What If …?

Over a dozen years ago Robert Cowley compiled an intriguing book of essays under the title What If? The essay authors – all outstanding historians of the day – were invited to compose a credible outcome, a “what if” alternative, for a pivotal moment in history if circumstances had taken a different, often minor, turn of events.

For example, in 1889 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show toured Europe featuring Annie Oakley’s famous shooting skills with her Colt .45. Her act concluded with an invitation for a gentleman in the audience to step into the arena and allow her to shoot off the ash from his cigar at a distance far enough away to make it interesting. It was all show because there were never any real takers. Her husband, Frank Butler, was planted in the audience as a stooge. He would bravely step forward with a Havana clenched in his teeth, allowing Annie to bring the crowd to its feet with her keen shot.

When the show made a stop in Berlin for a performance at the Charlottenburg Race Track, Annie offered her customary dare. In the audience was the young and showy Kaiser Wilhelm II who immediately took her offer, much to her shock and the horror of the Kaiser’s security detail. Stepping on to the arena, the local police tried to intervene but Wilhelm waved them off.

Annie couldn’t back out without losing credibility, so she paced off her usual distance and took aim. Sweating under the pressure of shooting at a crowned head of Europe and wishing she hadn’t consumed so much whiskey the night before, she nevertheless shot away the Kaiser’s cigar ash to the crowd’s wild jubilation.

Cowley asks what if she had missed? There would have been no bellicose Kaiser Wilhelm II alive 25 years later to start war in Europe. When World War I did in fact break out, Annie wrote the bombastic Kaiser and asked for a second shot. He never responded.

History offers many “what ifs.”

In the aftermath of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles was more punishment than peace treaty. It forced Germany to admit its ‘guilt” for the war as well as pay reparations for it. The Treaty’s major accomplishment was to invent Hitler.

Hitler rose to power in 1933 and obsessed over undoing the Treaty. He pursued this in a succession of trial provocations each intended to test the resolve of the former allies – primarily Britain and France. In 1934 he ordered the German home guard to arm for war and, the following year, reintroduced conscription – both flagrant violations of the Treaty. With no response forthcoming from the major world powers, Hitler was emboldened. In 1935 he began building tanks, planes, and submarines – further violations of Versailles. Still no intervention by England or France.

In 1936, Hitler ordered troops across the Rhine and created an armed threat in the demilitarized zone of the German Rhineland, the territory between the French border and the Rhine River, an unmistakable violation of the Versailles treaty. There his raw army recruits and 36,000 policemen faced nearly 100 French and Belgian divisions. France and Belgium were within their right to cross the Maginot Line and confront the Germans. But the French and English heads of state said nothing and did nothing. 

One of the Rhineland occupiers, General Heinz Guderian, said after the World War II that if the French had responded to their provocation in 1936, “…we should have been sunk and Hitler would have fallen." Another German officer confessed that the German General Staff considered Hitler’s move tantamount to a suicide mission.

I can tell you that for five days and five nights not one of us closed an eye. We knew that if the French marched, we were done. We had no fortifications, and no army to match the French. If the French had even mobilized, we should have been compelled to retire.

Hitler himself said:

The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.

The head of the French army, General Maurice Gamelin, believed that a confrontation of the German Rhineland occupiers would be unpopular at home, costly, and would lead to war requiring full mobilization of French armed forces. He counseled against action.

In England, not only were there no anti-German Rhineland protests, there were peace demonstrations. One Member of Parliament observed "the feeling in the House [of Commons] is terribly pro-German, which means afraid of war." The Prime Minister during the 1936 crises, Stanley Baldwin, had tears in his eyes when he admitted that British public opinion would not support military intervention in the Rhineland.

Winston Churchill, a backbench Conservative MP in 1936, was the British Jeremiah – one of the few voices raised against German rearmament and its threat to future peace. He wanted his country to reinforce a French challenge of the Rhineland occupation under the coordination of the League of Nations. The League of Nations, however, was as useless then as the United Nations is now and nothing happened. Churchill predicted the Rhineland would become a hinge allowing Germany to swing its forces through Belgium to attack France. And that’s precisely what happened in 1940.

