Erwin Rommel remains one of the most recognizable commanders of World War II. He is still famously known as the Desert Fox for his daring initiative on the battlefields of North Africa.
Rommel's legacy and ultimate destiny lay in his willingness to do something very few other generals would even consider. He spoke the brutal truth about the progress of the war to Adolf Hitler.
Rommel's young son, Manfred, witnessed his father's unpredictable relationship with Hitler. Rommel's honesty would one day cost him dearly.
Rommel was many things. He was a brilliant tactical and operational leader who at the same time was blind to certain strategic realities about the regime he served.
He could be kind and generous, and also overbearing and tyrannical. He was a highly decorated lieutenant and German hero of World War I.
After the demilitarization of the German armed forces following the Great War, Rommel chose to remain in the army. He served first as an instructor, then later in the mid-1930s as Adolf Hitler's military escort at the annual Nuremberg Rally.
Over the years came promotions to captain, major, and colonel. Rommel and Hitler's paths would cross several more times ahead of Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, launching World War II.
Rommel's genius lay in armored warfare. In 1940, Hitler gave Rommel command of the German 7th Panzer Division. He led his panzers to quick victory in France and all the way to the English Channel.
In February 1941, Rommel was promoted to Lieutenant General. It was his next assignment that made him a legend, earning him one of the most famous nicknames in military history.
Confidence was something Rommel never lacked. He had quite the ego, though as the saying goes, it is not bragging if it is fact.
Erwin and Lucie Rommel had one child, Manfred, born in 1928. Manfred, like most young people in Nazi Germany, was eventually swept up into World War II as well as into the shadow of his famous father.
Adolf Hitler's rise to chancellor, then president of Germany, beginning in 1933, changed Rommel's life in many ways. What this small German family could not foresee was that their new leader had set his sights on world conquest and also racial purity.
Hitler came to power by telling Germans that he would lead them back from economic and military ruin. The nation's despair was a result of the harsh penalties laid out against the country in the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I.
The general feeling was that Germany had been unjustly treated. Hitler used that resentment, promising to bring back pride and take away the injustice.
Germany had no place in the world and no standing. Germany was completely irrelevant. But something more sinister was also in play.
It would begin to reveal itself to Rommel and the majority of the German population after World War II was well underway. Irmgard Schmid was a schoolgirl in Germany at the time.
Information came from all sides. There were soldiers saying Germany was the greatest, the best, the finest, and praising their beloved leader.
In America, people would fall off their chairs screaming with laughter at such devotion. Schmid recalled having to say "Heil Hitler" seven times a day and sing German songs.
In 1939, nobody wanted a war except Adolf Hitler. In early 1941, following the conquest of the majority of Western Europe, Hitler ordered his newest lieutenant general, Erwin Rommel, to go to North Africa.
Rommel would be given command of two Panzer divisions. His newly named Africa Corps would be fighting the British in the desert.
Before leaving for Africa, Rommel and Hitler met. There were no cracks in their relationship in 1941 as Rommel took over command of the Africa Corps. That would change.
Rommel's relationship with Hitler before he was sent to North Africa was very much that of a superior and subordinate. There was no questioning on Rommel's part of Hitler's authority.
Rommel became a favorite of Hitler's since the very beginning. Their connection had been built on mutual experiences. Rommel was a combat soldier just as Hitler had been in the First World War.
Manfred Rommel, not yet a teenager, wondered if he would ever see his father again. The relationship between Erwin Rommel and his son was in many ways a classic father-son relationship.
The father wanted the son to grow into a certain type of man, while the son had his own ideas. Erwin Rommel had no qualms about talking with Manfred, expressing misgivings about the direction the war was taking and trying to pass on fatherly advice.
Rommel always wanted to lead. North Africa gave him yet another opportunity. He wanted a combat command.
He had been a combat officer in the First World War and had been very good at it. He thrived on it and wanted to get back into the action. He was also personally very brave and believed in leading from the front.
By 1941, English code breakers had already cracked Germany's secret code known as Enigma. The British were reading German military plans as they were being sent out from Berlin.
Manfred Rommel never believed that such a difficult code could be broken. The Germans believed the Enigma system would require years to crack a single message.
