title: Julius Martov

text: Martov was born to a middle-class, educated and politically aware Jewish family in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (modern day Istanbul). His sister was the fellow Menshevik leader Lydia Dan. Brought up in Odessa, he suffered constant humiliation as a schoolboy because of being Jewish. In his teens, he admired the Narodniks, but the famine crisis made him a Marxist: "It suddenly became clear to me how superficial and groundless the whole of my revolutionism had been until then, and how my subjective political romanticism was dwarfed before the philosophical and sociological heights of Marxism".


title: Julius Martov

text: Arrested in February 1892 for anti-tsarist activities, he was held in prison until May, when his grandfather paid bail of 300 rubles. That Autumn he enrolled at St Petersburg University, joined a Marxist group organized by Alexander Potresov, and was expelled, rearrested [Dec.], and held until May 1893. In this brief spell of liberty, he had tried to organize a Petersburg branch of the Emancipation of Labour group. Instead of accepting his grandfather's suggestion of emigrating to the United States of America, he chose to be exiled for two years in Vilna (now Vilnius).


title: Julius Martov

text: Initially, he was on good terms with the Jewish Bund. Together with fellow Vilno Social Democrat, Arkady Kremer, Martov explained the strategy involving mass agitation and participating in Jewish strikes, by also sometimes learning Yiddish to win over their support, in the work "On Agitation" (1895). The plan detailed that workers were to see a need for broader political campaigning through participating in strikes, led by the Social Democrats as trade unions were banned under the Tsarist regime. However, Martov would eventually have a critical parallel role with Lenin in the opposition to the Bund from the positions of the RSDLP.


title: Julius Martov

text: Martov returned to St Petersburg in October 1895, and helped to form the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, in which Lenin was a dominant figure. At this stage, "their friendship was so close that they agreed on the foundations of their world view", despite or because of the contrasts in their personalities. Lenin was neat and restrained; Martov lively and chaotic. Martov took on the task of contacting workers at the Putilov factory, until his arrest in January 1896.


title: Julius Martov

text: Martov was deported for three years to the village of Turukhansk in the Arctic, while Lenin was sent to Shushenskoye in the comparatively warm "Siberian Italy". When his term of exile ended, he joined Lenin in Pskov, where together they planned to go abroad and launch a newspaper as a way of organising the scattered Marxist movement into a centrally run political party. In June 1900, before they left Russia, they returned together to St Petersburg, where they were followed and arrested but released after a few days.


title: Julius Martov

text: Forced to leave Russia and with other radical political figures living in exile, Martov settled in Munich, joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and was one of the founders of the party journal "Iskra". Initially, Lenin and Martov were allies in disputes within the six member editorial board, on which Georgi Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, had the casting vote. When the "Iskra" operation was transferred to London, in April 1902, Martov shared lodgings in Sidmouth Street with the veteran Marxist, Vera Zasulich, close to where Lenin and his wife, Krupskaya had lodgings. While Lenin was working in the British Museum, Martov and Krupskaya together handled "a large proportion of routine wearying work", such as dealing with mail from "Iskra" supporters. Trotsky believed that the rift between Martov and Lenin began in London, where Martov came under the influence of Zasulich "who was drawing him away from Lenin." He also observed that the Bohemian lifestyle at their Sidmouth Street lodgings was "utterly alien" to Lenin. After "Iskra" moved again, to Geneva, in March 1903, Martov clashed with Lenin as one of the Marxists who wanted Nikolay Bauman expelled from the party on moral grounds.


title: Julius Martov

text: In April, prior to the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP, Martov produced a draft party programme, with which Lenin disagreed. Martov believed that RSDLP sympathizers who were willing to obey the party's leadership and recognize the party's program should be admitted as party members, as well as those people who were fully paid up party members who participated in one of party's organizations; while Lenin wanted clear dividing lines between party members and party sympathizers, with party membership being limited to those people who were fully paid up party members who participated in one of the party's organisations.


