Today 77 years ago, Rommel was forced to kill himself for his involvement in the Wolfsschanze. RIP Erwin. Stefan.
Seriously, Rommel and all other high-ranking military officers involved in the assassination attempt belonged to the old Prussian military elite. (Significantly, the majority had a "von" in the family name) For this camarilla had nothing whatsoever to do with what the Western Allies understood by democracy and civil rights. As long as the Wehrmacht was rearmed and later rushed from victory to victory, they were all simply streamlined careerists. Only when it became crystal clear that the war could no longer be won by any stretch of the imagination, did they want to dump Corporal Schicklgruber - in order to preserve their traditional privileges. They were just scared to death of being overrun by the "Bolshevik hordes". (Which, if I remember correctly, was set in motion by the same military clique Anno 1917 itself, when they transported a certain dissident from Switzerland to Finland on a special train). Millions of people from other nations had to pay the horrible price in blood to get away from such traditional structures of rule, because our ancestors preferred to be led like sheep to the slaughter. The supposedly cowardly and incompetent Italians, of all people, have shown us how a nation can solve such problems on its own initiative. In this respect, we as Germans should be more than glad to have come out of the whole story so cheaply! And therefore IMHO there is not the slightest reason to put such subjects on a pedestal. Not even Rommel - merely being a capable military man is not enough.... Hochachtungsvoll Olli
I recently listened to this (below) again... BBC Radio 4 - Great Lives, Series 34, Ray Mears on Rommel Ray Mears on Rommel Great LivesSeries 34 Episode 4 of 9 The life of Erwin Rommel, for a time Hitler's favourite general is nominated by Ray Mears. Matthew Parris hears why this German soldier was a "great life". They are also joined by Dr Niall Barr, Reader in Military History, Defence Studies Department at Kings College, London. Producer: Perminder Khatkar. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.
Good day Olli, I respect your opinion, but do not agree with some arguments. E.g. my great grandfather was a von W. and a church man Stefan.
If Mary Berry nominated someone on quantum mechanics? Why would that offend? Perhaps - they'd get... Michael Berry (physicist) - Wikipedia As the other guest ;-) List of Ig Nobel Prize winners - Wikipedia Physics – Presented to Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and Michael Berry of Bristol University, England, for using magnets to levitate a frog.[63] Geim later shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for his research on graphene, the first time anyone has been awarded both the Ig Nobel and (real) Nobel Prizes.
Rommel was fully signed up to the Nazi project until they started losing. He had no problems taking over a home that had served as way station for Jewish Germans on their way to be murdered. https://www.memorialmuseums.org/staettens/druck/1139 Rommel also was fully on board with the standard German suppression mechanism for insurrection, as shown by Patrick Bernhardt, and his division is implicated in the murder of colonial POWs during the campaign in France. Hangest-sur-Somme 1940 He lived by the sword and willingly and enthusiastically served a genocidal mass murderer to make his career, and he died by the sword of that same mass murderer. Not much to feel sorry about here, but maybe interesting content for a morality play, which we do however have already in "Des Teufels General". All the best Andreas
I have written a bit about the issues with our perception of the 'clean war' in North Africa, which of course was anything but, and highly recommend Patrick Bernhard's writing on the subject matter. Missing: a social history of the war in North Africa Im Rücken Rommels: Kriegsverbrechen, koloniale Massengewalt und Judenverfolgung in Nordafrika (full text author`s version) All the best Andreas
Touching story, I almost cried. Of course zero sources for all these claims, which is what made me so sad. All the best Andreas