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Yet Plebeian Rommel had no place in the skeleton post-war Reichswehr, and his frustrated longing for war turned him very early to the Nazis. He met Hitler in Württemberg, became a Storm Troop leader, joined a murderous raid against the Socialists and Communists of Coburg, a raid which Hitler, in Mein Kampf, singled out as the turning point in his career. Thereafter Rommel headed Hitler's personal police, the SS, and traveled with the leader and his adjutant, Bruckner, sharing with Bruckner the honor of sleeping in front of Hitler's bedroom door. When Hitler shook off the shackles of Versailles, Rommel went back to the army, wrote a manual, Infantry Attacks, which glowing little Paul Joseph Goebbels last fortnight, ordered into its twelfth edition (TIME, July 6). He also studied the techniques of armored forces.
The invasion of Poland found Rommel a colonel. The invasion of France found him a general, commanding the 7th Armored Division which broke through at Maubeuge and was of great help in the German race to the Channel. The invasion of Egypt finds him a field marshal.
Extemporaneous Art. Napoleon said that if the art of war were that of avoiding risk, glory would be at the mercy of the mediocre. All generals make mistakes. The best generals are those who rectify their own mistakes with the least loss. War, in short, is an extemporaneous art.
Rommel's success in the recent Battle of Libya began with a miscalculation. He sent his tanks south in a wide sweep around Bir Hachėim, to outflank the British line, but his intended surprise was detected, his columns were attacked by superior forces. At that point Rommel was worsted and he began to extemporize. While his engineers cut a gap in the heavily-mined Ain el-Gazala line, he distracted the British with various false movements, ringed his gap with protective artillery, then pushed his forces on through.
The British, as Winston Churchill said (see p. 26) thought the battle was reaching a "wearing-down stage" and the British generals evidently were content to let it do so. But not Rommel. He lined up his 88-mm. guns in ambush. With a light tank force and possibly with false radio orders transmitted to British tanks (said Churchill: "I do not know what actually happened"), he lured the British to slaughter. At the end of the day 230 out of 300 British tanks had been destroyed. The Battle of Libya was lost that afternoon.
Most of the British were not quick enough in retiring; 25,000 of them holed up in Tobruk for a long siege. Rommel did not take even a day to organize and prepare his assault. He organized it, under his hat, in one evening. The next morning, before the British were ready, his tanks stormed the defenses of Tobruk, cut down to the town and began shooting up shipping in the harbor before the British had even begun to evacuate. Rommel had seen that Tobruk was a difficult town to take in an eight-month siege, would be much easier to take in one day-if that day was at once.
The next day Rommel began seeing to it that the remainder of the British Army was not allowed to rest and recoup by retiring. In a week he drove the British from Halfàya Pass, from Sidi Barrani, from Matrûh, from Fuka. Only at El Alamein, 70 short miles from Alexandria, were Rommel's men and tanks so exhausted that he had to pause to reform.