LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
General Rommel
SIR,—After reading Mr. Desmond Young's Rommel, I have been much interested in Leading your review of the book in the Spectator of January 27th by Sir James Grigg. I venture to suggest that Sir James Grigg hits the right nail on the head when he says, "The really important question raised by the book is that of Rommel's and other German generals' attitude towards and relationship with Hitler." My own solution of this problem, which I put forward with diffidence, is that the officer corps of the German Army, if not the greater part of the German nation, had become agnostic and grossly materialistic as far back as 1898. No standards but material standards counted. No moral ideal prevailed except success—whether it paid.
In 1898, as an undergraduate, I happened to be attached to a Garde du Corps regiment for a fortnight during manoeuvres, when I was pleasantly entertained in the officers' mess. Later I followed the grand manoeuvres as a correspondent of an English daily paper. I recently re-read my letters of that date. They reflect the shock which the prevailing agnosticism and the lack of any moral standard except success made on a young but not unduly priggish mind. The suggestion which creeps in occasionally in the book that Rommel did not know of the beastliness of the Nazi regime and Hitler seems to me without foundation. Everybody in Germany knew It wa,s a common subject of discussion in all clubs, particularly military clubs. And, what is more, the public were meant to know to intimidate doubters into submission.—Yours truly,
Nylon, Aldingbourne, Air. Chichester.W,C. ALEY COHEN.
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