What if Rommel had succeeded in arresting Hitler?

[jmc247]

I see alot of alternate histories online about what if Stauffenberg managed to blow up Hitler. I have yet to see one regarding what would have happened if Rommel succeeded in having his soldiers arrest Hitler.

Reciently released evidence from secret British archives corroborates that Rommel knew of the July 20th plot.

During the Second World War, British intelligence secretly bugged the cells occupied by some of the most senior German army, navy and air force commanders who had been captured by the Allies. The transcripts have only recently been made available to researchers and show that:

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had been fully briefed about the 1944 attempt to kill the Nazi leader, and refused to betray the plotters.

The transcripts also point to closer links between Rommel and the plotters who attempted to kill Hitler in 1944. It was previously known that the conspirators asked Rommel whether he would take over if Hitler were no longer alive to run the Nazi state, but never told him of their plans to bomb the Führer.

However, a conversation involving General Heinrich Eberbach, who worked closely with Rommel in 1944, suggests Rommel had been fully told about the plans and kept them to himself.

http://news.scotsman.com/world/German-officers-knew-of-Holocaust.2685645.jp

But, I tend to believe Rommel's son that Rommel believed Stauffenberg's plan was likely to fail and the better way would be to organize a full scale military coup in the West and arrest Hitler and then make a deal or at worst a conditional surender to the Western Allies. The main condition being that they reach Berlin before the Soviet's.

As Rommel's quotes in The Rommel Papers by B.H. Liddell-Hart makes clear he didn't seem to put a great amount of faith in Stauffenberg's plot, "after the 20th July plot Rommel commented to his family and various officers that 'Stauffenberg had bungled it and a front-line soldier would have finished Hitler off'" (Page 486).

Ironically, at the time the SAS was preparing to kidnap or murder Rommel, the field marshal was scheming to eliminate Adolf Hitler. He invited the Führer to the castle in La Roche-Guyon, at which time he would try to convince him that the war was lost and that he, Hitler, should seek a negotiated peace with the Western Allies while Germany still had something with which to bargain.

If the Führer rejected Rommel’s proposal, he would have Hitler arrested by soldiers fanatically loyal to the field marshal. Hitler accepted the invitation— but he chose to hold the conference at a command bunker near Soissons, far to the east of La Roche-Guyon. The Führer was too wily a fox to be trapped in Rommel’s lair.

Furious and frustrated, Rommel returned to La Roche-Guyon, firm in his belief that Germany could survive only if he could secretly negotiate with the Western Allies to halt the conflict.

http://africaaxisallied.devhub.com/blog/547295-mission-kidnap-field-marshal-rommel/

Now lets say Rommel pulled it off and captured Hitler and declared himself the leader of the German army and the German government. Could he have managed a conditional surrender to the Anglo-American allies that gets the allies to scrap their plans to divide Germany between the Soviet Union and the western powers?

I personally think he would have had real trouble getting the rest of the German Army to go along with it. If he had been far more successful at Normandy his stock with the Army would have been much higher and he might have been able to negotiate much better terms then he would have coming to the table with them without having significant success at Normandy.

I think the most likely result had Rommel captured Hitler and surrendered to the allies would have been a civil war in the German Army that the allies would have taken advantage allowing them to get to Germany alot fast. I wouldn't be surprised if the allies used Rommel and the forces that did surrender with him to help them fight other Germans. The real question would be would if Truman and Churchill still go along with dividing up Germany with Stalin or would they (given Stalin breaking his agreements pertaining to Poland and its independence) take all of Germany as they would have had a much quicker shot to Berlin and risk war with Stalin?

However, if Rommel had much better success at Normandy, captured Hitler, and managed a side deal with the US/UK to give up France, Italy and the Low Countries in exchange for ending the war in the West and ending Nazism I think the German Army and the German people would have rallied around Rommel.

That would have allowed Rommel to move all German troops out of Italy, France and the other occupied countries in Western Europe which would set the stage for a titanic battle in Poland between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army. Given the German Army would have been outmatched in number of men at arms and tanks at that point Rommel's only hope would be to return to WW1 type trench warfare by building massive pits across Poland with traps and tricks and mines in order to make the Russian numeral advantage count for much less. I suspect Rommel would have silently court marshalled and executed those responable for the Final Solution, however I suspect he would have put off making the horrors of the Final Solution public until after the war as it would have been a poison pill to German morale and it would have killed Germany's chances of getting aid in fighting Stalin.

