(2 of 4)
When World War I began, Rundstedt was a captain in command of a company, led his men "with great distinction" in small engagements in the Vosges. By November 1914, he was a major and back with the General Staff, the heart and mind of the German Army. There he stayed for the rest of the war, serving on the Russian front, in Turkey and under the Crown Prince at Verdun. The Crown Prince's memoirs call Rundstedt balanced, calm, efficient. Against Pétain at Verdun the Crown Prince and his staff vainly hurled half a million men, and probably lost the war. Much later, in November 1942, Rundstedt was to have the pleasure of telling Marshal Pétain that he was taking over all of France.
When Germany collapsed, Rundstedt was included in the brilliant little band of officers whom brilliant General Hans von Seeckt had chosen to rebuild the Reichswehr. Like most Junker, Rundstedt looked cross-eyed at the Weimar Republic, but he said little. Instead, he spent his time studying the true causes of Germany's defeat, concluded that the Allies' economic resources had been too much for Germany.
The Soldier v. Politicians. In 1923 the workers of Thuringia attempted to set up a Communist regime. Colonel Rundstedt acted with vigor: Reichswehr machine guns put down the Communists.
In 1932 his good friend, Kurt von Schleicher, Germany's most political general, gave Rundstedt a boost up the ladder making him commander of Group Command I (Berlin). As such he arrested Prussia's Socialist President Braun and Interior Minister Karl Severing, on the orders of wily Franz von Papen, who became Chancellor after Heinrich Brüning had failed to save the Republic. Rundstedt told the people of Berlin that he would be "as mild as possible" if his wishes were obeyed. The people obeyed.
Having jailed Prussians of the legitimate Government, Rundstedt joined the anti-Papen clique, helped make his old friend Schleicher Chancellor. The generals hoped to inaugurate a blissful period of Army rule. But the little man in the trench coat, now the adored leader of faceless millions, was waiting for the generals at history's crossroads. Schleicher lasted 60 days. Then Adolf Hitler surged into office. The Third Reich became a fact. Rundstedt, who had never troubled to conceal his patrician contempt for Hitler and the Nazis, often spoke of Storm Troopers as "brown filth."* But he now stopped his visible political dabbling, concentrated on German rearmament.
During Hitler's Blood Purge, Rundstedt said nothing when the Nazis murdered Schleicher and his wife, disposed of Roehm and those who thought the Army should knuckle under to the Storm Troopers. The purge of the Storm Troopers was the price that Hitler paid for the Wehrmacht's alliance. Silence was the price the Junker paid for Hitler's services.
The Marshal. In 1939 Rundstedt captured Warsaw. Next year he won a marshal's baton for his masterly conduct of the breakthrough at Sedan and the subsequent race to the English Channel.