A “what if” opportunity thus passed unexploited in 1936 that could have prevented World War II.

An Austrian German by birth, Hitler provoked the 1938 Anschluss crisis two years after the Rhineland showdown. It was part of his plan to unite all German speakers in one state. "People of the same blood should be in the same Reich" he had written in his autobiography Mein Kampf.  Hitler’s annexation of Austria was accomplished by threatening invasion so convincingly that the Austrian government resigned and Hitler’s armies were invited in.

German-Austrian union was forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles. Notwithstanding, England and France did not protest, did not mobilize, and did not defend the Treaty.

When an aggressor senses his opponent’s lack of resolve to confront him, he will act without restraint. And that’s precisely what Hitler did. He was now convinced that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Baldwin’s successor, and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier were both appeasers – paralyzed by their nightmarish memories of World War I – and therefore loath to confront his militaristic aggressions.

His next move would exploit their fecklessness.

In 1938 Hitler demanded that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland – that portion of Czechoslovakia on its north, west, and southwest border which was populated by German speakers. If his demand was not accommodated, he would invade Czechoslovakia.

It was all bluff. At that time Czechoslovakia had one of the strongest armies in Europe. It was well trained and well equipped, thanks to the country’s armaments works – primarily those of Skoda, the Czech equivalent of Ford or GM. Moreover, its military industries were protected by military fortifications on the German and Austrian borders – all in the Sudetenland – which explains why Hitler wanted it.

Czechoslovakia probably could have won a fight with Germany given the poor quality of the German fighting force at the time. In fact, senior German generals were horrified with Hitler’s plans to invade, convinced it would ignite a world war which Germany would lose. So convinced were the German generals of a bad outcome, that one of the earliest conspiracies was plotted to overthrow and arrest Hitler. Representatives were sent to meet with Chamberlain, telling him that the moment Hitler gave the invasion order he would be arrested and imploring Chamberlain to intervene militarily in support of Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia had mutual defense treaties with France and Russia, and England was a defense partner of France. Poland too would likely have joined if France and England were in the fight.

But it was not to be. A meeting was held in Munich involving France, England, Germany, and Italy. Czechoslovakia was not invited. Chamberlain followed his appeasement instincts and the Munich Agreement was signed transferring the Sudetenland to Germany. Betrayed by its treaty allies, Czechoslovakia conceded. Hitler agreed not to invade Czechoslovakia – an agreement that lasted six months when Germany troops swallowed up the remainder of the country, now defenseless without its Sudeten armaments and fortresses.

The cowardly Chamberlain flew back to England and landed among the adulation of adoring pacifists. Deplaning, he waved the infamous Munich Agreement, assuring the crowd at the airport that he had won for them “peace in our time.” That phrase has gone down in history as a verbal monument to the gullibility of naïve world leaders who appease international bullies expecting conciliation to preserve peace. Think Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.

Chamberlain’s surrender to Hitler was criticized by some far-sighted British politicians, among them Winston Churchill who unleashed his rhetorical fury on the worthless document:

We are in the presence of a disaster of the first magnitude...we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road... we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies: "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.

Another “what if” moment was lost.

With the fall of Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s territorial ambitions now became apparent even to the western fools of Munich. The English and French publicly assured Poland that they could be relied on to protect it against German aggression. But the time for red lines had passed. Germany could no longer be denied its long sought destiny. Equipped with the armaments stolen in the Munich treaty, Germany was rolling like a juggernaut toward the Polish frontier, which bordered the northern Sudetenland acquisition. Germany was now the best armed military force in Europe, ironically clad in Panzer tanks that had been built for the Czechs by the Skoda works. England and France, Poland’s outfoxed treaty allies, could do no more than watch the eight-month massacre of an ally in 1939.

Sixty million people would die before the German beast was slain in 1945.

History may not repeat itself, but as Mark Twain said, it does rhyme. What can we learn today from this disgraceful episode of serial incompetence? One could certainly argue it teaches that preemptive military action, however unpopular at the time, is usually a winning antidote for an unbridled aggressor. Hitler had made his ambitions abundantly clear in Mein Kampf, assuming any of the western leaders had bothered to read it. And the provocations he initiated in 1936, twice in 1938, and in 1939 were straight out of his play book.

