This day in History: October 14th

1944: German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.

Erwin Rommel gives historians headaches.

It should be a pretty cut-and-dried picture. Rommel was, after all, a Nazi. He was one of the highest-ranking and most widely-decorated officers in the Axis Armed forces during World War II, as well as one of the most skilled wagers of desert warfare ever. Under his command, the Afrikacorps were a nearly unstoppable machine, conquering huge swaths of land on that continent. Similarly, his "Ghost Division" Panzer command ate up chunks of France like a day-old baguette due to its ability to attack from what seemed like thin goddamned air. So, yeah. Bad guy. Boo. Hiss. I'm guessing I could've stopped at, "he was a Nazi," and that's more than enough for 98% of everyone.

However, at the risk of making it sound like I'm actually defending one of the primary architects of the Third Reich's Military machine, students of the war also universally agree that Rommel was, at the core, a fundamentally decent human being.

"Don't judge me."

Yeah, that's tough to swallow, and incongruous with what we've been taught. But his record more or less backs that shit up.

To wit:

For one, his commands were some of the only German regiments NOT charged with any war crimes (nor was he, posthumously or otherwise). By all accounts, he ran the Afrikacorps with extreme honor and chivalry, treating prisoners humanely, and with respect as fellow soldiers. He openly criticized his closest allies if he felt he was not given adequate support. He refused to willingly or knowingly kill civilians. And perhaps most tellingly, Rommel was not an anti-Semite. He regularly and openly defied several orders to kill Jews. This seems to indicate that while he may have been a career soldier, he was only really in it for the nationalism, patriotism, and belief in country it represented. In other words, the only right reasons anyone on any side EVER joins up.

"Okay, sure," you're thinking. "But isn't being 'the most honorable Nazi' still sort of like being 'valedictorian of the special school'?" And yes, you'd be right. Except, there is the small matter of his self-inflicted death to consider.

A bit of background: toward the end of WWII, Der Führer didn't quite know what to DO with Rommel. I mean, despite being the most evil motherfucker in the history of the universe, Hitler at least had enough brains to serve his own self-interest. Sure, Rommel was FAR from on board with the Final Solution, and was regularly subordinate when it came to enforcing the policies thereof. But the guy was just so goddamned efficient, skilled, and determined that he was practically one whole leg of the empire Hitler was trying to build.

He just wasn't RUTHLESS enough. Rommel had a heart and mind of his own, and refused to embody the politics endemic to the whole movement. So, even a megalomaniacal fuck like Hitler, who demanded absolute fealty, was willing to keep him around because the pros of doing so outweighed the cons. I mean, shit. Here was a guy who not only didn't bitch about fighting in the goddamned desert, but achieved results besides.

"I'll go with the pastrami, I guess. No pickles, please."

Plus, the guy was incredibly popular back home. Stories of Rommel's exploits and successes on the front had kept morale up in the Motherland, where the general public knew little to nothing of the hush-hush atrocities being committed in their collective name, nor the Big Plan. So a straight-up guy like Erwin became a folk hero. They cut stories out of the newspaper, and toasted him at the pubs. Ergo, it simply wouldn't DO for Der Führer to smack Rommel down. The more they fixated on Rommel, he reasoned, the more they wouldn't ask questions about what had happened to the Goldmans from down the hall, and why all the Synagogues were actively on fire.

Still, there was a wedge. The more Rommel defied orders and got promoted anyway, the more other officers started seeing what they could get away with, too. Holes opened up. Factions were formed. Information about some of the shit that was actually happening at the top of the pyramid started floating down to people that had been deliberately kept in the dark. And slowly but surely, a lot of high-ranking German officials started to get that sinking, "Oh, SHIT" feeling as they realized that THEY were, in fact, the bad guys. And, being a by-all-accounts stand-up guy, Rommel was one of the ones who realized he was fighting for a cause he not only didn't believe in...But found to be morally repugnant.

So, shit started to get real.

Not pictured: Throat full of bile. Both of them.

The end of the war was rapidly approaching. It wasn't long before the failed "July 20th" bomb-assassination plot intended to kill Hitler good and dead came to pass. And, though it was not successful in actually offing the asshole, it was nonetheless a Pyrrhic victory for the burgeoning German resistance. I mean, yeah...In the wake of the attack, Hitler had the Gestapo round up more than 7,000 people he suspected of being in on it, and 5,000 of them were summarily executed. But while you might suspect that turning the lights off on everyone you even suspected to be tangentially related to the resistance would literally kill it, you just can't disappear seven-goddamned-thousand people, and NOT come off looking like a paranoid, despotic sack of shit. Which, of course, Hitler was.

So, even though he figured he'd exterminated anyone with the merest shred of rebellion in their soul, these things have a way of backlashing...Which meant that a big ol', "hey...WAIT a minute" presently showed up to bite Hitler right straight in the ass. And it was this growing opposition that ultimately helped the whole ball of wax start to melt down from inside, eroding the foundation, and making victory for the Allies a goal that was within reach.

