Book Review

Patton and Rommel

Reviewed by Colin Esler

Part I

This is the best book the reviewer has read about Generals Patton and Rommel.

Both these men accomplished huge tasks, involving controlling the energies, the courage and the lives of many thousands of men, aimed at goals their countries sought to reach.

One, Patton, had a somewhat sullied and disreputable reputation, yet defended the right, while Rommel, a privately virtuous man, fought on behalf of evil.

Patton, at various times, was known as something of a lecher and a man flirting with alcoholism.

His family was modestly affluent, could point to one or more ancestors with slight historical achievements to their credit, and cultivated acquaintances among America's lower-middle-rank movers and shakers.

They were slightly pretentious people.

Rommel was a small town boy who never pretended to be anything else.

Patton openly pursued fame. Rommel was steadily but not inordinately ambitious. Both earned their first recognition in World War I as young officers who led from the front, both getting wounded in the process.

Rommel was hit several times. Patton was shot once in the groin.

Their willingness to face enemy fire played a role in their ability to influence troops - Patton was slightly self-conscious about his private fear and courted risk to inure himself to it.

Rommel was convinced that with audacity and daring the few could intimidate and overcome the many.

To put his conviction into practice, he regularly required small-unit leaders - including himself as a junior officer - to put themselves and troops within their immediate reach into harm's way.

Like all German officers, he had been trained to subordinate everything to pure calculation.

But he had a natural feeling for ground, an instinct for the tactical advantage and disadvantage of ridges, slopes and tree-lines. And he was physically strong and enduring, equipped with exceptional stamina.

This combination drove him to devise and personally lead dangerous, winning forays of platoon and company-sized formations again and again against Germany's opponents in World War I.

Patton began WWI as Pershing's dog-robber (aide de camp) and then became his useful administrative assistant.

He knew promotion to significant rank would require a combat reputation, but at first could locate no available command slots that he could get himself appointed to. Eventually he hit on the prospects of a new branch of the Allied Expeditionary Force that was attempting to master an experimental weapon: the tank.

Continued In Part II