Basically, German's only hope of winning would be to bog down the Red Army an ugly WW1 style stalemate in Poland and hope the international community decides as they did later in the Iran/Iraq war that having one side or the other totally win this thing would be bad for Europe, thus the allies cut off aid to Stalin and send just enough backchannel aid via countries like Argentina to keep Germany from falling. All that being said the odds would certainly be against Rommel in this, but I don't believe would be impossible in this scenario for the battle to end as did the eight year Iran/Iraq war. Though Saddam used chemical weapons to bog down the Iranian advance. Germany had some new and horrific chemical agents, but Rommel like Hitler I suspect would not have been willing to use them in battle. Himmler would have had no qualms about doing it though.

Win or lose though I believe the German people like the Italians and French would have likely developed a resistance mythos which would have meant alot less self loathing among Germans and alot less fear and hatred of anything at all nationalistic or militaristic.

I noticed this forum searching online and I really like many of the alternate histories people here have posted. To sum things up the vast vast majority of online talk and mass media discussion about the resistance to Hitler revolves around Stauffenberg's failed plot to killing Hitler. I thought it would be nice to look at what if Rommel succeded in capturing Hitler (I suspect Rommel believed Hitler would be a nice gift to the Allies) and then immediately opening up negotiations with the Anglo-American allies, which Rommel believed was a better option then Stauffenberg's plot to blow up Hitler.

 

[Paul V McNutt]

I don't think thatvFDR and Churchil would have made a separate peace.

 

[jmc247]

I don't think thatvFDR and Churchil would have made a separate peace.

I agree as I said unless Rommel kicked their asses at Normandy there would be no seperate peace deal only at best a conditional surrender. If Rommel did manage to stop the Normandy attack and handed over Hitler, France, Italy, and the Low Countries a seperate peace could have been in the cards.

However, in the situation we have here if Rommel did manage to pull off the surrender an Army Group or two to the Allies they would have been able to get to Berlin well before the Red Army and between the remaining intact German Army, the British Army and the American Army all the sudden challenging the Red Army (Churchill's Operation Unthinkable) would have suddenly become alot easier to seriously contemplate.

 

[Typo]

Why does everyone think people wanted to fight the Soviets in 1945?

 

[Color-Copycat]

Because Stalin was the lesser of two evils. At least, that's what we know in hindsight.

 

[Cook]

Because Stalin was the lesser of two evils. At least, that's what we know in hindsight.

And it is definitely hindsight.

In 1944 the American’s were more suspicious about British Imperialism than Soviet Imperialism and to the British public the Soviet Union was heroic and worthy of sacrifice to support and Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’.

 

[KillerT]

Although yes there is the agreement for a total surrender I think the Western leaders were a tad more pragmatic and now knowing that a major game change had taken place-that Hitler would be placed on trial etc, that the German peoples and army would pull back etc then maybe there would have been a ceasefire at the very least in the west. The SS is still a big problem and yes you'd have to make sure they got coralled.

 

[Simon]

I don't think he'd be able to get a seperate peace. The best he could do I think would be to move as many of their the best units to the east to try and slow down the Soviets to buy time to evacuate civillians and pull back without offering resistance to the Western Allies or ordering those that can't pull back fast enough to surrender. If you know you can't win better to have the Western Allies holding as much of Germany than the Soviets and hope for the best.

 

[BlairWitch749]

Arresting Hitler is ASB, the plotters where stupid; damn stupid but that one part they did get right; you can't over throw Hitler (who despite a lot of people pretending to the contrary was still wildly personally popular in Germany in 1944) while he is still alive. Every soldier in the army, navy, airforce, ss and police has sworn a personal oath of loyalty to him; arresting him is a recipe for the hardcore elements of the SS and SD to launch a countercoup, nor would the rank and file in the army be likely to want to follow orders of someone not named Hitler; whilst Hitler is still alive

 

[zoomar]

I think its highly unlikely that the western allies would negotiate with anyone who killed Hitler and overthrew the Nazi regime anytime past the Battle of Britain, unless the coup leaders had no prior association with the Nazi party, the German military, or other conservative/monarchist parties. No one other than the military had the combination of desire and ability to effect a coup. From what I've read, the western allies tended to see WW2 the result of what they considered basic German nationalism and militarism, of which the Nazis were just a more extreme example. A coup by the military, especially after it had become fairly apparent Germany would lose eventually if the allies stuck to their guns would be seen as just one group of German rats trying to save their skins at the expense of another. They wanted to completely defeat Germany, not just Nazis, and (under Churchill and Roosevelt at least) they would not abandon their alliance with the USSR to acheive anything less.

