The Jester takes the Crown
The Second World War – Christopher Armlong
News of Rommel’s defection hit Germany like a thunderbolt. That their hero, the man who had so gallantly saved them repeatedly in Russia, who had taken over France without a sweat and had given the Allies bloody nose after bloody nose in Normandy had switched sides was incomprehensible. The initial reaction of the Himmler government was to deny it, which was quickly disproven by pictures of Rommel and Patton shaking hands. From there, Goebbels was given his toughest assignment to date – making the Germans hate Rommel.
Goebbels accused Rommel of “succumbing to ego”, “spitting on the graves of his dead soldiers” and “wishing the rape of every German women to the Jew and Russian savages”. It left little to the imagination, but it had little effect. Most Germans had little hatred of the Americans, British or Italians. They were, however, terrified of the Jewish and Soviet soldiers in the East. For that reason, Churchill would forbid the Jewish Army advancing any closer to Germany than liberating Prague, which it did by mid-July. [1] For that reason, Rommel’s defection was seen in a much more forgiving light.
Rommel would have little front-line command, but his very presence was a game-changer. He had formed a new army, mostly consisting of soldiers who fought on the side of the Valkyrie Coup in the ‘Free German Army’, which quickly grew to about 20,000 men once resolved Anti-Nazis joined in. The ranks continued to grow daily – some Nazis even joining to ‘get this over before Stalin makes a corpse of our country’ said one. By Summer, almost three quarters of Wehrmacht troops would surrender to the Allies without a fight. The only trouble the Allies faced were the SS and Wehrmacht loyalists, the latter being particularly troublesome in that some would feign surrender and launch surprise attacks.
Nevertheless, by mid-July, Patton had crossed the Rhine. The bridges had been preserved by Wehrmacht troops who had defected owing to Rommel’s own defection. The Soviets continue to struggle against the Germans in Poland, but Patton had his eyes on the prize, not that it was easy to convince the President to keep going.
The Madhouse: Germany After Hitler, Before the Occupation, by Ronald Hines
Perhaps the greatest indicator of the mental state of Berlin in 1944 was the faux Trial of Rommel. It consisted of a framed picture of the Field Marshall on a chair in front of Reich Judge Roland Freisler. Freisler berated the inanimate object as if it was Rommel himself and sentenced Rommel to death. A squad of SS members proceeded to grab the picture and smash it on the ground. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this event was the relative indifference the people of Berlin felt given the insanity surrounding them.
Himmler, who had already begun the pointless task of trying to destroy evidence of the Final Solution, decided that the Wehrmacht was simply too dangerous to the health of the state and began a round of Stalin-based purges, even those who weren’t
in the army at the time. Walter Von Brauchitsch found himself dragged from his house in the night and shot against the wall despite being in enforced retirement simply due to his historic disagreements with Hitler. Von Rundstedt luckily got word and defected to the West before anything could happen while Kesselring surrendered to the Italians and Von Kluge was safely in Hamburg. Georg Von Küchler and Fedor Von Bock were not so lucky and were both discreetly executed before being replaced by SS hacks. Only Model and Von Leeb were truly prized, as their historic enthusiasm for the Nazi Party line, especially when it came to Jews, was their salvation. Even still Von Leeb was given a fake execution to scare him into compliance. As Goebbels said ‘The ‘Von’ is our enemy’. This ignored the rather obvious fact that Rommel was not a ‘Von’. Himmler ordered his men to prepare a defence of the Reich from the ‘Satanic Babylon of Nations’ as Goebbels called it on the radio.
Everyone was conscripted down to pre-teens and men who were alive when Prussia wasn’t just a province. Street executions of ‘deserters’, ‘race-traitors’, ‘Judaists’ and a host of other charges were as daily a part of life in Berlin as going to the store for bread. It is estimated that there was, on average, a public execution in Berlin every day for the Summer, owing to Himmler’s belief that this would ‘put steel in our bellies’. Needless to say, supplies were getting scarce, though anyone who attempted to leave Berlin, had to have a
very good reason unless they wanted to be put up against a wall. This was Total War, and the bombing runs from American, British and by now even Italian planes were increasing. Some cities declared for the Hamburg Government after Rommel’s defection for no other reason than to spare them from bombing runs. With the Jewish Army marching through Czechoslovakia, Dresden was terrified at the prospect of being in the crossfire. The army executed the SS officials and Nazi leaders in the town and declared that Dresden was an open city. Himmler ordered Dresden to be “blasted to rubble” but only after Berlin was upheld against ‘the Cowboy and the Traitor’, by which he meant Patton and Rommel. This would ultimately mean the salvation of ‘Germany’s Venice’, as it was known.
Patton raced through Germany as quick as his supplies could take him. “He’s learned well from me,” joked Rommel, as Patton cut a swathe right through the heart of Germany, with only one target: the one target that would cause so much grief for everyone.
The Dark Decade: America in the 40s by Wendy Walters
The fight over Rommel’s involvement in the Allies was to have at least one major casualty. Roosevelt and Churchill would furiously argue, with the former believing that Rommel was just an opportunist looking to escape the collapse of the Reich while Churchill seemed willing to give him a shot. The impasse was only broken when Patton demanded Rommel be brought onto the Allied side. Faced with the overwhelmingly popular Patton threatening to resign if Rommel would be kept in a camp for the whole rest of the War, Roosevelt finally relented.
Roosevelt had a troubled few years. His collapse in his relationship with Churchill had affected him and he could feel a layer of coldness between them. The introduction of Mussolini into the Allied fold had made him bitter and resentful, especially when Churchill was seen as getting close to him. After the exhausting Kiev Conference and subsequent fights with Churchill, Roosevelt would grow more and more withdrawn. Historians generally believe that the collapse in his personal relationships and much heightened stress would be the ultimate contributors to his death.
After discovering what was being done in Auschwitz, he issued a press release on June 6th detailing his disgust. After discussing the matters with his generals on June 7th, he called the meeting short and said he was feeling sick due to all the suffering he was now privy too, thus going to bed. However, on the morning of June 8th, staff noticed that he hadn’t arisen. When doctors investigated, they had concluded he had died of a gigantic cerebral hemorrhage in his sleep. That morning, Vice-President Henry Wallace was whisked to the White House and given the Oath. Though he didn’t want it to be like this, there was no other way around it. He was now the 33rd President of the United States of America. It would be the beginning of some of the most troubled years in America since the Civil War.
[1] And of course, that the feared the fury of having discovered Auschwitz could lead to reprisals on the civilian population
