The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

The time is 1941...

a month before Pearl Harbor.

At 11:00 on a November night...

a British submarine surfaced in the Mediterranean...

off the coast of Libya in North Africa...

behind the German lines.

Are you sure the light carries that far?

It should.

There they are.

- What's he saying? - He says they're all set, sir.

Tell him we're coming in.

These were British commandos...

and the purpose of this carefully plotted raid...

was the death of one man.

Aaaah!

Cover me.

It's no use. Go on without me.

- Get hold of my arm! - It's no use, I tell you. Get out of here!

Did we... Did we get him?

Are you serious, Englishman?

Gentlemen, the following order from General Auchinleck...

is to all commanders and chiefs of staff of the Middle East forces.

"There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel...

"is becoming a kind of magician or bogeyman to our troops...

"who are talking far too much about him.

"He is by no means a superman...

"although he is undoubtedly very energetic and able.

"Even if he were a superman, it would still be highly undesirable...

"that our men should credit him with supernatural powers.

"I wish you to dispel by all possible means...

"the idea that Rommel represents something more...

"than an ordinary German general.

"Please ensure that this order is put into immediate effect...

"and impress upon all commanders...

"that from a psychological point of view...

it is a matter of the highest importance. "

Signed C.J. Auchinleck, General...

Commander-in-Chief, M.E.F.

This is the North African desert in June of 1942...

and these are British soldiers taken prisoner the night before...

by units of the German Afrika Korps.

Run, you fool, run!

You! Come on, get out of there!

Get over with the other prisoners!

Who is the senior officer here?

- I am, I suppose. - Come with me.

- What's your rank? - Lieutenant colonel.

Colonel, I want you to go along with these two officers on a flag of truce.

And tell that battery to stop firing.

- Tell them they're... killing their own men. - I can't do that.

Don't tell me what you can or can't do. I'm giving you an order.

Here, tie this on that rifle.

Listen, Major, I'm a prisoner of war.

You can't give me any such order.

You know that as well as I do.

I'm not going to argue the point with you.

Either you do as I tell you, or we'll soon find a way to make you.

Are you going or not?

Major! Major!

What's the row?

The field marshal said you're right.

Field marshal?

So this, then, was Rommel...

Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel...

commander-in-chief of the enemy army...

and the most celebrated German soldier since World War I.

Already a legend in the desert, he was a fox...

who had chased his hunters back and forth across North Africa...

about as often as they had chased him...

and his tricks and turns had made even the Tommies chuckle...

which is scarcely the proper reflex to the enemy in time of war.

In spite of which he was still, of course, my enemy ...

the enemy not only of my country and the army in which I served...

but of all life as I knew it ...

not only of democracy as free men had fashioned it...

but of civilization itself.

My name is Desmond Young.

At the time of my capture, I was a lieutenant colonel in the Indian army.

This was my first and only sight...

of the cool, hard, professional soldier...

whose scrupulous regard for the rules of warfare had been exercised...

in this instance, so fortunately for myself.

Two years and four months later...

while the British and Americans were fighting their way across Europe...

Erwin Rommel was dead.

He was dead, the Nazis reported...

of wounds gallantly received on the field of honor.

But the Nazis were great liars, of course.

Many people wondered.

For already there were mysterious rumors floating across the battle lines.

So, when the war was over and my military life behind me...

I gave myself a mission.

I set out to discover what actually had happened to him.

What was the truth about his death...

and on what field of honor had he died?

In a modest home in the tiny village of Herrlingen by Ulm in Wurttemberg, Germany...

I talked long and often with Rommel's son and widow...

and examined his letters, reports and other papers.

In Germany, I talked to soldiers...

who had served with him, over him and under him;

In England, with men who had fought against him...

from field marshals to desert rats.

And in both countries, of course...

I went to the official records.

Based on these facts...

what now follows is the true story of Erwin Rommel.

The beginning of the end for this single-minded soldier...

came at 9:30 on the evening of October 23, 1942...

when at El Alamein six miles of British guns ...

Fire!

I discovered that actually Rommel was not in Africa...

when the storm of battle broke.

Suffering from a chronic diphtheria of the nose...

he had been relieved of his command a month before...

and flown back to a hospital in Germany.

