Confusion in the German High Command brought a confusing week to 68-year-old Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, German Supreme Commander in the west. First he received the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, with a double-talk citation for "preventing the deployment of the enemy bridgehead into a battle of three fronts." Then he lost his job.
D.N.B. reported that Rundstedt had been relieved because of ill health, a plausible enough reason, had not the same agency's correspondents, two weeks earlier, reported on his "firm, healthy stride." But observers in Allied and neutral countries could see other...
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