Question: Why was Von Rundstedt removed from his command?
About the article "Invasion of Normandy", section "German leadership".

Candidate passages:
In March 1942 Hitler re-appointed Rundstedt OB West, in succession to Witzleben, who was ill.
He returned to the comfortable headquarters in the Hotel Pavillon Henri IV in Saint-Germain, which he had occupied in 1940–41.
Rundstedt's command of French and his good relationship with the head of the collaborationist Vichy regime, Marshal Philippe Pétain, were considerable assets.
But his position was to grow increasingly difficult.
Hitler did not intend giving him real authority, seeing him as a dignified figurehead.
Although he was commander of the German Army in the west, charged with defending the coasts of France and Begium against attack by the western Allies, the military governors in Paris and Brussels (Rundstedt's former subordinate Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel and Alexander von Falkenhausen respectively) were not under his direct command, and he had no control over the Navy or Air Force.
He also had no control over the SS and Gestapo operations in France: the HSSPF in Paris, Carl Oberg, answered only to Himmler.
Secondly, the internal situation in France had changed greatly since Rundstedt's departure in March 1941.
Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union had led the French Communist Party to abandon its previous neutrality (its slogan was "Neither Pétain nor de Gaulle"), and launch active resistance against the Germans and the Vichy regime.
The result was an escalating cycle of assassinations and reprisal killings that rapidly alienated the hitherto quiescent French population.
On 20 October French Communists assassinated the German commander in Nantes, Karl Hotz, triggering the execution of over 100 French hostages.
As military governor, Stülpnagel directed the policy of executing hostages.
Rundstedt had no direct control over the Army's response to Resistance attacks.
Nevertheless, many held him responsible, then and later.
Rundstedt had more direct responsibility for the Commando Order of 1942, which later served as the basis of war crimes charges against him.
There were in fact two German orders concerning captured Allied commandos.
The first was issued by Rundstedt in July 1942, and stated that captured Allied parachutists were to be handed over to the Gestapo, "whether in uniform or not", rather than made prisoners of war.
This was a response to the increasing number of British agents being parachuted into France by the Special Operations Executive.
The second was issued by Hitler personally in October, following the Dieppe Raid by the British and Canadians on the coast of France.
It stipulated that all captured Allied commandos were to be executed, again regardless of whether they were in uniform.
As a consequence, six British commandos captured in Operation Frankton, a raid on shipping at Bordeaux in December 1942, were executed by the German Navy.
Although Rundstedt neither ordered nor was informed of this action, he was later held responsible as German commander in France.
Meanwhile the military situation for the Germans was deteriorating.
The entry of the United States into the war in December 1941 raised the likelihood of an Allied invasion of France.
Hitler's response was to order the construction of the Atlantic Wall, a system of coastal fortifications from Norway to the French-Spanish border, to be constructed by the Organisation Todt using slave labour.
There was also a steady build-up of German forces in France, despite the demands of the eastern front.
By June Rundstedt commanded 25 divisions.
In November 1942 the Allied invaded French North Africa (Operation Torch).
When the Vichy authorities in Africa surrendered after token resistance, the Germans responded by occupying all of France and dissolving what remained of the French Army.
Rundstedt travelled to Vichy to placate Pétain, who threatened to resign but backed down after soothing words from Rundstedt.
At the same time, in the Soviet Union, Rundstedt's old command, Army Group South, was facing disaster at Stalingrad, the decisive battle of World War II in Europe.
The catastrophe of Stalingrad prompted renewed efforts by dissident German officers to remove Hitler from power while there was still time, as they believed, to negotiate an honourable peace settlement.
The conspirators were centered on Halder, Beck and Witzleben, but by 1943 all had been removed from positions of authority.
The real movers were now more junior officers: Henning von Tresckow, chief of staff of Army Group Centre, Friedrich Olbricht, Chief of the Armed Forces Replacement Office, and Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a member of the Replacement Army staff.
Their strategy at this time was to persuade the senior field commanders to lead a coup against Hitler.
