Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Erwin Rommel was never in top command anywhere he fought, yet his superiors are all but forgotten,
00:13for it was Rommel that the Allies feared, and his troops cheered.
00:20He had what the Germans call Fingerspitzengefühl, which is a sixth sense of sizing up a situation.
00:38He came to personify armored blitzkrieg that knifed through bewildered enemies, whatever their numbers.
00:46A man who could turn the tide of a hopeless battle in one insanely daring stroke.
01:00Of course I was proud of him. I still respect him very much.
01:08Rommel is probably best understood as a character from another century.
01:15Rommel was a very honorable and principled man. He would never obey an unsullied order, even though it came from Hitler.
01:26He's got the genius ability like a chess master has. He can face off maybe twelve guys and play them to a standstill at one time.
01:36It was Rommel who would cause the redoubtable Winston Churchill to cry out to the House of Commons,
01:41for what else matters but beating him?
02:01On November 15, 1891, Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel was born in Württemberg, Germany.
02:08The son of the dour, frugal schoolmaster Erwin Rommel and his wife, the former Helene von Lutz, both devout Protestants.
02:17Young Erwin would grow up with an older sister and two younger brothers in a family that had no military tradition.
02:24His father was attentive, if not warm.
02:28In his early life, he was a frail, docile child, but as he grew into his teens, he developed into a gymnast and an athlete, and showed signs of leadership at that age already.
02:45He was a courageous boy, and the others gravitated around him.
02:58The Germany of the early 20th century was still glorying in its humiliation of the French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.
03:07Prestigious officer corps heavy with Prussian nobility dominated a powerful army fed by conscription.
03:15Still, the need for officers from the middle classes was great enough for schoolmaster Rommel to urge his son to service,
03:22and young Erwin joined the Württemberg Infantry Regiment in July 1910.
03:28He served a mandatory stint in the ranks and passed to the military academy in Darmstadt.
03:34He was a cadet who didn't sow any wild oats.
03:39He drank only an occasional glass of wine. He didn't smoke.
03:45And those habits continued with him for the rest of his life.
03:53While he was a cadet at the military academy, he met Lucie Maria Merlin, daughter of a well-to-do family.
04:00She was drawn to Rommel's easygoing humor, so rare in a military man.
04:08By 1912, Rommel was a second lieutenant.
04:13With no openings in his first choices, artillery and engineers, he joined the infantry.
04:22When Germany and most of Europe plunged into World War I in August 1914, young Rommel found his first reputation in battle.
04:40As his battalion lost a quarter of its officers, he was constantly in motion at the front, probing for soft spots to go through and around the French.
04:48He didn't hesitate to take control of other platoon commanders' troops when he needed to keep up the attack.
04:54His courage was phenomenal.
04:58He was leading two platoons in a counterattack.
05:02And during that counterattack, he ran into a group of Frenchmen.
05:06He fired, and two Frenchmen, one behind the other, were brought down by that shot.
05:13But when he went to fire at the others, his gun was empty.
05:18He charged them.
05:21Unfortunately for him, the French beat him to it and shot him, shattering his thigh.
05:28He drove himself to recovery, and his legend as an unkillable fox of the battlefield began.
05:35He won his first Iron Cross, and deep respect.
05:44A platoon leader wrote of him,
05:47In some curious way, his spirit permeated the entire regiment right from the start.
05:52Everybody was inspired by his initiative, his courage, his dazzling acts of gallantry.
06:02Anyone who once came under the spell of his personality turned into a real soldier.
06:08He seemed inexhaustible.
06:10He seemed to know what the enemy were like, and how they would probably react.
06:15His plans were often startling, instinctive, spontaneous, and not infrequently obscure.
06:22His men idolized him, and had boundless faith in him.
06:30After being promoted in 1916, he joyfully returned home on leave to marry his sweetheart, Lucy Maria Merlin.
06:38She would be the love of his life to its end.
06:50Rommel's capstone achievement in World War I came commanding a battalion on the Italian front at Mount Matajour,
06:58during the Caporetto Offensive of 1917.
