During its brief lifespan, victory and defeat were close companions for the German Afrika Korps. Experiencing both firsthand was one young officer who would fight on the front lines and ride in a staff car with the unit’s legendary commander, Erwin Rommel, a. k. a. the Desert Fox.
As a memoir, With Rommel In The Desert offers color and a fair amount of candor, but is a loss when it comes to context or depth. If you grew up like me watching World War II movies or TV shows like “The Rat Patrol,” this is engaging if somewhat breezy and episodic.
Despite the title, Rommel is a background figure most of the time.
Heinz Werner Schmidt got to Africa even before Rommel. In East Africa, where the Italians were holding on to their coastal colony of Eritrea, he commanded a small detachment of German sailors who volunteered to fight. In March 1941, before Eritrea fell to the British, he was called up to Libya, where a new German unit, the Deutsche Afrika Korps, was settling in to shore up the beleaguered Italians there.
His introduction in Tripoli to DAK commander Rommel was memorable. After asking about Eritrea, Rommel was nettled by Schmidt’s pessimistic response.
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| Rommel in full uniform and planning with aides in North Africa. Before arriving in Libya, Rommel had already won renown in the Third Reich for whipping through France in 1940. Image from https://historycollection.com/desert-fox-8-things-never-knew-erwin-rommel/6/ |
“What do you know about it, anyway, Herr Leutnant?” Rommel shot back. “We shall reach the Nile, make a right turn, and win back everything.”
In this of course Rommel was mistaken. But not by much.
Despite the awkward beginning, Schmidt developed a positive if not particularly close relationship with Rommel, even serving for a time as his personal aide. He offers a portrait of the future Field Marshal as a leader “possessed by restlessness” and dogged in making sure his officers were the same:
The General inspired all ranks with enthusiasm and energy wherever he appeared. He could not tolerate subordinates who were not as enthusiastic and active as himself, and he was merciless in his treatment of anybody who displayed lack of initiative. Out! Back to Germany they went at once.
Schmidt accompanied Rommel while he toured the front lines, walking well beyond them so as to inspect his defenses from no-man’s land. At one point, Rommel’s staff vehicle, a captured British Mammoth, lost a wheel while enemy forces were advancing just behind, forcing a tense repair session.
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| Schmidt describes Rommel riding his captured British Mammoth command car in precisely this way, completely exposed and with his legs out over the hatch. It was a rare luxury for the Spartan commander. Image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/464293042833471561/ |
On another occasion, Schmidt heard Rommel compare desert warfare to naval combat. “Whoever has the weapons with the greatest range has the longest arm, exactly as at sea,” Schmidt quotes Rommel telling German soldiers. “Whoever has the greater mobility, through efficient motorization and efficient lines of supply, can by swift action compel his opponent to act according to his wishes.”
That theory seems to capture Rommel’s persona as well as anything, cunning and ever-on-the-attack. But Schmidt doesn’t let you forget that Rommel was defeated in the desert nearly as often as he won, or that his strategic genius, like that of the more successful George Washington, was often showcased best by his retreats.
Especially early on, when Rommel was riding high, With Rommel In The Desert drew me in and expanded my interest in this part of World War II. But it is not a book that grabs you with scintillating prose or probing insights. Perhaps because of an unpolished translation, Schmidt writes in stilted fashion, starting his story abruptly and leaving a few early tales half-told.
At one point early in the book, Rommel sends a tiny tank force against the Libyan fortress port of Tobruk while Schmidt watches helplessly, knowing it is a mistake. The tanks are destroyed and their crews lost to the last man, but Rommel’s thoughts after are left unrecorded.
Schmidt also doesn’t provide many dates, which gives his war account a fuzziness when he isn’t discussing a major battle.
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| As one of only two ports in a thousand-mile stretch between Tunisia and Egypt, Tobruk was vital to control of North Africa and became the main focus of Rommel's 1941-1942 campaign. Image from https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/debacle-in-the-desert-the-siege-of-tobruk/ |
Despite the title, there was not a lot of closeness between Schmidt and Rommel. About all we learn of Rommel’s personality was that he was brave, often short of temper with underperforming officers, and enjoyed jokes about Prussians (he was Swabian himself). After Schmidt gets a requested transfer to front-line service halfway through the book, Rommel becomes a distant background figure.
