What if Rommel became a prisoner of war before the 20 July Plot? How will his survival change history?
AHC: POW Rommel
- Thread starter Barbarossa Rotbart
- Start date
He might end up leading a rightist faction in post-war West Germany, something like Nazism without the racism and with less authoritarianism. He also might be given command of their armoured corps.
No. Did you know that his son was a member of the CDU and mayor of Stuttgard from 1974 to 1996? And that Rommel himself was political very naive. He also did not realize the nature of the war or of the racism of the Nazis.
I believe that he would have been the second former field marshal (von Manstein was the only one iOTL) involved in the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1955. But his soldierly self-image would prevent any political activity.
I believe that he would have been the second former field marshal (von Manstein was the only one iOTL) involved in the creation of the Bundeswehr in 1955. But his soldierly self-image would prevent any political activity.
Which is interesting considering he was head of the FührerBegleitbataillon that he was that politically naive??
Many of the German generals didn't seem to think beyond the fact that Hitler opened up the toy box and gave them lots of nice shiney new toys with guns mounted on them. Sad but true. Plus the bit about tearing up the Treaty of Versailles got them all excited as well. Realising that they'd allowed a bunch of homicidal crooks in to tear up the constitution and commit mass murder came as something of a shock to them - according to their memoirs at least.
That is the opinion of all of his biographers (and many of them are british or american). His suggestion to Hitler to install a jew as Gauleiter is a very good example. He had been used by the regimen and he did not realized that.
Making him a member of a political party is completely against his character.
Making him a member of a political party is completely against his character.
No, he would not get into politics on his own accord in a post war timeline where he survives. In a worse Cold War timeline where he survives if the Western Allies and USSR are even more at each others throats I could imagine Allied leaders perhaps trying to make him a political figurehead for a militarily strong anti-Communist West Germany. I am not sure if he would go along or not as he disliked politics and as a nationalist who once believed in his country by 1944 his faith in it was pretty damaged.
I imagine he would want to write his second book on war after WW2 ended if he survived. Like Hans Speidel his deputy the Western Allies very well might want to make him into a NATO commander. Unlike Speidel I don't know if he would have accepted or not, it would have depended if he came out of the pretty deep depression he was in during the last few months of his life about Germany and his personal failings.
The two of them were not popular with the Allied press, with many rank and file Allied officers and generals they were, which is why for 'health reasons' they were released/charges dropped several years after the war.
When it comes to the immediate post war treatment of him think of Guderian below without the Soviet bloc objecting to him not being charged as they didn't fight him. And, Guderian got off without having Rommel's advantage of the the Anglo-American press spending years promoting him as an honorable and professional soldier.
Just as a note, the family of Rommel has been very active in accusing anyone who paints him in a less favourable light of bigotry and falsification. It's also them who provided the base materials that his biographers - worldwide - have worked from. More recent works (last two decades) by authors like Maurice Philipp Remy are rather more critical of him, using archived information instead of the Rommel family filter. Yes, Rommel was originally (probably) naive and apolitical. That changed around 1938/39 already though, and by 1942/43 he was firmly entrenched in the political scene, even if still - probably intentionally - ignorant of certain parts of it.
Many of the German generals didn't seem to think beyond the fact that Hitler opened up the toy box and gave them lots of nice shiney new toys with guns mounted on them. Sad but true. Plus the bit about tearing up the Treaty of Versailles got them all excited as well. Realising that they'd allowed a bunch of homicidal crooks in to tear up the constitution and commit mass murder came as something of a shock to them - according to their memoirs at least.
To be honest who would have thought the Nazis were so evil until it was too late? They weren't that different from Robisperre (who although bad, wasn't anywhere near the Nazis in term of mass murder) or Napoleon until 1939, and they certainly didn't appear it.
In my TL, Giovinezza, he defects to the Italians after Hitler accuses him of defeatism, and now is one of the German Co-Belligerent Army (Made up of German defectors), and is now one of the 5 major commanders on the Italian Front, along with Badoglio, Patton, Cavellaro, and other commanders on the Allied side (This TL Fascist Italy is an allied country).
