Was Rommel a war criminal?(Letters)

SIR: In some ways, Neil McDonald's shot at being generous about Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (May 2004) probably does him credit. He may have taken things a bit too far, though.

It's true Rommel's name's not linked to any of the German army's major atrocities. Rommel did most of his fighting in the North African desert, and people to commit atrocities against were in short supply there.

In France in 1940, there were more chances for that sort of thing. There's a case in The Tank." Studies in the Development and Use of a Weapon, by Douglas Orgill (1970). Rommel's words are from The Rommel Papers, edited by Captain Basil Liddell Hart.

This was on May 17, near Arras. Rommel was a major-general then, in command of the 7th Panzer Division in the XV Panzer Corps. His troops had broken the French front on the Meuse, and they were pushing westward towards the Channel coast.

Rommel's staff vehicles were following the main road, past tangles of French transport and surrendering French troops. Rommel saw a French lieutenant-colonel stuck in a trapped car, watching the German tanks rumble past.

"I asked him for his rank and appointment," Rommel wrote. "His eyes glowed hate and impotent fury and he gave the impression of being a thoroughly fanatical type. There being every likelihood, with so much traffic on the road, that our column would get split up from time to time, I decided on second thoughts to take him with us ..."

What was the French officer thinking just then? Nobody ever found out. "He was fetched back to Colonel Rothenburg, who signed to him to get in his tank," Rommel wrote. "But he curtly refused to come with us, so after summoning him three times to get in, there was nothing for it but to shoot him ..."