Evening Post

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 101, 30 April 1943, Page 4

Evening Post

FRIDAY,.APRIL 30, 1943

RISE AND DECLINE OF ROMMEL

In the years to come the adventures of Rommel may be used to adorn many a tale, and perhaps .to point some morals. At the present time, it is not possible to separate fact from fiction in the Rommel legend; and possibly the imaginative writers of the future will not desire to do so; but the military analysts will insist on stark facts, purging away the emotional additions, and giving the -world a hard, cold picture of what Rommel actually did. At present, his story begins in a mist created by conflicting reports; and now, after a brilliant but comparatively brief period of action, the story is again misty, for it is difficult to accept as final the message published yester*: day that a military prophet like i Rommel has lost honour in his own country. If it is indeed true that Hitler refused him an audience on his return from Africa, then the . Psalmist's injunction, "Put not your trust in Princes," seems to be applicable also to Dictators. Where in Rommel's military career is there a mistake comparable with Hitler's blunder that led to the Stalingrad disaster and plunged Germany into mourning? It seems to be true that Rommel, as prophet, made one big error, when he announced that he held the key o£ Egypt's door and promised to open it. But that is a pardonable prophetic lapse compared with Hitler's , arrogance in "reporting to history" that he would sit in London, Moscow, and Stalingrad. Armies'that are officered from a class are not easy for a ranker to rise in. One story of Rommel is that, "rough as bags," he rose to rank solely through his Nazi status, since his native ability would not otherwise have enabled him to run the gauntlet of the Prussian officer type, which recognised his military capacity only grudgingly and his social equality not at all. No sooner had the Nazi movement lifted Rommel than he, in turn, helper^ powerfully to lift the Nazi maria by his African military successes. To Germany, but not to the Prussian officer type, he became both a great general and a heroic figure; and a hero to Germans he will probably remain, whatever post-war military criticism may do to his professional reputation for generalship. According to. the, message published yesterday, Hitler's entourage "holds Rommel personally responsible for the loss of" the battle for Egypt. No ground' for that charge, however, has yet emerged from the current accounts of El. Alamein and its after events. Current accounts picture Rommel as great in both victory and defeat. His 1400 or 1500 miles' Marathon along the Mediterranean littoral of Africa appears to have been as notable for what he saved as for what he lost. If his run from the gates of Egypt to Tunisia was an anti-climax politically and morally, does the same criticism apply militarily? If not, in what way was this non-Junker prodigy personally responsible for the loss of the battle for Egypt? •fhere can be no greater contrast than Jhe contrast of the African war of movement with the positional war, that followed Its stereotyped course in France in 1915, 1916, and 1917. The fall of France can fee ascribed to the fact that the French army took its inspiration from those three years, and the German army did not. Rommel, who may not have risen" at all in positional warfare of- the old, type,.quickly shone in the Wild West show that moved backwards ahd . forwards through Libya, and came to its climax at El Alamein. Probably the principal explanation of Rommel's successes and reverses is the fact that the "invincible" German army cannot take its own medicine when administered to it in larger 'doses than it can itself administer to the enemy. Montgomery defeated Rommel by out-Germaning the Germans in the art of warthat is, in the art of war as it exists today, not as -it existed a generation ago, nor as it will exist twenty-five years hence. German invincibility melted before a supei-ior application of modern war methods, comprising German methods and some additional ones. This hoisting of the signal of German: military inferiority was a disaster for Germany morally and politically, and for the bunkers as well as for the Nazis. Any excuse is better for Berlin than to admit that the German army is being beaten at its own game; so some temptation exists to make Rommel the scapegoat. But since propaganda along that line is not likely to be believed, one may expect Goebbels to substitute something different. What to do with the military reputations of Hitler and Rommel—the one spurious, the other genuine—must be a very delicate matter. And equally delicate is the question of what Hitlerite Germany will proceed to do witn Rommel himself.