All of this makes the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany particularly tragic. Not only did they fail to ever kill or arrest Hitler, but they completely misunderstood how a successful coup would be interpreted and reacted to by the Allies.

 

[Hörnla]

Rommel's scheme would ensure quick defeat in the West, nothing else.

Without a "Valkyrie"-like plan to overthrow the government in Berlin and to move the army into power throughout Germany, there is little he can accomplish. The rest of the German "government" and the SS will be fully intact.

Without a logistical base, there is also little chance for a "Civil War" based alone on the troops loyal to Rommel, the best he can do is to open the Western Front.

However, I am afraid the WAllies will react to cautious to shorten the war spectacularly.

 

[mrmandias]

If Rommel "kicks ass at Normandy," then he and the rest of the German Army are much less likely to think that they need to bow down to the Western Allies. Your scenario is a lot more plausible if the Western Allies invasion of northern France goes as OTL. In that scenario, I agree that the result is something much like civil war. Hey, a new stab in the back myth, except this time the bad guys aren't Jews but former mountaineering troops!

 

[jmc247]

And it is definitely hindsight.

In 1944 the American’s were more suspicious about British Imperialism than Soviet Imperialism and to the British public the Soviet Union was heroic and worthy of sacrifice to support and Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’.

That is where there was a major disconnect. The opposition to Hitler in Germany knew quite well of Stalin's brutality. The Western Allied governments covered up things like the Katyn Massacre in Poland and/or blamed the Nazi's for it. At the same time German generals and officers had the crimes of Stalin's regime drilled into them by the German press and it corresponded with what they heard from German soldiers and officers fighting on the Eastern Front.

Patton was probably the only major Allied general in WW2 who saw the threat from Stalin the same way German generals did.

There was a second factor going on at play here. German officers like Rommel believed Germany had a collective shared identity with the Anglo-American allies. Rommel spoke English and would met with Allied soldiers and officers in the desert and not just in the POW camps as one can see from the article below. Such a thing would have been totally unthinkable on the Eastern Front. Rommel thought the Anglo-Americans saw the Soviet threat as he did and he believed the problem keeping them from being allies was the Nazi Party and once that was removed they could have a united front against Stalin.

In the summer of 1941, two groups of German and British soldiers met deep in the Libyan desert. Instead of shooting at each other, the enemies chatted and exchanged cigarettes before going their separate ways. What made the encounter all the more remarkable was that Erwin Rommel, the German commander in North Africa, was among them.

Mr Schneider, now 86, said: "The common soldiers did not act out of hate. When we met the English soldiers in the desert that time, we were far, far from anywhere. There was no reason to shoot. We swapped cigarettes and I talked with the English officers. But there were also times when we were shocked by the enemy. "Rommel enjoyed touring the front lines. We would go deep into the desert to explore. One time we came across 14 German soldiers who seemed asleep. When we got closer we saw each had his throat cut. Nearby we found a kukri – the knife of the British Gurkha soldiers. I still have that knife."

The extent to which the ferocity of a war fought by young men has been replaced by comradeship among former enemies was underlined this weekend when Mr Schneider met five former Desert Rats, including an ambulance driver who accidentally drove into a German tank position while it was being inspected by Rommel and was promptly sent back to his lines by the field marshal with Mr Schneider at his side.

"We are now friends, very good friends," he said. "I was once a German soldier and they were English soldiers but now we find it difficult to understand why we had to fight against each other. Rommel was always first a soldier. We did not forget that we were fighting fellow human beings." Mr Schneider said: "I was one of Rommel's drivers. I was chosen because I knew English and could operate their equipment.

Mr Schneider said: "When the propaganda photographs were taken of our unit, they would drape Swastika flags over the vehicles. When the cameramen went away, Rommel would order the Swastikas to be taken away. He didn't like Nazi insignia and took it off. He said, 'I am a German soldier'."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/rudolf-schneider-i-was-rommels-driver-1706924.html

 

[JoeMulk]

What if The Ramones had succeeded in arresting Hitler?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP9BBUK7LvA

 

[Urban fox]

Of course one thing these pipe dreams leave out. Is the simple fact that moving whatever forces the Germans have in the west to fight the Soviets wont work.

Germans troops may as well shoot themselves in the head they'll die either way but it'll save eveyone else some time. The Red Army simply wasnt going to be stopped by a limited German reinforcement. Added to this the fact the Germans had very limited oil stocks.