title: Julius Martov

text: When the Second Congress opened in London in August 1903, Lenin and Martov voted together on every division until the 22nd session, when a vote was taken on their respective programmes, and Lenin was outvoted by 28 to 23.[18] At the 27th session, Lenin and Martov were again on the same side during an argument over whether the Bund should be recognised as an autonomous branch of the RSDLP, representing Jewish workers. Martov was one of the Jewish Marxist leaders (alongside Trotsky), who rejected the demands for Jewish national autonomy, with the Iskra group favouring class interests over nationalism; he was therefore deeply opposed to the Bundists' Jewish nationalism. After the Bund was defeated by 41 votes to 5, its five delegates walked out. The two 'economist' delegates, Alexander Martynov and Vladimir Makhnovets also walked out, depriving Martov of seven votes, and giving Lenin's supporters a majority. They referred to themselves as Bolsheviks throughout the Congress, hence their adoption of the name Bolshevik which literally means 'person of the majority'. The minority or 'Menshevik' faction adopted the corresponding title. At the end of the Congress, there was a highly emotive dispute over the future composition of the editorial board of Iskra on which Lenin proposed to exclude the three least active editors, Zasulich, Pavel Axelrod, and Alexander Potresov. Martov was shocked by his treatment of the two older Marxists, Axelrod and Zasulich, and refused to serve on the truncated board.


title: Julius Martov

text: The Congress ended in a split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, which proved to be irreconcilable. Martov became one of the outstanding Menshevik leaders along with Axelrod, Martynov, Fedor Dan and Irakli Tsereteli. Leon Trotsky too was a member of the Menshevik faction for a brief period but soon broke with them.


title: Julius Martov

text: Martov was described as being "too good an intellectual to be a successful politician", as he often was held back by his integrity, and "philosophical approach" to matters of politics. He tended to select political allies primarily by the "coherence of their general worldview", instead of "practicality" or "timeliness". His "high minded approach" would later win rounds of applause among the socialist intelligentsia. Nonetheless, Martov's noble principles made him too "soft" and "indecisive", at a time when the opposite were politically required of him. He has been described as a "brilliant intellectual and party theoretician".


title: Julius Martov

text: Alexander Shotman, a metal worker who backed Lenin at the 2nd Congress, left a vivid description of Martov:


title: Julius Martov

text: Trotsky, who initially supported Martov against Lenin, later described him as "one of the most talented men I have ever come across" but added: "The man's misfortune was that fate made him a politician in a time of revolution without endowing him with the necessary resources of will power."


title: Julius Martov

text: Lenin spoke affectionately about Martov long after the split in 1903. He told Maxim Gorky "I am sorry, deeply sorry, that Martov is not with us. What a splendid comrade he is." When he was ill, Lenin remarked to Krupskaya "And Martov, too, they say, is dying."


title: Julius Martov

text: Martov was in exile during the strikes following Bloody Sunday, which marked the start of the 1905 Revolution. From abroad, he argued that it was the role of revolutionaries to provide a militant opposition to the new bourgeois government. He advocated the joining of a network of organisations, trade unions, cooperatives, village councils and soviets, to harass the bourgeois government until the economic and social conditions made it possible for a socialist revolution to take place.


title: Julius Martov

text: He returned to Russia in October 1905, and was arrested in February, but released in April 1906. He helped organise the RSDLP group in the First Duma and first their first declaration, which was delivered on 18 May 1906. Rearrested in July, he was deported to Finland. Later, he settled in Paris.


title: Julius Martov

text: Martov was always to be found on the left wing of the Menshevik faction and supported the reunification with the Bolsheviks in 1905. That fragile unity was short lived, however, and by 1907 the two factions had again split in two. In 1911 Martov notably wrote the pamphlet "Spasiteli ili uprazdniteli? Kto i kak razrushal R.S.-D.R.P.," "Saviours or destroyers? Who destroyed the RSDLP and how", which denounced the Bolsheviks for, among other things, raising money by "expropriations," that is, robbing banks. This pamphlet was denounced by both Kautsky and Lenin.