But when the telephone rang at his bedside...

and a familiar voice from Berlin called on him once more...

he rose and was in a plane on the way back to the desert within hours.

- Thank you, Bayerlein. Still a dandy, I see. - Just luck, sir.

- Welcome back. - Good to see you, sir.

- Shall we take a look at those maps? - Over here.

- How've you been, Bayerlein? - Oh, very well, I suppose.

- Did you see Frau Rommel? - Yes, she came to stay a week, she and Manfred.

- Well, I hope... - How does it look today?

Oh, looks like they've got too much for us.

If they keep this up, I've no idea how we're going to get out of it.

- Not with the amount of petrol we've got. - But we've got petrol?

- Some, but not enough. - You mean it's still on the way.

- Neither on the way nor any prospect of it. - Who told you that?

I've talked to Rome three times. There's no petrol on the way nor any committed to us.

Schultz. Aldinger.

- What about the tanks? Did they come? - None.

- None since I left? - No. None since August.

- What about the guns? - Nothing, I tell you.

- And no petrol at all? - Not a pint.

This is correct from the hour.

Get me a stool, will you?

Here's where it's worst. 15th's in a bad way, barely hanging together.

- What's this? - A trailer division. They came in here.

- Yes, I see. How far's this armor? - No further.

- They're doing pretty well there. - Where are my maps?

Bring the 21st north through here.

- Move the 90th forward here. - They'll hook up.

That's right. Now tell me this.

- Is Montgomery sending his infantry in first? - Naturally.

Then let's give him a surprise. Let's send our tanks and blow a hole through that infantry.

If it works, we'll be on top of his tanks before he knows what hit him.

- Very good, sir. - If it doesn't work, we'll know better than to try it next time.

- Come on, Aldinger. - You're not going up now, are you?

Don't you think you oughta turn in for an hour or so?

- After three weeks of being turned in? - We're away, sir?

Let's head north and go in with the 21st.

But there was now another fox in the desert...

an even craftier one, perhaps.

And if the battle boiled into confusion during the next few days...

it was a confusion that was clearly more and more in Montgomery's favor.

Have you found the field marshal yet?

No, sir. He's out at the front again.

I don't know how the men on line feel about it...

but so far as the staff is concerned, I'd just as soon have a commander-in-chief...

with a little bit of cowardice about him.

Just enough to come back at headquarters every now and then.

Keep after him, will you?

By the tenth day of the battle...

not even Rommel could have any doubt as to its outcome.

There's a limit to this sort of thing.

You can't just go on indefinitely until the last man's dead.

It's all very gallant and all that, but it's also pretty idiotic.

Von Thoma wants to pull back to Djerba.

- What about Müller? - No answer as yet, sir.

- Where're you from, son? - Goslar, sir.

Really? I was stationed in Goslar once with a mountain battalion.

- We did a lot of skiing there. Do you know that run? - Very well, sir.

- Are you any good? - Well, sir, two years ago...

- Are you sure you understood? - Yes. I had him repeat it back to me.

- Are you keeping after Müller? - Yes, sir.

- Have you tried Berlin? - Call if you can.

- Nothing yet, though. - Nobody knows the situation. I sent him the whole story.

- If there's anything he can do, he will. - No matter what you say...

to Berlin we're only a side show and you know it.

- Well, what? - Müller's in a bad way.

- How bad? - Very, I'm afraid.

If he doesn't pull back soon, he won't have anything to pull back.

- Well, where is he? - His command car is gone. He's working in a carrier.

And if he's got more than 40 tanks left, I'd be greatly surprised.

- How about the Italians? - Müller thinks they've had as much as they can take.

Rome calling, sir.

- Well? - Field Marshal Kesselring regrets.

Well, that eliminates any further speculation anyway.

It's now a simple matter of mathematics.

With the petrol we've got left, we have two choices:

We can remain here and be destroyed...

or we can pull out tonight and dig in somewhere for the next round.

- You think we still can? - Pull out? Of course. Why not?

Montgomery's got no petrol shortage.

But Montgomery's a very deliberate fellow.

He wouldn't dream of leaping after me the way I'd leap after him.

- He'd have to think about it. - I don't see what else there is to be done.

There's nothing else. Let's have plan "C."

Notify all commanding officers to stand by for important orders.