I find it very difficult to read about the last years of the Weimar Republic - there are so many accounts of brave men and woman who saw the Nazis for exactly what they were but who were unable to get the word out. A lot of journalists ended up in concentration camps post-1933 for the grievous sin of writing accurate stories about the beatings and murders that the Brownshirts were responsible for (and yes they also wrote about the same crimes committed by the communists).
I think that the German Army started to realise just what kind of scum were leading Germany in 1938 - the Fritsch Affair drove it home with a horrible clarity.
It isn't so much the political thuggery that was inconveiable or even the systematic side-lining/crushing of political opposition but the mass murder. There was literally nothing to make anyone think the Nazis or any sort of human for that matter was capable of the Holocuast, before it actually happened.
No chance of it.
By the end of 1942 he knew Hitler was crazy. Though, he had to be hit over the head with it by a stand and die order from Hitler followed by a hour plus long screaming and threatening execution session from him.
Interestingly he believed Hitler's mental health was declining rather then he was insane all along. By mid to late 1943 upon his return from Africa and then the hospital he found out what the SS was doing in Russia from other German officers. He rationalized that Himmler was taking advantage of Hitler's declining mental health to commit such acts. But, by early 1944 he did recieve intelligence about the death camps in Poland and that Hitler was directly responsable along with Himmler for them and it was intelligence good enough he couldn't ignore it.
The question is what to do about it. He knew about the July 20th plotters, but he believed that their plot would likely fail and even if they did kill Hitler and managed to not be killed quickly by other factions like the SS the Germany people looked upon Hitler as almost a God so they would likely be strung up and you would get another Nazi in charge.
Then as a big seperate problem he had a two front mega war to deal with and believed if Stalin occupied Germany it would be the end of Germany as a state and Germany would face a future like Ukraine under Stalin.
He didn't know of the post war deal to divide up Germany between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. So, his plan was to give the Western Allies one last big fight at Normandy before talks on the conditions to surrender his forces in the West to give the Western Allies the straight shot to Germany. That didn't work so his goal then became to organize an unconditional surrender on the Western Front, but he was put out of commission as we know. It wasn't the fact he had weaks links to the July 20th plotters that got him killed, it was mainly him fighting an 'retreating campaign' as Himmler called it and trying to organize a surrender on the Western Front.
If it wasn't for his father Manfred could and likely would have ended up in the Waffen SS committing war crimes instead of the internationally respected former mayor of Stuttgart who recieved some of the highest awards by Israel and the UK that a foreigner can recieve.
Instead he owes his life and his entire future to his father and has been defending him since the 70s from attacks from biographers that want to take a little bit of truth and strech it out to try to prove his father was an evil monster.
Case in point, Rommel through his connections found out in 1944 that they (as well as likely the Allies) were building a bomb thousands of times more powerful then any that had been made before that could potentally wipe out an invading army in one blow. He didn't have much understanding of the weapon being designed beyond that. He in the summer of 44 was trying to find info on how far along the project was by trying to ask the right questions the the right way.
If a biographer wanted to they could imply that Rommel was a monster who would have nuked London and Moscow if given the chance and so a biographer did and so his family called bullshit on it.
Then just a few years ago they had a two hour TV documentary on German TV that Rommel's goal was to bring the Final Solution to the Middle East. They didn't prove anything about Rommel's views about the Jews all they proved is the SS wanted to kill the nearly 200K Jews in North Africa as well as in Palestine. They certainly didn't ask the Jews living in Africa at the time what they felt about Rommel. However, unlike the biographer Rommel's son did get a chance to talk to them and to them and told him how he kept the SS out for the most part and the Arab nationalists from attacking them.
In the early Cold War the biographies were in the West agenda driven in the positive direction toward him for political reasons. Instead of well rounded biographies on Rommel all I have seen in my life time has been agenda driven biographies that take bits of history and minipulate them to suit an agenda. I commend Manfred and his family for having the balls to spend years fighting the crap biographies that keep coming out about him.