title: Julius Martov

text: On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, while other Menshveiks supported Russia's war effort, Martov viewed the conflict as an imperialist war, in terms very similar to those of Lenin and Trotsky. He therefore became the central leader of the Menshevik Internationalist faction which organized in opposition to the Menshevik Party leadership. Martov also joined Trotsky in launching the newspaper "Nashe Slovo" ("Our Word"). He was the only contributor to "Nashe Slovo" not to align with Lenin in 1917. In 1915, he sided with Lenin at an international conference in Switzerland, where he settled, but he later repudiated the Bolsheviks. The 'internationalist' minority in the Menshevik party favored a campaign for 'democratic peace'.


title: Julius Martov

text: At the onset of the 1917 Revolution, Martov was in Zurich with Lenin. He was the instigator of the idea of exchanging Russian Marxist exiles for German citizens interned in Russia. This way, the Russian Marxist revolutionary leaders, including Lenin, would manage to return to Russia following the February revolution of 1917. However, the Provisional Government was unwilling to agree to the exchange, and Martov agreed to wait. He declined to join Lenin's party on the famous sealed train which traveled across Germany. After Lenin had arrived in St Petersburg, the remaining members of the Russian colony appealed to the German government, through the Swiss Red Cross, for permission to cross, with their families. Martov was one of a party of 280 that included his Menshevik comrades, Axelrod, Martynov, and Raphael Abramovitch, who left by train on 13 May 1917.


title: Julius Martov

text: Martov reached Russia too late to prevent some Mensheviks from joining the Provisional Government. He strongly criticized those Mensheviks such as Irakli Tsereteli and Fedor Dan who, as members of the Russian government, supported the war effort. However, at a conference held on 18 June 1917, he failed to gain the support of the delegates for a policy of immediate peace negotiations with the Central Powers. He was unable to enter into an alliance with his rival Lenin to form a coalition in 1917, despite this being the "logical outcome" according to the majority of his left wing supporters in the Menshevik faction.


title: Julius Martov

text: When the Bolsheviks came to power as a result of the October Revolution in 1917, Martov became politically marginalised. At the Congress of Soviets immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power, he called for a 'united democratic government' based on the parties of the soviet. His proposal was met with 'torrents of applause' in the Soviet, as the only way to avoid a civil war. Martov's faction as a whole was however isolated. His view was denounced by Trotsky. This is best exemplified by Trotsky's comment to him and other party members as they left the first meeting of the council of Soviets after 25 October 1917 in disgust at the way in which the Bolsheviks had seized political power: "You are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history!" To this Martov replied in a moment of rage, "Then we'll leave!", and then walked in silence away without looking back. He paused at the exit, seeing a young Bolshevik worker wearing a black shirt with a broad leather belt, standing in the shadow of the portico. The young man turned on Martov with unconcealed bitterness: "And we amongst ourselves had thought, Martov would at least remain with us". Martov stopped, and with a characteristic movement, tossed up his head to emphasize his reply: "One day you will understand the crime in which you are taking part". Waving his hand wearily, he left the hall.


title: Julius Martov

text: For a while Martov led the Menshevik opposition group in the Constituent Assembly until the Bolsheviks abolished it. Later, when a factory section chose Martov as their delegate ahead of Lenin in a Soviet election, it found its supplies reduced soon afterwards.


title: Julius Martov

text: During the Russian Civil War, Martov supported the Red Army against the White Army; however, he continued to denounce the persecution of non-violent political opponents of the Bolsheviks, whether Social Democrats, trade unionists, anarchists, or newspapers.


title: Julius Martov

text: Speaking of the Red Terror, Martov said: "The beast has licked hot human blood. The man-killing machine is brought into motion... But blood breeds blood... We witness the growth of the bitterness of the civil war, the growing bestiality of men engaged in it." In one of his newspaper articles, in 1918, he argued that Stalin was unfit to hold a high position in the communist party, alleging that he had been expelled from the RSDLP for involvement in the 1907 'expropriations'. Stalin accused him of slander, and demanded that a tribunal be formed to hear the accusations, at which Martov said he would produce witnesses, but the hearing was never held because of the outbreak of civil war.