The mistake was that in wartime, any assumption about enemy capabilities can turn out to be wrong. In North Africa, as was the case in France, Rommel led his German and Italian tanks and soldiers from the front lines.
Seeing their commander in the thick of the fight earned Rommel great respect from his troops. He began an attack that brought back Libya to the German-Italian forces in almost two weeks.
Success came quickly in North Africa. Almost immediately, Rommel began driving the British army out of key desert strongholds throughout 1941.
The early victories by an aggressive and audacious Rommel in North Africa's western desert earned him more points with Hitler. Germany's leader felt the people back home needed to better know one of his most successful field commanders.
Hitler promoted Rommel to field marshal. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was told to make Rommel into a hero back in the fatherland.
Goebbels began a propaganda campaign to put and then keep Rommel's image in front of the German people. Rommel was a handsome man, photogenic, and well spoken.
Rommel became the poster boy for the Wehrmacht. The German army's new face of victory provided a much-needed boost of morale on the home front as the war headed into 1942.
Rommel's relations with Hitler remained rather good. Rommel did not come often to Germany, and Hitler did not interfere in his tactics because the African war was a very fast-going war.
Rommel's run of success in North Africa had given him freedoms not enjoyed in other parts of the world by German generals, especially those commanding in Russia, where Germany had invaded the Soviet Union in 1941.
The Desert Fox, as Rommel had been respectfully branded by the British for his genius and daring, had latitude due to his early victories. When orders came in from the Nazi general staff and Rommel did not like them, he ripped them up and did it his way.
These actions baffled the British, who were still reading the German coded messages telling them where the next battle would be fought. The British expected Rommel to follow the orders they were reading, but almost as soon as he got those orders, he tossed them out and did it his own way.
In late 1942, the fight in North Africa began to turn back in favor of the Allies. Within two hours, Allied light tanks were 40 miles behind Rommel's lines, destroying his transport.
Rommel's early successes were undone mostly because the British were receiving far more supplies and because the United States was now in the war, fighting alongside England in North Africa beginning in early November 1942.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel begged German leadership for more of everything to regain his lost momentum, but was met with silence. He made a long list asking Hitler for support.
In the meantime, new tanks were sent to Africa, but it was nothing. Hitler was taking a very hands-off approach. It was almost as if he did not care. North Africa was to him a sideshow.
Hitler fully expected the war to be over by the end of 1942. The superiority of the British was so overwhelming and the strategy was made so carefully and exactly that the Germans had no chance.
Rommel's Africa Corps attacked. Despite shortages of material and men, Rommel heroically led the fight to recapture North Africa. The odds were just too overwhelming, even for the legendary Desert Fox.
Frequent bouts of depression, insomnia, low blood pressure, headaches, and jaundice began to affect Rommel. Despite sickness and defeat, his reputation continued to grow.
It really was a case of Rommel running rings around his opposition. They never quite got the measure of him. It was not until he was so badly outnumbered in men and material that he could not stop an Allied advance, and he was finally compelled to retreat out of North Africa entirely.
With North Africa now lost, Rommel returned to Germany. He went to see Hitler on his own initiative and said they had to give up Africa. It was no longer possible to do anything good under such circumstances.
Hitler became unfriendly and asked how many rifles Rommel had in his army. Rommel said he had not counted them. Hitler mocked him as a wonderful general who did not even know how many rifles he had.
Rommel replied that Hitler should come to Africa and show them how to fight Montgomery with a carbine 98. Hitler told him to leave the room. Rommel went out, and Hitler ran after him. They came back, and everyone had shattered nerves.
The relationship was starting to sour. By the spring of 1943, Rommel began to feel that his troops in North Africa had been sacrificed needlessly. A sense of betrayal first began to manifest itself whenever Rommel was in Hitler's presence.
The tremendous charisma that Hitler possessed would serve to at least temporarily overcome the doubts Rommel was beginning to have. In May of 1943, 130,000 Germans and Italians surrendered in North Africa, signaling the end of the Axis fight there.
It was around this time that many historians believe Rommel began to first hear stories of the executions and mass murder of Russian prisoners of war and civilians. It was not until late in 1943 that Rommel began to learn of the excesses committed by not just the SS but by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.
He started hearing rumors about the concentration camps, the death camps, and the Final Solution. His whole attitude toward Hitler began to turn not just sour but arguably hostile.
