page_title: Rommel myth
section_title: Elements of the myth
hierarchical_section_title: Rommel myth / Elements of the myth
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Der Generaloberst packt mit an. Der Wagen des Generaloberst Rommel war im Wüstensand stecken geblieben, nun packt er selbst mit an, um seinen Wagen wieder flott zu bekommen. Bei Abdruck nennen: Pk-Kriegsberichter Valtingojer [herausgegeben am 9.2.1941]
context_page_description: The Rommel myth, or the Rommel legend, is a phrase used by a number of historians for the common depictions of German field marshal Erwin Rommel as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of Nazi Germany due to his presumed participation in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler, which led to his forced suicide in 1944. According to these historians, who take a critical view of Rommel, such depictions are not accurate.
  The description of Rommel as a brilliant commander started in 1941, with Rommel's participation, as a component of Nazi propaganda to praise the Wehrmacht and instil optimism in the German public. It was picked up and disseminated in the West by the British war-time press as the Allies sought to explain their continued inability to defeat the Axis forces in North Africa: The genius of Rommel was used by dissenters to protest against social inequality within the British army and by leaders like Churchill to reduce class tensions.
  Following the war, the Western Allies, and particularly the British, depicted Rommel as the "good German" and "our friend Rommel", adhering closely to the tenets of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.
context_section_description: Some early authors who wrote about Rommel during the war and post-war biographers use the word "legend" or "myth" when describing various pieces of propaganda and rumours that the Nazi government and the Allied press spread about the life and character of Rommel. These rumours usually ignored his middle-class background and highlighted his connection with the lower classes and his early adherence to National Socialism or Hitler, using several invented anecdotes. The most notable of these, according to Charles F.Marshall, was that Rommel was a storm trooper (which was designed by Nazi propaganda to show "what heights a storm trooper could claim" and promote the impression of Rommel as an ardent Nazi supporter at the same time), that several American encyclopaedias still published a decade after the war.    
  According to the historian Mark Connelly, Young and Liddell Hart laid the foundation for the Anglo-American myth, which consisted of three themes: Rommel's ambivalence towards Nazism; his military genius; and the emphasis of the chivalrous nature of the fighting in North Africa. Their works lent support to the image of the "clean Wehrmacht" and were generally not questioned, since they came from British authors, rather than German revisionists. The leading German news magazine Der Spiegel describes the myth as "Gentleman warrior, military genius".
  According to Watson, the most dominant element in the Rommel myth is Rommel the Superior Soldier, the second being Rommel the Common Man, and the last one Rommel the Martyr. Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck, writing in 1943, also takes note of the image of the general who fought with common soldiers, with an indelible youthfulness and apparent invulnerability.
  Historian Sandra Mass considers the Rommel myth a hero cult, a synthesis of old and new hero cults and traditions culled primarily from Germany's largely imaginary colonial past, in particular the proletarian hero cult originally represented by Carl Peters and the bourgeois one represented by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Rommel, as portrayed by this hero cult, was both chivalrous and ruthless, young and old, harsh and gentle, strong and righteous. Calder, Duffy and Ricci opine that Rommel's military brilliance provoked a masochistic tendency to romanticise a worthy opponent, that because he was skilled at his profession, he must have been an anti-Nazi hero.
caption: An iconic picture of Rommel as the "Common Man", helping to free up his staff car alongside his men.[89]
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