title: Julius Martov

text: In October 1920, Martov was given permission to legally leave Russia and go to Germany. Martov spoke at the Halle Congress of the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany later that month. Martov had not intended to stay in Germany indefinitely, and only did so after the Mensheviks were outlawed in March 1921, following the Tenth Congress of the ruling Communist Party. In 1922, learning Martov was ill, Lenin asked Stalin to transfer funds to Berlin to contribute to Martov's medical care, but Stalin refused. Martov died in Schömberg, Germany, in April 1923. Before his fatal illness, he launched the newspaper "Sotsialisticheskiy vestnik" ("Socialist Courier"), which remained the publication of the Mensheviks in exile in Berlin, Paris, and eventually New York until the last of them had died.


title: Faron Young

text: Faron Young (February 25, 1932 – December 10, 1996) was an American country music producer, musician, and songwriter from the early 1950s into the mid-1980s. Hits including "If You Ain't Lovin' (You Ain't Livin')" and "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young" marked him as a honky-tonk singer in sound and personal style; and his chart-topping singles "Hello Walls" and "It's Four in the Morning" showed his versatility as a vocalist. Known as the Hillbilly Heartthrob, and following a singing cowboy film role as the Young Sheriff, Young's singles charted for more than 30 years. In failing health, he died by suicide at 64 in 1996. Young is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.


title: Faron Young

text: Young was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the youngest of six children of Harlan and Doris Young. He grew up on a dairy farm that his family operated outside the city. Young began singing at an early age, imagining a career as a pop singer. However, after he joined some friends watching Hank Williams perform with nine encores on the "Louisiana Hayride", Young switched to country music instead. He performed at the local Optimist Club and was discovered by Webb Pierce, who brought him to star on the Hayride in 1951, then broadcast on KWKH-AM. He graduated from Fair Park High School that year and attended Centenary College of Louisiana.


title: Faron Young

text: Young recorded in Shreveport. His first releases were on Philadelphia's Gotham Records. By February 1952, he was signed to Capitol Records, where he recorded for the next ten years. His first Capitol single appeared that spring.


title: Faron Young

text: Young moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and recorded his first chart hit, "Goin' Steady" in October 1952. His career was sidetracked when he was drafted into the United States Army the following month. "Goin' Steady" hit the "Billboard" country charts while Young was in basic training. It peaked at No. 2, and the US Army Band took Young to replace Eddie Fisher on tours—its first country music singer—just as "If You Ain't Lovin'" was hitting the charts. He was discharged in November 1954.


title: Faron Young

text: From 1954 to 1962, Young recorded many honky-tonk songs for Capitol, including the first hit version of Don Gibson's "Sweet Dreams". Most famous was "Hello Walls", a Willie Nelson song Young turned into a crossover hit in 1961. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.


title: Faron Young

text: During the mid-1950s, Young starred in four low-budget films: "Hidden Guns", "Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer", "Raiders of Old California" and "Country Music Holiday". He appeared as himself in cameo roles and performances in later country music films and was a frequent guest on television shows throughout his career, including ABC-TV's "Ozark Jubilee". His band, the Country Deputies, was one of country music's top bands and they toured for many years. He invested in real estate along Nashville's Music Row in the 1960s and, in 1963, co-founded, with Preston Temple, the trade magazine, "Music City News".


title: Faron Young

text: The same year, Young switched to Mercury Records and drifted musically, but by the end of the decade he had returned to his sound including "Wine Me Up". Released in 1971, waltz-time ballad "It's Four in the Morning" written by Jerry Chesnut was one of Young's records and his last number one hit, also becoming his only major success in the United Kingdom, where it peaked at No. 3 on the pop charts. By the mid-1970s his records were becoming overshadowed by his behavior, making headlines in 1972 when he was charged with assault for spanking a girl in the audience at a concert in Clarksburg, West Virginia, who he claimed spat on him, and for other later incidents. In the mid-70s, Young was the spokesman for BC Powder.