This was the Adolf Hitler Rommel did not know but was beginning to perceive. Uniformed men came to schools and put up posters saying "Die Juden sind unser Unglück," meaning the Jews are our downfall.
The entire huge organization to exterminate the Jews was concealed well enough that the majority of the people did not know about it. Rommel discovered not only a lot of crimes that had been committed but also that this would be a tremendous dilemma. It would not be possible to come to a reasonable peace arrangement.
Denied another command in Italy, Rommel would eventually be put in charge of the defense of Western Europe. The stage was set for the final confrontation between Hitler and Rommel.
Before that happened, in February 1943, the Germans were engaged on the Eastern Front in the Battle of Stalingrad. Russian soldier Boris Yeltsin saw the vicious combat firsthand.
Many historians believe this brutal winter fight was the turning point of World War II. The Germans and Axis powers suffered over 800,000 casualties. Following Stalingrad, the Russians began pushing the Germans out of the Soviet Union.
Rommel and Hitler watched the results from Russia. Both knew it was only a matter of time before the Allies opened their much-anticipated second front in Western Europe.
Because of his familiarity with the British and Americans from North Africa, Field Marshal Rommel was given command of Western Europe's defense. There, Hitler championed his so-called Atlantic Wall, fixed fortifications along the coast that supposedly stretched over 1,600 miles from Norway to the border of Spain.
Hitler believed the defensive emplacements would stop any American-British invasion of Western Europe. What Rommel found on inspection was that Hitler's Atlantic Wall existed only in the Führer's dreams.
Rommel had a rather realistic idea of the Allied tactics and way of fighting. He recognized that if the Germans were to stop an invasion in the West, they had to do it at the waterline in the first 24 hours of battle. They could not let the Allied army get ashore in Western Europe.
Others disagreed with Rommel's strategy of stopping the Allies in the water. They still believed in the big mobile battle.
By the time he was given command in France in late 1943, Rommel had made up his mind about how things would ultimately end for Germany in World War II. He was absolutely certain that Germany could not win the war anymore.
Rommel expected an Allied invasion to come somewhere along the coast of France because of its suitable landing beaches. Fortifications were strengthened and new ones built. Hundreds of thousands of mines were laid and thousands of obstacles constructed on the French coast.
Bunkers and machine gun nests were put up to destroy landing craft before they hit the shoreline. Other insidious barriers would attempt to slow down soldiers at the water's edge and wreak havoc with paratroopers and gliders behind the eventual landing beaches.
At least the Atlantic Wall was no longer pure fiction. Rommel moved his headquarters from Paris 40 miles closer to what he believed would be the eventual front lines on the coast of France.
He would lead the defense of the West from a 12th-century chateau at La Roche-Guyon, overlooking the north bank of the river Seine. That was his plan anyway.
In the spring of 1944, logic had it that any Allied assault would come at Pas-de-Calais, the closest point between France and England, just 19 miles across the English Channel. That is what Allied leaders wanted Rommel and Hitler to think.
They even thought up an ingenious plan to make it seem that way. One of the great stories of World War II that is poorly known to this day is Operation Fortitude.
An Allied army of soldiers, tanks, trucks, and radio traffic in England was set up. All of it was fake, wholly designed to point toward an Allied invasion coming at Calais, 150 miles northeast of the coast of Normandy.
The Germans had no means to find out if this was true or not. It was in its own way every bit as complex and detailed and required as great a degree of precision as the Overlord landings on Normandy.
The activities of the French Resistance were carefully coordinated with Fortitude to again create the impression that the landings were going to happen in the Pas-de-Calais. Hitler was duped.
If he had stayed with his original conviction of Normandy, the Normandy beaches might have been more heavily reinforced than they were. Rommel was duped just like almost every other senior German officer.
Adolf Hitler believed that Rommel and the Atlantic Wall would stop the Allies wherever the invasion took place. Hitler, however, never once visited any of the fortifications on the French coast to see for himself.
Rommel was like a jolt of electricity when he took over command. In reality, this was now Rommel's Atlantic Wall. And if he was going to be given command of the Atlantic Wall, he was going to turn it into an Atlantic Wall.
