Erwin Rommel was a decent, God-fearing man.
“The Führer is meeting with Herr Speer. He will enter when he is ready,” said the impossibly tall nineteen-year old. His uniform had been washed more times than it had been worn. Rommel only nodded in reply, the leather of his jacket creaking quietly as he sat down.
The nineteen-year old clicked his heels together and stood motionless in front of the door. Had he seen action? Rommel doubted it. While the hollow eyes and nervous disposition of the veteran did not, contrary to popular belief, arrive after one's first skirmish, this boy had clearly not fired a rifle since his training finished. No, this was clearly 'somebody's son'. Rommel could not resent whichever bureaucrat or Party official had secured him this post. Better he was here than at the front. But better he was at the front than in the General Government. Better in the General Government than - than -
Rommel stopped himself, as if afraid his thoughts would be overheard. Of course he had heard about what was going on in the East. No dictatorship in human history had ever succeeded in stamping out rumour. The wagging tongues of the Wehrmacht - and the black, sneering looks of the SS - had succeeded in spreading tales of unimaginable horror across all of civilised Europe. Most discarded the talk of 'transit camps' as fantasy. The Jews were being fed, clothed and put to work making armaments. With the Russians pressing on from Kursk, Herr Speer had plenty of jobs for the untermenschen.
But if that was the case, why was Speer always so short of labourers?
Rommel had learned to put such questions far from his mind. For almost two years, now. But today was the end of a journey. A long journey.
On the first day of January, 1942, the Nile had turned red with blood. Rommel had seen it himself, his wide-eyed staff officers dragging him to the riverbank where the Tommies’ planes had massacred a field hospital. A tragic mistake - the red crosses not visible in the sandstorm, of course. The British were desperate, but not monsters.
But, all the same, the Nile had turned red with blood.
Days later, Schmidt had bundled him into the staff car when he went almost catatonic at the sight of the frogs menacing the rations of the men at the front. Fat, belching things, they leapt in their dozens at men who swatted vainly with bayonets and shovels. They proved to be no great threat, but one unlucky soul whose face was smeared with the skin of a frog had screamed long into the night until his Gefrieter put him down.
The war had continued apace - why would it not? The British had remained broken and disorganised, and Benghazi and Timini fell in short order. Then the Cauldron brought triumph at Gazala, and the Tommies turned and ran. After the victory at El Alamein in June, the men had complained of an increase in lice. It was around about this time that the first rumours of the East began to circulate.
Inspecting a unit after the retreat from Alam Halfa, Rommel had noted how the men struggled to remain upright as flies crawled over their sores and barely-bandaged wounds. Initially putting his nausea down to this, it was some four days until a physician insisted he had in fact fallen badly ill and must take leave for rest immediately.
The Korps was in good hands in his absence, and it had been good to get back to Germany. The crisp air, even the chill of September was welcome after so many months in that godforsaken country.
The first news of dying cattle in Bavaria was scattered at first, with most information delivered as jokes. Within a week, men were deserting, insisting with wild eyes that they were taking their rations home to mutti and would kill anyone who stood in their way. The Tommies, just as Rommel would have ordered his own men to do, took advantage of the disarray and broke through at El Alamein in late October. On his arrival back, Rommel had taken charge of the situation as best he could, and insisted that no court martials be held - a good night’s sleep under guard was all these terrified boys needed. There was still room for some humanity.
Two months later, the war had certainly turned on a pin. Montgomery had followed up his successes at El Alamein, and Stalingrad had become a horrific slaughterhouse that the Sixth Army could not hope to escape. Other news from the East was even worse - depending on how you valued Jewish lives - and now there was talk of prisoners of war meeting the same fate.
As 1943 went on, Rommel's health did not improve. He found boils under his arms, and on the back of his neck. Many among his staff suffered similar afflictions as the Korps trudged back towards Libya, then Tunisia. The grotesque, pulsing things made him sick to his stomach, and even now, as the nineteen-year-old stared blankly into the middle distance but gave an infinitesimal twitch of the nose, Rommel felt his scars twinge. The heat of the scalpel, and then the flat of the searing bayonet. He'd encountered cleaner surgeries in the trenches.
