What would have happened to Rommel?
- Thread starter Vanguard45
- Start date
Asperger's has ceased as a diagnosis in the DSM-V (probably because Hans Asperger was involved in sending his patients to their deaths after the Anschluss as well as for diagnostic reasons) and has been subsumed into the broader diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. So potayto potahto at this point.
EDIT: while Asperger may have attempted to rehabilitate his "Aryan", high functioning, able bodied patients he certainly was tacit in sending those who didn't fit those criteria to die.
So Hans was a bit of a %$^& then?
Of course the answer to Montys mental state during WW2 could simply be a result of his very serious injury in WW1 (a form of PTSD?) or far more likely the sudden and unexpected death of his wife (who he was very happily married to for 10 years) from septicemia in 1937 - apparently he was utterly devastated and threw himself into his work in a single minded fashion from that point onwards.
I wonder if the the 1951 film “The Desert Fox” starring James Mason might be butterflied away by a living Rommel?
Then again Rommel might cooperate with a memoir of the North African Campaign. It would be interesting if Rommel coached James Mason for the movie role.
Imagine Rommel sitting down with Cornelius Ryan to be interviewed for “The Longest Day”.
What would Rommel think of the 1970 film “Patton”?
Would Rommel agree to appear in “The World at War”?
What would be Rommel’s critique of his nemesis Montgomery’s performance in Normandy and Operation Market Garden?
Then again Rommel might cooperate with a memoir of the North African Campaign. It would be interesting if Rommel coached James Mason for the movie role.
Imagine Rommel sitting down with Cornelius Ryan to be interviewed for “The Longest Day”.
What would Rommel think of the 1970 film “Patton”?
Would Rommel agree to appear in “The World at War”?
What would be Rommel’s critique of his nemesis Montgomery’s performance in Normandy and Operation Market Garden?
Mm, I think Inspector General of the Bundeswehr is a real possibility if he's willing to take it. I mean, he refused several inhumane orders, general treated prisoners and occupied populations well, and wasn't tainted by serving on the Eastern Front. Really his only quirk was a close personal relationship with Hitler.
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Monty was always a difficult character, see his relations with his mother.
Best think of him as a natural scrum-half - small, opinionated and bossy, who is highly annoying but usually right.
Perhaps in life, his star wont be so shiny. Here's what the commander who beat him at Tobruk had to say about Rommel:
He was highly popular for reasons that had nothing to do with battlefield tactics which is something not well understood today. That being said 1941 in his battles to take Tobruk were some of his messiest battles for a few reasons one of the biggest was because he was on the clock and if he didn’t take Tobruk in ‘41 the odds of making NA anything other then a resource pit for Germany to be grinded down while the WAllies built up was dim.
The only meaningful addition to the Himmerod memorandum he could make would be to have it occur earlier but this is unlikely.
Its a complicated situation post-war with the British playing a key role in the manufacture and propagation of the Rommel myth. West German rearmament was highly dependent on the moral rehabilitation that the Wehrmacht. Basil Liddell Hart provided the first widely available source on Rommel in his 1948 book on Hitler's generals portraying Rommel as an outsider to the Nazi regime and that Rommel's "gifts and performance qualified him for a place in the role of the 'Great Captains' of history".
He was promoted post war as the good German - and as such is (happy to be corrected) the only WW2 German General to have Barracks and Ships named after him for example.
The British like him as they fought him so often in what was largely remembered as a clean war in the desert
Having averaged ten hours a week the past six years working with veterans in trouble I can see both contributing to Montys mentality. Things like losing a SO/family will compound on top of the symptoms of wartime trauma. Knowing very little about his Great War injuries I have to ask if there was any clear source for concussion/Traumatic Brain Injury. I don't recall any biographer mentioning typical symptoms during his remaining life, but Im not the expert here.
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Firstly well done on your work
IIRC he was shot through the right Lung and as I understand it the injury ensured that he was unable to drink alchohol or smoke for the rest of his life - for what ever reason.
Not being able to Drink would make me grumpy
Here is what I would say in regards to the revisionist historians. Google news archive exists, I have Times magazines from the 40s, how Rommel was viewed during the war by the whole Western world including the U.S. was unique in a way you won’t understand without reading the papers ‘their boys’ be they American, British, etc. were going several rounds with Rommel himself.
Generally the American press like boxing or wrestling metaphors. The British press other sports like fencing among others.
Either way his depiction during the war and post war was not actually all too different (honorable foe and the rest) outside of an addendum that he got fed up with his CiC and lost that fight.
In 1944/1945 both the British and Americans upfront said that Rommel joined did back the plot, but backed off of that when it came to re-create the German Army when the Cold War hit because the July Plotters themselves were very much hated by WW2 era Germans as trying to stab their leader in the back during the war and they preferred for Cold War reasons to depict a more purely apolitical image of Rommel.
From May 1945
... among one large segment of the population. We have to remember the homogeneity of the German population was a illusion created by intimidation and propaganda. Folks actually at odds with the nazi regime were pretty thoroughly intimidated, or imprisoned & killed. Post war the population was a mix of apologists and people who sincerely viewed the facist era as wrong. So its not like there would be a universal rejection. Since 1950s German politics and leadership were dominated by the likes of Adnauer rejection of the conspirators will not be universal or even effective.
It wasn’t every German no, but even those who viewed the Nazi era as wrong post war seemed to have a fair bit of disquiet about the coup post war. An ordered people do not kill their leader was the common view and Germans by in large have long taken that view back to the Middle Ages where one has to go back to the 1300s to find a successful case of court intrigue.
There was also a lot of opinions one has trouble reconciling today as mainstream ones in Germany that Hitler wouldn’t have ordered the killing of the Jews and others it had to have been Himmler and others in the regime.
I have seen this type of mass thinking in action when they interviewed survivors of Pol Pot’s killings. It couldn’t have been Pol Pot who killed my family, he was our great leader, it had to have been the people around him.
If you are talking about that POS film “Raid on Rommel” I would hope Rommel would take the film makers to court for using his name!
Deleted member 1487
No, I was being tongue-in-cheek there, suggesting that if Rommel lives they would make a movie about him, not Patton.
How would rommel legacy be in Germany and viewed by the germans. Would the right or left co-opt his image for the right to prove they aint nazis the left i dunno being human and to rehabilitate the german pop to show they can change. Will he have monuments. Would he germany MacArthur, Cromwell, robert e lee, sherman, Belisarius.