life as he is dying of Parkinson's his own people decide to turn the image of his father upside down and depict him as either a coward, a puppet or a monster.

That according to his daughter has really effected him emotionally as he nears death (he can't walk anymore) as that isn't the man that tought him about what is right and wrong, kept him from joining the Waffen SS, was willing to kill himself against his Catholic beliefs to keep him and his mom from going to a concentraton camp or the person who taught him to ride a bicycle or took him to the beach.



If I could tell Manfred something before he dies it would be that a few wars are etched in the collective memory of civilization for all time (and I am certain WW2 will be one of those wars) and certain leaders in those wars are remembered for thousands of years. The wars that ended the Roman Republic are an example of that with Pompey, Caesar, Anthony, Cleopatra and Augustus being remembered around the world to this day.

500 years from now or hell even 2000 years from now after we are long dead, unless humanity wipes itself out there is no doubt in my mind that three Germans from the war will be etched into the collective memory of civilization. Hitler of course, Himmler as Germany's warrior for genocide and mass murder and Rommel as Germany's respected honorable warrior. Only few military or political leaders get the honor or infamy of being etched in history and I would tell Manfred that his father I believe will be one of those leaders and regardless of what people in Germany are saying about him now and showing him as today it won't be what people are saying about him and showing him as a hundred years from now.