He was going to do his damnedest to stop the Allies at the water's edge and not allow them to gain a foothold on occupied Europe. The first step was fortification of the coast with positions for infantry in the minefields, using the experiences from Africa.
Then the armored divisions were distributed on different parts of the coast so that they could interfere on the same day or night. Rommel saw a certain chance to compensate for the nonexistence of the German Navy and the rather poor existence of the air force.
Rommel was also convinced that no mobile battle on the scale of 1944 was any longer possible because the Allied British and Americans were so superior in the air that they would have nailed down the German armor and it would have been hopeless for them.
The Atlantic Wall was being reinforced. Thinking the Allies intended to strike directly across the channel at its narrowest point, the enemy kept strong forces in the area and heavily fortified the Pas-de-Calais coastline.
Rommel had hoped to have 6 million mines laid by the time the wall was finished and the Allies invaded. As it was, he got 2 million of those 6 million laid.
But he trained the troops. He had constant exercises. When they were not digging trenches and building bunkers and laying mines, they were training.
Rommel was able to not only get his manpower mobilized but to turn the Atlantic Wall from a joke into what was literally one of the most formidable defensive systems ever emplaced in modern warfare. He came up with several different designs for beach obstacles, for mines, for detonation of mines and minefields, for sighting bunkers, and designs of bunkers.
He would sketch out what his concept was and then hand it to his staff and tell them to make it a reality. He did a lot of fortifications himself, showing a lot of initiative and also imagination.
He traveled around France and looked to see that his orders had been followed. Many of the beaches had been very well fortified in a very short time.
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was running out of time as May turned into June of 1944. He had done all he could, including adding Germany's battle-hardened 352nd Infantry Division to the Normandy coast.
One huge advantage Rommel had going for him in early June 1944 was his knowledge of the tactics used in previous Allied landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, especially how they relied on weather reports. June is a particularly nasty month weather-wise in the English Channel.
Holding to form, the weather in early June 1944 along the English Channel coast of France was very windy, very wet, and predictably nasty. However, Allied weather forecasters had seen something German meteorologists did not see: a 48-hour break from the elements beginning on June 6.
Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "Go." D-Day. The decision to launch Operation Neptune-Overlord in less than suitable conditions would stun Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.
The choice of Normandy as the location was also surprising. It was not Pas-de-Calais. Rommel was very surprised because he relied on the expert view of the German navy that nobody could land under such weather conditions.
It was a very courageous decision by General Eisenhower and a very successful one. The navy was nonexistent. The air force also said that in such weather it was not worth getting their machines out. So the first to notice the invasion was infantry. This is extraordinary.
Making matters much worse for the Germans on the morning of June 6, 1944, was that the commander of the Atlantic Wall was not even in France. Rommel had decided it would be a good time to return to his home in Herrlingen, Germany, to accomplish two objectives, one personal and one professional.
He intended to go to Hitler and tell him again what it meant if Normandy fell. He also used the visit to see his wife, who was celebrating her 50th birthday. So Rommel was in his house near Ulm on June 6.
At 7:20 in the morning of June 6, 6:20 a.m. in France, the telephone rang at the Rommel house in Germany. Some 17,000 Allied airplanes, 7,000 ships, and thousands of Allied troops were either attacking Normandy or just off the coast.
Allied naval forces supported by strong air cover under the command of General Eisenhower and his ground commander, the great Montgomery of Egypt and North Africa, had attacked along miles of the French coast. The elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe and security for a free world was the goal.
Rommel said it would take 24 hours to know what was going on. From that moment came the beginning of his heart condition, the realization that not only the war was lost but the battle was lost.
Manfred Rommel was also home on June 6 with his father. The young teenager had been called up to join the German Luftwaffe as a flak helper for an anti-aircraft gun.
Manfred had an opportunity to see his father. He was one of the first Germans to understand that an invasion had begun.
Manfred witnessed his father's initial reaction to reports of the Normandy landings. He also saw his frustration at not being able to get back to his headquarters at La Roche-Guyon at that decisive moment in history.
Rommel was not pleased at all. He said he wished he was in France. There was still no clear picture of the situation at his headquarters. They were still doubtful if this really had been the landing.
But this changed in one hour, and Rommel began to call his driver and prepare himself for departing to France. He said it was very painful that they were landing while he was not there.
