Post by Admin on Nov 29, 2019 22:37:21 GMT
Erwin Rommel's son desert in the Second World War
His father had recently been forced to commit suicide at Hitler’s order. This was part of a deal whereby Rommel would quietly end his own life with poison, and in return the Gestapo wouldn’t execute his family right there in his house then hunt down and try his former staff officers for treason and execute them as well. Another part of the deal was that Rommel’s family was to be left alone, unmolested, so long as they told nobody the truth about how and why Rommel died.
Shortly after the grand funeral of Rommel, his son Manfred was summarily dismissed from his post in the Luftwaffe without any reason given, and then immediately drafted into a forced labor battalion to build fortifications near the Western Front. This was a very dangerous post, as such workers frequently came under Allied air and artillery attack. And of course it was the destruction of his own military career and a casting down to be basically a slave, worked mercilessly until he died either from enemy attack or from his own Nazi slavemasters. Manfred naturally saw this is as a gross betrayal of the deal his father had made essentially at gunpoint, so he decided he was no longer bound by the secrecy deal or by further loyalty to the Reich.
He waited until his labor unit was moved near to the front where the French were advancing, then created an opportunity to slip away. He made straight for the front line, where he turned himself in to the French. He then proceeded, in a series of interviews with French, British, and American officers, to tell the Allies everything he knew about the situation along that portion of the front, about the political situation in Berlin, about the current state of the German High Command, and of course about how his father had died. He naturally had a lot of useful information, having been something of a confidante to his father during the last weeks of his father’s life.
Really, who can blame him?
Shortly after the grand funeral of Rommel, his son Manfred was summarily dismissed from his post in the Luftwaffe without any reason given, and then immediately drafted into a forced labor battalion to build fortifications near the Western Front. This was a very dangerous post, as such workers frequently came under Allied air and artillery attack. And of course it was the destruction of his own military career and a casting down to be basically a slave, worked mercilessly until he died either from enemy attack or from his own Nazi slavemasters. Manfred naturally saw this is as a gross betrayal of the deal his father had made essentially at gunpoint, so he decided he was no longer bound by the secrecy deal or by further loyalty to the Reich.
He waited until his labor unit was moved near to the front where the French were advancing, then created an opportunity to slip away. He made straight for the front line, where he turned himself in to the French. He then proceeded, in a series of interviews with French, British, and American officers, to tell the Allies everything he knew about the situation along that portion of the front, about the political situation in Berlin, about the current state of the German High Command, and of course about how his father had died. He naturally had a lot of useful information, having been something of a confidante to his father during the last weeks of his father’s life.
Really, who can blame him?
Manfred Rommel (24 December 1928 – 7 November 2013) was a German politician belonging to the Christian Democratic Union, who served as Mayor of Stuttgart from 1974 until 1996. Rommel's policies were described as tolerant and liberal, and he was one of the most popular municipal politicians in Germany. He was the recipient of numerous foreign honours. He was the only son of Wehrmacht field marshal Erwin Rommel and his wife Lucia Maria Mollin (1894–1971), and contributed to the establishment of museums in his father's honour. He was also known for his friendship with George Patton IV and David Montgomery, the sons of his father's two principal military adversaries.