If you wanted an honest biography about him you would have a man who found in WW1 that he loved combat and leading men who used Hitler as his means of bypassing the Prussian old guard in the military and getting control of an Army division to again lead men into combat. And, from there spent about two years fighting in Africa in a war in the desert with the British their allies and later the Americans. However, as the war goes on he starts to realize his leadership is insane and then then he finds out they are evil, but the question is how to deal with his nation's leadership at the same time he deals with a two front mega war and Rommel struggles for an answer.
There were no good answers at that point. Obviously if he knew what he knew in 1944 in 1939 he could have killed Hitler in the position he was in and fat man would likely have not attacked the Soviet's or declared war on the U.S., but you would still be leaving a very evil regime in place and in life unlike on this forum there is no going back in time to fix your mistakes.
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If Rommel had been captured he would have been paraded on the newsreels and he would be a bit of a celebrity. I'm not sure how things would have turned out if he were subjected to the full scrutiny of the western media.
How would he answers questions such as 'if you knew Hitler was crazy why continue to serve under him?"
"What about the forced labourers on the Atlantic Wall?" "When did you know about the mass murder of Jews?"
I guess he would have been shielded from that until the 1960's if he were still alive by then.
He would not be allowed a role in politics because he would be still be seen as na Axis general. He would be given a role in the Bundeswehr and would be the toast of the talk circuit.
How would he answers questions such as 'if you knew Hitler was crazy why continue to serve under him?"
"What about the forced labourers on the Atlantic Wall?" "When did you know about the mass murder of Jews?"
I guess he would have been shielded from that until the 1960's if he were still alive by then.
He would not be allowed a role in politics because he would be still be seen as na Axis general. He would be given a role in the Bundeswehr and would be the toast of the talk circuit.
By 1944 the Anglo-American press and Hollywood had already turned him into a celebrity. Case in point this Hollywood 1943 Classic nominated for several Academy Awards below in which we find out an attractive French woman who attempts to seduce Rommel in Egypt to get her brother back from a POW camp started the Rout of Rommel.
He would have pretty clear answers for two of those. He was open at the time that he believed that civilians during a time of war could be conscripted to help the war effort either as soldiers or as workes, but believed they had to be paid for their services otherwise its slavery and he would say and show the documents that he ordered them in his area of operations to be paid and not to be treated like slaves.
Regarding when he knew about the mass killings of Jews he would likely dodge the question a bit and point to the numerous letters he wrote the German High Command protesting the treatment of Jews starting in 1937 and would say his knowledge on the subject grew with time and the letters show this, he would then probably talk about his refusal to hand over the Jews in his area of operations to the SS in North Africa and France or to allow them in and his refusal to kill or hand over Jewish POWs to be deported to Poland.
The most vexing question of those above for him would be on the question of why he stayed in the military after finding out what he did about his government. Obviously he couldn't say, because I was hoping to maul your troops at Normandy and then open up seperate peace/conditional surrender talks so I could get a better deal for my country.
If he was smart he would keep it simple like 'I wanted to be in a position where I could make a difference', but like I said it wouldn't be an easy question for him to answer, because that answer comes off as somewhat of a dodge and the complete answer would be something the Anglo-American press wouldn't want to hear.
Well, it would still probably come off a bit better on Guderian's answer that a true German officer never revolts against the leader.
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Right. That's why Manfred Rommel was a part of Hans Filbinger's personal staff in the 60s, that oh so respectable statesman, right? There's a reason why Manfred Rommel didn't become minister-president in 1978 after "our last nazi" was removed from power. And that reason was that just like his father, he was way in deep with that government, and the CDU wanted someone with a cleaner bill regarding connections to Filbinger and his cronies.
His - or his father's - personal convictions are of no consequence. Any "march through the institutions" allure is a pipe dream that has never worked. Colaboration is always despicable.
Nebogipfel
Monthly Donor
Actually most of the following Ministerpraesidenten (~Governors) continued to have a good relationship with Filbinger afterwards (especially Lothar Spaeth). The man was far from an outcast afterwards, not in the CDU in BW which is traditionally quite right-winged. I don't think this damaged Rommel in any way - he probably was just happy being in charge of Stuttgart. And he was very popular even outside of his party, I am sure he even could have become Chancellor.