Following more reports from his chief of staff Hans Speidel, Erwin Rommel left Herrlingen, Germany, by car for France around 10:30 in the morning of June 6. The field marshal arrived back at La Roche-Guyon around 9:00 p.m.
There were still thoughts that morning that Normandy was just a diversion. The real attack would still come at Pas-de-Calais. Operation Fortitude's plan of deception had been an overwhelming success.
It worked so well that the German 15th Army stayed at Calais, waiting well into July for an invasion that never came. Allied control of the skies hindered any immediate response by German tanks and reserve infantry on D-Day and the days that followed, just as Rommel had predicted.
Direct hits were scored on roads used by the Nazis to bring up reinforcements against the largest initial beachhead less than 10 miles away. The Allies followed very exactly where the Germans were.
In addition to winning the air battle, American and British ships controlled the channel coast. Their big guns reached deep inland. Some German commanders said it was not possible that they could fire over a distance of 30 kilometers. It was quite something that it was possible to control the coast.
The Allies had managed to land 156,000 troops ashore and had driven an average of 4 to 6 miles inland. On June 7, Rommel drove to Normandy to see the desperate situation for himself.
Rommel analyzed the situation but came back to his headquarters. Despite 10,000 casualties, the Allies had established their beachhead. A week after D-Day, Rommel knew full well the war in Western Europe was lost.
Rommel's bluntness about the situation in Normandy with Adolf Hitler was not appreciated by the Führer. The two met on June 15 to discuss Normandy.
Rommel did not exclude that Hitler might give in when he saw there was no hope. He told Hitler they could not win the war and this was not possible. They must see that.
Hitler said to Rommel that he saw it well, but with him nobody would make peace. Many people had to discover that Hitler would rather lead the Germans to disaster. It is terrifying that he was almost successful.
Rommel knew all along that all his mines, obstacles, fortifications, and infantry could never stop the Allies. By gaining their beachhead, Rommel knew that the Anglo-American alliance now held all the cards in the West.
As the Battle of Normandy raged, Rommel began articulating that the only way to save Germany was for Adolf Hitler to seek a truce with the Americans and the British. The situation was very poor.
Rommel was convinced that the Germans had never had any chance to win the battle under the beaches. The war was lost. The Allies were in a position where they did not have to concede anything to the Germans.
Hitler had to disappear, and the only good thing a German general could do was to surrender. Rommel told Hitler to make peace even if that meant Hitler had to step down as Führer and head of state.
If the Allies would not negotiate with Hitler, and Hitler openly admitted no one would negotiate with him, then it was time for Hitler to step aside. As Rommel put it, the proper considerations had to be taken.
Rommel's forthrightness with Hitler came to a head on July 15, 1944, in a three-page letter to the Führer. In it, Rommel told Hitler the war in the West was lost and, in so many words, that the Führer of Germany should now sue for peace in the West.
Ending the fight in Western Europe would also allow Germany to devote more resources to defending itself against the fast-approaching Russians in the East. The only thing Erwin Rommel could have done, he did. He could not have remained silent and watched the Germany he loved be destroyed in the name of a man he had come to detest.
There had been rumblings that others also wanted Adolf Hitler removed. Their goal, however, was to assassinate him. A small group was working on a plan to murder Hitler in the summer of 1944.
The great majority were passive. It was not possible to tell a friend that they should kill Hitler and make a revolution. Maybe the friend was such a patriot that he would run to the police and denounce you.
The German resistance movement was composed of staff officers, priests, and elites who believed and knew that they were not falling into the hands of traitors but into public view. To talk to people was suicide.
The war was no longer about Germany. The war had morphed into being about Adolf Hitler. At that point, in Rommel's estimation, it certainly became evil. And Hitler became evil with it.
Hitler was no longer working for Germany's general good. He was using Germany to preserve himself. The honeymoon was long past. The time for a divorce was coming.
Erwin Rommel was not in favor of killing Germany's leader. Rommel's oath to serve his country superseded any murderous plot. Rommel wanted Hitler out but felt assassination was not an option.
Rommel believed Hitler should surrender Germany to the Western Allies first, then stand trial in court by the German people. Any thoughts of being part of a murder plot were not something Rommel actively considered in 1944. However, he did listen to some of those German officers in favor of Hitler's assassination.
