The Trail of the Fox Read online

  THE TRAIL OF THE FOX

  The Search for the True

  Field Marshal Rommel

  This edition ISBN 1-872197-30-2

  ePub ISBN 9781872197401

  Mobi ISBN 9781872197418

  The editor of this work was master craftsman Thomas B Congdon, who had previously edited Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws

  David Irving’s The Trail of the Fox was first published in 1977 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, in London; by E P Dutton Inc as a Thomas Congdon Book in New York; and by Clarke, Irwin & Company Ltd in Toronto. It was reprinted in 1978 by Avon Books, New York. In Italy it appeared in 1978 as La Pista Della Volpe (Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano); in Spain as El Rastro del Zorro (Editorial Planeta, Barcerlona). In Germany it was a major bestseller, published in 1978 by Hoffmann & Campe Verlag, Hamburg, and serialized in Der Spiegel. In subsequent years it appeared many countries including Finland (published by Kirjayhtymä, of Helsinki); in Ljubljana, by Drzavna Zalozba Slovenije; and in Japan (published by Hayakawa of Tokyo). Subsequent German-language editions included a paperback published by Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, of Munich and a book club edtion by Weltbild Verlag, of Augsburg.

  First published 1977

  Electronic Edition 2001

  Focal Point Edition 2005

  Classic hardback edition 2012

  © Parforce UK Ltd. 2001–2005

  An Adobe pdf (Portable Document Format) edition of this book is uploaded onto the FPP website at http://www.fpp.co.uk/books as a tool for students and academics. It can be downloaded for reading and study purposes only, and is not to be commercially distributed in any form.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be commercially reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission of the author in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and to civil claims for damages.

  Readers are invited to submit any typographical errors to David Irving by mail at the address below, or via email at [email protected]. Informed comments and corrections on historical points are also welcomed.

  Focal Point Publications

  London WiJ 7SE

  “The most thrilling war book I have ever read. It yanks Rommel out of the hazy aureole of legend and flings him down before us: Hungering for medals, escaping unscathed while a shell blows his comrade’s back off, restaging whole battles for propagandists. I could no more stop reading this book than the French could stop Rommel’s panzers.”

  DAVID KAHN, AUTHOR OF THE CODEBREAKERS

  “A fascinating study of the brilliant Rommel. It enables the reader to experience the emotions of a warrior in battle.”

  GENERAL MARK W. CLARK

  “I am tremendously impressed. . . A superb character study and a fine work.” —GENERAL MATTHEW B. RIDGWAY

  “I myself learned a lot. I am convinced this book will find many readers and be discussed everywhere.”

  MANFRED ROMMEL, LORD MAYOR OF STUTTGART

  “A brilliant biography, almost a great one.”

  CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

  “Superb narrative history, rendered with an intimacy that transcends print. The central character is drawn with a skill no novelist would disdain. . . Mr. Irving has pictured Rommel in a harsh light, but he has combined his qualities, strengths, weaknesses, and vanities in such a way that he breathes life on every page.” THOMAS LASK, THE NEW YORK TIMES

  “One of the finest, freshest and most vigorous military biographies to appear since the war.” —THE TIMES, LONDON

  DAVID IRVING WRITES: It is nearly thirty years since I completed this Rommel biography for Tom Congdon (above, in 1979) and William Morrow Inc. He was one of Madison Avenue’s most gifted editors. He had just finished editing a book called “Jaws” for author Peter Benchley, who had never written a book before in his life.

  After Rommel, Tom also edited my book The War Between the Generals, and then my Hermann Göring biography.

  Any editor has to be the author’s best friend. His brain is plugged in throughout the period of gestation, and it provides extra thinking power where it is so vital – it asks the awkward questions, and refuses to tolerate sloppiness in any form.

  In fact Tom Congdon taught me all over again just how to write – and I was by then halfway through my writing career.

  He was a demanding editor, and not easily satisfied. A few weeks after I had delivered the Rommel manuscript, cleared my desk in London, and prepared to turn to a new subject, a letter came from him congratulating: “David, that is the finest first draft of a book I have ever read.” He was right, of course, and I wrote it all over again.