07:02He sought the soft spots, the unguarded post, the position where there was no continuous trench line.
07:12Although he was only a first lieutenant, his tactics so impressed higher commanders,
07:18that he was given a battle group of battalion size, normally led by a major or even a lieutenant colonel.
07:25Rommel succeeded in storming Mount Matajour, and decimating five Italian regiments, taking 9,000 prisoners.
07:36He had lost only six dead from his force.
07:40One dying of exhaustion trying to keep up with Lieutenant Rommel.
07:46For his feats, he won the Pour le Mérite, the Blue and Red Cross,
07:51For his feats, he won the Pour le Mérite, the Blue Max, Germany's highest award for bravery, and was promoted to captain.
08:01One of his contemporaries said that you will never understand Rommel until you understand what he did at Mount Matajour.
08:07He will always be that lieutenant, on the way to that hill, making snap decisions.
08:13But those lessons of combat would have to wait for another war.
08:18Germany collapsed, and Rommel would not command in another battle for over 20 years.
08:28Chaos came to the streets of a conquered Germany.
08:32The imperial army was dissolved, to be replaced under the peace treaty by the Reichswehr.
08:36A tiny 100,000-man army denied all modern equipment.
08:41It was to put down mutinies and maintain order, and no more.
08:49Erwin Rommel was one of the tiny elite officer corps of barely 4,000 men.
08:57Briefly, life was tranquil for the Rommels.
09:01A much-loved son, Manfred, was born.
09:04Rommel won appointment as instructor to the infantry school in 1929,
09:09and a promotion to major in 1932 at the age of 40.
09:14By 1933, he was a lieutenant colonel.
09:18My father was a very modern father.
09:22This means he was rather tolerant and liberal for his profession and for his time.
09:28But the man who would use the rebuilding German army as the tool to shatter an entire world
09:34was soon stalking to the leadership of a bellicose Germany.
09:38Adolf Hitler would notice a book, one written by a young officer named Rommel.
09:47He had time to write a book, The Infantry Attacks,
09:52It was a compendium of infantry tactics,
09:56and actually was so highly thought of that the Swiss army adopted it as a text.
10:03Hitler happened to read this book and was so impressed by it
10:09that he was appointed as commandant of Hitler's headquarters.
10:14The army had been taught to be not political.
10:18This was a very good principle in the democracy,
10:23but a very bad principle in the time of Hitler,
10:27because many soldiers said, I do my duty.
10:32Politics is not my business.
10:34This partnership of knight and monster would be as intense and explosive
10:39as the German attack that blasted into Poland on September 1st, 1939,
10:44to begin World War II.
10:50The German attack was a major blow to the German army.
10:55The German army was in a state of panic.
10:58It was September 1st, 1939, to begin World War II.
11:14In September of 1939, Rommel was a major general,
11:19watching the German Wehrmacht tear through a hapless Poland in three weeks.
11:24As commandant of the Führer's headquarters, he took no part in the fighting
11:29and fell under Hitler's reptilian charm, saying,
11:33the Führer knows exactly what is good for us.
11:37While Rommel was at Hitler's headquarters, he became a great admirer of Hitler.
11:42The two men had both been infantry soldiers in World War I,
11:48and there was an affinity.
11:53Rommel saw the huge assault on France forming,
11:57and he saw that the new armored weapon would be at the spearhead,
12:01right where he wanted to be.
12:04He begged Hitler for field command of a panzer division.
12:07Over opposition, Hitler agreed.
12:11Hitler wanted to champion this officer that he respected so much
12:17by giving him the command of a panzer division.
12:20Here's an infantryman who had absolutely no experience in tanks,
12:24given one of the elite panzer divisions.
12:34Rommel's invasion of France, his piece in the German invasion of France,
12:40as the commander of the 7th Panzer Division,
12:42was almost precisely what he had done as a lieutenant
12:46in France, in Romania, and in Italy during World War I.
12:50He sought the soft spot.
12:52He looked for the unprotected flank.
