Plausability and Effects of Rommel Defecting

It did also help that he kept his word and provided supplies to an allied field hospital in North Africa after blundering into them in the dark one night.
 
However, Mr Proske claims to have found hitherto ignored historical evidence which casts serious doubt on the general's unblemished reputation and the widely accepted clam that he opposed the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazis. "At the time when Rommel marched into Tripoli, more than a quarter of the city's population were Jews," he said. "There is evidence which shows that Rommel forbad his troops to buy anything from Jewish traders. Later on, he used the Jews as slave labourers. Some of them were even used as so-called 'mine dogs' who were ordered to walk over minefields ahead of his advancing troops."

However, Mr Proske claims to have found hitherto ignored historical evidence which casts serious doubt on the general's unblemished reputation and the widely accepted clam that he opposed the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazis. "At the time when Rommel marched into Tripoli, more than a quarter of the city's population were Jews," he said. "There is evidence which shows that Rommel forbad his troops to buy anything from Jewish traders. Later on, he used the Jews as slave labourers. Some of them were even used as so-called 'mine dogs' who were ordered to walk over minefields ahead of his advancing troops."
However, Mr Proske claims to have found hitherto ignored historical evidence which casts serious doubt on the general's unblemished reputation and the widely accepted clam that he opposed the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazis. "At the time when Rommel marched into Tripoli, more than a quarter of the city's population were Jews," he said. "There is evidence which shows that Rommel forbad his troops to buy anything from Jewish traders. Later on, he used the Jews as slave labourers. Some of them were even used as so-called 'mine dogs' who were ordered to walk over minefields ahead of his advancing troops."
However, Mr Proske claims to have found hitherto ignored historical evidence which casts serious doubt on the general's unblemished reputation and the widely accepted clam that he opposed the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazis. "At the time when Rommel marched into Tripoli, more than a quarter of the city's population were Jews," he said. "There is evidence which shows that Rommel forbad his troops to buy anything from Jewish traders. Later on, he used the Jews as slave labourers. Some of them were even used as so-called 'mine dogs' who were ordered to walk over minefields ahead of his advancing troops."
However, Mr Proske claims to have found hitherto ignored historical evidence which casts serious doubt on the general's unblemished reputation and the widely accepted clam that he opposed the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazis. "At the time when Rommel marched into Tripoli, more than a quarter of the city's population were Jews," he said. "There is evidence which shows that Rommel forbad his troops to buy anything from Jewish traders. Later on, he used the Jews as slave labourers. Some of them were even used as so-called 'mine dogs' who were ordered to walk over minefields ahead of his advancing troops."
 
Rommel was a loyal German officer and was killed, not for participating n the July plot, but for only tacitly approving of it by knowing about it and keeping quiet.

I don't see Rommel defecting unless he was first captured or forced to surrender to the Allies.

Rommel only turned against the Nazi regime in 1944. Given this, the only opportunity for Rommel to defect would be during a very short period in 1944 if he somehow fell into US or British hands after the Normandy invasion, perhaps by being in a front line position that fell to an Allied offensive or captured by commandos. You'd also have to butterfly away his absence from the front during this period due to his injuries and/or the July plot. If these two events occur as scheduled, I just don't see where the opportunity for turning his coat would arise.
 
However, Mr Proske claims to have found hitherto ignored historical evidence which casts serious doubt on the general's unblemished reputation and the widely accepted clam that he opposed the rabid anti-Semitism of the Nazis. "At the time when Rommel marched into Tripoli, more than a quarter of the city's population were Jews," he said. "There is evidence which shows that Rommel forbad his troops to buy anything from Jewish traders. Later on, he used the Jews as slave labourers. Some of them were even used as so-called 'mine dogs' who were ordered to walk over minefields ahead of his advancing troops."
Citation needed.
 
I'm calling bull on them, 65+ years after the fact and they've 'only just been discovered'? Also, how many of these have been examined by those outside of this collusion? Hells, when one of the period papers declared he was a nazi party member, he protested it, and eventually managed to get them to rescind it.
 
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Defection is not a thing Rommel would do as it would be way too far from his mindset of honorable and dishonorable behavior for a soldier, especially given the horror of what the SS were doing in Eastern Europe was a world away from Africa and France. The idea of defecting means German soldiers fighting German soldiers and it's one thing to kill a few political leaders, it's another to try to start a civil war.

But, surrendering his troops well before he militarily needed to to help end a war that he believes is already lost and that Hitler is to fanatical to end is an entirely different story.

The evidence that he was organizing this in the summer of 1944 and trying to build support for it among the divisional commanders likely had as much or more to do with getting him killed then what the SS found between him and the July Plot.
 
Africa, yes. France? Not so much.