  He and Connie retired to Nantucket in 1994. I want my readers to know how much of the credit for these pages belongs to him.

  WHAT will history say in passing its verdict on me? If I am successful here, then everybody else will claim all the glory. . . But if I fail, then everybody will be after my blood.

  From the unpublished Rommel diary,

  April 16,1944

  Contents

  ON THE TRAIL OF THE FOX

  THE USEFUL SOLDIER

  THE INSTRUCTOR

  HITLER’S GENERAL

  SPOOK DIVISION

  NOT A PENNY FOR AFRICA

  THE ELITE CORPS

  KILOMETER 31

  THE COMMANDERS’ REVOLT

  THE COMING OF CRUSADER

  THE DESPERATE FORAY

  TURNING THE TABLES

  THE GLITTERING PRIZE

  PRELUDE TO EL ALAMEIN

  THE RIDGE

  IF I DON’T RETURN

  HUMILIATION

  THE ART OF DISOBEDIENCE

  LAST CHANCE FOR GLORY

  FAREWELL AFRICA

  MAN IN A GRAY HOMBURG

  THINK VICTORY

  DEATH ZONE

  CLOSED SEASON

  THE SILENT SWABIAN

  WITH THEIR PANTS DOWN

  NORMANDY

  A COLONEL CALLS ON ROMMEL

  KILL ROMMEL!

  WHO KILLED ROMMEL?

  INQUEST

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THE SOURCES

  INDEX

  List of Illustrations

  BETWEEN PAGES 170-171

  Rommel’s parents.

  In 1906 Rommel and a school friend built a glider.

  Lucie Mollin, and a photo of Rommel in the uniform of the Officer Cadet School at Danzig.

  Marital portraits taken before and after winning the Pour le Mérite.

  Rommel and his pet fox at the Western Front in 1914.

  Rommel’s only legitimate child, Manfred, born in 1928.

  September 30,1934: the first meeting between Hitler and Rommel.

  In the Polish campaign, Rommel commanded Hitler’s headquarters. Rommel finds himself between Hitler and Martin Bormann.

  Rommel at Saint-Valéry, on the English Channel, with a captured British commander, Major General Victor Fortune.

  Karl Hanke reports to Hitler during the French campaign.

  On March 31,1941, Rommel and General Gariboldi inspect the Afrika Korps.

  Lieutenant Alfred Berndt.

  Rommel’s diarists: Interpreter Wilfried Armbruster, Albert Böttcher, and Hellmuth Lang.

  Rommel and Fritz Bayerlein confer between the Mammut and a Panzer III.

  Rommel, General Alfred Gause, Colonel Siegfried Westphal and Major Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin.

  Bayerlein with Rommel during the fighting at Kasserine.

  Major Wilhelm Bach, the ex-pastor who directed the heroic defence of the Halfaya Pass.

  General Georg von Bismarck, with Rommel.

  General Johannes Strei
ch.

  Lieutenant General Ludwig Crüwell, Rommel’s successor. Afrika Korps commander General Wilhelm von Thoma surrenders at El Alamein.

  Hitler bestows the field marshal’s baton upon Rommel in September 1942 watched by Army Adjutant Gerhard Engel, Chief Adjutant Rudolf Schmundt, Navy Adjutant Karl Jesco von Puttkamer, Wilhelm Keitel, SS Adjutant Richard Schulze, and Rommel’s aide Alfred Berndt.

  The same day, Rommel is the hero of a Berlin rally. Next to him is Keitel.

  Rommel’s own sketches of his plan to seize Cairo and the Suez Canal.

  The rutted desert. Low ridges were of importance during the battles.

  The crew of a German half-track watch an enemy vehicle burning on the horizon.

  The Panzer III was the backbone of Rommel’s battle tank force.

  A Panzer IV, with Rommel aloft, advancing through the scrub.

  German infantrymen in desert foxholes wait for an attack.

  BETWEEN PAGES 340-341

  The flak eighty-eight was Rommel’s best hope against British tanks.