Their initial target was Manstein, now commanding Army Group Don, but he turned Tresckow down at a meeting in March 1943.
Several sources say that Rundstedt was also approached, although they do not say specifically who approached him.
In any case, he refused to get involved, although both Stülpnagel and Falkenhausen were recruits to the conspiracy.
By one account, he complained: "Why always me?
Let Manstein and Kluge do it."
He told Gerhard Engel, one of Hitler's adjutants, that he was "too old and had had enough."
This failure of moral leadership at a critical time, when Rundstedt was the most senior and respected officer in the German Army, was to count heavily against him after the war.
It was true, however, that Rundstedt was well past his best.
The military historian Chester Wilmot wrote soon after the war: "The truth was that Rundstedt had lost his grip.
He was old and tired and his once active brain was gradually becoming addled, for he had great difficulty in sleeping without the soporific aid of alcohol.".
Events in June 1944 were to show that this was an exaggeration: Rundstedt was still capable of clear thought and decisive action.
But his health was a matter of increasing concern to his staff and his family.
His son Major Hans-Gerd von Rundstedt was posted to his command as an aide-de-camp, partly to monitor his health and report back to Bila von Rundstedt in Kassel.
In one of his letters, Hans-Gerd referred to his father's "somewhat plentiful nicotine and alcohol consumption," but assured his mother that Rundstedt's health was basically sound.
Nevertheless, in May 1943 Rundstedt was given leave and was sent to a sanatorium at Bad Tölz, south of Munich, which was also the site of the SS Officer Candidate School.
Later he stayed some time at Grundlsee in Austria, and was received by Hitler at his summer house at Berchtesgaden, a sign of Hitler's continuing respect for him.
He was back at work by July. 
Lack of a coherent strategy hampered the German defence.
German leadership was split between Field Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel.
Von Rundstedt's staff advocated a strategy of keeping the most powerful units in reserve, mounting a powerful counterattack once the allied landing started.
Rommel wanted to stop the allies at the beach, and thought that by the time reserve panzer units could be moved to the invasion site it would be too late.
He tried to locate units so that they could counterattack quickly, with minimal allied air power intervention.
While Rommel's strategy had promise, the reserve strategy suffered from the inability to move units during the day due to allied air strikes.
In the end, following a hybrid of the two strategies proved to be more of a disaster than following one or the other.
The beach defences were overcome and the counterattacks, after suffering attrition from allied air power and delays by the French resistance, were not strong enough.
German commanders at all levels failed to react to the assault phase in a timely manner.
Communication problems exacerbated the difficulties caused by Allied air and naval firepower.
Local commanders also seemed unequal to the task of fighting an aggressive defence on the beach, as Rommel envisioned.
The German High Command remained fixated on the Calais area, and von Rundstedt was not permitted to commit the armored reserve.
When it was finally released late in the day, success was immeasurably more difficult.
Although the 21st Panzer Division, had counterattacked earlier but was stymied by strong opposition that had been allowed to build at the beaches.
Overall, despite steadily growing considerable Allied material superiority, the Germans slowed the Allies advance from the bridgehead for nearly two months, aided immeasurably by terrain factors.
Although there were several well-known disputes among the Allied commanders, their tactics and strategy were essentially determined by agreement between the main commanders.
By contrast, the senior German leaders were unable to prevent interference by Hitler, who possessed little knowledge of local conditions.
Field Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel repeatedly asked Hitler for more discretion but were refused.
Von Rundstedt was removed from his command on 29 June after he bluntly told Field Marshal Keitel, the Chief of Staff at OKW (Hitler's Armed Forces HQ), to "Make peace, you idiots!"
Rommel was severely injured by Allied aircraft on 16 July.
Field Marshal von Kluge, who took over the posts held by both von Rundstedt and Rommel, was compromised by his association with some of the military plotters against Hitler, and he would not disobey or argue with Hitler for fear of arrest.
As a result, the German armies in Normandy were ill-served by Hitler's insistence on counterattack rather than retreat after the American breakthrough.
Kluge was relieved of command on 15 August and took his own life shortly afterwards.