After World War II ended Churchill, whose resolve had saved the British, was ousted from office. So much for the thanks of a grateful nation.

However, a relatively unknown school, Westminster College in the small Missouri town of Fulton (population 7,000), wished to bestow an honorary degree on the statesman that got England into the war and kept it there to the end. And because Churchill was indisputably the best rhetorician of the 20th century, he was invited to be the keynote speaker. The audience numbered over 40,000 and his speech, which is often referred to as the “Iron Curtain” speech, alerted the world to a coming “cold war.”

Churchill’s speech presaged many of his thoughts that would later appear in his seminal recollection of the Second World War, most especially its first volume entitled The Gathering Storm. Here is an excerpt from the Iron Curtain speech that verbalizes the many lost “what ifs”:

Up till the year 1933 or even 1935, Germany might have been saved from the awful fate which has overtaken her and we might all have been spared the miseries Hitler let loose upon mankind. There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action than the one which has just desolated such great areas of the globe. It could have been prevented in my belief without the firing of a single shot, and Germany might be powerful, prosperous and honoured to-day; but no one would listen and one by one we were all sucked into the awful whirlpool. We surely must not let that happen again.

We surely must not let that happen again indeed.

Today we are once again confronted by the villainous face of evil. This time it’s Iran. Iranian leaders are as fanatical as Hitler but are many times more dangerous given nuclear weapons. Iran’s mullahs are believers in the 12th imam and hold the apocalyptic theology that bringing the world to an end will usher in the “second coming” of this imam. He will establish the Shia religion as the world religion and begin an unending era of peace. In short, a worldwide nuclear holocaust favors Iran’s theology.

Moreover, the west is once again afflicted with gullible leaders who believe appeasement is the answer to aggression. The recent “agreement” championed by Kerry and Obama does nothing to stop Iranian bomb-making. Worse, it deludes the America people into thinking that something short of military intervention will stop a nation intent on eliminating Israel, whose existence it won’t officially recognize. Israel will be our Poland.

Once again, our leaders believe that peace can be won without victory over disturbers of peace. We are standing aside while a replay of 1936, 1938, and 1939 passes before our eyes … while, as Mark Twain observed, history rhymes.

Once again the Left believes – and tries to convince the rest of us – that our choice is between war and peace when in fact it is, and always will be, a choice between fighting and surrender.

Kristallnacht: Beginning the Holocaust

At 0945 on Monday morning November 7, 1938 a 17-year old German Jew of Polish descent, Herschel Grynszpan, appeared at the reception desk of the German Embassy at 78 Rue de Lille in Paris. He asked to see an Embassy official in order that he might hand-deliver an important document. Grynszpan was directed to the office of the most junior embassy official on duty that morning, Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. Entering vom Rath’s office, the diplomat rose and asked for the document. Grynszpan allegedly cried out, "You're a filthy boche and in the name of the 12,000 persecuted Jews, here is the document!" as he pulled a pistol and fired five shots at vom Rath.

One shot entered vom Rath’s shoulder and did little damage. But another struck him in the left side causing severe internal damage to his spleen, stomach, and pancreas. The German diplomat punched Grynszpan and staggered out of his office where he collapsed. He was rushed to the hospital but despite all of the efforts of French and German surgeons, the damage exceeded their skills. Ernst vom Rath died on Wednesday November 9.

That night and into the early hours of the next morning the sounds of breaking glass were heard throughout Germany and its territories as the storefronts of Jewish businesses were smashed. Fires consumed synagogues and Jewish institutions as gangs of Nazi storm troopers destroyed 7,000 Jewish businesses and torched more than 900 synagogues. Over 90 Jews were killed, and 30,000 able-bodied Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps, over 1,000 of whom would die from disease or beatings before their release.

History would remember this night as Kristallnacht – Crystal Night or the Night of the Broken Glass. Seventy-two years ago this week, Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the Holocaust.