title: Faron Young

text: Young signed with MCA Records in 1979; the association lasted two years. Nashville independent label Step One Records signed him in 1988 where he recorded into the early 1990s (including a duet album with Ray Price), then withdrew from public view. Though country acts including BR549 were putting his music before audiences in the mid-1990s, Young apparently felt the music industry, which had undergone a revolution of sorts in 1991, had mostly rejected him.


title: Faron Young

text: Faron Young's son Robyn followed him into the country music business starting in 1975. Robyn was the main headliner at his father's night club, Faron Young's Jailhouse. In the early 1980s Robyn began touring with his father, performing as an opening act.


title: Faron Young

text: Young briefly dated Billie Jean Jones before she became the second wife of country music superstar Hank Williams. It was through Young that Jones was first introduced to Williams, who went on to wed Williams in October 1952.


title: Faron Young

text: In 1952, while Young was stationed at Fort McPherson, he met his future wife Hilda Macon, the daughter of an Army master sergeant and the great-granddaughter of Uncle Dave Macon. The couple married two years later in November 1954 after Young was discharged from the Army. They had four children, sons Damion, Robyn and Kevin, and a daughter Alana.


title: Faron Young

text: Young's later life was plagued with bouts of depression and alcoholism. In 1972, Young was arrested and charged with assault for spanking a girl in the audience at a concert in Clarksburg, West Virginia, after claiming she spat on him. Young appeared before a Wood County, West Virginia, justice of the peace and was fined $24, plus $11 in court costs. On the night of December 4, 1984, Young fired a pistol into the kitchen ceiling of his Harbor Island home. When he refused to seek help for his drinking problem, Young and his wife Hilda separated, sold their home, and bought individual houses. When asked at the divorce trial if he feared hurting someone by shooting holes into the ceiling, Young answered "Not whatsoever." The couple divorced after 32 years of marriage in 1986.


title: Faron Young

text: A combination of feeling he had been abandoned by country music and despondency over his deteriorating health were cited as possible reasons that Young shot himself on December 9, 1996. He died in Nashville the following day and was cremated. His ashes were spread by his family over Old Hickory Lake outside Nashville at Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash's home while the Cashes were away.


title: Faron Young

text: In 2012, the UK-based Jasmine Records released a budget-minded 2-CD box set entitled "Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young: The Early Album Collection". The set focused on Young's first four albums. Later in 2012, Real Gone Music released a similar compilation which combined Young's first six albums with key singles.


title: Faron Young

text: Two years before Young's death, the German independent record label Bear Family Records released a box set entitled "The Classic Years 1952–1962", which showcased Young's early recordings for Capitol. It did not include Young's recordings for Mercury or Step One.


title: Faron Young

text: Young's final recordings were released on a CD entitled "Are You Hungry? Eat Your Import," by the record label Showboat Records, which was founded by fellow country music star Liz Anderson.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Alia Al-Hussein (, born Alia Bahauddin Toukan (); 25 December 1948 – 9 February 1977) was the Queen of Jordan and the third wife of King Hussein from their marriage in 1972 until her death in a helicopter crash in southern Jordan near Tafilah.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Alia was born on 25 December 1948 in Cairo, Egypt, the daughter of Baha Toukan and his wife Hanan Hashim. Her mother, a home-maker, was a niece of Ibrahim Hashim Pasha, and her father was a diplomat. At the time of Alia's birth, he was the ambassador of Jordan to the Court of St James's (United Kingdom), Italy, Turkey and Egypt all at once. Toukan, a close confident of King Abdullah I of Jordan, had previously helped write the Jordanian Constitution in 1952, and had served as Jordan's first Ambassador to the United Nations.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Alia spent most of her childhood years traveling with her parents during her father's career in Jordan's diplomatic corps: she lived in Egypt, Turkey, London, the United States, and Rome. She attended Church School in London with her younger brothers, Alaa and Abdullah. She was educated at the Rome Center of Liberal Arts of Loyola University Chicago. She studied political science with a minor in social psychology, and public relations at Hunter College in New York. She was interested in sports and writing, and she wished to be a diplomat. In 1971, she moved to Jordan, where she worked for Royal Jordanian Airlines. She was asked by King Hussein, grandson of Abdullah I, to oversee the preparations for the first International Water Skiing Festival held in the coastal city of Aqaba in September 1972.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Alia married the King in a private ceremony at her father's house, with no attendance of any other royal family members, on 24 December 1972, 3 days after the king divorced his second wife Princess Muna Al-Hussein, and was titled Queen Alia Al Hussein ().