12:54In many cases, he was directing the efforts of a single tank up front.
12:59His staff quite often simply lost contact with him,
13:03but it was Blitzkrieg in its purest form.
13:06It was Rommel.
13:13Exhilarated and invincible, Rommel exulted in outracing the other panzer groups.
13:17There were no reins, only the whip and spur.
13:21Slashing into the French rear in communications,
13:24he saw shock and the momentum of advance
13:27as the keys to paralysis of the enemy will.
13:30Ignoring minor shrapnel wounds,
13:32he maintained the pressure day and night.
13:35The mercurial 7th Panzer became known as the ghost division,
13:39and the verb to rommel came into use
13:42to describe a crushing armored attack.
13:45Rommel's 7th Panzer Division was among the lead,
13:50breaking for the French coast.
13:53He paid no regard to his flanks,
13:56sure of the confusion that the German onslaught was about to strike.
14:01It was a bloody battle.
14:03It was a bloody battle.
14:05It was a bloody battle.
14:07It was a bloody battle.
14:09It was a bloody battle.
14:10He was sure of the confusion that the German onslaught
14:15had wrought among the French enemy.
14:25Rommel's division broke through the French-Belgian border,
14:28forced the crossing over the Meuse River,
14:31and raced on to the channel ports.
14:36And in the process,
14:37he completely decimated two French divisions,
14:41took hordes of prisoners,
14:43and drove on to Cherbourg.
14:53Rommel had advanced 175 miles in 10 days,
14:58crossed the Meuse, captured 10,000,
15:01destroyed 100 tanks,
15:03and would lose barely 2,000 men in the whole campaign.
15:08As the British were pushed into the sea at Dunkirk
15:12to end the French campaign,
15:15Rommel was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
15:19He had won Germany's highest military award in two world wars.
15:27Propaganda minister Josef Goebbels
15:30had found the perfect hero to exploit to the Germans.
15:34Rommel is an exotic figure,
15:37a classic military-looking figure
15:40with steady, piercing blue eyes and a square jaw.
15:45He looks like the quintessential soldier.
15:54The Nazi leadership had just the showcase
15:57for the new soldier.
15:59The Nazi leadership had just the showcase
16:02for the new superhero, North Africa.
16:06Now a lieutenant general, Rommel was ordered by Hitler
16:10to go to the assistance of Germany's Italian allies
16:13before they were pushed off the continent.
16:16Such a defeat would eliminate the Axis threat
16:19against the Suez Canal and British oil supplies.
16:23Rommel arrived on February 12, 1941,
16:26to take command of two German divisions
16:29organized into what was called the German Afrika Korps.
16:34It was a name that would strike terror
16:37into Allied hearts for two flaming years.
16:49The 100,000 British troops under General Wavell
16:52had been dealing with the quarter million Italians handily,
16:55rolling them up along the Libyan coast
16:58while capturing the important supply port of Tobruk.
17:02Rommel was ordered to stabilize the situation.
17:07His mission order from Halder and OKH and OKW,
17:12the German high command,
17:14is essentially to just stave off Italian defeat for the moment.
17:18He's not to try to conquer North Africa or anything.
17:20He's permitted to do perhaps an aggressive defense,
17:24but no more than that.
17:28Knowing the British had weakened their African army
17:31by reinforcing their forces in Greece,
17:34he conveniently forgot his orders
17:36and ripped into the British with the customary Rommel zest.
17:46In just over two weeks,
17:47he had mostly thrown the British out of Libya
17:50and captured their best field general, Richard O'Connor.
18:01The reeling British reinforced their desert army
18:04until the Afrika Korps was outnumbered nearly three to one.
18:08But Rommel still ran rings around his enemy
18:11as the fighting seesawed east and west across the desert.
18:14Rommel's fearsome reputation
18:16was as great a weapon as his panzers.
18:19The British again and again held back
18:21from pressing their advantage in fear of a nasty Rommel surprise.
18:25He said,
18:27it is given to me to feel where the enemy is weak.