I was actually thinking about the 1940 to run up to D-Day time frame not after when the center was falling, as for the massacre, yes, he heard about it and saw the pictures and demanded the SS Das Reich division be punished in particular the Der Führer regiment that ordered the attack.

desk.png~original


Did he know such actions in the East were happening on a daily basis? Yes, intellectually at least he understood by the end of 1943 when he returned to Africa he was told in the East they were waging 'dishonorable' warfare.
 
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I was actually thinking about the 1940 to run up to D-Day time frame not after when the center was falling, as for the massacre, yes, he heard about it and saw the pictures and demanded the SS Das Reich division be punished in particular the Der Führer regiment that ordered the attack.
Plenty of massacres carried out by the Germans in 1940, it's just that as the victims were overwhelmingly Black French troops they've been widely forgotten. So far as I'm aware only one instance was ever punished - Le Paradis - and only one single man executed for it, that only because the victims were British and because Albert Pooley was so obsessed with ensuring justice was done in the face of official disbelief that the Germans could act in such a way. Given that the normal estimate of victims is in the thousands, the whole thing was generally either ignored or brushed under the carpet.
 
Plenty of massacres carried out by the Germans in 1940, it's just that as the victims were overwhelmingly Black French troops they've been widely forgotten. So far as I'm aware only one instance was ever punished - Le Paradis - and only one single man executed for it, that only because the victims were British and because Albert Pooley was so obsessed with ensuring justice was done in the face of official disbelief that the Germans could act in such a way. Given that the normal estimate of victims is in the thousands, the whole thing was generally either ignored or brushed under the carpet.

There was no standing order to do that from the German High Command or any of the divisional commanders or even Hitler.

So what happened? What happened was a product of a combination of building German racism and their anger at the French colonial troops for at times killing their own POWs with coupes-coupes resulted in dead French colonial soldiers especially in heavily idologically indoctrinated units.

Rommel would have seen this as an inter-German military problem to be corrected rather then a portend the kind of thinking that was building up in Germany and that the state itself was going to go genocidal.

Scheck states that between 1,500 to 3,000 black French prisoners of war were massacred throughout the campaign, either during or after combat. Generally speaking, Tirailleurs Sénégalais were treated differently from other war prisoners by the victorious army. The existence of a well-implanted anti-black racism and stereotypes among the German soldiers frequently resulted in the black French troops being separated from other prisoners of war. Fear of coupes-coupes (a hand-to-hand weapon used by the Tirailleurs Sénégalais that German soldiers considered a treacherous weapon), latent desire for revenge because of German losses, or simple racism, resulted in random massacres of black French war prisoners by members of the Wehrmacht.

The author’s investigation of what caused the slaughters is also interesting. Scheck gives a precise account of those situational factors and links them well to ideological ones, stating that racist Nazi indoctrination and stereotypes must be fully integrated into the chaotic context of fighting in order to explain the massacres. He remarks that there were no clear governmental or military orders authorizing such criminal behavior toward specific groups of prisoners of war in 1940. In fact, many of those atrocities were committed by heavily indoctrinated elite Wehrmacht,or Nazi military units like the SS Totenkopf, or the Gross Deutschland. Those troops were already (or would be, along with others, later on) held responsible for racist behavior and excesses, as well as mass murders during May-June 1940.

Scheck avoids overall generalization on what happened to those prisoners by discussing the random character and inconsistency of the massacres. Readers quickly understand that not all black French war prisoners were executed, and that some German or French officers even managed to prevent such events from occurring. In fact, the treatment of imprisoned black French soldiers actually improved after the May-June 1940 campaign, especially in prisoner of war camps.

https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=24173
 
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Tovarich

Banned
Hm. Put it that way its pretty simple. He did have a lot of love for his family, so... yeah, I guess without his family, he won't defect. Could he have gotten them out too, though?
What were their singing voices like?
That might work :p
 
My thought is a direct defection would have been very unlikely. There may have been a indirect back hand defection. One of the ideas among the anti Hitler/nazi conspiritors was that the German army in the west could reach a armistice with Britain & the US, allowing a portion or perhaps all the German soldiers to withdraw from France & Belgium & move to east to fight the Bolshiviks. Rommel was connected in their minds with the negotiations and organization of the withdrawll. Assuming Hitler had been killed in July & the senior nazis replaced with the Army leaders Rommel in theory could have attempted this. It is unlikely Eisenhower or Roosevelt would have accepted such a plan but Rommel in desperation might have directed a withdrawl in the west anyway, in the hope the Allies would not press on into Germany & start negotiations.

There are a lot of ways this could have been a non starter but its better than the idea of Rommel actually deserting.
 