 

[jmc247]

Arresting Hitler is ASB, the plotters where stupid; damn stupid but that one part they did get right; you can't over throw Hitler (who despite a lot of people pretending to the contrary was still wildly personally popular in Germany in 1944) while he is still alive. Every soldier in the army, navy, airforce, ss and police has sworn a personal oath of loyalty to him; arresting him is a recipe for the hardcore elements of the SS and SD to launch a countercoup, nor would the rank and file in the army be likely to want to follow orders of someone not named Hitler; whilst Hitler is still alive

Rommel believed killing Hitler would cause something akin to the reaction in Rome to Julius Caesar's assassination where the public rioted, tore apart a Tribune of the Plebs, burned down the Senate, and drove the assassins out of Rome.

In capturing Hitler Rommel believed he could immediately hand him over to the Western Allies as a negotiating present before any kind of conditional surrender and there wouldn't have been the same kind of problems that killing Hitler in Berlin would have caused.

Of course one thing these pipe dreams leave out. Is the simple fact that moving whatever forces the Germans have in the west to fight the Soviets wont work.

Germans troops may as well shoot themselves in the head they'll die either way but it'll save eveyone else some time. The Red Army simply wasnt going to be stopped by a limited German reinforcement. Added to this the fact the Germans had very limited oil stocks.

All that is true as I said unless in the unlikely event the US/UK aided Germany as the West did with Saddam several decades later to keep the balance of power in the Middle East. The only hope of Germany if that scenario is that the Western powers decide having Stalin over run all of Germany on his own would be too big a danger and decide they want to keep the balance of power in Europe.

 

[BlairWitch749]

Rommel believed killing Hitler would cause something akin to the reaction in Rome to Julius Caesar's assassination where the public rioted, tore apart a Tribune of the Plebs, burned down the Senate, and drove the assassins out of Rome.

In capturing Hitler Rommel believed he could immediately hand him over to the Western Allies as a negotiating present before any kind of conditional surrender and there wouldn't have been the same kind of problems that killing Hitler in Berlin would have caused.

I'm not saying Rommel and a number of other generals where not stupid enough to believe this or blind to how effectively Hitler held control of the state, I was merely stating that it actually working was ASB

Arresting Hitler and not killing him is a suicide mission

 

[Tellus]

I think Valkyrie gives the Germans better odds of negotiating something separately than just having Hitler. The SS state is strong enough to keep the Nazi government in power, quite possibly under someone even worse than Hitler (And such a thing definitely existed), if they aren't dismantled in the sweep.

Frankly, the general staff waited too late. If they had acted when Germany was still in much better shape - say, once they realized Hitler was leading them to ruin with his stupid operational orders in the Caucasus in '42, they could quite certainly negotiate a separate peace in the west, and possibly even keep Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg, Austria, the Sudetenland and parts of Poland. Before Casablanca, the west was still prepared to make important concessions for an early peace, as the cost of victory is very uncertain. In '44, not so much. Nevermind the fact that with the shape Germany was in by 44, even territorial gains would have been quite bittersweet. By then, Germany needs a Marshall plan to revive; but in '42, German cities are mostly intact and they can rebuild on their own.

 

[jmc247]

I'm not saying Rommel and a number of other generals where not stupid enough to believe this or blind to how effectively Hitler held control of the state, I was merely stating that it actually working was ASB

Arresting Hitler and not killing him is a suicide mission

That depends on how fast they managed to turn him over to the Allies. Lets say Hitler is arrested and they immediately leave with him to the Allied lines as a gift and by the time the SS figures out what is going on they could have been outside their reach and at the table with Montgomery and Eisenhower.

In that instance FDR and Churchill might decide to promote the idea of a rump German government (as they did in Italy) in this case led by Rommel with the backing of mainly the British and American military.

 

[BlairWitch749]

That depends on how fast they managed to turn him over to the Allies. Lets say Hitler is arrested and they immediately leave with him to the Allied lines as a gift and by the time the SS figures out what is going on they could have been outside their reach and at the table with Montgomery and Eisenhower.

You know Hitler had nearly an entire regiment assigned as his bodyguard right? The guy didn't travel light; Rommel can't just arrest him with his personal security company; plus ordering the troops to fire on his SS bodyguards would be extremely risky as there is a decent chance they wouldn't obey; everyone knew who Hitler's bodyguards where... also asking rank and file people to arrest Hitler is equally risky because they have a personal oath to the man and will either hesitate or not obey; which in turn brings down the wrath of the SS and SD