The national vandalism against Jewish businesses was not provoked by the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, but his death provided the Nazi government with the excuse needed to implement a policy that had been in the works since Hitler took power in 1933 – i.e. to expunge Jews from all public German life. Hitler ruled that the stores damaged on Kristallnacht could not reopen except under the management of non-Jews. Jews could not sell goods or services anywhere or manage a business or pursue any economic activity in Germany or its territories. Jewish children could not attend school.

The insurance proceeds from the damage of Kristallnacht – about 6 million marks or $30 million today – had to be turned over to the German state where it fueled German rearmament. For the death of vom Rath a 1 billion mark fine was imposed on the Jewish community, the equivalent of $5.5 billion today.

Grynszpan’s execution of vom Rath horrified the Jewish community, but they also condemned Kristallnacht and the expropriation of Jewish property. German Jews and the World Jewish Congress decried the denial of statehood because of the act of one apparently deranged teenager. News of Kristallnacht spread to the global community, which was nominally sympathetic to the plight of the German Jews but weren’t moved to action. The world still hoped that Hitler could be appeased, and so it was anxious not to provoke the Reich to move closer to the horrors of another world war.

In America President Roosevelt exclaimed, "The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United States... I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a 20th century civilization." Yet he was disinclined to accept any more European Jewish refugees. The 15,000 or so already in the US on temporary visas were granted permanent asylum but no more.

Anti-Semitism was rampant in that era and Roosevelt’s mother was an outspoken anti-Semite. But it is unlikely that he was. He had appointed a number of Jews to high public positions in his cabinet and one – Felix Frankfurter – to the Supreme Court. Yet when prominent Jews and liberals pressured Roosevelt to be more accommodating, he suggested resettling Jews in Africa or South America rather than the US because he feared it would stir up his political enemies like Charles Lindbergh, a white supremacist, anti-Semite, and Nazi sympathizer.

As Jews fled Germany ahead of the impending Holocaust, several boatloads of mostly Jews were denied disembarkation in ports around the world. The plight of the St. Louis off the coast of Florida in June 1939 was one such incident that remains a controversy in the Roosevelt administration to this day. Carrying a thousand Jews fleeing the Nazis, the St. Louis’ captain, a sympathetic German, had first attempted port in Cuba and was refused. Sailing toward the US, the State Department refused landing rights and Roosevelt refused to respond to telegrams from passengers aboard who asked for asylum. Canada also refused to let the St. Louis dock and it returned to Europe where its German captain was determined to beach the ship off England to force it to accept the passengers. A compromise was reached which distributed the Jews to England and Free Europe, but when Hitler overran the Continent, half of the Jews who returned there died in concentration camps. The odyssey of the St. Louis became the basis for the historical novel The Voyage of the Damned.

Varian Fry, a 32-year old Harvard-educated classicist with no training in undercover work, was untroubled by his country’s diplomatic sensibilities. Working under the nose of the Nazis as a representative of a private American relief organization, Fry went to France to rescue Jewish intellectuals who had been ordered to surrender themselves to the Nazis after France fell to Germany. Using illegal means and a black market network, he managed to smuggle about 4,000 Jews out of Vichy France before the Vichy government threw him out of the country. Those rescued from the Holocaust represented the best and brightest minds in philosophy, music, art, literature, and the sciences. They included pianist Wanda Landowska, painters Marc Chagall and Max Ernst, writer Hannah Arendt, and sculptor Jacques Lipchiptz. Writer Franz Werfel and his wife Alma Mahler also escaped the Gestapo with Fry’s help. She brought with her the original scores composed by her first husband, Gustav Mahler, and manuscript symphonies by Georg Bruckner.

Varian Fry – essentially an American Schindler – was reprimanded by the US government for his actions and died in obscurity. But in 1995 he became the first American to be given Israel’s honorific, “Righteous among the Nations,” at Israel's national Holocaust Memorial. It was the same honorific bestowed on Oskar Schindler.

The motives of Herschel Grynszpan have never been revealed but they were probably driven by despair. Grynszpan was in France illegally living with an aunt and uncle. Because of his status, Grynszpan could not work and had no money. After two years in country he could speak little French. Because he had entered France illegally, he had no way to return to Germany legally or to legally enter Belgium or Poland. In short, he was trapped.

