The Rommel Papers, edited
by B.H. Liddell Hart, translated by P. Findlay, published in 1953 by De Capo
Press, are the incomplete memoirs of Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944),
the famous German commander of the Deutsches Afrika Korps. The book is mainly a
collection of diary entries, narratives and reviews of campaigns, letters to his wife,
Lucia Maria (1894-1971), and son, Manfred (1928-2013), and memoranda, but with some accounts and reviews
of events by Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein (1899-1970), who served with Rommel in
North Africa, where there are gaps in Rommel’s papers.
The writer’s intention was to
provide narratives of his campaigns and the lessons learnt from them, with
Rommel’s personal thoughts on how they were conducted, his opponents (mainly
the British, but also the Americans), his ideas about tactics and strategy, and
his views on the German High Command, particularly after the Battle of El
Alamein in 1942, in Italy in 1943, and lastly in France in 1944.
The memoirs are edited by Basil
Liddell Hart (1895-1970), the well-known British military theorist and historian, along with
Bayerlein and Manfred Rommel.
The memoirs begin with the
campaign in France in 1940, then move to North Africa and the fighting in late
1941 to early 1943, when Rommel was recalled to Germany. He writes then about
his short involvement in the Italian campaign in 1943, after which he became
commander of Army Group B in France, where he was heavily-involved in the
preparations to resist the forthcoming Allied invasion of Europe in 1944. They
conclude with his lengthy review of the defeats in North Africa and in
Normandy, as well as a memorandum of his own ideas about contemporary leadership.
Owing to the fact that Rommel’s
own documents are incomplete, the section on North Africa from late 1941 to
early 1942, along with that on 1944, are
dealt with by Bayerlein, using other sources, along with some of Rommel’s
papers, while Manfred Rommel dealt with Italy in 1943 in a similar fashion, and
his father’s last days mainly from his own recollections of that time.
Rommel’s writing is detailed and
analytical, with interesting anecdotes interspersed amongst the narrative and
discussion, as well as a more personal side in the letters to his wife and son.
He writes about his troops and their qualities, other officers, both German and
Italian, his enemies and their faults and strengths, these mainly the British,
about modern mechanized warfare, about logistics and the problems of supplying
an army in North Africa, and the impossibility of conducting a war against opponents
who have secured air superiority and have an inexhaustible reserve of materiel
with which to fight. As he became disillusioned with the Nazi regime from 1943
onwards, his writing turns to open criticism of the High Command and Hitler.
The translation of Rommel’s
original papers is not only very readable, helped I am sure by the fact that he
was a was clearly a good writer in terms of style, but also brings out his
personality very well. The text is not without several factual errors, but he
would doubtless have corrected them had he survived the war; they do not
suggest Rommel was trying to falsify events, his actions or those of others. A
lot of Rommel’s ideas and conclusions were, with hindsight, very much close to
the truth.
As one would expect, since these
are memoirs, the book radiates around Rommel, his achievements, opinions and
judgements, his aura of self-confidence as a commander, his ambitious nature,
and his certainty that his ideas and conclusions were correct. At times, one
can sense the weight of frustration he must have felt when his efforts to
advise his colleagues and superiors as to the right course of action came to
nothing. But then he was an incisive, unorthodox, bold officer, who had little
time for “academic” and plenty of time for “practical” ones who learnt their
craft by experience, not from books. Troops, for Rommel, needed to be led from
the front by generals who related to their men and understood the need to
“grip” a battle (as Field Marshal Montgomery liked to say) and exploit
opportunities, unnerving and unsettling one’s opponent, but never taking
foolish chances, only calculated ones. He was also a realist: when all was
going wrong, he was not afraid to say so even under a regime which would brook
little criticism. However, it is also evident from the memoirs that he had a
mercurial temperament and made mistakes of judgement and his army paid for it,
as at Tobruk in 1941 and at Alam Halfa in 1942. It is not an impartial work,
but nonetheless it has a feel of honesty in its words and a sense of
objectivity in its judgements.
The accounts of campaigns are
informative and interesting as they represent very much the perspective of “the
other side of the hill”, to use a phrase of Liddell Hart himself. Rommel’s
comments on British troops, tactics and commanders in North Africa are of
particular interest. Unlike many, he thought well of Auchinleck and especially
Wavell, was sorry for Cunningham and Ritchie, thought Montgomery an excellent
strategist, rather than a tactician; he was full of praise for the fighting
qualities of British and Empire troops, especially the Australians; felt that
the British learnt the right tactics, but only slowly and with the weight of
conservatism hanging over them all the time. He very much admired the speed
with which the Americans learnt modern warfare compared to the British,
pointing out that, in coming to the war without past traditions and unconstrained
by out-dated theories, “education is easier than re-education”.
However, it is not a book for
someone seeking to find out about Rommel’s personal life, his early military
career, his political opinions, his past support for the Nazi party. But then
the papers upon which it draws were never intended to do that; the book is very
decidedly a military history of 1940 to 1944 from Rommel’s point of view. If
you want a biography of his life, warts and all, search elsewhere.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
It was very readable and very interesting. At times, I found it unputdownable.
It gave me a wider understanding of Rommel as an individual and his place in
the Second World War. It certainly did nothing to lessen his reputation as a
dashing commander of armoured troops. It also offered perspectives,
particularly on the North African campaign, which I found very informative. If
you want a handy account of the campaigns in which Rommel was involved or
commanded, with a German viewpoint, then I would certainly recommend this work.