Then a reprieve from fate at Kasserine. Patton, too hot and too keen. The Amis in retreat. Here, at last, was something to celebrate. But as he cheered with the men, a motorcycle courier handed him the letter.
It had nearly killed him. The thought of Manfred - his Manfred - blown to hell and back by British bombs. A rain of fire from the sky. By chance he lived - but barely. The hospital in Stuttgart had been cold and dark when Rommel - having spent his last political capital with Hitler on insisting on leave to visit - arrived. He had cursed the damned 'Luftwaffenhelfer' programme with all his might as he made the long journey north. But once he was there, alone but for sleeping, bandaged young men, he could only feel the pain of a father. Lucia was asleep elsewhere, and so Manfred woke up the next morning with his left hand held - carefully - by his father.
News reached Rommel during his journey back to Tunisia of the famine in Italy. Some spoke of locusts, others simply a freak crop failure, but the numbers spelled death. Hunger cared not for uniforms or ideology - fascisti, civilians and Germans lay dead in their hundreds while Americans and Tommies grew fat on Coca-Cola and Hershey bars. And could they be blamed, when efforts to drop food from aircraft were swatted out of the sky by a reluctant Kesselring? On the boat to Africa he heard news that the famine, along with rumours of locusts, had spread to his beloved Württemburg. After a short search of his cabin, Rommel opened a Bible for the first time in a very long while.
Rommel landed in Tunisia in time to oversee the withdrawal from the Mareth Line, and then made his way north after leaving the Korps - now the 'Armee' - in the hands of General Messe. As he prepared to travel to Sicily, the darkness fell.
His logistics officer told him it was a dust cloud - surely the largest on record - obscuring the sun and making the day like twilight. The Tommies had made a grand bomb, so it was said. A chance hit on a fuel depot...
Night had lasted a whole day. A queer dusk, really, more than night. But by now, the pious men among the ranks had begun to talk. Rommel realised he had come to Africa with a corps of cynics who believed in one another and nothing more, and now he was evacuating an army of zealous converts. Many were praying simply out of gratitude that the famine had come to an end. The darkness was surely the sign of an end - a bitter warning, but an end nonetheless.
But Rommel had read his Bible. And Erwin Rommel was a decent, God-fearing man.
He could see it. It would come. Manfred in bed, morphine offering the blissful nothingness of sleep. His wounds clean but unhealed. A soft cry in the night, as he had given when he was an infant.
Then nothing.
Germany’s first-born sons, all gone in the dead of night. The tall nineteen-year old would doubtless be among them, unless he had some poor soul of an elder brother fighting the Bolsheviks somewhere. As he had done the last time his people underwent grave suffering, the Lord had spoken, and he had given warning after terrible warning. And yet, like Ramses before him, the Führer had not listened.
But Rommel had. He knew what had been going on. He realised now that all the most terrible and horrifying rumours that had reached him must be true. He, more than most, had seen in black and white what the German army, the German nation, had been engaged to do. What it had been engaged to destroy. Order after order had passed over his desk regarding 'undesirables' and 'subhumans', and while he ignored them, how many did the same? It was with this in mind that Rommel had insisted on meeting Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in person before he agreed to take full command of the defence of northern Italy.
The Lord had not chosen to send a messenger, not this time. Or perhaps he had, and he had been shot face down in the street in Lodz, or Warsaw, or Amsterdam.
But His message was clear, and its demand was unmistakeable.
Blood in the Nile.
Frogs.
Lice.
Flies.
Sick cattle.
Boils.
Locusts.
Fire from the sky.
Darkness.
And then...
The nineteen-year old turned and held open the door, having heard a knock that Rommel had been too engrossed in his thoughts to make out.
Manfred would live. The sons of Germany would live.
As the Führer entered the room, Rommel calmly placed his right hand inside his jacket pocket.
Erwin Rommel was a God-fearing man.
