Question: Rommel's politics?

Sort of inspired by the Cliche thread but also something thats puzzled me now and then:

Rommel features a lot in AH were Hitler is killed off, Valkyrie PODs mainly but elsewhere. He seems to be protrayed as liberal, or at least democratic as oppossed to most German generals who are portrayed as authoritarian and conservative in differing shades (in one story I read he becomes President of a post-Nazi Germany in the 1970s as a Liberal, while Manstein or someone else is leader of the Christian Democrat opposition). Is there any indication in history as to his actual politics?

It seems to me he's portrayed in such a light because of his dashing military record, his anti-Nazi tendencies and lack of enthusiasm over anti-Semitism (I believe he went to the trouble of covering up for Jewish POWs in North Africa).

Is this wishful thinking for one of the 'good guys' in Germany that got screwed over, or is there some substance to it?

Any information would be most helpful.

Cheers,
Jape
 

maverick

Banned
I read somewhere that he had socialist symphaties sometime in the 1930s, could be wrong...

Rommel was mostly apolitical...he was a proud soldier, and thus hated the SS, but was mostly loyal to king and country, and then to Fuhrer and Country, to the point in which he was never actually involved in any conspiracy against Hitler whatsoever...and there were like, 12 of them, I mean, even Albert Speer considered killing Hitler once...

Rommel was also in charge of Hitler's security in the late 1930s, interestingly enough...

There's also an interesting annecdote, in the middle of a parade, Rommel, Hitler and an SS officer were sitting at a balcony, the SS officer in front of Rommel, who stood up, took his rather heavy opera couch-sit, placed it in front of the SS officer, placing himself on the first row and said something like "The heer always comes first", or something like that...

Is this wishful thinking for one of the 'good guys' in Germany that got screwed over, or is there some substance to it?

It is, but there's nothing wrong with wishful thinking...and Rommel did deserve better...


Polishpedia says that in the late 1930s, Rommel and Goebbels met and became friends, Goebbels turning into an admirer and using his propaganda machine to highlight Rommel's exploits, interesting...
 
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wormyguy

Banned
I read somewhere that he had socialist symphaties sometime in the 1930s, could be wrong...

So did Goebbels (and nearly all of the other Nazis that joined before Hitler). That doesn't prove anything.

Rommel, like most of the military, would most likely have nostalgia for the "good old days" of the German Empire. He had strong ideas about doing what was honorable, especially in wartime, but it would be a stretch to say that he was a big proponent of liberal, democratic ideas, although he was certainly more of a "nice guy" than most in the German hierarchy at the time.

It would be wrong to say he was a proponent of ideas he never espoused to anyone. You could give him the benefit of the doubt, but Occam's razor suggests that his ideas were the same as those found in other senior officers: reinstation of the Kaiser, efforts to achieve "Grossdeutschland," militant anti-Communism, and reinstation of the old aristocracy to their "rightful place."
 

maverick

Banned
Hard to say, given that Rommel himslef was not part of said Prussian aristocracy, and thus wouldn't have much interest in seeing the Junkers getting their power back...
 
If the accounts written conveniently after his death are to be believed, the guy was really tin death, suggesting a Jewish gauleiter be appointed at some point in the 1940s, and thinking Hitler would never go to war.
 
So did Goebbels (and nearly all of the other Nazis that joined before Hitler). That doesn't prove anything.

Goebbels wasn't an 'old comrade' from the DAP was he? Also his love of movie stars and glitz makes me doubt he had much of a proletarian bent. Also the fact you suggest Rommel was a founding Nazi is even stranger :confused:
 

maverick

Banned
Goebbels wasn't an 'old comrade' from the DAP was he? Also his love of movie stars and glitz makes me doubt he had much of a proletarian bent.

No he wasn't, but I don't think must of the General Secretaries of the USSR Communist Party or the Politburo members cared too much about their lifes of luxury intefereing with their love for the proletariat:p

Also the fact you suggest Rommel was a founding Nazi is even stranger :confused:

Where does he suggest that? did you even read the post?
 

wormyguy

Banned
Goebbels wasn't an 'old comrade' from the DAP was he? Also his love of movie stars and glitz makes me doubt he had much of a proletarian bent. Also the fact you suggest Rommel was a founding Nazi is even stranger :confused:

Ask the great Wikipedia :D:

"National and socialist! What goes first, and what comes afterwards?" Goebbels asked rhetorically in a debate with Theodore Vahlen, Gauleiter (regional party head) of Pomerania, in the Rhineland party newspaper National-sozialistische Briefe (National-Socialist Letters), of which he was editor, in mid 1925. "With us in the west, there can be no doubt. First socialist redemption, then comes national liberation like a whirlwind…"



"In 1925, Goebbels published an open letter to "my friends of the left," urging unity between socialists and Nazis against the capitalists. "You and I," he wrote, "we are fighting one another although we are not really enemies."


"Goebbels was bitterly disillusioned. "I feel devastated," he wrote. "What sort of Hitler? A reactionary?" He was horrified by Hitler’s characterization of socialism as "a Jewish creation," his declaration that the Soviet Union must be destroyed, and his assertion that private property would not be expropriated by a Nazi government. "I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That’s the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away."



Seems that he was, indeed, a socialist, and a true believer at that, and a friend of the Soviets at that.


I also, as has been pointed out, did not say that Rommel was a founding Nazi.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#cite_note-15
 
I also, as has been pointed out, did not say that Rommel was a founding Nazi.

Admittedly I was teasing a tad on that, its just your first setence sounds like your calling Rommel 'another' of the old pre-Hitler Nazis.

I'm going to check up on Goebbels, your sources are very interesting, although frankly the 1925 piece from a Nazi newspaper should be taken with a pinch of salt as a universal rule, but the private entries are quite something. I mean the man who stayed in the Fuhrerbunker until the end and poisoned his kids lost faith in Hitler back in the early 30s? Certainly not the image of Goebbles I had. Learn something new everyday, cheers :)
 
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