The more independent Field Marshal Walter Model then took command. 
German commanders at all levels failed to react to the assault phase in a timely manner.
Communications problems exacerbated the difficulties caused by Allied air and naval firepower.
Local commanders also seemed incapable of the task of fighting an aggressive defense on the beach, as Rommel envisioned.
The German High Command remained fixated on the Calais area, and von Rundstedt was not permitted to commit the armoured reserve.
When it was finally released late in the day, any chance of success was much more difficult.
Overall, despite considerable Allied material superiority, the Germans kept the Allies bottled up in a small beachhead for nearly two months, aided immeasurably by terrain factors.
Although there were several known disputes among the Allied commanders, their tactics and strategy were essentially determined by agreement between the main commanders.
By contrast, the German leaders were bullied and their decisions interfered with by Hitler, controlling the battle from a distance with little knowledge of local conditions.
Field Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel repeatedly asked Hitler for more discretion but were refused.
Von Rundstedt was removed from his command on 29 June after he bluntly told the Chief of Staff at Hitler's Armed Forces HQ (Field Marshal Keitel) to "Make peace, you idiots!"
Rommel was severely injured by Allied aircraft on 17 July.
The German commanders also suffered in the quality of the available troops.
Sixty thousand of the 850,000 in Rundstedt's command were raised from the many prisoners of war captured on the Eastern Front.
These "Ost" units had volunteered to fight against Stalin, but when instead unwisely used to defend France against the Western Allies, ended up being unreliable.
Many surrendered or deserted at the first available opportunity.
World War II.
German invasions.
On 7 May 1939, Blumentritt submitted to his superiors a working plan for the German Invasion of Poland.
At this time, he was assigned to the "Oberkommando des Heeres" (Army High Command; OKH), and formed along with von Manstein and "Generalfeldmarshall" Gerd von Rundstedt a "Working Staff" for the development of a plan for the invasion.
The plan he submitted was called "Fall Weiss" (Case White).
It was subsequently to be followed with little alteration.
Then on 2 September 1939, Blumentritt was transferred to the general staff of Army Group South (one of the two German Army Groups to carry out the invasion) in Silesia under von Rundstedt.
This collaboration began his long and intimate friendship with von Runstedt, which was to last for many years.
Blumentritt was von Rundstedt′s Chief of Operations, while von Manstein was Chief of Staff.
The invasion was put into motion, after some delays, on 1 September 1939, and by 6 October the entire country of Poland was subdued.
In 1940, Blumentritt—as the Operations Officer of Army Group A (again under von Rundstedt)—took part in the planning (with von Manstein and Henning von Tresckow) and execution of the invasion of France.
The plan he helped develop was called "Sichelschnitt" or "Sickle Cut", and was later referred to as the Manstein Plan.
The subsequent unmitigated success of the German "Blitzkrieg" in France and the complete collapse of the French defense shocked even the Germans.
However, as the German army closed in on complete victory, Blumentritt and von Rundstedt ignored conflicting orders from the OKH to advance on the British and French position at Dunkirk, and instead followed Adolf Hitler′s order to halt for three days, consequently allowing the evacuation of the British Forces.
Immediately after the German occupation of France, von Rundstedt, Blumentritt, and others were tasked with preparing for the invasion of Great Britain.
This plan, as handed down from high command, was designated Operation "Sea Lion".
Blumentritt helped with the details of the plan, and several exercises were carried out in preparation for it, but he never believed that it was a serious option, or that Hitler intended to carry it out.
He said that at the end of July or August "... Field-Marshal von Rundstedt was in Berlin, and Hitler stated quite clearly to him that he did not intend to carry out "Sea Lion"," and further, "By the end of September it was clear that the invasion of England was off.
"In 1941, Blumentritt, under General Günther von Kluge, was made Chief of Staff of the 4.
"Armee" and promoted to general, and despite the opposition he later professed to the plan, was involved with the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
On 18 April 1941, Blumentritt wrote:Maybe the Russians really intend to stand and fight the Germans between the western border and the Dnieper, a move which would be desirable...
