Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt
Biography
Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt was born in Aschersleben near Magdeburg, Germany, on December 12, 1875.
His father was a general and his brother a major. Raised in a strict environment, Karl attended various military schools before joining the Prussian army in 1891.
He participated in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 as part of the general staff and alternated between commands on the Western and Eastern Fronts. At the end of the First World War, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the German Fifteenth Army.
In August 1938, along with a group of German generals, Gerd von Rundstedt opposed Hitler’s plan to invade Czechoslovakia.
In July 1940, he was appointed Field Marshal and then Commander-in-Chief of the Western Armies during the invasion of France. Following his success in these operations in the west, he was sent to the Eastern Front in 1941.
After the Normandy landings on June 6, 1944, von Rundstedt was called upon to command the Western Armies. Along with General Rommel, he tried to persuade the Führer that a strategic withdrawal behind the Seine was necessary, and that the German armies in southern France should be called in as reinforcements and deployed along a Seine-Switzerland line. But Hitler refused to listen: the German soldiers were to defend their positions to the death.
Yet, the German chiefs of staff knew it, Rommel and von Rundstedt first and foremost: the Allied capture of Cherbourg on June 27, 1944, marked a turning point in the Battle of Normandy, foreshadowing a much larger defeat for Nazi Germany.
German losses were far too high to hold the ground: by the end of June, they had reached over 50,000 prisoners and 300 tanks destroyed out of the seven Panzer divisions involved.
On the evening of July 1, Field Marshal Keitel and von Rundstedt spoke on the telephone about the meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Keitel asked him, “What should we do?” Von Rundstedt replied, “Make peace, you bunch of idiots! What else can you do?” Some time later, von Rundstedt was dismissed by the Führer, who had been informed beforehand by Keitel.
Gerd von Rundstedt was immediately replaced by von Kluge, a highly regarded German general.
On July 20, 1944, a bomb attack, orchestrated by German generals, narrowly missed Hitler. Testimonies indicate that von Rundstedt was suspected of involvement in organizing the attack, particularly due to his falling out with the Führer in Normandy. However, Hitler trusted him and asked him to preside over the German army’s Court of Honor, which was tasked with judging the military personnel involved in planning the July 20th attack. 55 officers were tried, and most of them were forced to commit suicide (like Rommel and von Kluge). The others were simply executed.
At the time of the launch of Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands in 1944, Hitler called upon von Rundstedt to lead his armies against the Allied troops, a task he successfully completed. On January 1, 1945, in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans launched Operation Nordwind, and von Rundstedt was tasked with breaking through the front towards Antwerp. But American troops resisted valiantly, and the offensive failed.
Relieved of his command in March 1945, he was arrested on May 1 by American forces of the 36th Infantry Division. During his interrogation, he suffered a heart attack and was immediately taken to England for treatment. Released in March 1948, he was not charged at the Nuremberg Trials but was nevertheless required to remain available to the authorities for four years.
He died in Hanover in 1953.
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