Killing Patton The Strange Death of World War II's Most Audacious General (6 page)

Hitler originally suggested that the assassins be impaled on the hook, to be “hanged like cattle.” But that sort of death would not have allowed the plotters to suffer sufficiently. Instead, the hangman picked up the loose end of the rope and pulled it taut, using the hook as a pulley to lift the condemned man slowly off the ground. The executioner was in no hurry, and very often the hangings lasted fifteen minutes or more, with the victim’s airflow cut off and restored multiple times. Before dying, the accused had plenty of time to memorize the interior of the room: the whitewashed walls, the cognac bottle on the simple wooden table, the door through which he entered alive and would exit quite dead.

Each execution was brutal, but the suffering was not enough for Adolf Hitler. He wanted even more revenge. Hitler then ordered the conspirators’ immediate families and other relatives rounded up. More than seven thousand innocent men, women, and children were arrested—and almost five thousand of them executed.

The most significant of these murders took place just seven days ago, and it means that Adolf Hitler will have to launch his major new offensive, code-named Operation Watch on the Rhine, without the only German general who can even remotely compare with George S. Patton.

The Wolf could have waited until after Operation Watch on the Rhine was completed to pass judgment on his favorite field marshal. From a tactical perspective, it would have been the smart thing to do. But Adolf Hitler needed his revenge. Nothing, not even winning the war, matters more.

Hitler and Blondi finish their walk and reenter the massive concrete fortress that serves as the Führer’s home away from Berlin. It is almost time for lunch—and the unveiling of his brilliant new campaign.

Or, as it will soon become known around the world, the Battle of the Bulge.

*   *   *

George S. Patton thinks so highly of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel that he keeps a copy of Rommel’s book on infantry tactics near his bedside. Often at night, when he is unable to sleep, Patton opens it to reread a chapter or two. But while the armies of the two great generals collided in the North African desert two years ago, engaging in the sort of epic tank warfare that only the wide open desert spaces can allow, they have not fought one another since. Patton’s Third Army did not become active in Europe until early August, nearly three weeks after Rommel’s skull was fractured in three places when a Royal Air Force Spitfire fighter plane strafed his car.

Now, as Patton’s retreat from Fort Driant brings the attack to a bitter end, Rommel is just 230 miles away, convalescing from his wounds at home in Herrlingen. On the evening of October 13, a phone call from the Wolf’s Lair informs Rommel that he will be visited by Generals Wilhelm Burgdorf and Ernst Maisel the next morning. They will bring news from the Führer about Rommel’s next assignment.

This can mean only one of two things: a new command or a death sentence. Rommel knew of the assassination plot in advance, but said nothing. By proxy, this makes him as guilty as the men who concealed the bomb in the briefcase and hand-carried it into Hitler’s conference room.

But Rommel is not sure whether Hitler knows of his betrayal. He is Germany’s most famous general, a man who has shown his loyalty to the Führer through extraordinary service on the field of battle, and a man the Führer holds in high esteem. Until recently, that feeling was mutual. But Hitler will never sue for peace, and this could lead to the complete destruction of Germany. Rommel now has grave doubts about Hitler’s ability to lead the war effort, and is in favor of negotiating with the Allies rather than continuing to fight. But he has never voiced this opinion publicly.

Rommel is restless as he tries to sleep through the night. If his awareness of the assassination plot has been made known to the SS interrogators who have tortured those implicated in the bombing, then General Burgdorf is most likely coming to take Rommel away to be publicly tried before a people’s court; if not, there is a very good chance that Burgdorf is coming to offer him a new army.

Erwin Rommel outside Hitler’s headquarters in Berlin

Morning arrives. Rommel’s fifteen-year-old son, Manfred, who serves as a soldier in a nearby antiaircraft battery, returns home for two days’ leave. When he walks in the door, he finds the field marshal dressed in riding pants, a brown jacket, and a tie. Rommel asks Manfred to join him for breakfast.

“At twelve o’clock today two generals are coming to see me to discuss my future employment,” Rommel tells his son. “So today will decide what is planned for me: whether a people’s court or a new command in the east.”

“Would you accept such a command?” Manfred asks.

“My dear boy,” Rommel responds, grabbing his son by the arm. “Our enemy in the east is so terrible that every other thought has to give way before it. If he succeeds in overrunning Europe, it will be the end of everything that has made life worth living. Of course I would go.”

Shortly before noon Rommel walks to his room on the first floor and changes into his favorite uniform, a tan tunic that he wore in the North African campaign. Soon a dark green Opel pulls up the gravel driveway. The driver wears the black uniform of the Waffen SS, Hitler’s most feared and loyal fighters, who swear a personal oath of loyalty to the Führer. In the backseat sit the round-faced Burgdorf and the wiry Maisel, who themselves fear the SS.

The two men enter the home and treat Rommel with the utmost respect and courtesy. When they ask the field marshal if they might speak with him alone, their deference is so overwhelming that Manfred is sure his father will not be made to appear before a people’s court. He calmly walks upstairs to look for a book to read.

But unbeknownst to Manfred Rommel, Burgdorf and Maisel are giving his father the worst possible news: SS troopers have surrounded the house and have orders to kill everyone inside should Rommel attempt to flee.

Erwin Rommel, the famous Desert Fox, is being accused of high treason by Adolf Hitler. If only out of respect for the field marshal’s bravery, and the devastating effects a public trial would have on the morale of German citizens, he is being offered the option of committing suicide.