Even the Imperial Army was no match for the German command, and the Russian commanders today are at an even greater disadvantage.
The shortcomings of the middle ranks are even greater...
The effects of German weapons, whose prestige has increased with the campaign against Yugoslavia, will soon be felt!
There will be fourteen days of heavy fighting.
Hopefully, by then we shall have made it.
In another memo, Blumentritt wrote:On warfare and the inner value of the Russian opponent, the dull mass had two kinds of "ideas": the tsar and God.
Today, there is neither.
Bolshevism has taken their place.
I consider that to be a weakness since I never believed that this idea means anything to the bulk of the Russian people.
That is why I do not believe that the people will be carried away by Bolshevism.
They will soon be indifferent and fatalistic.
Blumentritt′s command was part of Army Group Center, which suffered massive casualties and the 4th Army itself only narrowly escaped envelopment and annihilation by the Russians outside Moscow.
After the ultimate failure of Operation "Barbarossa" in January 1942, Blumentritt returned to Germany as Chief Quartermaster of the OKH.
Late in the year he personally recommended to his superiors that the Germans should withdraw from Stalingrad, receiving the support of Chief of Staff OKH—General Franz Halder—in this recommendation, but the idea of any withdrawal was rejected by Hitler. 
The Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943 removed Rundstedt's fears that France would be invaded that summer, but he could not have doubted that the massive build-up of American troops in Britain meant that a cross-channel invasion would come in 1944.
In October Rundstedt sent Hitler a memorandum on the defensive preparations.
He placed no faith in the Atlantic Wall, seeing it merely as useful propaganda.
"We Germans", he said, "do not indulge in the tired Maginot spirit."
He argued that an invasion could only be defeated by a defence in depth, with armoured reserves positioned well inland so that they could be deployed to wherever the invasion came, and launch counter-offensives to drive the invaders back.
There were several problems with this, particularly the lack of fuel for rapid movements of armour, the Allied air superiority which enabled them to disrupt the transport system, and the increasingly effective sabotage efforts of the French resistance.
Hitler was not persuaded: his view was that the invasion must be defeated on the beaches.
Characteristically, however, he told Rundstedt he agreed with him, then sent Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to France with orders to hasten the completion of the Atlantic Wall; while von Rundstedt remained the C-I-C in France, Rommel became the official commander of Army Group B. Rundstedt was extremely angered by this decision; although he admired Rommel's tactical skill, he knew from his colleagues that Rommel was notoriously difficult to work with and would mostly be able to ignore Rundstedt's authority thanks to his patronage by Hitler and Goebbels.
Rommel in fact agreed with Rundstedt that the Atlantic Wall was a "gigantic bluff", but he also believed that Allied air power made Rundstedt's proposed defense plan impossible.
By the spring of 1944 Rommel had turned the mostly-nonexistent 'Wall' into a very formidable defensive line, but since he believed that the invasion would come somewhere between Dunkirk and the mouth of the Somme, much of his work was directed at strengthening the wrong area- although in late 1943 he had focused on Normandy.
As fears of an imminent invasion mounted, conflict broke out among the commanders.
Rommel wanted the armoured divisions positioned close to the coast, mostly in the area he considered at highest risk.
The commander of armoured forces in France, General Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg, backed by Rundstedt, strongly disagreed, wanting his forces to be positioned inland to preserve their manoeuvrability.
Eventually Hitler intervened, and in his usual way imposed an unsatisfactory compromise: half the armour would be allocated to the Army Groups defending the beaches, and half would be kept in reserve under Geyr von Schweppenburg: but these could not be deployed without his direct order.
Hitler then made matters worse by appointing Rommel commander of Army Group B, covering all of northern France.
This unworkable command system was to have dire consequences when the invasion came.
The invasion duly came before dawn on 6 June 1944, in Normandy, far to the west of where Rundstedt and Rommel had expected.
Rommel was on leave in Germany, many of the local commanders in Normandy were at a conference in Rennes, and Hitler was asleep at Berchtesgaden.