18:30To awed fellow officers, he was known as the schoolmaster.
18:37What Rommel managed to forge into a single cohesive weapon
18:41were his tanks, his infantry, but above all,
18:46his anti-tank weapons,
18:48his 88-millimeter anti-aircraft guns.
18:58Time and again, he won battles by drawing British armor
19:02onto a screen of 88-millimeter anti-aircraft guns
19:05whose barrels were depressed to knock out British armor.
19:12He is a soldier's soldier.
19:15He's happiest when he's in command of those kinds of forces.
19:19He is oblivious to hardship,
19:21doesn't care about eating good food or good wine,
19:24arresting and so forth.
19:26He's happy when he's pushing those forces across the ground.
19:31I never forgot that the battles weren't won
19:35by the staff officer in the polished boots.
19:38And with his bed and his duplicating machine.
19:41It was won by the dirty soldier who had lice and diarrhea
19:46and was sweaty and cold and homesick.
19:58Rommel became obsessed
20:00with a very important seaport, Trebrook.
20:09On his first encounter with that place,
20:12it had been denied to him by a stout British defense.
20:15And it had become a real British symbol,
20:18British resolve against all odds.
20:24Rommel would crush that resolve with guile and dash.
20:33In a second bloody siege, he took Trebrook.
20:39It is a bitter blow
20:41for the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
20:44And Churchill says things like,
20:46defeat in warfare is one thing,
20:49but humiliation is quite another.
20:54The odds against him were so great,
20:57his initial successes were so fabulous,
21:00he essentially can write his own ticket.
21:03An elated Hitler made Rommel a field marshal.
21:17Sent to fight a holding action,
21:20Rommel now stood before El Alamein,
21:23the gateway to Cairo and Suez,
21:26on the point of driving the British out of Egypt.
21:29Rommel hardly noticed that the frustrated Churchill
21:32had sent the very antithesis of the Desert Fox
21:35to command the British Eighth Army in Africa.
21:38General Bernard Montgomery was as coldly methodical
21:42as Rommel was hotly intuitive.
21:46Montgomery began systematically
21:49to assemble an overwhelming material superiority
21:52that even Rommel could not defeat.
21:55The RAF began to dominate the sky
21:58and the Royal Navy, the Mediterranean.
22:08The Nazi tide was ebbing,
22:11but keeping Rommel out of El Alamein
22:14would take one of the world's epic battles.
22:17Rommel was the last man standing
22:20to defend his country.
22:22This was one of the world's epic battles.
22:42Rommel's desert war reached its climax
22:45in the long battles for El Alamein
22:48and an open road to Suez.
22:53Beginning in October 1942,
22:56Rommel had little chance
22:59to prevail over Montgomery.
23:12The British had found themselves
23:15in the midst of a fierce battle.
23:18The British had set up a head-on battle
23:21with no room to maneuver.
23:31It was a fight that would trade men and tanks
23:34one for one.
23:39And Rommel's thin forces would run dry first.
23:48He was at a definite disadvantage
23:51at the end of a long supply line
23:54and running extremely low on munitions
23:57and gasoline for his mobile elements.
24:01By the 2nd of November,
24:04it was clear in his own mind
24:07that he had no chance to prevail
24:10and retreat was already part of his plan.
24:13Rommel's faith in Hitler
24:15and certainly his earlier admiration for the man
24:18were shaken considerably
24:21at the last stage of the Battle of El Alamein.
24:24On November 3rd, Hitler radioed an order
24:27to Rommel directly to stand fast
24:30and fight to the last bullet.
24:36An order he was fond of giving
24:39especially in the later stages of the war.
24:46Though he considered the order suicidal,
24:49Rommel held for five furious days
24:52before moving to save his army
24:55with a brilliant retreat
24:58that began on November 4th.
25:01But Rommel was wearing down physically.
25:07But even a sick Rommel
25:10was a feared and lethal foe
25:12even with just 35 tanks left.
25:15British victories seemed temporary
25:18and Rommel victories inevitable.