The whole idea of assassination of a head of state was something that would have been abhorrent to Erwin Rommel simply because it was not done. It was a patently illegal act. It was not the way Germans do things. It was treason, pure and simple.
In Rommel's eyes, he was prepared to countenance Hitler being arrested and removed from his position as Führer of the Third Reich. He was not willing to countenance assassination. It is the difference between a legal and an illegal action.
On July 17, 1944, while returning to La Roche-Guyon from a conference, two British Spitfires caught up with Erwin Rommel's staff car near the French town of Sainte-Germaine-de-Montgommery. The car was forced off the road and into a ditch.
In the process, Rommel, who was sitting in the front seat, was thrown against the frame of the windshield. He smashed the left side of his face to the point where it was almost disfiguring.
He was taken to a hospital, and it was first supposed that he would die in the same night. But Rommel did survive, and this was the end of his military career. His cheekbone was crushed, the orbit for his left eye received a fractured skull.
Interestingly, it did not seem to do anything to him psychologically. He was still very alert and aware, but it took him out of the battle completely. He never held active command again after that. He was relieved of command for medical reasons, and that really marked the end of his combat career.
Before suffering his severe injuries on July 17, Rommel had allegedly been working on an alternative scenario for ending the war in Western Europe sooner rather than later. Rommel's arrangement involved taking matters into his own hands and dealing with the Allies himself if Hitler would not.
Therefore, he decided to try to render the army. But he could not do so because he was hit by the bullets and grenades of two British fighters and was out of action since July 17.
The planned July 20, 1944 attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Führer's Rastenburg headquarters in East Prussia, also known as the Wolf's Lair, failed. More than 5,000 people would be tried and executed for the attempt on Hitler's life.
Most were not involved in any way, but it allowed Hitler to eliminate many of those he felt were not loyal to him. One of those on his list was his once-favorite field marshal.
Rommel would never be allowed a public trial. Adolf Hitler would make sure of that. Rommel was guilty of speaking the truth to Hitler. It did not matter if he was in on the plot to kill Hitler or not. Rommel committed treason in Hitler's eyes for having a defeatist attitude.
In the fall of 1944, Hitler's form of justice caught up with Erwin Rommel while he was recuperating at home in Herrlingen, Germany. When Rommel woke up on the morning of October 14, 1944, he had no idea that it was his last day on Earth.
Around noon, two general officers, SS generals, came calling and informed him that a military tribunal had concluded that he was guilty of acting against the Führer and the interests of the fatherland. He was given a choice.
One of the generals had brought a vial of cyanide with him. Rommel could take the cyanide and commit suicide. No actions would be taken against Lucie or Manfred. Rommel would be given a state funeral, and there would be no mention whatsoever about any disfavor Rommel might have fallen into with Hitler.
The alternative was that Rommel could dispute the charges and be brought before a people's court. You did not leave the people's court with an acquittal. It was only a question of how much of a circus and how much of a farce they would make out of the proceedings before a pronouncement of guilt and a death sentence was handed down.
Rommel had a brief scene with Lucie, telling her that in a quarter of an hour he would be dead. There were two men outside. They brought poison. This was the price he had to pay for telling the truth to Hitler.
Rommel asked Manfred to be strong and to be there for his mother. Then he drove off with the two SS generals. A few hundred yards up the road, they pulled over to the side.
The two generals got out of the car and walked a short distance away. Rommel took the poison. They came back. He was gasping for air. He was already unconscious and almost dead. Within minutes, he was dead.
He was given a state funeral. At one point, Field Marshal von Rundstedt had to declare, because his speech was scripted by Goebbels's propaganda department, that Rommel's heart belonged to the Führer, which of course was absolute nonsense. But Rommel had done the honorable thing. It was the only choice he really had.
Adolf Hitler had succeeded in ridding himself of one of his only generals who dared tell him the truth about the war. Following Rommel's death, Hitler led Germany to almost total ruin before finally committing suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945.
By that time, millions more Germans had died unnecessarily, and the Soviet Union was set to claim half of Germany as communist property. Germany's once most celebrated field marshal had been proven right in the end.
Erwin Rommel had paid for his prophetic words and brutal honesty with his life.