But Rundstedt, now 68, was up before 3.00 am, trying to take charge of a confusing situation.
He immediately saw that the reported Allied airborne landings in Normandy presaged a seaborne invasion.
He contacted OKW and demanded that he be given authority to deploy the armoured reserves, but OKW could not agree to this without Hitler's approval.
Hitler's refusal came through at 10 am, followed by his change of mind at 2.30 pm, by which time the Allies were well ashore and the cloud cover had lifted, meaning that the armour could not move until dusk.
In mid afternoon Rundstedt ordered that "the Allies wiped out before the day's end, otherwise the enemy would reinforce and the chance would be lost", but it was too late.
Rundstedt's biographer concludes: "If Hitler had released the Panzer reserves as soon as von Rundstedt had asked for them, the Allies would have experienced a much harder day on 6 June than they did."
The historian Stephen E. Ambrose wrote: "The only high-command officer who responded correctly to the crisis at hand was Field Marshal Rundstedt, the old man who was there for window-dressing and who was so scorned by Hitler and OKW... Rundstedt's reasoning was sound, his actions decisive, his orders clear.
"Being right was little consolation to Rundstedt.
By 11 June it was evident that the Allies could not be dislodged from their beach-head in Normandy.
Their total command of the air and the sabotage of roads and bridges by the Resistance made bringing armoured reinforcements to Normandy slow and difficult, but without them there was no hope of an effective counter-offensive.
Supported by Rommel, he tried to persuade Keitel at OKW that the only escape was to withdraw from Normandy to a prepared defensive line on the Seine, but Hitler forbade any withdrawal.
On 17 June Hitler flew to France and met Rundstedt and Rommel at his command bunker near Soissons.
Both Field Marshals argued that the situation in Normandy required either massive reinforcements (which were not available) or a rapid withdrawal.
Remarkably, they both also urged that Hitler find a political solution to end the war, which Rommel told him bluntly was unwinnable.
Hitler ignored all their demands, requiring "fanatical" defence and a counter-attack with whatever was available.
It was during the desperate German attempts to bring reserve units to the front that men of the "Das Reich" SS Panzer Division massacred over 600 inhabitants of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in central France, in retaliation for partisan attacks in the area.
Rundstedt was German commander-in-chief in France, he had ordered "Das Reich" to head north to Normandy, and he had previous condoned tough action against partisans, including the shooting of hostages.
This was enough for the French government to demand after the war that he stand trial for the massacre at Oradour.
On 29 June Rundstedt and Rommel were summoned to Berchtesgaden for a further meeting with Hitler, at which they repeated their demands, and were again rebuffed.
On his return to Saint-Germain, on 30 June, Rundstedt found an urgent plea from Schweppenburg, who was commanding the armoured forced at Caen, to be allowed to withdraw his units out of range of Allied naval gunfire, which was decimating his forces.
Rundstedt at once agreed, and notified OKW of this decision.
On 1 July he received a message from OKW countermanding his orders.
In a fury, he phoned Keitel, urging him to go to Hitler and get this decision reversed.
Keitel pleaded that this was impossible.
"What shall we do?"
he asked.
Rundstedt replied ""Schluss mit dem Krieg, Idioten!""
This literally means "Finish with the war, idiots!
", but is usually translated as "Make peace, you fools!"
There has been some doubt raised as to whether Rundstedt actually said this, but Wilmot says the incident was recounted to him and Liddell-Hart by Blumentritt, who was present.
Keitel immediately reported Rundstedt's words to Hitler, whereupon Hitler dismissed him from his post, replacing him with Kluge.
It is likely that Hitler had already decided that Rundstedt should be replaced after the meetings of 17 and 29 June.
It was officially given out that Rundstedt was retiring on the grounds of age and ill-health.
Hitler wrote him a "very cordial" letter, and awarded him the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross, one of the highest of the new decorations created in 1940.
Rundstedt departed Saint-Germain for the last time on 4 July, accompanied by his son, and was driven back to the sanatorium at Bad Tölz, to be reunited with his wife.
He told Rommel on departing that he would never hold another military command.