25:21The words Rommel leading always produced a chill.
25:24A letter to British commanders warned
25:27that there was a real danger
25:30that our friend Rommel is becoming a kind of magician
25:33or bogeyman to our troops
25:36who are talking far too much about him.
25:39Yet they couldn't hate him.
25:43When he was attacking El Alamein,
25:46one part of the British defense
25:49was a brigade of Jewish soldiers
25:52and Hitler learned of that
25:55and ordered Rommel to execute them
25:58when they were captured.
26:01And once again, Rommel simply tore up the order.
26:13A month after the Battle of El Alamein had ended,
26:16a heavy Anglo-American North African landing in the west
26:19threatened Rommel from behind.
26:22It would squeeze in between the forces of Montgomery
26:25and the American General Eisenhower.
26:29But smoothly and swiftly,
26:32Rommel staged a fighting retreat
26:35into a strong defensive pocket at Tunisia
26:38with the sea at his back.
26:40They are in no way trying to give up.
26:43They are trying to figure out a way to deliver knockout blows
26:46particularly to the Americans
26:49whom they know to be fairly inexperienced.
26:52Rommel has worked out the way in which he wants to
26:55move into these very critical passes
26:58in the mountain chain that runs north and south
27:01up through the Tunisian area.
27:04In order to break out and essentially disrupt
27:07the American and British command system,
27:10the battle of Kasserine Pass
27:13and around Sidi Bouzid was classic Rommel.
27:16The apparently bloodied, fleeing desert fox
27:20turning to sink his teeth into an overconfident pursuer.
27:24The fighting before and at Kasserine Pass
27:28in the middle of February 1943
27:31is significant from the American perspective
27:34because it's almost a disaster.
27:37A little over a hundred tanks lost.
27:40The 168th Infantry Regiment
27:43has significant troops lost as casualties
27:47including a large number of prisoners that are taken.
27:50At that point as the German armored forces
27:54are rolling west,
27:57business trying to figure out how to get in front of this juggernaut.
28:00At that point he is told,
28:03no, we have this problem down on the Marath line.
28:06So at the culminating point,
28:08he victoriously pushes the Americans back,
28:11sees the pass, they stop.
28:14And they withdraw.
28:22By now the armored strength of the poorly resupplied Afrika Korps
28:26was dropping dramatically.
28:29Rommel without tanks was not truly Rommel.
28:31In March of 1943, drained and sick,
28:34he was withdrawn to Germany from Tunisia.
28:37He would never see Africa again.
29:02The Afrika Korps surrender in May 1943 broke his heart.
29:07His classic command had lasted just two years
29:11and never exceeded five divisions in creating its havoc.
29:17And now, back from desert isolation,
29:20Rommel would confront disturbing realities.
29:27After his return,
29:29he became agonizingly aware of the crimes of the Hitler regime.
29:35His old friend General von Blaskowicz asked him,
29:38Rommel, do you know why I'm not a field marshal?
29:41And then grimly answered his own question saying,
29:44I would not countenance what the SS did in Poland and Russia.
29:51A horrified Rommel was finding out
29:54that he served not just a failing war,
29:56but a criminal enterprise.
30:05Rommel became increasingly disillusioned
30:08and soon became part of a widespread conspiracy
30:11to do away with Hitler.
30:15Ever correct, he felt Hitler should not be killed,
30:18but arrested and tried in the courts.
30:27But when Hitler put him in charge
30:30of building a mighty Atlantic wall
30:33to throw a building Allied invasion force
30:36back into the English Channel,
30:39all other considerations were put aside.
30:42For this supreme soldier,
30:45the plans of war far overshadowed
30:48those of political intrigue.
30:51Yet it was the political plans
30:53that would prove fatal to Erwin Rommel.
31:05Through the first half of 1944,
31:08the Allies were building
31:11the most formidable assault machine ever assembled,
31:14all of it to crush Rommel's Atlantic wall defenses.
31:17Their equipment was factory new
31:20and in boundless supply.
31:23It dominated the air and the sea.
