Erwin Rommel war crime?

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corbulo
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Re: Erwin Rommel war crime?

#31

Post by corbulo » 19 Dec 2019, 13:55

aurelien wolff wrote:
17 Dec 2019, 17:18
and romme lis misrepresented too https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... nd_to_his/
Ok. Let's try and break that Reddit comment down.

"Rommel was an ardent Nazi"
Really? What does that actually mean? Rommel was not a member of the Nazi party. He might have welcomed the rise of the Nazi party, but then again, plenty of Germans did to reverse the national humiliation after WW1. Let's be clear, the rise of the Nazis in Germany mirrored the rise of Fascist parties (and Communist) in EVERY other European country. For the author of that Reddit comment to comment on Rommel supporting Right Wing movements immediately after the Armistice and using it to paint a picture of Rommel being a Nazi ideologue is a really basic, lazy way of thinking. "While it didn't come so far that his troops fired live ammunition on the demonstration, they brutally beat and used a fire hose against a peaceful demonstration against an attempt to violently overthrow democratic order. " Pathetic. You might as well malign him because he may or may not have once kicked a dog up the backside. Let's be clear, Hitler was voted Time magazine's (an American magazine) Man of the Year for 1938. Gandhi was voted in in 1930. Stalin in 1939 - after systematically starving c. 15m Ukrainian in the 30s...

Using marginal transgressions of the Hague convention and using them to depict him of being a hardened war criminal is also pathetic - unless all generals and commanders are viewed under the same exacting standards whatever side they fought on. Civilians were targeted across the board The 'Perfidy' claim just made me laugh. That was just being clever.

With regards to the situation in North Africa, it was completely different to the situation in Europe. Jews and Gypsies were regarded as alien races in Europe. In North Africa Arabs and Berbers predominated. "...construction of concentration camps in Libya, the most famous being Jado and Beghazi where over 600 Jews died due to poor conditions." Just out of interest, how many others died due to the same poor conditions. Internment camps in hot countries usually produced mortalities. Heat, lack of clean water etc. Just because an amount of people died (who incidentally might have been Jewish) it does not mean that Jews were specifically targeted as a group. The treatment of the wider population was hardly that much worse to how colonial forces acted against native populations, and should be viewed through that prism (surely...?)

Rommel's order in Italy after Italy dropped out of the war. "This order was the basis for several brutal acts in disarming the members of the Italian army captured by the Germans. Summary executions and hangings were common in order to make an example and force their fellow soldiers to give up their weapons willingly. This too was a clear war crime."

Summary executions and hangings for what, exactly...? The writer does not make it clear.

"Furthermore, the disarmed Italian soldiers were not be treated as POWs. They received a special status that was called "Military Interned" and indicated worse treatment, including forced labor in work and concentration camps."

Again, does this fly in the face of how colonial forces acted in occupied countries...? My own grandfather, who was Italian, was caught dealing in the black market and carted off to Dachau when the Nazis set up the Republic of Salo in the northern half of Italy (and bear in mind that 90% of the 100,000 italians interned in concentration camps in Europe died) But even i can see the basic, lazy interpretations in the writer's comments. For Rommel, or any other Wehrmacht general to be viewed in either black or white terms (usually black) is ridiculous. They usually had better things to worry about that what the SS/SD/Einsatzgruppen mopping up squads were getting up to.

aurelien wolff
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Re: Erwin Rommel war crime?

#32

Post by aurelien wolff » 19 Dec 2019, 14:10

what goebbels say about him doesn't count I guess: "Goebbels wrote in his diary in 1942 that Rommel "is not only politically close to National Socialism, he is a Nationalsocialist." [Elke Fröhlich (ed.): Die Tagebücher des Joseph Goebbels, München u. a. 1987-2001, II. 4, 01.10.1942, p. 38.]" and just because he wasn't a party member didn't mean he didn't believe in the ideiology


corbulo
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Re: Erwin Rommel war crime?

#33

Post by corbulo » 19 Dec 2019, 14:19

aurelien wolff wrote:
19 Dec 2019, 14:10
what goebbels say about him doesn't count I guess: "Goebbels wrote in his diary in 1942 that Rommel "is not only politically close to National Socialism, he is a Nationalsocialist." [Elke Fröhlich (ed.): Die Tagebücher des Joseph Goebbels, München u. a. 1987-2001, II. 4, 01.10.1942, p. 38.]" and just because he wasn't a party member didn't mean he didn't believe in the ideiology
Depends on extent, i guess. Was he for the interests of Germany. Undoubtably. Was he a fanatical anti-Semite and racial theorist? Who knows? Doubtful, though. That's why i asked what "ardent Nazi" actually meant.

Politically he might have lent towards Fascism in the truest sense of the word (a national form of Socialism), but casting him in the same vane as a Goebbels, Himmler or Rosenberg is the same thinking as casting Attlee as a Stalinist show trial judge just because he was a member of the Labour Party.

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Aida1
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Re: Erwin Rommel war crime?

#34

Post by Aida1 » 19 Dec 2019, 16:27

aurelien wolff wrote:
19 Dec 2019, 14:10
what goebbels say about him doesn't count I guess: "Goebbels wrote in his diary in 1942 that Rommel "is not only politically close to National Socialism, he is a Nationalsocialist." [Elke Fröhlich (ed.): Die Tagebücher des Joseph Goebbels, München u. a. 1987-2001, II. 4, 01.10.1942, p. 38.]" and just because he wasn't a party member didn't mean he didn't believe in the ideiology
No it does not because it finds no support in Rommels life.i do not think Goebbels had many contacts with Rommel on a day to day basis. He probably confuses being loyal with being a nationalsocialist.

aurelien wolff
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Re: Erwin Rommel war crime?

#35

Post by aurelien wolff » 19 Dec 2019, 21:01

I know you'll say it's wikipedia so it doesn't,but I still find this article interesting,same goes for the reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... elieve_in/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rommel_my ... _Socialism (I guess it's like the clean wehrmacht myth,a conspiracy)

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Aida1
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Re: Erwin Rommel war crime?

#36

Post by Aida1 » 19 Dec 2019, 21:37

aurelien wolff wrote:
19 Dec 2019, 21:01
I know you'll say it's wikipedia so it doesn't,but I still find this article interesting,same goes for the reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ ... elieve_in/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rommel_my ... _Socialism (I guess it's like the clean wehrmacht myth,a conspiracy)
At least that article lists all the opinions, not only the nonsense about the myth. the Some people think they can only make themselves interesting by pretending a historical figure is a myth.All great commanders get that treatment.

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