There has been a big push by revisionist historians in Germany in recient years to argue that Rommel wanted to take the Final Solution to Palestine. The notion has made it into recient books and even TV shows in Germany.
Now, I personally consider this to be a BS attempt for anti-war Germans to turn Rommel who is still a military hero to many Germans into a Himmler like figure. The reality is that Rommel fought mostly successfully to keep the SS out of Africa and according to most sources only learned about the Final Solution in late 43 early 44 after returning from Africa and recovering from his illness and was not the least bit happy to learn fellow Germans were mass killing innocent people.
However, had the Afrika Korps managed to remove the UK's hold on Palestine in Rommel's drive to Iraq leaving a security vacuum I do wonder what would have happened. I suspect there would have been mass killings of Jews, but by locals not by Germans and civil war in Palestine. As for who wins I suspect that will be up to how big a resistance the Jewish population of Palestine put up against the Afrika Korps. If they blew their weapons and manpower fighting a futile battle against the Germans while the Arabs watch and wait the local Jewish population loses badly. If not then they have a shot of not being killed off or forced into slavery.
With the fight going badly in Russia I don't see Himmler or Hitler sending SS divisions to the area to help the Arabs. But, other Arab states like the new German friendly Egypt might send forces to the area. If that happens the Jewish population loses as they didn't have the numbers or the support that they had by the 1948 war.
'Chivalrous' Rommel wanted to bring Holocaust to Middle East
Erwin Rommel's reputation as one of Nazi Germany's few chivalrous generals has been blackened by a new documentary film which depicts the legendary "Desert Fox" as an unscrupulous commander who spearheaded Hitler's attempts to take the Holocaust to the Middle East.
Rommel, the head of the German Afrika Korps who won fame for his initial successes against the British in North Africa in 1942, was widely respected during and after the Second World War. Churchill once referred to him in parliament as a "great general".
Defeated by General Bernard Montgomery's "Desert Rats" at the battle of El Alamein in Egypt the same year, Field Marshal Rommel once claimed that his military campaign against the British was a chivalrous affair and the nearest thing to "war without hate".
However, a new two-part documentary series being broadcast on Germany's ZDF television channel provides evidence that Rommel played a key role in the Nazis' drive to invade Palestine and exterminate the Jews of the Middle East.
The historian Jörg Müllner, who made the film Rommel's War with co-author Jean-Christoph Caron, yesterday dismissed as a "myth" the notion that Rommel fought a clean war in the desert. "With his victories, he was simply preparing the way for the Nazi extermination machine," he added.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...to-bring-holocaust-to-middle-east-450304.html
Now, I personally consider this to be a BS attempt for anti-war Germans to turn Rommel who is still a military hero to many Germans into a Himmler like figure. The reality is that Rommel fought mostly successfully to keep the SS out of Africa and according to most sources only learned about the Final Solution in late 43 early 44 after returning from Africa and recovering from his illness and was not the least bit happy to learn fellow Germans were mass killing innocent people.
However, had the Afrika Korps managed to remove the UK's hold on Palestine in Rommel's drive to Iraq leaving a security vacuum I do wonder what would have happened. I suspect there would have been mass killings of Jews, but by locals not by Germans and civil war in Palestine. As for who wins I suspect that will be up to how big a resistance the Jewish population of Palestine put up against the Afrika Korps. If they blew their weapons and manpower fighting a futile battle against the Germans while the Arabs watch and wait the local Jewish population loses badly. If not then they have a shot of not being killed off or forced into slavery.
With the fight going badly in Russia I don't see Himmler or Hitler sending SS divisions to the area to help the Arabs. But, other Arab states like the new German friendly Egypt might send forces to the area. If that happens the Jewish population loses as they didn't have the numbers or the support that they had by the 1948 war.
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