The young Rommel, a six-point synthesis of the myth and the soldier one hundred years from Caporetto

(To Andrea Pastore)
19/04/16

What is the boundary between initiative and insubordination is often difficult to understand, especially during the excited phases of a military offensive; and it is within this "Hamlet groove" that the reasoning dedicated to one of the greatest tactics of military history, Lieutenant Erwinn Rommel, unfolds.

Almost a hundred years after the marvelous marches that led him to Longarone from Kolovrat, putting dozens of Italian departments in check, a question remains alive: how many Rommel could have supported the XIV Army of von Below?

A question and a premise to fathom one of the most controversial and exciting war events in military history, the hard fight between the Friulian valleys of the young lieutenant Erwin Rommel at the head of a small group of German army jagers to conquer immortal glory.

Innovation, speed, tactical vision, rescheduling capacity, ruthlessness, ambition.

In these six themes, which accompanied the enterprise of the future Fox of the Desert, we will try to fathom the man and the soldier, in order to offer a reasonable response to the premises of this reflection.

Rommel the innovator, so it could be called a biography celebrating the German officer and in fact, a superficial reading of the facts, with a conflict stuck in the trenches, the speed of movement and depth of penetration, especially in the Italian device of 1917 on the part of the Germans, would let us presume some news, at least from the tactical point of view, in reality nothing had changed under the sun of the 1 ^ World War, certainly Lieutenant Erwin, showed himself endowed with an unparalleled tactical acumen, as well as a significant spirit of observation, and precisely through this spirit that he was able to learn how the French tried, along the quagmire of the western front, a way to break the static nature of the conflict through localized winding maneuvers. What has been learned in France Rommel had the opportunity to re-propose it on the Italian front, helped by a significant partitioning of the territory, as well as by an operative disposition of the Italian troops structured to support offensive and non-defensive military activities.

In an environment characterized by the rapidity of intervention, with the XIV Army set up in a decidedly short time, deployed on the Italian-Austrian front through logistical efforts astonishing for the time and in a climate of waiting for the possible change in the course of the conflict, the mental terrain and psychological on which the young officer Rommel grew up appears fertile enough so that his personality, certainly not common, could emerge, bear positive and in some ways poisoned fruits.

On the first line of Italian defense, born as a starting line for the XII Battle of the Isonzo it is still ambitious today to believe that we can carry out a breakthrough, especially if we look at the front from the point of view of the Austro-German forces, after all Rommel himself must have had several doubts about the effective positioning of the opposing forces, as well as about the capabilities of units that had behind it the national territory, with all the advantages that this can entail from the point of view of supplies and also psychological.

Taking into account the premises and the actions carried out, with particular regard to the circumvention of the Italian artillery, the capture of the Matajur, passing through the combat at the Cimolai pass and therefore the capture of part of the 1st Italian Division in Longarone it seems that the tactical of Rommel was blessed by the god Mars himself.

He should have covered the right flank of the 114th Division in the Isonzo valley and instead found himself going up and down the ridges of the Kolovrat on the left of his "mission" probably in search of the Salerno Brigade or that Croce Pour le Merit, which, however, will be denied him on the Matajur and subsequently granted for the events of Longarone, when, once again, outside his own unit, but united with Austro-Hungarian departments, he constituted the vanguard and with a new amazing mountain ups and downs it took the 1st Italian Division by surprise on the Piave in retreat. Rescheduler of himself according to the opportunities offered by the battlefield, today one could speak of Mission Command? In those days someone ventured to the idea of ​​insubordination.

Unconventional and ambitious, the young Lieutenant Rommel was keen on the success of Germany and certainly demonstrated it in France and Romania, but in Italy we can swear, the question was different, for Rommel, as for all the German forces that made up the XIV Army; in fact they were there to lend a hand to an ally who was too little resolute and slow, perhaps reluctantly, certainly with limited strategic objectives, in such an operational framework, a character like Rommel's could not have done anything but seek personal glory, on the other hand he had very little to lose, he was foreign to the Prussian military elites, a parvenue that only with its own merits and ambition precisely, would be able to break the rigid hierarchical schemes of Germany Wilhelmina.

In the short story about the action of Lieutenant Rommel, about the six themes related to his military ability and his personality, there is the answer to the initial question: of Rommel the XIV Armata could have borne at most one and not only because his initiative was very similar to insubordination, but because his personal ambition, during the events of Caporetto, gigggiò on the general interest, moreover, to look carefully at the operational situation, he did everything to avoid confrontation with the adversary and in fact did not commit him as he should, in doing so he entrusted his continuous grinding ground into avant-garde more to the luck and inadequacy of the defenders than to a real concept of action.

The activity of Rommel was certainly audacious and noteworthy, but the doubt remains that the chronicle of the facts, elaborated years later by the same protagonist, had a lot of evocative and celebrative car, moreover it should not be forgotten, in this narration, the role historical played by the Anglo-Americans, a role linked to the Second World War and the need to demonize, but at the same time celebrate the strength of the adversary, in a psychological approach such that the stronger my enemy is the more skillful, determined and it was good that I defeated him, in short, General Rommel, to be that great enemy that should have been an equally exceptional subordinate.

Young Rommel has written a lot, but still has not been made a clear examination of what happened in Caporetto, events told by himself in his memoirs "infantry attack", but that very rarely have found a place in a close scientific confrontation it is clear.

With this reflection we want to provide an opportunity to generate, in almost a hundred years from those events, a peaceful and frank debate, free from the comments of fashion and heroic celebrations typical of winners and losers.