31:26But if Rommel could stop them at the beaches,
31:29it would invite the negotiated peace he wanted.
31:34Only a Rommel would not have trembled at the challenge.
31:38There were 1,616 miles of beach to defend,
31:42from Holland to southern France.
31:45That meant only one understrength German division
31:48to defend every 28 miles.
31:50And he no longer had the freedom of a desert.
31:55Rommel, the master of mobile warfare in North Africa,
31:59found himself compelled to fight a static defensive war
32:03to protect the Normandy coastlines.
32:12Hitler and Rommel needed each other
32:15and they renewed bonds strained by the North African defeat.
32:19Of Hitler's ability to weave an optimistic spell,
32:22Rommel said wryly to a friend,
32:25I am here for a sun ray cure.
32:28I am soaking up sun and faith.
32:32He was awarded the swords and diamonds of the Knight's Cross
32:36and knew he had won back Hitler's support.
32:49Because his forces were so thin for the long coast he must defend,
32:54Rommel, the offensive genius, had to turn to fixed defenses.
33:05Millions of mines, thousands of miles of barbed wire
33:10and glider-smashing stakes known as Rommel asparagus went into place.
33:19But the desert fox was now chained down to measureless tons of concrete
33:24poured into miles of bristling gun emplacements and pillboxes.
33:29These were the kinds of positions he had always thought of
33:33as coffins for soldiers.
33:41The one bright spot in his life was his family.
33:44Though he could see them only seldom over the war years,
33:46he produced an incredible flow of letters to Lucy.
34:00Fire!
34:03Rommel was at home visiting Lucy on her birthday, June 6th,
34:07when he heard that the Allied avalanche had fallen upon Normandy.
34:17He rushed back to the new fighting front.
34:25Now Rommel found he had run out of time.
34:28His dream of parallel minefields miles wide
34:32and four belts of underwater obstacles was too far from realization.
34:37The Allies were held up at the beaches for less than a day
34:41before they punched through to establish a beachhead.
34:47Rommel raged in frustration.
34:54Somehow Rommel held the Allies in place and bogged them down
34:58as two million men contested the hedgerows of Normandy.
35:05But the inevitable German defeat was now clear to Rommel.
35:16The brave and charismatic Colonel Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg
35:21and General Hans Speidel were the highly placed leaders
35:24of a long-running complex plot to remove Hitler.
35:29Several attempts to kill the Führer had failed.
35:33There was some disagreement as to what Rommel's function would be,
35:39whether he would be taking over the army
35:41or whether he would be president of the new Germany.
35:47He didn't think to make any political career.
35:51He only acted out of his responsibility.
35:55He felt as a general.
35:59Field Marshal von Kluge replaced von Rundstedt over Rommel
36:04who now talked recklessly of opening the Western Front to the Allies
36:07when they achieved the inevitable breakthrough and ended the last hope.
36:11He would present Hitler with a fait accompli.
36:14He thought it critical for the Allies to reach Berlin before the Russians.
36:20Making one more effort at reason, Rommel met with Hitler at Berchtesgaden
36:25to make one more attempt to have him end hostilities.
36:29Hitler coldly insisted that Rommel leave the room.
36:33This was at the end of June 1944
36:35and Rommel never came into Hitler's presence again.
36:40After Rommel's meeting with Hitler,
36:43he and his chief of staff returned and composed a message,
36:48basically an ultimatum.
36:50This ultimatum told Hitler that it was time to bring the war to a close,
36:56that Germany could in no way win it anymore.
36:59He sent the message via von Kluge's headquarters
37:02and von Kluge endorsed it with, I agree with Rommel.
37:08Rommel would not get his answer.
37:12At about four o'clock in the afternoon of the 17th of July,
37:18he was proceeding back to the chateau near a town called Livarot.
37:24When British aircraft caught him on the road,
37:27he yelled to his driver to speed up
37:30and take a turn off that was coming up.
37:33But the aircraft, in a low attack,
37:37caught the staff car on the open road.