  Rommel sits in the roof hatch of his Mammut on the Via Balbia.

  Rommel was renowned for his ability to sense the approach of the enemy.

  Rommel was fascinated by motor engines.

  Recalled to Germany in March 1943, Rommel feared his career was over. Uncomfortable in civilian clothes, he lived with Lucie and her friends.

  Rommel used his spare time that spring to review local Hitler Youth units.

  Rommel moved in March 1944 into this château in La Roche-Guyon, France. The Hall of Ancestors became the staffs table tennis room.

  Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt visited the château in May 1944. Rommel welcomed him with his Chief of Staff Hans Speidel.

  Speidel had just received the Knight’s Cross.

  After the war, Speidel appeared with Rommel’s widow at a ceremony at Rommel’s grave; the year was 1949 and Speidel was by then commander of all NATO land forces in Europe.

  Rommel inspects the defenses of France against invasion, in his powerful Horch automobile. His driver Corporal Daniel is later killed; behind him are aide Hellmuth Lang and operations officer von Tempelhoff.

  General Feuchtinger shows Rommel multiple rocket launchers.

  Devices developed by Rommel to thwart the Overlord invaders: spikes, steel tetrahedra, “can openers,” and mines. Poles were planted in fields to prevent glider landings, but in Normandy Rommel’s pole planting had had not made much progress.

  General Wilhelm Meise was Rommel’s expert in explosives and mines. General Hans von Salmuth, commander of the Fifteenth Army. General Erich Marcks, the corps commander in Normandy. Field Marshal Hans von Kluge replaced Rundstedt.

  Panzer General Hans Eberbach.

  On June 4,1944, Rommel arrived home from France to celebrate Lucie’s fiftieth birthday with her friends.

  Rommel and SS General Sepp Dietrich discuss Germany’s future.

  Released from the hospital, Rommel convalesced at his villa in Herrlingen; one of the last photos of Rommel.

  Lieutenant Colonel Cesar von Hofacker confessed to the Gestapo, sealing Rommel’s fate.

  On October 14, 1944, emissaries bring Rommel Hitler’s edict. General Wilhelm Burgdorf carries the phial of cyanide in his briefcase.

  Rommel on his deathbed in the villa’s smoking room.

  The state funeral of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

  On The Trail of The Fox

  IT IS MAY 18,1944. At Hitler’s war conference he is told that the enemy has carried out two spy operations during the night on the heavily defended French coastline. At one place, near Calais, German troops have found shovels and a flashlight lying on the beach after a shoot-out. At another, in the estuary of the river Somme, two British officers have been captured. “They came ashore by rubber dinghy,” General Alfred Jodl, chief of Wehrmacht operations, tells Hitler. “Their interrogations so far have revealed that they were set down by a British motor launch.”

  The scene changes to a French château built against a steep rock face overlooking the Seine valley. It is two days later. A small German army staff car swerves into the driveway to the château and comes to a halt. Two soldiers climb out, stiff from their 150-mile drive from the coast of the English Channel. They lead two other men, blindfolded and handcuffed, from the car. These two men wear no insignia, but the empty stitching on their khaki battle dress shows all too clearly where the purple Combined Operations badge and the narrow Special Service shoulder flash have been removed; they are British commandos. Their blindfolds are untied, and they blink in the sunlight. Their expressions are grim; they know that Hitler has given standing orders that all commandos are to be turned over to the Gestapo and shot.

  When they are pushed into their cells, they find tea and sandwiches waiting for them. One of them, Lieutenant Roy Woodridge, curtly refuses to talk. The other, Lieutenant George Lane, is less tightlipped and is taken to see Colonel Hans-Georg von Tempelhoff. A suave and handsome blond, Tempelhoff stands up and holds out his hand. “It must be very beautiful in England just now,” he says pleasantly.

  Lane’s face betrays his surprise at the colonel’s flawless English. Tempelhoff explains: “My wife is English.” For a moment he stands eyeing Lane, then briskly directs him to wash his face and hands, clean his fingernails and smarten himself up. “You’re going to meet somebody very important. Very important indeed. Field Marshal Rommel!”