“The Führer is meeting with Herr Speer. He will enter when he is ready,” said the impossibly tall nineteen-year old. His uniform had been washed more times than it had been worn. Rommel only nodded in reply, the leather of his jacket creaking quietly as he sat down.
The nineteen-year old clicked his heels together and stood motionless in front of the door. Had he seen action? Rommel doubted it. While the hollow eyes and nervous disposition of the veteran did not, contrary to popular belief, arrive after one's first skirmish, this boy had clearly not fired a rifle since his training finished. No, this was clearly 'somebody's son'. Rommel could not resent whichever bureaucrat or Party official had secured him this post. Better he was here than at the front. But better he was at the front than in the General Government. Better in the General Government than - than -
Rommel stopped himself, as if afraid his thoughts would be overheard. Of course he had heard about what was going on in the East. No dictatorship in human history had ever succeeded in stamping out rumour. The wagging tongues of the Wehrmacht - and the black, sneering looks of the SS - had succeeded in spreading tales of unimaginable horror across all of civilised Europe. Most discarded the talk of 'transit camps' as fantasy. The Jews were being fed, clothed and put to work making armaments. With the Russians pressing on from Kursk, Herr Speer had plenty of jobs for the untermenschen.
But if that was the case, why was Speer always so short of labourers?
Rommel had learned to put such questions far from his mind. For almost two years, now. But today was the end of a journey. A long journey.
On the first day of January, 1942, the Nile had turned red with blood. Rommel had seen it himself, his wide-eyed staff officers dragging him to the riverbank where the Tommies’ planes had massacred a field hospital. A tragic mistake - the red crosses not visible in the sandstorm, of course. The British were desperate, but not monsters.
But, all the same, the Nile had turned red with blood.
Days later, Schmidt had bundled him into the staff car when he went almost catatonic at the sight of the frogs menacing the rations of the men at the front. Fat, belching things, they leapt in their dozens at men who swatted vainly with bayonets and shovels. They proved to be no great threat, but one unlucky soul whose face was smeared with the skin of a frog had screamed long into the night until his Gefrieter put him down.
The war had continued apace - why would it not? The British had remained broken and disorganised, and Benghazi and Timini fell in short order. Then the Cauldron brought triumph at Gazala, and the Tommies turned and ran. After the victory at El Alamein in June, the men had complained of an increase in lice. It was around about this time that the first rumours of the East began to circulate.
Inspecting a unit after the retreat from Alam Halfa, Rommel had noted how the men struggled to remain upright as flies crawled over their sores and barely-bandaged wounds. Initially putting his nausea down to this, it was some four days until a physician insisted he had in fact fallen badly ill and must take leave for rest immediately.
The Korps was in good hands in his absence, and it had been good to get back to Germany. The crisp air, even the chill of September was welcome after so many months in that godforsaken country.
The first news of dying cattle in Bavaria was scattered at first, with most information delivered as jokes. Within a week, men were deserting, insisting with wild eyes that they were taking their rations home to mutti and would kill anyone who stood in their way. The Tommies, just as Rommel would have ordered his own men to do, took advantage of the disarray and broke through at El Alamein in late October. On his arrival back, Rommel had taken charge of the situation as best he could, and insisted that no court martials be held - a good night’s sleep under guard was all these terrified boys needed. There was still room for some humanity.
Two months later, the war had certainly turned on a pin. Montgomery had followed up his successes at El Alamein, and Stalingrad had become a horrific slaughterhouse that the Sixth Army could not hope to escape. Other news from the East was even worse - depending on how you valued Jewish lives - and now there was talk of prisoners of war meeting the same fate.
As 1943 went on, Rommel's health did not improve. He found boils under his arms, and on the back of his neck. Many among his staff suffered similar afflictions as the Korps trudged back towards Libya, then Tunisia. The grotesque, pulsing things made him sick to his stomach, and even now, as the nineteen-year-old stared blankly into the middle distance but gave an infinitesimal twitch of the nose, Rommel felt his scars twinge. The heat of the scalpel, and then the flat of the searing bayonet. He'd encountered cleaner surgeries in the trenches.
