GERMAN COMMANDER

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 64, Issue 4534, 9 February 1942, Page 8

GERMAN COMMANDER

ROMMEL OF AFRIKA KORPS Germany’s Afrika Korps commander back in Libya has been politely described as an ex-policeman and expolitician who has become a skilful soldier. Writers who are less polite say that he was one of Hitler’s thug organisers. Rommel is that rarity in the German army, a high officer not drawn from the Prussian military class. Tough, wiry, sandy-haired, 49, son of a Bavarian workman, he emerged from the last war as a lieutenant. When Hitler became Chancellor he made Rommel chief of the S.S. or Black Guard. In the invasion of Poland Rommel led an armoured corps against the Polish cavalry with conspicuous ferocity. He received the Iron Cross in France. It was he who drafted the “plan south” (1937) in North Africa. He visited Libya in peace time, saw Bengasi, Derna, Tobruch and Bardia, studied the roads, the deserts and the climate, went for sick leave to Egypt and toured the Western Desert. He trained his Afrika Korps in hothouses—artificially-heat-ed quarters—Where they practised going without water for long periods at a time.