In March 1938, Poland passed a law to become effective October 31 which revoked the citizenship of Poles who had been living abroad for more than five years. The purpose of this edict was to prevent the 70,000 Poles who had been living in Austria and Germany from returning to Poland. Although Grynszpan was born in Germany and was thus a German citizen, he was also a Polish citizen – until the edict which made him stateless.

In August 1938 the German government canceled all residence permits for foreigners living in Germany and told them to leave. This was specifically directed at the Jews. In an attempt to beat the Polish edict which would become law on October 31, the Gestapo arrested 12,000 Polish Jews, packed them on trains, and started them toward the Polish border. Among them were the Herschel Grynszpan’s parents and sister. The Jews were permitted only one suitcase and all other property and possessions were to be left behind to become property of the state.

As the train approached the Polish border, for some unknown reason it stopped two kilometers short, forcing the 12,000 deportees to walk the rest of the way to the border town of Zbaszyn. They were refused entry into the country and the Polish Red Cross and Jewish welfare organizations were ill-equipped to feed and nurture so many people in so small a town. From Zbaszyn, Herschel’s sister wrote a post card to him reporting what had happened and asking for money – which he didn’t have.

Ernst vom Rast was obviously selected randomly to be the victim of Herschel Grynszpan’s despair. Ironically, the young German diplomat was known to have expressed anti-Nazi sympathies because he opposed the persecution of the Jews. That had put him under Gestapo scrutiny for his views.

After the shooting, Grynszpan remained in his victim’s office awaiting the arrival of the French police. He cooperated with them freely and gave his correct name. Confessing his act he said: “Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on this earth. Wherever I have been, I have been chased like an animal.”

In his pocket was a photograph of him, taken by a street photographer as was common in that day. On the back, addressed to his parents in care of his uncle, he had written a final note dated November 7, 1938:

"With God's help.[in Hebrew]My dear parents, I could not do otherwise, may God forgive me, the heart bleeds when I hear of your tragedy and that of the 12,000 Jews. I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do. Forgive me. – Hermann [his German name]

From November 1938 to June 1940 Grynszpan was imprisoned in the juvenile section of the Fresnes Prison in Paris from the date of his arrest to June 1940 while his French lawyer and the prosecutor (who consulted with a German lawyer to placate Hitler) argued about trial procedures for 18 months. But Germany invaded France in May 1940. As they approached the outskirts of Paris in June, prison inmates including Grynszpan were sent south away from the advancing army.

En route south, the prison bus was strafed by a German plane, killing several prisoners and allowing others to escape in the confusion. Grynszpan was one of them. But instead of making good his escape, he continued to walk south to the original destination – to the prison at Bourges – where he dutifully turned himself in to the French police. They sent him on foot and without guard to the prison at Toulouse thinking he would attempt to escape the Nazis. But with no money, no knowledge of the country, and poor French speaking skills, this naïve, if not immature, boy turned himself over to the officials in Toulouse.

Since arriving in Paris, the Nazis had been on Grynszpan’s trail, and with the fall of France, they caught up with him in Toulouse where he was taken into German custody and flown to Berlin. Shuttled between concentration camps, Grynszpan was treated relatively well because Goebbels intended to make him the object of a show trial in which it would be alleged that vom Rath’s death was the result of a conspiracy of international Jewry, not the random act of a distraught young man.

But Goebbels found that it was no easier to proceed with a trial in Germany than it had been in France. He got caught in a bureaucratic crossfire between the German Justice Ministry, which asserted its independence from the Nazi political apparatus, insisting that Grynszpan was not now a German citizen and therefore could not be tried in a German court for a crime committed outside of Germany. It was textbook German bureaucratic paralysis, and the pulling and tugging continued into 1941.

Goebbels’ solution was to charge Grynszpan with high treason for which he could be tried regardless of citizenship – at least so he thought. But the internecine legal wrangling continued until October 1941 when an indictment was finally handed down. However, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December brought the US into the war with a formal declaration against Germany and the Axis on December 11, and the Grynszpan trial never took place.

