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Originally Posted by Jim O
Sal,
Interesting comment about Tunisia. However, the question is was Rommel was responsible for political actions in North Africa? If not, then it would have been a politically based prosecution. I know that some argue that the mere fact that he was in North Africa was part of the Nazi plan to export the Holocaust to the Middle East, but those decisions were made by the politicians (Nazis) to whom Rommel reported.
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No, Rommel was not responsible for the politcal actions, but unfortunately that did not make him immune to possible persecution at war's end.
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Not all German generals were prosecuted. Guderian was not even though he participated in Barbarossa.
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Only because the western victors wanted to learn from the father of Blitzkrieg and protected him. IIRC, the Soviets and the Poles wanted Guderian at Nuremburg.
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Walter Rauff of the RSHA was in charge of the actions in Tunisia against civilians in general and Jews in particular. Ironically, he survived the war and was protected by foreign governments, particularly that of Chile. How much Rommel aided Rauff is not known to me, but my guess is that Rommel had more important considerations at the time.
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Rommel was forced to withdraw the remnants of his army to Tunisia, where it sustained a bridgehead until May 1943, enabling Rauff ’s SS to conduct a well-organ-ised persecution campaign against the country’s Jews.
More than 2,500 Tunisian Jews died in a network of SS slave labour camps before the Germans withdrew. Rauff’s men also stole silver, jewels and religious artefacts from the Tunisian Jews. Forty-three kilograms of gold were taken from the Jewish community on the island of Djerba alone.
The gold and jewels were taken by the Germans as they withdrew and were later thrown into the sea off Corsica. Divers are still searching for “ Rommel’s Treasure”.
The documentary makers argue that the role Rom-mel played in supporting the Nazis’ plans to export the Holocaust to the Middle East was largely forgotten after the war because of the field marshal’s later alleged involvement in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. The Nazis responded by arresting Rommel and leaving him the choice of facing trial and certain execution or committing suicide. He chose the latter.