Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century by Dennis E. Showalter

Author:Dennis E. Showalter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780425206638
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2004-01-01T11:00:00+00:00

VI

In the summer of 1940, the Third Reich’s public relations apparatus embraced Erwin Rommel with an enthusiasm hitherto denied any senior Army officer. Rommel’s tanks “carve long bloodstained trails across the map of Europe like the scalpel of a surgeon,” wrote one commentator—exactly the metaphor sought in a Third Reich at the zenith of its power and prestige. Rommel and the 7th Panzer were summoned to re-create their crossing of the Somme for the major propaganda film Victory in the West, with French Senegalese POWs temporarily released to act as extras. Rommel enjoyed playing the role of director and discussing his plans to write a tanker’s counterpart to Infantry Attacks. He basked in the admiration of junior officers who took advantage of temporary peace to make a pilgrimage to the 7th Panzer’s headquarters. Invited to report personally to Hitler, he hoped in vain for a higher grade of the Knight’s Cross and settled for a briefing on the success of the air campaign against Britain.

The Ghost Division was scheduled to play a major role in Operation Sea Lion, the projected cross-channel invasion. Rommel spent an increasing amount of time training his men in embarkation and debarkation techniques and was correspondingly frustrated when the operation was cancelled and the 7th Panzer sent south to Bordeaux. He was overlooked in the spate of promotions made in that summer of victory; not until January 1941 did he become a major general. His public response was to complain of the continuing influence of a General Staff clique that understood better how to further its own interests than to wage modern war. He also prepared an elaborate illustrated version of the 7th Panzer’s war diary and sent it to Hitler directly. “You can be proud of your achievements,” the Fuehrer responded.

Although unlikely to be influenced at any time during his career by souvenir photo albums, Hitler nevertheless was developing plans for his ambitious outsider. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had remained neutral in the war’s early stages, entering the conflict only in June 1940. An Italian army spectacularly ill prepared for modern warfare suffered a humiliating defeat against France’s Alpine defenses. The Italian air contingent dispatched to the Battle of Britain performed so poorly it had to be withdrawn. Mussolini, however, was primarily concerned with establishing an independent imperium in the Mediterranean. Refusing Hitler’s offers of assistance, he embarked on a disastrous campaign against Greece, an air offensive against the island of Malta that the Royal Air Force managed to stand off with a few obsolescent fighters, and an invasion of British-ruled Egypt that stuck fast only a few miles from the border.

Churchill responded by committing an increasing amount of the scarce resources Britain possessed after Dunkirk to the Mediterranean. He was desperate for a victory, both for the sake of domestic morale and to improve America’s confidence in British capacity to endure and prevail. Churchill’s initial refusal to consider negotiations with Hitler had in good part reflected his belief in the prospect of rapid, large-scale U.

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