Erwin Rommel

by WW2Nut

Hello, I was wondering if anyone on the reddit could help me. I've been looking for Historical Debates and opposing opinions about whether or not Feild Marshall Erwin. Rommel was a morally just man, or just opinions or debates on Rommel would be a great start. If anybody knows it would be a magnificent help.

jonewer

Reading his own works would be a good place to start

Start with Infantry Attacks and The Rommel Papers

You can also read With Rommel in the Desert which was written by one of his batmen.

From the other side The Desert War Is a good account by what we would now call an imbedded journalist with the British Empire's 8th Army.

There have been quite a few threads about Rommel both here and on r/badhistory where there's generally a "Good guy Rommel" anti-circlejerk attitude. This thread being but one of many. I'll copy over my comment from that thread

The Good Guy Rommel thing goes back to ww2 itself. It suited both the Nazis and the western allies to create a myth about Rommel. For the Nazis, it was an obvious propaganda op and the western allies saw in him a reason to explain their failings. Sure, it nothing to do with your rubbish commanders and bad tanks, its all because of GGR!

After the war its necessary to rehabilitate Germany as an ally of the west, so we create the Clean Heer myth with GGR as its poster boy and dump all the bad stuff on the SS.

Overall, its important to remember that Rommel was a Nazi General. He was very fortunate to have earned his reputation fighting in theatres in which military law and civilisation were not completely abandoned (France) or in North Africa, where there were no untermensch or juden to be persecuted and exterminated.

If he had been sent to the east, there is no reason to suppose that he would not have become involved in war crimes to same extent as other generals such as Manstein.

abt137

The so called "Rommel papers" are a kind of autobiography put together by others, Liddel Hart among them but they still provide insight into the historical character, worth a try.