One early morning long ago, before Hitler was master of Germany, the late Hangman Reinhard Heydrich rushed to see his Führer on a matter of desperate urgency. He tramped through an anteroom to the Führer's bedroom and. with his usual disregard of anything that stood in his way, drove his heavy boot into the body of a man who was lying in front of Adolf Hitler's door to protect him from assassination.
The sleeping bodyguard, a big, tough veteran of World War I, got to his feet. He had two broken ribs. Perhaps it was unfortunate for Heydrich that Hitler was within hearing. Otherwise Heydrich might easily have died, sooner, to be sure, but more quickly and pleasantly than he did last month in Czecho-Slovakia.
The man whose ribs Heydrich had broken was Erwin Eugen Johannes Rommel, now a field marshal of the German Reich. The only man on earth whom Rommel looks up to is Hitler. And he looks down contemptuously on all other men in the entire continent of Africa.
Among military men Rommel is now variously appraised as: 1) a bold and brilliant desert commander who makes mistakes like any other; 2) the best armored-force general of World War II; 3) one of the great military commanders of modern times. The outcome of the battle for Egypt and the Middle East may well settle Rommel's place in history.
Whatever his place, he is such a man as some of the commanders Napoleon assembled around him in his youth: tough, untutored, plebeian, successful. The German radio recently quoted him as saying:
"If you kick an Englishman in the stomach today, in the teeth tomorrow and on his behind the day after, he will be unable to stand it. His command cannot adapt itself to such measures."
The remark was quite in character.
Self-Made General. In common with Hitler, Rommel is no Prussian aristocrat. His father was a schoolteacher in south Germany. Like most German boys who were born in 1891, World War I found him serving in the German Army. He started the war as a humble lieutenant, but his war record was remarkable.
Commanding a detachment of mountain troops in the first battle of Champagne (1915), he captured an important French position, forced a whole French brigade to retire. (Reward: Pour le Mérite, highest Prussian military decoration.) In 1917 Rommel distinguished himself against the Italians at the Isonzo. Recently the Germans, with characteristic tact, reminded their World War II allies by stating, in a radio sketch of his life, that Rommel "captured 9,000 Italian troops in less than half an hour."