What happened to Grynszpan after that is not fully known. Many Nazi documents remain unread. But there remained hope among German authorities that they could charge international Jewry with causing World War II. Thus it is likely that Grynszpan continued to be treated well during the war in order to make him the key actor in a trial. He was still alive in late 1943 or early 1944 because Adolf Eichmann testified in his own trial in Israel that he remembers interrogating Grynszpan in Gestapo headquarters in Berlin around that period.

After the war – which all of Herschel’s family survived – there were rumors that he was living under an assumed name in Paris. One rumor wag said he was married and had two children. This is unlikely. His parents and siblings moved to Israel and made it known through Jewish networks that they were alive and were looking for him. While it is possible that his German captors killed him, it is more likely that he died of disease, since his value as a trial witness and Hitler’s interest in him would have provided an extraordinary degree of political protection.

On June 1, 1960, the Amtsgericht (Lower Court) of Hanover declared Herschel Grynszpan deceased. The date of death was fixed as May 8, 1945. The decree became official on July 24, 1960.

Zendel Grynszpan, Herschel's father, was present at the Israeli premiere in 1952 of Sir Michael Tippett's oratorio, A Child of Our Time, based on Herschel Grynszpan.

Of the eleven million pre-war European Jews, six million were consumed in the Holocaust. The Nazi plan had been to kill them all.

The Death of Erwin Rommel

In the ten weeks following the Allied landings at Normandy in June 1944 – known in history as the D-Day invasion – the war went badly for Germany. Allied planners had estimated it would take eight months to advance to the Franco-Belgian border. It had taken only three. And the fighting in Normandy had cost Germany 240,000 killed or wounded and more than 200,000 missing, the majority of whom were Allied prisoners.

The destruction that Hitler’s Third Reich was visiting upon its citizens and the atrocities that were being committed by German fanatics – like the SS – against the citizens of the invaded countries had turned many in the officer corps against their Führer. Despite the fact that these officers had taken an oath of “unconditional obedience” to Adolf Hitler, rather than allegiance to the nation and its constitution, a growing resistance movement was gaining influence among the highest ranks of Hitler’s General Staff and command structure. Only Hitler’s death would release them from their oath of allegiance to him and twelve attempts had been made on his life.

Erwin Rommel was Hitler's favorite general. He had begun to be noticed in 1940 when his exploits as a commander of a panzer division smashed through French defenses. From there Rommel was sent to command the Afrika Korps where he displayed uncanny tactical genius, an ability to inspire the loyalty of his troops, and the resourcefulness to fight effectively when outnumbered in men and matériel. Hitler promoted him to the rank of Field Marshall and in 1943 put him in command of fortifying the "Atlantic Wall" along the coast of France which was designed to repel the anticipated Normandy landings.

When he took his new command, Rommel was beginning to doubt that Germany could win the war, especially if Hitler continued to be in command of it. He was appalled to see the destruction caused by Allied bombing raids on German cities and the effect the war was having on the morale of private citizens. He learned of the existence of death camps, slave labor, the extermination of the Jews, and the other atrocities of the Nazi regime.

During this time Rommel also became aware of the growing German resistance movement, and some of its members contacted him to discuss plans for ousting Hitler and making peace with the west. Some high-ranking officers had even spoken to him about assassinating Hitler. Notable among them was General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, the military governor of France, who invited Rommel to Paris for secret talks aimed at recruiting Rommel into the plot.

Rommel agreed that Hitler had lost touch with reality in continuing the war and believed that the Fuehrer should be forced to concede the war or else be removed from power. But Rommel was morally opposed to assassination. He also believed assassination would spark civil war and make Hitler a martyr. At most he believed Hitler should be arrested and tried by a German court for his crimes – a tall order in a totalitarian state.

In their secret meeting, Rommel told Stülpnagel that he would give Hitler one last chance by sending a "blitz" telegram to him. He would outline the prospects of further war in the gravest terms and urge Hitler to immediately open the diplomatic front and reduce Germany's losses by ordering the Werhmacht to evacuate France and fall back to Germany’s borders. Rommel had little hope that his recommendations would be heeded thus a coup seemed inevitable.