title: Alia Toukan

text: They also adopted Abir, a young Palestinian girl whose mother had been killed by a plane crash at a refugee camp near the Amman airport.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Queen Alia founded the Office of the Queen of Jordan and gave it an active and public role. The active role she took in Jordan has been emulated by her successors. She financed social development projects, placing particular emphasis on women and children. She often made surprise visits to hospitals and national institutions, aiming to raise service standards and help people to help themselves. In her drive to ensure that children from impoverished backgrounds received their right to education, she fostered close ties with schools such as the Schneller School for Orphans, which took many of the street children that Queen Alia sent there.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Her commitment to improving social services continued throughout her lifetime and was still pursued in her name after her death, when King Hussein ensured the continuation of the many educational scholarships given in her honour.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Alia's love of the arts and literature inspired the establishment of libraries throughout the country, including one at the Central Bank of Jordan and another in the King Hussein Medical City. Her interest in the arts led to the founding of the Haya Cultural Centre for Children, the National Folklore Troupe and the Alia Art Gallery. It was also instrumental in conceiving the Jerash Festival for the Arts.


title: Alia Toukan

text: In 1974, Alia called for women to be granted the right to vote and be elected for parliament. On 4 April 1974, a law was promulgated granting women this right; however, the suspension of parliamentary life in Jordan between 1974 and 1989 prevented its implementation.