Then a reprieve from fate at Kasserine. Patton, too hot and too keen. The Amis in retreat. Here, at last, was something to celebrate. But as he cheered with the men, a motorcycle courier handed him the letter.
It had nearly killed him. The thought of Manfred - his Manfred - blown to hell and back by British bombs. A rain of fire from the sky. By chance he lived - but barely. The hospital in Stuttgart had been cold and dark when Rommel - having spent his last political capital with Hitler on insisting on leave to visit - arrived. He had cursed the damned 'Luftwaffenhelfer' programme with all his might as he made the long journey north. But once he was there, alone but for sleeping, bandaged young men, he could only feel the pain of a father. Lucia was asleep elsewhere, and so Manfred woke up the next morning with his left hand held - carefully - by his father.
News reached Rommel during his journey back to Tunisia of the famine in Italy. Some spoke of locusts, others simply a freak crop failure, but the numbers spelled death. Hunger cared not for uniforms or ideology - fascisti, civilians and Germans lay dead in their hundreds while Americans and Tommies grew fat on Coca-Cola and Hershey bars. And could they be blamed, when efforts to drop food from aircraft were swatted out of the sky by a reluctant Kesselring? On the boat to Africa he heard news that the famine, along with rumours of locusts, had spread to his beloved Württemburg. After a short search of his cabin, Rommel opened a Bible for the first time in a very long while.
Rommel landed in Tunisia in time to oversee the withdrawal from the Mareth Line, and then made his way north after leaving the Korps - now the 'Armee' - in the hands of General Messe. As he prepared to travel to Sicily, the darkness fell.
His logistics officer told him it was a dust cloud - surely the largest on record - obscuring the sun and making the day like twilight. The Tommies had made a grand bomb, so it was said. A chance hit on a fuel depot...
Night had lasted a whole day. A queer dusk, really, more than night. But by now, the pious men among the ranks had begun to talk. Rommel realised he had come to Africa with a corps of cynics who believed in one another and nothing more, and now he was evacuating an army of zealous converts. Many were praying simply out of gratitude that the famine had come to an end. The darkness was surely the sign of an end - a bitter warning, but an end nonetheless.
But Rommel had read his Bible. And Erwin Rommel was a decent, God-fearing man.
He could see it. It would come. Manfred in bed, morphine offering the blissful nothingness of sleep. His wounds clean but unhealed. A soft cry in the night, as he had given when he was an infant.
Then nothing.
Germany’s first-born sons, all gone in the dead of night. The tall nineteen-year old would doubtless be among them, unless he had some poor soul of an elder brother fighting the Bolsheviks somewhere. As he had done the last time his people underwent grave suffering, the Lord had spoken, and he had given warning after terrible warning. And yet, like Ramses before him, the Führer had not listened.
But Rommel had. He knew what had been going on. He realised now that all the most terrible and horrifying rumours that had reached him must be true. He, more than most, had seen in black and white what the German army, the German nation, had been engaged to do. What it had been engaged to destroy. Order after order had passed over his desk regarding 'undesirables' and 'subhumans', and while he ignored them, how many did the same? It was with this in mind that Rommel had insisted on meeting Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in person before he agreed to take full command of the defence of northern Italy.
The Lord had not chosen to send a messenger, not this time. Or perhaps he had, and he had been shot face down in the street in Lodz, or Warsaw, or Amsterdam.
But His message was clear, and its demand was unmistakeable.
Blood in the Nile.
Frogs.
Lice.
Flies.
Sick cattle.
Boils.
Locusts.
Fire from the sky.
Darkness.
And then...
The nineteen-year old turned and held open the door, having heard a knock that Rommel had been too engrossed in his thoughts to make out.
Manfred would live. The sons of Germany would live.
As the Führer entered the room, Rommel calmly placed his right hand inside his jacket pocket.
Erwin Rommel was a God-fearing man.
Wow! That was amazing! Great job.