We all remember the General Rommel, Erwin Johannes Eugen to be exact, like the man who in 1940 suddenly became the most famous commander of the Seventh Armored Division during its advance through France. After two years, when his Africa Since he stood with the Italian forces just over 100 kilometers from Alessandria, his name ran all over the world. The same year he was appointed federal marshal by Hitler and to the British he was the best general of the war.
Hence the expression "make a Rommel” which meant accomplishing a magnificent feat. While his ability to improvise and his cunning earned him the nickname of "Desert fox".
Knowing that every day the RAF was taking photographs above the German lines, he ordered all available motor vehicles to go back and forth, day and night, in the surrounding desert, thus leaving innumerable traces of their passage.
Another time, as they were about to give the order to attack, he was told that only six tanks were available, and he said, "Then attack with the dust!" And how? He set off the vehicles that moved in circles and madly in the space of a few kilometers, thus creating a cloud of dust.
Rommel also possessed a good deal of sex appeal military, that is, a fascination in his wearing of the cap on the twenty-three, in his peasant cunning.
But what are the circumstances of his mysterious death? According to the official version he died due to injuries sustained in the breaking of a car near Livarot, at the time of the invasion of Normandy. But there is also another truth.
Before the surrender in Tunisia in May 1943, Hitler had ordered Rommel to return to Germany to join his entourage. The following months were difficult, it is known that he never joined the Nazi party, rather worried about wanting to make a career, far from mass killings, forced labour, concentration camps and the terror of the Gestapo in the occupied territories. He was horrified by what they did in the name of the German people. Indeed, when Hitler ordered the German commanders to shoot certain hostages, he refused.
Later he tried in hopes of getting something better than the unconditional surrender demanded by the allies, Rommel tried to propose an armistice to Eisenhower and Montgomery without Hitler's knowledge. And also to have Hitler captured by trusted units of tankers and to translate everything before a German court.
Meanwhile the Allies were landing in Normandy, and on 5 July 1944 Rommel sent Hitler an ultimatum demanding the opening of negotiations for an armistice. He gave Hitler only 4 days to decide.
On 19 July near Livarot, two airplanes with British badges headed straight towards him. One of these hit the car and Rommel was thrown out completely unconscious. The second aircraft that descended in a dive opened fire, seriously wounding him.
But in the RAF archives there appears to be none of this fact. Was this Hitler's response to the Desert Fox's ultimatum?
By the end of the summer, Rommel had made a full recovery, save for partial paralysis of his left eye.
On 13 October he received a telephone call while at his home near Ulm informing him that General Burgdolf, the Führer's envoy, would visit him the following day to discuss his assignment to a new command.
That October 14 Rommel in the company of his wife and son welcomed Burgdolf who arrived accompanied by another general, Maisel. After an exchange of greetings and platitudes, the lady and her son withdrew. At 13 Rommel went up to his wife and said " In a quarter of an hour I'll be dead“. Rommel knew that Hitler held him responsible for the July 20 plot, so he was being offered the choice between death by poisoning and trial before a people's court. The two generals had confided to him that if he had chosen the court, there would have been repercussions towards his wife and son, while if he had allowed himself to be poisoned, his family would have been spared. Thus the Führer allegedly concealed from the German people the fact that the most popular of his generals had plotted to overthrow him from his position and power.
IThe diabolical plan had already been thought out, once he got into the car towards Ulm he would have been dispensed with poison and would have died in three seconds. He was taken lifeless to the hospital "suggesting to the doctors" that he would die suddenly from the after-effects of the wounds of July 17th. And so it was.
But why didn't anyone intervene? Surely any intervention to save him would have led anyone who had undertaken it to suffer the same end, given that, as it later came to be known, there were cars loaded with SS men outside his house
What exactly happened that day will remain a mystery forever.