On June 6, 1944 the Allies began landing at Normandy. Many of the senior German commanders were on leave, including Rommel who was in Germany to celebrate his wife’s birthday. With news of the invasion, Rommel rushed back to the front to counterattack. But Hitler refused to release needed armored divisions which were under his personal command and were stationed near the Pas-de-Calais, believing it, not Normandy, would be the main invasion target. Not even entreaties in person by Rommel and Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt, the Commander-in-Chief-West, could persuade Hitler that Normandy was the main attack. Rommel's defensive nightmare came true as the Allied beachhead built up over the next six weeks.

On July 15, Rommel wrote his “blitz” telegram to Hitler, recommending that Germany should seriously consider ending the war on favorable terms while it was still possible. For reasons unknown, its delivery to Hitler was delayed, and two days after he wrote it, Rommel’s staff car was strafed by a British pilot, killing his driver and ejecting him into a ditch where he suffered a severe skull fracture. His injuries removed him from battle and sent him back to Germany for treatment. He would never return.

On July 20, while Rommel was recovering from his injuries, a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler was made when a bomb exploded in his secret Wolf's Lair (Wolfsschanze) field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. Two weeks later, Rommel’s blitz telegram was handed to Hitler. Rommel was unaware of the assassination attempt, but his brutally frank letter now took on a traitorous and defeatist tone, which it likely would not have had if it delivered as intended.

The Gestapo sifted through the debris of Wolfsschanze and identified the person who brought the bomb into the meeting room. Many co-conspirators were identified and arrested as the dragnet expanded to anyone even suspected of participating. General von Stülpnagel, was uncovered and recalled to Germany from Paris. Along the way he ordered his driver to stop and he waded into the Meuse River and shot himself in the head. Hoping that he would drown if his shot failed to kill him, he succeeded only in blowing out one eyeball. His driver rescued his unconscious body from the river and rushed him to a local hospital where his other eyeball had to be removed. During his recovery, he hallucinated and blurted out Rommel’s name, which was heard by his guards. Stülpnagel’s aide, Lt. Colonel Caesar von Hofacker, another conspirator, was arrested and severely tortured by the Gestapo, and only after holding out for so long that it won the admiration of his torturers, he said that Rommel was actively involved.

Carl Goerdeler was the main civilian leader of the plot. He would have been the Chancellor of the new government if the plot had succeeded. Goerdeler was arrested and without torture freely cooperated with the Gestapo in naming names, which made him the object of a considerable hatred from the other prisoners, who saw him as a spineless coward. His letters and other documents revealed that Rommel was a potential supporter and an acceptable military leader to be placed in a position of responsibility in the new government.

A "Court of Military Honor" – little more than a drumhead court-martial – was convened to decide the fate of officers involved in the conspiracy. The Court decided that Rommel should be expelled from the Army in disgrace and put on public trial. This would present a problem to Hitler who knew that accusing a popular military figure like Rommel of being a traitor to Germany could cause civilian unrest. Hitler decided, therefore, to give Rommel the choice to commit suicide or else face public trial, certain death, and an uncertain future for his wife and son.

Rommel was unaware that he had been uncovered and between July and October he remained inactive as he recovered from his head injuries. It would have been difficult, however, for him to be unaware of the officer corps purge going on and the execution of the inner circle of plotters.

In October 1944, while recuperating at home, Rommel received a phone call from Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s supreme staff officer, asking him to report in person to Hitler in Berlin to discuss his next posting. Rommel was suspicious. He might indeed be in line for a new command on the Eastern Front fighting the Russians, or he might be turned over to the Gestapo, as had happened to others, and never see his family again. He declined Keitel’s invitation, citing his injury recovery as an excuse. Keitel accepted that excuse and said he would send Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Ernst Maisel to Rommel's home with details of his next assignment. Rommel knew that Burgdorf was Hitler’s adjutant (assistant) and Maisel was a protocol officer, so it was plausible that the purpose of their visit was as Keitel had represented it.

Burgdorf and Maisel arrived at Rommel's home on October 14, 1944, and Rommel escorted them into his study. As the senior officer and Hitler’s representative, Burgdorf did most of the talking and Maisel acted as a witness. Rommel was given a letter written by Keitel at Hitler’s dictation. It revealed what Rommel had feared – that he had been implicated by other conspirators. A copy of their testimony was included and Rommel examined it. Keitel’s letter stated that if Rommel believed he was innocent, he should report to the Fuehrer; otherwise, he would be arrested and tried. He should consider the consequences of that.