  The Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied France is just seventeen days away. In English harbors a mighty invasion fleet is assembling for the operation. Here in France, Hitler has put one man in command, his favorite field marshal, Erwin Rommel, the celebrated Desert Fox. Rommel is a veteran of campaigns against the British and Americans. He knows what makes them tick. He believes he can anticipate their every move. Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes have sighted landing craft massing across the Channel from the Somme estuary. This latest commando spy operation on that very coastline confirms to him that this is where the Allied invasion will come. How is Rommel to know that the landing craft are dummies and that these commandos have been deliberately played into Nazi hands to feed misleading information to him? It is all part of a deception plan code-named Fortitude, masterminded by British intelligence.

  Rommel has chosen this château as his tactical headquarters because it is honeycombed with cellars. He has blasted more bombproof tunnels deep into the cliffs behind it. For the last five months he has been preparing the German army for the coming battle and devising ingenious and deadly anti-invasion defenses—spiked staves, barbs, submerged booby traps, minefields and entanglements. He is not surprised that the British are willing to take risks to find out what he is up to.

  As Lane is brought into Rommel’s study, the field marshal is seated at his desk in the far corner, gazing out of his window. It is a long room, hung with four priceless tapestries; rare carpets lie upon the highly polished floor; vases and lamps of ancient porcelain stand along the walls. Rommel himself is a short, stocky man with receding, close-cropped hair, a set jawline and penetrating gray-blue mastiff eyes. He is tanned from weeks of touring the new coastal fortifications. At his throat glitters the rare blue and gold cross of the Pour le Mérite, the highest medal in Prussia’s power to give, awarded him in 1917.

  Rommel rises, walks around his desk and courteously greets the British officer. Then he motions Lane over to a low round table, surrounded by antique chairs, on which orderlies have laid a rather incongruous collection of cheap metal teapots and exquisite bone china.

  “So you’re one of those commando gangsters?” Rommel asks the prisoner.

  “I’m a commando and proud of it. But not a gangster. None of us are.”

  “Perhaps you aren’t a gangster, but we’ve had some nasty experiences with you commandos. They haven’t always behaved as impeccably as they should.” Rommel smiles distantly. “You’re in a bit of a spot. You know what we do with saboteurs . . .”

  Lane turns to the interprete
r and comments, “If your field marshal thinks I’m a saboteur he wouldn’t have invited me here.”

  “So you regard this as an invitation?” asks Rommel, grinning.

  Lane bows slightly. “I do, and I must say I’m highly honored.”

  At this everybody chuckles. Rommel casually inquires, “How’s my old friend General Montgomery?”

  “Very well, thank you,” replies Lane. “I hear he’s planning some sort of invasion . . .”

  Rommel feigns surprise. “You mean there really is going to be one?”

  “So the Times tells us,” the prisoner answers, “and it’s usually reliable enough.”

  “You realize this is going to be the first time that the British have had to put up a proper fight?”

  “What about Africa, then?”

  “That was child’s play,” scoffs Rommel. “The only reason I had to retreat there was that no more supplies were getting through to me.”

  For twenty minutes Rommel reminisces about the war and lectures Lane on Britain and its fading empire and on the great future of Hitler’s Third Reich. Lane listens spellbound and finally asks permission to put a question himself: “Would your Excellency tell me whether you regard military occupation as an ideal situation for a vanquished country?”

  Rommel argues that by their very upbringing soldiers make ideal dictators. Soldiers are accustomed to crisis, they know how to master even the direst emergency. “If you travel around occupied France today and keep your eyes open, you’ll see everywhere just how happy and contented the French people are. For the first time they know just what they have to do—because we are telling them. And that’s the way the man in the street likes it!”

  After a time the blindfold is replaced on Lieutenant Lane. In this brief interview something of Rommel’s magnetism has electrified him, and as he is led out to the car to resume his journey to a prison camp and safety—as the field marshal has personally guaranteed—Lane grasps the arm of Colonel Anton Staubwasser, Rommel’s intelligence officer.

  “Do me one favor,” he says. “Tell me—where am I now?”