Too bad Erwin got called on the carpet before the liberation. Rommel was one of the 7,000 peeps 'Dolf wound up corralling, as apparently, one of the co-conspirators had named names prior to the Gestapo torturing him to death. Rommel's had come up. Even worse, Hitler had intercepted some letters from the main organizer of the civilian Resistance, who had written on several occasions that Rommel was a potential supporter and an acceptable military leader to be placed in a position of responsibility should their coup-d'etát succeed. As if that wasn't enough, Nazi party officials in France reported that Rommel had rather extensively bagged on what he saw as widespread Nazi incompetence, corruption, and war crime while engaging in operations there.

Herr Chancellor had finally reached his limit of the sort of shit up with which he simply could no longer put. A meeting with Rommel was convened, and under duress, Rommel admitted that yes...He'd had prior knowledge of the assassination plot he'd failed to disclose to the Führer. But he also told Hitler that he had opposed outright killing him, for fear of touching off Civil War, and because he feared Hitler would turn into a martyr. So, yeah. More than one person puts Rommel mano-a-mano with Adolf Goddamned Hitler, telling him to his hideous Chaplin-'stached face that killin' was too good for him. That he'd instead hoped Hitler would be captured, and subsequently made to stand trial for his heinous war crimes.

Nazi? Yeah. But ya gotta admit, the guy had some brass fucking balls.

In a crazy twist of bizarro fate, Hitler actually had something like respect for Rommel's candor. So, he gave the Field Marshal a choice: He could be stripped of his Military standing and sent to stand trial at the "Court of Military Honor" (a kangaroo tribunal that had never once found in favor of the defendant), or he could up and off himself...in which case his family would not only escape prosecution as co-conspirators, but would receive his full military pension. He'd also get an Officer's funeral, and his "crime" would not be widely disclosed to colleagues, or the public.

For a dude like Rommel, it wasn't a choice. He quietly explained the situation to his wife and son, and then got into a car driven by a fellow officer, where he was driven out of town. From there, reports differ. He was either shot, or downed a cyanide capsule. The detail nobody disagrees on is that he woke up dead the next morning.

As for the official story of Rommel's death, Hitler was typically self-serving, but just as uncharacteristically respectful. It was reported to the public that Rommel had either keeled over from a heart attack, or bit it due to his injuries from an ambush on his staff car. In an even more baffling move, Hitler ordered an official day of mourning the day Rommel was buried with the promised-as-a-condition-of-his-death military honors. However, as a final "Fuck You" to the Reich, Rommel had specified that no swastikas or other political paraphernalia were to be displayed at the service.

A memorial marker on the spot where Rommel said, "you can't fire me, I quit."
The plaque on it reads: "On this spot Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was forced to
commit suicide on October 14th, 1944. He took the cup of poison and sacrificed
himself, to save the lives of his family from Hitler's henchmen."

Long story short (too late, I know), eventually, Nuremberg happened and everything came out in the wash. Thing is, even people who'd helped bring Rommel's ass in, other high-ranking Reich officials who HAD committed war crimes and were standing trial for them...guys who were dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semites (or at least, too pussy to stand up to extermination orders), and who had lacked the spine to conspire to take down their leader once it became clear just how very, very evil he'd been...? These guys? They defended his memory. They spoke of him during the trials as having been honorable, fair, guiltless of the same sort of large-scale horror that they themselves were being tried for, and ultimately...right. So even though Rommel fought for what everyone eventually came to realize was the wrong side, even his sworn enemies agreed in short order that Rommel had still landed on the right side of history. Not completely clean, unbruised, or un-tainted, but still with whatever was left of his heart firmly in the right place.

Total disclosure: I full well realize that coming up in the heezy and all but straight-up defending a dirty, filthy Nazi will probably get my ass chewed off. At the very least, I hope my in-laws don't read this, or it'll be a mighty tense Hanukkah. But the whole fucking point stands, and remains relevant. In case you still need to be tenderly taken by the hand and LED to it, the gist of it is that hardly anything is ever black-and-white. Stereotypes are always more evil than the people who embody their worst generalizations. It is, after all, criminally simple to dehumanize an enemy. Happens all the time, and is practically considered essential to modern warfare. And yes, being the "most respectable Nazi" is EXACTLY like being the "least-offensive-smelling puddle of beer-and-taco diarrhea."

But sometimes people get caught up in bullshit not of their own design, then STILL manage to rise above the circumstances. Hell, if Rommel was able to look around at the most shameful clusterfuck in modern history, say, "this shit is DEFINITELY not right," and then work for positive change from within the mountain of excrement he lived inside...Then maybe YOU can get off your ass and do something constructive with your life. Get a little perspective.

And thus concludes my attempt to extinguish the last, weakest, and most tremblingly precious ember of hope I may have EVER had of running for public office. See you guys in the murky mists of misunderstanding.