The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power

by Daniel Yergin

Soon all that Rommel’s forces had left was a toehold between the forces advancing from both east and west. The legend had fallen, and in March 1943 Rommel, now regarded by Hitler as defeatist, was removed from command of the Afrika Korps. By May, the last German and Italian troops in North Africa had surrendered.17 But Rommel was called to serve the Führer again, first in Italy, and then in France, where he was badly wounded shortly after the Normandy invasion, when his car was hit by Allied bombs. Three days later, a group of army officers tried to assassinate Hitler, but failed. Rommel was suspected both of involvement in the conspiracy and of plotting a separate surrender in the West to the Allies. Hitler ordered his death, but it could not be done publicly, for Rommel was a very popular general, and the adverse impact on German morale might have been enormous. So, instead, in October 1944, two SS generals appeared at his home with an ultimatum. Either he commit a suicide that could be disguised as a natural death, or his entire family would be in danger. Rommel, holding the Field Marshal’s baton that Hitler had given him two years earlier, drove off with the two SS men. A few hundred yards from the house, the car pulled over into an open space in the woods; the area had been sealed off by the Gestapo. Rommel was given a poison pill; he swallowed it and fell forward in the seat, dropping the Field Marshal’s baton. Rommel was dead. The death was attributed to a brain hem...