On the other hand, Keitel’s letter continued, there was an alternative – suicide. Burgdorf had personal orders from Hitler to prevent Rommel from shooting himself in the head; he was to offer him poison, in order that the cause of death could be attributed to the brain damage he had suffered in the car accident. That would be the public story, and it would be an honorable way for him to die and preserve his national reputation.

Burgdorf told Maisel to leave the room, and he produced a cyanide capsule for Rommel, promising that it would kill him within three seconds, thus sparing him unnecessary suffering. Rommel was promised he would be given a state funeral with a hero’s military honors, and his wife would receive a Field Marshal’s pension for the rest of her days.

Having made up his mind, Rommel left his study and went upstairs to see his wife, Lucia, telling her his decision to take his own life. His son, Manfred, entered the room behind him. After the war, he described that his father was pale but otherwise calm. He and Manfred stepped out into the hall and Rommel told his son that he would be dead in a quarter of an hour. If he accepted this way, Rommel said, none of the usual steps would be taken against his family and his military staff would also be left alone.

With his field marshal's baton under his arm and his son Manfred and his orderly beside him, Rommel walked to Burgdorf’s car, shook hands with his son and orderly, and slipped into the back seat with Burgdorf and Maisel beside him. Rommel did not look back as the car pulled off.

The driver, Sergeant Doose, was told to drive out of the village and onto a side road; then he and Maisel were told to leave the car and Burgdorf remained behind. In about five minutes Maisel and Doose were waved back to the car. Doose said that he found Rommel slumped over in his seat and his cap had fallen off. Doose, while sobbing, replaced the fallen cap on Rommel's head. Ten minutes later Rommel's wife received a call to inform her that her husband was dead.

Rommel's body was driven to a nearby hospital for a doctor to certify a time of death. The doctor immediately realized that the cause of death was unnatural, and recommended an autopsy, which Burgdorf refused. The German government announced Rommel's death as caused by aneurysm in the brain.

To further strengthen the story, Hitler ordered an official day of mourning in commemoration of the death. Rommel was buried with full military honors as promised. Hitler even sent Field Marshal von Rundstedt as his representative to the funeral. Although Rommel had specified that no political paraphernalia were to be displayed on his corpse, the Nazis made sure he was fully festooned with swastikas.

In a personal correspondence with his wife dated October 24, 1944, Keitel kept up the ruse, saying "Rommel has died after all from the multiple skull injuries he received on a car journey, through a blood-clot." But later, in his memoirs which were written in 1945 from prison, Keitel would admit to knowing the real cause of Rommel's death. He first revealed that Rommel was forced to commit suicide when he testified about his death during the Nuremberg Trials.

Rommel fought aggressively to win the war for Germany. Yet he was one of the few, if not the only, officer in the German High Command who had not committed atrocities or allowed them against civilians during his war service. There is strong evidence that he was not anti-Semitic and in fact complained to Hitler that he was concerned by Allied carping on German anti-Semitism. "Why don't we put some Jews into prominent leadership positions and shut them up?" Rommel suggested. Hitler told Rommel to stick to military matters and, after the General left the room, Hitler told associates, "That fellow has absolutely no understanding of what we are trying to accomplish."

Allied POWs who were captured by Rommel’s troops were treated humanely. In North Africa, he ordered that food and water rations for his troops be reduced so they could be shared with POWs. On one occasion, Rommel refused the wish of white soldiers of the British Empire for separate POW camps for white and Negro soldiers. His answer was that they fought together in battle as comrades and so should share the same fate after the battle. Rommel also ignored the order to treat Free French troops as irregulars and partisans, i.e., to shoot them on the spot.

After the war, Winston Churchill said of Rommel:

He deserves our respect because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this, he paid the forfeit of his life. In the somber wars of modern democracy, chivalry finds no place ... I do not regret or retract the tribute I paid to Rommel, unfashionable though it was judged [when given in the House of Commons].

Field Marshall Erwin Rommel was forced to take his own life 67 years ago this week on October 14.