Manfred Rommel hears his father walk upstairs and enter his wife’s bedroom. Curious, the younger Rommel follows his father into the room.

Lucie Rommel is lying on the bed, the picture of utter sorrow. Erwin Rommel stands and leads his son back to his bedroom. When the field marshal finally speaks, his voice is pinched in grief.

“I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour,” he tells Manfred in a level voice. “The house is surrounded, and Hitler is charging me with high treason.”

Now Rommel’s voice turns sarcastic. “In view of my services in Africa, I am to have the chance of dying by poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It’s fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family—that is, against you.”

“Can’t we defend ourselves?” Manfred asks, ready to die for his father.

Rommel cuts him off. “It’s better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray.

“Anyway,” Erwin Rommel adds, a soldier to the end, “we’ve practically no ammunition.”

Rommel dons his long leather jacket and walks to the Opel with his son. His face is without emotion. Manfred will always remember that “the crunch of gravel seemed unusually loud.” The two shake hands when it comes time to say farewell. There are no tears, no final orders, and no mention of the horrible event that will take place in just a few minutes. A crowd of local villagers has seen the Opel and now gathers to watch Rommel be driven away, not having any idea about his fate. The general reaches into his jacket pocket and discovers his house keys and wallet. “I don’t need these anymore,” he says, handing them to Manfred.

The SS driver salutes and stands stiffly at attention as Erwin Rommel steps toward the car, his field marshal’s baton tucked precisely against his elbow. Rommel sits in back. Burgdorf and Maisel slide in beside him. The bodies of the three generals press snugly against one another on the very small seat.

The Opel drives away, leaving Manfred Rommel to watch the back of his father’s head through the back window as the car disappears into the distance. His father does not turn for one last look.

After a few minutes, the car pulls off the road and into a forest clearing. A squad of SS troopers form a perimeter ring, with orders to shoot should the field marshal make a run for it.

Rommel has no such plans.

General Burgdorf tells the driver to go for a walk. Rommel never even gets out of the car. He is handed the suicide pill.

Fifteen minutes later, as predicted, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel is dead.

The official cause of death is not the cyanide that he was forced to swallow, turning his mucous a dark brown as his body lost its ability to breathe. Instead, the good people of Nazi Germany will be saddened to read that Rommel endured “death as a result of a heart attack suffered while in service of the Reich in the west.”

*   *   *

One week later, on October 21, SS officer Otto Skorzeny snaps to attention in Adolf Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair bunker. At six foot four, the legendary commando stands a half foot taller than the Führer. His enormous hands dwarf Hitler’s as he accepts the jewelry case containing his newest in a long line of decorations, the vaunted German Cross in Gold.

Otto Skorzeny

British Intelligence considers Skorzeny the most dangerous man in Europe. He is thick across the chest like a heavyweight fighter, and the epaulets on his powerful shoulders display the rank of Sturmbannführer—or, in the American equivalence, major. He sports a stylish mustache that lends him a passing resemblance to the swashbuckling American movie star Errol Flynn. And while Hitler’s face is lined only by weariness, a scar creases Skorzeny’s left cheek from ear to mouth, a memento from a saber duel he fought for the love of a ballerina back in his college days.

But as esteemed as the Cross in Gold might be—and to be sure, it is one of Germany’s highest honors, awarded only to men exhibiting repeated bravery in battle—Hitler and Skorzeny both know that the strapping warrior is deserving of so much more. If Erwin Rommel was once Hitler’s favorite general, then the “Long Jumper,” as Skorzeny is nicknamed, is Hitler’s favorite commando. Time and again, the gruff Austrian has shown his loyalty to the Führer by accepting missions that other men would have refused on the grounds that they were impossible or suicidal. Most famously, it was Skorzeny and his crack team of SS troopers who discovered where the deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini was being held prisoner by partisan forces loyal to the Allies in the summer and fall of 1943. After months of deceit and intrigue as Mussolini was ferried from hiding place to hiding place, Skorzeny learned that the Fascist leader was being held at the Campo Imperatore Hotel, high atop the tallest peak in the central Italian Apennine Mountains. Gran Sasso, as the rugged and rocky summit is known, was accessible only by a single cable car.

Skorzeny was undeterred. He devised an ingenious plan that involved landing his commando team atop the peak in a glider. Not only did Skorzeny and his men rescue Mussolini, but they did so without firing a single shot.

And just last week, the great Skorzeny trumped even that bold raid.

Six days ago, anticipating that the Hungarian government would switch its allegiance to Germany’s enemy Russia, Hitler ordered Skorzeny to make sure this betrayal did not occur. In less than twenty-four hours, “Operation Mickey Mouse”
¹
netted the son of Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy. The thirty-seven-year-old was lured into a trap, beaten unconscious, rolled up in a carpet, and smuggled through the city streets to the airport, where he was flown to Vienna and placed under Gestapo detention.

There was no request for monetary ransom. Instead, Skorzeny demanded Hungary’s enduring loyalty. When that pledge didn’t materialize, he sent shock troops into the heart of Budapest to take control of the city. An armistice was soon secured, and Miklós hoped his son would be returned to him unharmed. This was not to be. Even now, as Skorzeny and Hitler exchange pleasantries, Miklós Horthy Jr. is on his way to the Dachau concentration camp, a prison from which few men, women, or children ever come back.