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Lot 269
Document Signed by Hitler Sept. 4, 1944, Removing Rommel From Command. Document signed as Der Führer, 1 page, in German, 11¾ x 8¼", Führer's Headquarters, September 4, 1944. The document orders, effective the same day, the transfer of General Field Marshal Rommel, Commander of Army Group B, to the Führer Reserve of the General Headquarters of the Army. Five weeks later, on October 14, 1944, Rommel would be given the choice of taking poison or being tried for high treason and executed, along with his family and staff. This historic document signals the official beginning of the end for Rommel.
The document also orders that, effective the same day, General Field Marshal Model be appointed Commander of Army Group B, Rommel's former command, and General Field Marshal von Rundstedt is appointed Commander of the West and Army Group D.
Rommel, like many German officers, had become disenchanted with Hitler, and was convinced that Germany's defeat was inevitable. When approached in the early months of 1944 by Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler about joining the plot to assassinate Hitler, Rommel refused, claiming that assassination would turn Hitler into a martyr. Rommel favored opening independent peace negotiations with the Allies and presenting Hitler with a fait accompli. Hitler could then be arrested and brought to trial.
In a letter written July 15, 1944, Rommel made one last attempt at impressing on Hitler the urgency of the situation, beginning, "The situation on the Normandy front is growing worse every day and is now approaching a grave crisis" and concluding: "…the unequal struggle is approaching its end. It is urgently necessary for the proper conclusion to be drawn from this situation. As C[ommander]-in-C[hief of the Army Group I feel myself in duty bound to speak plainly on this point."
On July 17, Rommel suffered severe injuries from Allied aircraft near Livarot, and any hopes he had of pursuing an independent peace had to be put aside. In the aftermath of the failed July 20th attempt on Hitler's life by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (played by Tom Cruise in the movie Valkyrie), and the arrests and executions which followed, Hitler discovered that Rommel had been aware of the July 20th assassination plot, even though he had played no part in it.
Hitler decided that Rommel had to be done away with, but it wasn't a simple matter. As Rommel's son, Manfred, writes at the conclusion of The Rommel Papers (Edited by B.H. Liddell Hart), "My father's case presented a particularly difficult problem for Hitler, for the news that even Field Marshal Rommel regarded the war as lost and was advising a separate peace would have been tantamount to a declaration of military bankruptcy." Thus, the decision was made to save face for the Reich by giving Rommel the opportunity to take poison, an option he would obviously choose to spare his family and staff from execution.
On October 14, 1944, Generals Burgdorf and Maisel arrived at the Rommel home and gave Rommel his brutal choice. He was given only 15 minutes to say goodby to his wife and son, to whom he said, "To die by the hand of one's own people is hard." That evening, when Manfred saw his father's dead body at the hospital, where Rommel had been taken to facilitate the cover story of a "seizure," he noted, "My father lay on a camp-bed in his brown Africa uniform, a look of contempt on his face."
Under threat of death, Mrs. Rommel, Manfred, and Captain Hermann Aldinger, Rommel's aide-de-camp, had been told to never divulge the true circumstances of Rommel's death. Hitler announced that Rommel had died of a seizure on the way to a conference, and to maintain the facade, Rommel was "honored" with a state funeral and a national day of mourning.
Estimated Value $30,000 - 50,000.
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| Realized $39,100 |
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