Rommel: Leadership Lessons from the Desert Fox (World Generals)

218 Pages·2009·1.5 MB·English

by  Charles Messenger

Rommel

Leadership Lessons from the Desert Fox
Charles Messenger
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R o m m e l
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The World Generals Series
“Palgrave Macmillan’s World Generals Series will feature great
leaders whose reputations have transcended their own nations,
whose bold characters led to new forms of combat, whose determi-
nation and courage gave shape to new dynasties and civilizations—
men whose creativity and courage inspired multitudes. Beginning
with illustrious World War II German Field Marshal Irwin Rom-
mel, known as the Desert Fox, the series will shed new light on fa-
mous warrior-leaders such as Napoleon, Frederick the Great,
Alexander, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan, drawing out the
many important leadership lessons that are still relevant to our lives
today.”
—General Wesley K. Clark (ret.)
This distinguished new series will feature the lives of eminent
military leaders from around the world who changed history.
Top military historians will write concise yet comprehensive
biographies including the personal lives, battles, strategies and
legacies of these great generals, with the aim to provide back-
ground and insight into contemporary armies and wars as well
as to provide lessons for the leaders of today.
Rommel by Charles Messenger
Alexander the Great by Bill Yenne
Montgomeryby Trevor Royle
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R o m m e l
Leadership Lessons
from the Desert Fox
Ω
Charles Messenger
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ROMMEL
Copyright © Charles Messenger, 2009
All rights reserved.
First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the
US—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New
York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of
the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan
Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number
785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
companies and has companies and representatives throughout the
world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978-0-230-60908-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
from the Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Letra Libre, Inc.
First edition: June 2009
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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Contents
Foreword vii
General Wesley K. Clark
Introduction 1
1. The Formative Years 5
2. France 1940 37
3. Libyan Sands 57
4. Rommel’s High Tide 85
5. Star on the Wane 113
6. Last Flourishes 147
7. Rommel’s Legacy 177
Afterword 189
General Klaus Naumann
Notes 193
Select Bibliography 197
Index 199
The photosection appears between pages 112 and 113.
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Foreword
NO FOREIGN GENERAL HAS EVER QUITE INSPIRED AS
muchpassion, curiosity, and respect among Americans as Ger-
man Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. His World War I experi-
ences are the subject of serious study, his leadership in the Axis
campaigns in North Africa was almost the stuff of legend, and
his self-inflicted death by cyanide poisoning after a failed assas-
sination plot against Hitler has been viewed as the essence of
human tragedy. Decades after his death his son, then mayor of
the German city of Stuttgart, received the utmost admiration
and respect from the American forces and leaders stationed in
Germany.
Charles Messenger’s intense, fast-moving biography places
Rommel’s character, service, and lifetime of military achieve-
ments in perspective. But for all the demythologizing of his
wartime record, Rommel’s stature still casts an enormous
shadow across contemporary military studies.
Born in 1891 into an average middle-class family in what
is today southern Germany, Rommel showed an early aptitude
for mathematics and an interest in the outdoors. Given the
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strong nationalist feelings of the time, it was probably natu-
ral to join the Army and become an officer—just like his fa-
ther, who encouraged him to follow this path. As a young
officer on the eve of World War I he strived for combat serv-
ice, and he soon found it. Moving quickly through the ranks
from platoon leader to commanding a battalion, he found
himself in action against the French, and then later with the
Germans and Austrians against first the Romanians and then
the Italians.
Rommel proved quickly to be a charismatic and highly ef-
fective leader. He established a rapport with his troops, won
their respect by sharing in their hardships, and was a diligent
student of the new tactics and techniques brought about by
the use of the machine gun and rapid-fire artillery in battle. By
the later years of the war he proved himself to be an attack spe-
cialist, massing pinpoint fires, bypassing enemy strongpoints,
and leading from the front to acquire the most up-to-date in-
formation and assessment. He was young, physically fit, dar-
ing, and lucky. By Christmas, 1917, he had won Prussia’s
highest decoration, the Pour Le Mérite.
It was these experiences that formed the basis for his pro-
fessional teaching and his book, Infantry Attacks,written in the
1930s, which did much to shape German military training
prior to World War II and even American military thought
well into the 1990s. It was Rommel’s combination of fire—
massed and pinpointed to suppress and distract enemy
forces—and daring maneuver to take advantage of the effects
of that fire that provided the basis for much of the renaissance
of American military thought in the post-Vietnam period. For
at a time when much of the military experiences of both Ger-
man and Allied officers had been based on surviving the risks
and hardship of massed, trench warfare on the Western Front,
Rommel taught the essence of maneuver.
viii Ω ROMMEL
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Indeed, decades after historians commented about how
much more effective World War II German units were, man-
for-man, than most of their American adversaries, the American
Army went back and seriously studied Rommel’s lessons. And
the principles of leading from the front, operating well-forward
with a small command group, and personally directing the bat-
tle became ingrained in the American officer corps through re-
peated practice at the U.S. Army’s National Training Center
located in the high Mojave desert of southern California.
Had Rommel retired as a middle-aged former battalion
commander in the 1930s, we might never have paid heed to
his invaluable lessons. But, in fact, he did not retire; rather,
through a combination of skill, personality, and self-
p romotion, he won the attention of Germany’s new leader,
Adolf Hitler. And, though he wasn’t a member of the Prussian
officer class and was no General Staff “insider,” he managed
through personal relationships to advance himself and win
command positions of increased responsibility.
He missed out on the German Blitzkrieg into Poland in
1939, but he saw the effects. And with his profound personal
experience and penetrating understanding of battle, his tough-
est task was to gain acceptance into the upper ranks of Ger-
man commanders. His connections with Hitler did the trick;
he received command of the soon-to-be-famous 7th Panzer
Division and led it in the 1940 breakthrough into France.
Here he quickly seized the advantage of the German Stuka in
close air support, right in front of his lead elements, and
pushed his men and the equipment to the breaking point. In
his second war he again earned a solid reputation, and even
public adulation, as an attack specialist.
Rewarded with a larger command in North Africa, he
found himself in a difficult command environment working
with the Italians and a long way from easy access to Hitler.
FOREWORD Ω ix