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He had performed no miracle. At every stage of the battle he had merely fought intelligently, fought hard, seen what the next thing was to do, done it today, instead of tomorrow. He had merely shown what can be accomplished by common battle sense and the energy to begin the next tough job before its predecessor is finished.
Hothouse Training. When Hitler decided in 1940 to put Rommel in charge of the Afrika Korps and send him to strengthen the stumbling Italians in Libya, Rommel began to train the kind of army that could fight a successful desert war.
Before the war, Rommel had traveled over the desert as a "tourist" and studied the terrain thoroughly. But he had no desert battle experience. So he established a training ground on the Kurische Nehrung, a sandy Baltic peninsula where UFA had filmed many a desert scene. His carefully picked soldiers lived in overheated barracks, learned to get along on dried food and vitamins, little water. Wind machines blew up artificial sandstorms. Rommel acclimated himself in a private hothouse.
Once his men were in Africa, Rommel made them as comfortable as possible. Each man got his own green bivouac tent, with a floor, and a pack containing a camp stove, solid fuel, eye lotion, mouthwash, body powder, washing sets, flashlight, billfolds. Rations included beer, coffee, tinned and fresh meat, lemons, potatoes, onions. Hospitals were never short of anything. At the rest camps in the rear there were beer gardens, brass bands, playing grounds, movies.
Rommel never tells his men that the British are pushovers. He tells them that the British are tough-and that they, the thin, hard young elite of Germany, must be tougher.
As a successful man, Rommel is vain, arrogant and autocratic, for when he makes war nowadays he takes all the responsibility, all the blame, all the glory. When things go awry in battle, he flies into volcanic rages that produce results. He showers everyone around him with a stream of vituperation, usually beginning with "Schweinehunde!"
At other times Rommel is polite but ironic. In the order of the day with which he started this campaign he referred to King Vittorio Emanuele as the "Emperor of Abyssinia."
His men as well as his officers, fear and look up to him. Dashing about by car and motorcycle in the forward zones of action, he sees his men and they see him. Sometimes they have to bear the lash of his wrath, but they admire him. They have coined a new word: they say that a fallen British stronghold is gerommelt. He is also not above playing on them with false propaganda. Last winter, when Rommel had overstretched his supply lines and the British were rolling him back to Bengasi, he signaled his soldiers: "Don't let our men in Russia down. They have just taken Moscow." Last month, when Bir Hachėim held out longer than he expected, he rode among his tanks and infantry, bellowing: "Men of the Afrika Korps, be of good heart. Our glorious Führer informs me that his forces have overrun Sevastopol."