My thought is a direct defection would have been very unlikely. There may have been a indirect back hand defection. One of the ideas among the anti Hitler/nazi conspiritors was that the German army in the west could reach a armistice with Britain & the US, allowing a portion or perhaps all the German soldiers to withdraw from France & Belgium & move to east to fight the Bolshiviks. Rommel was connected in their minds with the negotiations and organization of the withdrawll. Assuming Hitler had been killed in July & the senior nazis replaced with the Army leaders Rommel in theory could have attempted this. It is unlikely Eisenhower or Roosevelt would have accepted such a plan but Rommel in desperation might have directed a withdrawl in the west anyway, in the hope the Allies would not press on into Germany & start negotiations.

There are a lot of ways this could have been a non starter but its better than the idea of Rommel actually deserting.

Rommel had talked to middle ranking WAllied officers in the run up to D-Day about if a surrender with conditions would be possible or an alliance against Stalin assuming regime change in Berlin.

He knew if he failed at D-Day there would be no conditions, but he also believed the Western Allies if they occupied all of Germany first would have kept Stalin out. As Stalin would have kept them out if he took all of Germany. There he didn't understand how much some in the West had drank the Uncle Joe fights for freedom kool aid. He never understood people buying their own propaganda.

But, yes what he was trying to do was a Lee at Appomattox in the West and if he couldn't get that he would throw the troops West to shore up what is left of the Eastern front while in his own words allowing the WAllies an unopposed march in.
 
A German equivalent to De Gaul would in the very least be interesting. But it seems like if that were to happen it would have to be early in the war. Late war just seems like opportunism at best and a plot at worst.
 
A German equivalent to De Gaul would in the very least be interesting. But it seems like if that were to happen it would have to be early in the war. Late war just seems like opportunism at best and a plot at worst.

How do you get that early in the war short of him being on the Eastern front and seeing from a far better vantage point then North Africa what the Nazi state was doing? Even then I can't see him defecting to Stalin under any circumstances.
 
I feel like it's not TOO improbable, perhaps, at least relatively, but that were probably all blinded by wishful thinking, given Rommel was such a kewl dude and all. I'm not a Rommel expert, but so far as I know he was brought up in the same staunch Prussian system everyone else was and subjected to German military culture for some considerable time. To that, you have the fact that he's already been fighting for the Germans, and won a considerable number of battles, it would be extremely difficult to mentally swallow switching sides in his position. Furthermore, are their enough Germans that aren't Jews or Socialists up for fighting Hitler? are their enough that can be recruited outside of Germany itself? Once the invasion of Germany starts this is less a problem as you can recruit on the way, but that late in the game I have to wonder if they'd even be able to properly organize and outfit anything before the Soviets are in Berlin.
 
I feel like it's not TOO improbable, perhaps, at least relatively, but that were probably all blinded by wishful thinking, given Rommel was such a kewl dude and all. I'm not a Rommel expert, but so far as I know he was brought up in the same staunch Prussian system everyone else was and subjected to German military culture for some considerable time. To that, you have the fact that he's already been fighting for the Germans, and won a considerable number of battles, it would be extremely difficult to mentally swallow switching sides in his position. Furthermore, are their enough Germans that aren't Jews or Socialists up for fighting Hitler? are their enough that can be recruited outside of Germany itself? Once the invasion of Germany starts this is less a problem as you can recruit on the way, but that late in the game I have to wonder if they'd even be able to properly organize and outfit anything before the Soviets are in Berlin.

Rommel didn't believe in the Prussian system of blind obedience to authority. He believed in being loyal to Germany as a state above any temporary leaders it might have. He saw himself as a Swabian warrior executing Swabian military honor which was different then Prussian military honor.

The big problem with the whole defection notion is that the WAllies and Soviets were both not coming to end Nazism. That would be an after effect of what they were coming to do, but their primary goal was to make Germany at best a third rate power that would never again be able to compete with the rest of Europe economically much less raise arms against them.

Then there were the more radical plans for deindustrialization and dissolving the country and these were the good guys, as far as Rommel was considered Stalin might treat Germany as he did Ukraine.

BTW about Swabians.

‘Shoot Swabians’: Berlin berates its bourgeois invaders

Their dialect is famous for being unintelligible to most Germans. Stereotypically, they are hard workers, miserly, and fastidious doorstep polishers, and they have flooded the trendiest part of Berlin with yuppie residents since the fall of the city’s infamous Wall over two decades ago. The newcomers hail from a wealthy region in Germany’s south-west called Swabia. But their presence in the capital has now provoked a furious outburst from one of the country’s leading politicians, who has accused them of importing nauseating provincialism to metropolitan Berlin.