Schmidt liked and respected Rommel, but he makes clear he didn’t buy the Desert Fox myth Nazi propaganda built up at the time and which has perhaps only grown since:
I do not subscribe to the theory that Rommel was a superman. Close to him, I found him much more unimaginative and stolid than the romanticized pictures that have been drawn of him by both friend and foe. But as one of those who was almost constantly in touch with the enemy on the long haul back from El Alamein to Mareth, I hand it to him for the way he juggled us along, never losing more than he must, fighting for time while a formidable redoubt was built up for a trial of strength in Tunisia.
You know how when you take time off from work,
when you come back everything has gone to hell? Something like that happened to
Schmidt.
After leaving Rommel’s staff, Schmidt got himself assigned to combat duty and was on hand to see the German conquest of Tobruk, the Afrika Korps’ high-water mark which took Rommel 14 months to achieve. After that, with his former boss marching to the Nile just as he vowed to, Schmidt went on an extended leave. When he returned, it was just in time to see Rommel get crushed by the British Eighth Army and their new commander, Bernard Law Montgomery.
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| Montgomery in November 1942. At El Alamein, Schmidt writes, Montgomery dictated the terms of battle and, by doing so, brought to bear his advantage in tanks and men against a divided foe. Image from https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/bernard-montgomery |
A lot of historians and buffs say Montgomery was lucky, or overrated, or stole his laurels from more deserving generals. Schmidt frankly admires Monty’s ability to turn the tide so completely and irreversibly. He notes the many ways Montgomery demonstrated pluck and cleverness in command, building a fake pipeline to fool the Germans into expecting an attack elsewhere along the front and disguising his new tanks so as to conceal his true strength until it was brought to battle:
Psychologically, Montgomery was gaining the upper hand. The Eighth Army was receiving steady reinforcements in men and materials. His troops knew it: he told them so. He had a positive task ahead of him – to defeat Rommel, remove the menace to Egypt, and win renown in so doing.
By this point, With Rommel In The Desert is a different book entirely, not being with Rommel at all, but more about the author’s own experiences as a small-unit commander. Schmidt took command of a motley force of irregulars and was detailed to protect the German rear as it began its long retreat from El Alamein through Libya and into Tunisia.
One constant in the book is death. People pop up only to die or vanish a page or two later. “Death began to loom up as a brother, and it seemed absurd that one should fear him,” Schmidt writes. “He would be kind...”
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| The spear of Rommel's North Africa campaign was the Panzer IV. "Panzers were the butter for his bread," Schmidt writes. But after El Alamein, Rommel commanded less than a hundred of them. Image from https://thedailybounce.net/historical/panzer-iv-big-weak-and-uncomfortable/ |
Schmidt comes across as a good man, unimpressed with Nazism, generous with praise for his foes, and courageous without calling much attention to it. At times one wishes he had more ego; some bluster might have made for a more gripping read. Instead he writes about his combat experiences as if embarrassed he could not do more.
During Operation Crusader, a notable British victory in 1941, he recalls falling prone with others as enemy artillery zoned in on their position:
“Gentlemen,” the colonel called out reprovingly, “a German officer does not lie down!”
In the din I murmured to the major, “For my part I consider this attitude exaggerated and inapplicable to modern warfare.”
The major looked rather startled at my outspokenness, blinked, but nodded agreement. “Yes, I think you’re right.”
I wonder if Schmidt got that mouthful out under the circumstances, but it’s an amusing, human moment.
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| Four Afrika Korps soldiers captured in southern Tunisia, February 1943. While Allied forces captured many Germans in North Africa, others like Schmidt would escape to fight another day. Rommel also escaped, losing in Normandy in 1944 and forced to commit suicide that same year when implicated in a plot to kill Hitler. Image from https://twitter.com/milhist_shane/status/1326807676257447937 |
Schmidt discusses some aspects of the Desert War in ways I found illuminating. When it comes to the Italians, who represented the majority Axis force in North Africa, Schmidt writes the soldiers were good men, “sometimes” even more helpful at executing orders than Germans. But their leadership and equipment were poor.
Rommel had a lot going against him beyond the high class of his opponents. He was given little reinforcement as the war in Russia sapped German attention and strength; he was constantly beset by jaundice and other illnesses; and despite his concerns, Axis commanders ignored Malta, a British-held colony that blocked supply lines to Europe.
Ultimately the character of desert warfare left the author frustrated. He writes: “The desert battle for me was a strange action fought in reverse. We would be fighting our way forward one way, but I was always looking backward, stopping to fight, and then moving backward again.”
I
felt something of that reading Schmidt’s book. In that I guess it is an
accurate representation of how things went. What I found lacking was Schmidt
putting his own experience into a broader context, taking time to match up what
he saw with what really happened. History is a collection of multiple lenses;
here we really get just the one.
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