Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel was a famous German Field Marshal during the time of World War II, and popularly known as the Desert Fox. He started his military career with WWI, becoming a highly decorated officer. Rommel was presented with awards for his expoits on the Italion Front. He was awarded the Pour le Mérite, which was otherwise informally known as the Blue Max. It was the Kingdom of Prussia's highest military order until with end of WWI. Paul Von Hindenburg was also awarded with this honor, he was later the president of Germany.
In WWII, during the invasion of France in 1940, Rommel distinguished himself as commander of the 7th Panzer Division. This division was nicknamed as the Ghost Division because of its remarkable speed and independet movement which was so great the German High Command had difficult times trying to follow it. Rommel was actually criticized for being having his division being too hard to locate and follow.
Rommel became known as the legendary Desert Fox because of his leadership of the German and Italian forces in the North African Campaign. He is known as one of the most skilled commanders in desert warfare from WWII. Because Rommel's Afrikakorps, the German expiditionary force in Libya and Tunisia, were never accused of any war crimes during the war on the african front, Rommel got the reputation of a humane officer. All of the soliders his force captured were treated humanely, and Rommel ignored orders to kill Jewish soliders and civilians in all theatres of his command. Rommel achieved his greatest fame as a commander while he was in Africa, even though he was involved in many other battles and such. The last Rommel offensive in North Africa was on March 6, 1943, at the Battle of Medenine It was here where he attacked the eighth army. The attack was made with 10th, 15th, and 21st Panzer Divisions. Because of a loss of 52 tanks, Rommel called off the assault. On March 9th he handed over his command of Armeegruppe Afrika to General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim. Because of health reasons, Rommel left Africa and never returned.
Rommel is said to have been involved in some conspiracy against Hitler. Basically these men thought that Hitler had gone completely mad and thought that he atleast needed to be arrested and trialed for his insanity. After a failed bomb attack on May 20th, a lot of the conspirators were arrested, but Rommel was not one of them. His name was not brought to light as a conspirator until later. Rommel was supposed to be taken to court to be tried and executed, but instead he chose to end his own life. Rommel was burried full of military honors, and is the only member of the Third Reich to have a museum made in his honor.
I think that it is very important to know of people such as Rommel, for he played a large part in the war. He seems like quite the nobel man to me, and I find the whole conspiracy against Hitler thing extremely interesting.
Sources:
Comments