The broadside against Berlin’s Swabian community has been delivered by German parliamentary vice president, Wolfgang Thierse, a 69-year-old east-Berliner who has lived in the city’s now upmarket and Swabian-dominated Prenzlauer Berg district for over 40 years. Anti-Swabian campaigners have gone on the offensive, covering parts of Prenzlauer Berg – nicknamed “Schwabylon” - with “Shoot Swabians” and “Swabians Out” stickers. Doctored road signs even show workmen digging graves for Swabians.

Albert Einstein The world’s most famous theoretical physicist, below, was born in Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, in 1879, and often referred to himself as “the valiant Swabian” in his youth. The phrase was a quote from the poem by Ludwig Uhland, which had the line: “But the valiant Swabian is not afraid.”

Erwin Rommel The Second World War Nazi Field Marshall, otherwise known as the Desert Fox, hailed from Swabia – as was evident from his surname Rommel, a common Swabian name.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...n-berates-its-bourgeois-invaders-8439039.html

Rommel actually believed that if they didn't make peace the right way it would be the end of Germany as a unified state. But, at the same time defecting was a bridge too far for him given the war aims of the WAllies and his own sense of honor and not wanting to kill fellow German soldiers.

However, he was willing to tell his son to ask Patton that as a favor and professional courtesy to let his son join the U.S. Army after Germany was overcome as he figured it would be not too long after before Stalin was knocking at the rest of Europe's gates and it shows by the end how angry he actually was with the regime ruling Germany.

The French soft conscripted his son anyway, and turned him into the nice face to sell the world on their huge German contingent in Indochina that was stocked full of Germany Army and SS vets with experience with anti-partisan operations on the Russian front. After a bit of time the British and Americans basically told the French to let Rommel's son come home as they had too much respect for his father for his son to be the face of a dirty colonial war.

Rommel, Leclerc fight with Foreign Legion

New York (N.A.N.A) - The sons of two bitter wartime enemies are today fighting side by side in Indo China. They are Erwin Rommel Jr., son of the late Field Marshal, and the young Count de Hauteclocque son of the late Free French General who distinguished himself under the name who distinguished himself under the name Leelere in the North African fight against the German "Desert Fox". Both sons are now members of the French Foreign Legion.

With Frenchman forbidden to join the Legion-Marked on the rolls as Belgian and Swiss, and Germans (quota maxium in the Legion is 50 per cent, but that has been far exceeded) listed as Austrian, Swiss, the Foreign Legion, colorful and brutal, continues to grow.

Young Rommel said his father said that if captured he should tell General George S. Patton that Marshal Rommel asked him to take his son into the U.S. Army.

"But, since you can't join the U.S. Army" De Lattre is reputed to have said, "would you join the Foreign Legion". Rommel hesitated and muttered something. "Perfect!" De Lattre said to have exclaimed. "I knew you would want to join the Legion! Congratulations!"

https://news.google.com/newspapers?...BAJ&pg=2954,2356559&dq=rommel+indochina&hl=en
 
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Hey! These are my ancestors you are talking about!

‘Shoot Swabians’: Berlin berates its bourgeois invaders

Their dialect is famous for being unintelligible to most Germans. Stereotypically, they are hard workers, miserly, and fastidious doorstep polishers, and they have flooded the trendiest part of Berlin with yuppie residents since the fall of the city’s infamous Wall over two decades ago. The newcomers hail from a wealthy region in Germany’s south-west called Swabia. But their presence in the capital has now provoked a furious outburst from one of the country’s leading politicians, who has accused them of importing nauseating provincialism to metropolitan Berlin.

The broadside against Berlin’s Swabian community has been delivered by German parliamentary vice president, Wolfgang Thierse, a 69-year-old east-Berliner who has lived in the city’s now upmarket and Swabian-dominated Prenzlauer Berg district for over 40 years. Anti-Swabian campaigners have gone on the offensive, covering parts of Prenzlauer Berg – nicknamed “Schwabylon” - with “Shoot Swabians” and “Swabians Out” stickers. Doctored road signs even show workmen digging graves for Swabians.

Albert Einstein The world’s most famous theoretical physicist, below, was born in Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, in 1879, and often referred to himself as “the valiant Swabian” in his youth. The phrase was a quote from the poem by Ludwig Uhland, which had the line: “But the valiant Swabian is not afraid.”

Erwin Rommel The Second World War Nazi Field Marshall, otherwise known as the Desert Fox, hailed from Swabia – as was evident from his surname Rommel, a common Swabian name.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...s-8439039.html

In north central Indiana there was a enclave of Swabian emigrants, in Benton & Warren counties among others. In Oxford Indiana 'Rommel Park' is named after on of the local families who trace back to a cousin of Irwin Rommels father who emigrated in the later 19th Century. & yes eve today its possible to detect a peculiar handling of the consonants in the speech of the old families in Benton county who have German surnames.
 
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