37:42A critically injured Rommel would survive,
37:46but it would be no mercy.
37:49On Thursday, July 20th, 1944,
37:53as Rommel lay grievously wounded by a strafing fighter,
38:00a shattering explosion wrecked a headquarters hut
38:04in Rostenburg, East Prussia,
38:07where a high-level meeting was in progress.
38:10The last second movement of a briefcase bomb
38:13to behind a heavy table,
38:15saved the life of Adolf Hitler.
38:18The blast set the assassination plotters
38:21into premature and disastrous motion,
38:24setting off a chain reaction of arrests, torture, kangaroo courts,
38:29and cruel summary executions.
38:33Ironically, a doomed Erwin Rommel
38:36was winning a temporary reprieve from death from his wounds.
38:46But by now, Rommel's name had been mentioned by conspirators
38:50who had been tortured by the SS after the failure of the bomb plot.
38:54Hitler himself resolved that Rommel had to be eliminated,
38:58but in a way that would not cause embarrassment
39:01to the state or its Führer.
39:04Von Stauffenberg already had been executed,
39:08but it would never do to have Rommel dragged through
39:11the humiliations of the public mock trials
39:13by overwhelming other plotters.
39:20Rommel had for long been the most popular figure in Germany
39:24after Hitler himself.
39:27Hitler dared not accuse his most heroic general
39:30of involvement in treason for fear of crushing national morale.
39:39On the 14th of October,
39:41two generals came from the Supreme Headquarters,
39:45Bertdorf and Meisel.
39:48They went into Rommel's house and met with him quietly in his study.
39:52They explained that he had to make one of two terrible choices.
39:57My father talked to me before he went away.
40:01The two generals, army generals,
40:05told him that there was enough evidence
40:08that he had been a part of the upheaval against Hitler.
40:14But Hitler, remembering his merits in North Africa,
40:19would give him a chance.
40:22His chance is to take poison.
40:27The alternative was having his family sent to a concentration camp
40:31after Rommel's public court-martial and disgrace.
40:35They also promised that his staff officers would escape.
40:39And then he decided to go with them
40:43and said, I have no choice and I will do the reasonable thing,
40:47not the dramatic thing.
40:51Rommel climbed into a staff car with the two officers
40:55and later that afternoon was reported dead of a stroke.
41:04Rommel's funeral was heavily orchestrated by the Nazi party.
41:09It was budgeted.
41:12It was a magnificent funeral.
41:15Rommel's casket was draped with his medals,
41:19including the Knight's Cross.
41:22A jewel sword was there.
41:25His marshal's baton was also on top of the casket.
41:29The body was being watched over by the guards.
41:32The body was being watched over by officers with drawn swords.
41:37One of the songs that was sung by the congregation
41:41was I Once Had a Comrade,
41:44a lament ballad to honor a fallen German soldier.
41:55Hitler's wreath is brought in.
41:58It's so large you could barely get it through a huge doorway.
42:02It's so large you could barely get it through a huge doorway.
42:05It's so large you could barely get it through a huge doorway.
42:08It's so large you could barely get it through a huge doorway.
42:11The funeral oration done by the oldest German field marshal, von Rundstedt,
42:17had the central theme of unity of Germany against the Allies.
42:22And in that oration von Rundstedt said that Rommel's heart was with the Führer.
42:28He said that National Socialism was a cause that Rommel was heavily devoted to.
42:37It is a horrible irony that Erwin Rommel was given the magnificent hero's funeral
42:42that he deserved by the very people who had murdered him.
42:46His magnificent career was splendidly commemorated by those who had so misused it.
42:52The huge crowds that lined the streets differed from these high officials in one important way.
42:59Their grief was genuine.
43:09Erwin Rommel's soldier was laid to rest in the village cemetery in Herlingen.
43:14It planted back into the soil of a disgraced Germany
43:17at least one seed of honor and decency for a new flower.
43:39Rommel was probably out of his age.
43:42He should have been in the 16th or 17th century.
43:44Erwin Rommel might have been the last German knight.
44:14To be continued