title: Alia Toukan

text: Alia died in a helicopter crash in Amman, Jordan, on 9 February 1977. Amman's principal airport, Queen Alia International Airport (AMM), was built in 1983 and named in her honour. It is located 32 km (20 miles) south of the city and replaced Amman Marka International Airport (now Amman Civil Airport) as the city's main gateway.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The Aeolian Islands ( ; ; ), sometimes referred to as the Lipari Islands or Lipari group ( , ) after their largest island, are a volcanic archipelago in the Tyrrhenian Sea north of Sicily, said to be named after Aeolus, the mythical ruler of the winds. The islands' inhabitants are known as Aeolians (). The islands had a permanent population of 14,224 at the 2011 census; the latest official estimate is 15,419 as of 1 January 2019. The Aeolian Islands are a popular tourist destination in the summer and attract up to 600,000 visitors annually.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: There are seven significant islands: Lipari, Vulcano, Salina, Stromboli, Filicudi, Alicudi and Panarea, and a set of minor islands and rocks.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The "Lipari Islands" are 30 km and 80 km off the north coast of Sicily in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Vulcano is located closest to the Sicilian coast. Lipari and Salina follow to the north, Filicudi and Alicudi to the west, and Panarea and Stromboli to the northeast. In addition to these seven inhabited islands, there are a number of smaller, uninhabited islands and rocky cliffs, such as Basiluzzo, Strombolicchio, Dattilo and Lisca Bianca.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The largest island is Lipari (37.5 km²), followed by Salina (26.8  km²), Vulcano (21.2 km²), Stromboli (12.6 km²), Filicudi (9.5 km²) and Alicudi (5.2 km²). The smallest island with 3.4 km² is Panarea. The highest elevation of the Lipari Islands is Monte Fossa delle Felci on Salina, which reaches a height of 962 m.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The complex of the seven Aeolian Islands, covering an area of , originated in the Tyrrhenian Basin, a great plain at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Emissions of lava from depths of up to resulted in the formation of the Aeolian Islands, together with Ustica and a series of submarine volcanoes named Magnani, Vavilov, Marsili and Palinuro, as well as two that are unnamed.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The present shape of the Aeolian Islands is the result of volcanic activity over a period of 260,000 years. There are two active volcanoes – Stromboli and Vulcano. Steaming fumaroles and thermal waters are on most of the islands. The volcanic activity has also left the islands with a very fertile soil that is beneficial in the growth of natural flora.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: Geologically the archipelago is defined as a volcanic arc. The origin of the Aeolian Islands is due to movement of the Earth's crust as a result of plate tectonics. The African continental shelf is in constant movement towards Europe. Its subduction underneath the Eurasian plate generates magma, which rises to the surface to form the volcanoes. The "Aeolian Arc" extends for more than , but the area of geological instability caused by the collision of Africa and Europe is much larger. It includes Sicily, Calabria, and Campania together with Greece and the Aegean islands.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The islands form part of the Sicilian province of Messina. All the islands except Salina comprise the commune of Lipari within that province; Salina forms three separate communes: Malfa, Leni and Santa Marina Salina.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: Curbing urban development has been a key in preserving the Aeolian islands in a natural state. New buildings are severely restricted. Existing residences can be bought and restored but they must be constructed to resemble its whitewashed houses. Traditional houses consist of modular cubes constructed from indigenous building materials like stone, lava, pumice, and tufo. Almost all houses have a huge outdoor terrace, usually shaded by grape and flowering vines. The balconies and terraces of the houses are mostly decorated with bright patterned terra-cotta tiles, a throwback to long-ago Spanish conquerors.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: In Homer's epic poem, the Odyssey, Aeolus, son of Hippotes, was the divine keeper of the winds and king of the mythical, floating island of Aeolia. He kept the violent winds locked safely away inside the interior of his isle, releasing them only at the command of greatest gods to wreak devastation upon the world.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The hero of the epic poem, Odysseus, on his travels to return home from Troy, visited Aiolos' isle and was entrusted with a bag containing all of the winds to ensure a safe voyage home. However, during the trip, the hero's companions opened the bag and the escaping winds carried their ship all the way back to Aiolos' shore.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The first evidence of Sicilian migration was in Lipari (Castellaro Vecchio culture). A manufacture and commerce of obsidian objects was highly developed until the introduction of metals.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: During the Bronze Age, the Aeolians prospered by means of maritime commerce in an area which extended from Mycenae to the British Isles, from where tin was imported. Villages on the Aeolian islands flourished on Capo Graziano (Filicudi), Castello (Lipari), Serro dei Cianfi (Salina), Capo Milazzese (Panarea), and Portella (Salina). All these settlements were destroyed by new Italic invasions in 1250 BC.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: According to Diodorus Siculus, the Aeolian Islands were occupied by the Ausones led by Liparus. Liparus was succeeded by Aeolus whose house, according to the "Odyssey" by Homer, gave hospitality to Odysseus.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: In 580 BC, Greeks exiled from Rhodes and Knidos landed at Lipari and began a period of Greek domination, which was known for acts of piracy against Etruscan and Phoenician shipping. There was production of vases and other ceramics.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The islanders were allies of the Carthaginians against Rome during the Punic Wars. Although the Battle of the Lipari Islands in 260 BC led to a Carthaginian victory, the Romans later sacked Lipari and their domination led to a period of poverty.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: At the fall of the Roman Empire, the Aeolian Islands came under the sway of the Visigoths, the Vandals and the Ostrogoths, followed by the domination of the Byzantine Empire. According to a Christian legend, in 264 a coffin which contained the body of Bartholomew washed up on the beach of Lipari, with the result that Bartholomew was immediately elected the patron saint of the Aeolian Islands. In 836 the Aghlabids of Ziyadat Allah I of Ifriqiya sacked Lipari, massacred most of the population, enslaved the survivors and annexed the Liparian Islands into the Emirate of Sicily.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The Norman conquest of Sicily from the Emirate of Sicily in 1061 resulted in the annexation of the islands. Roger II of Sicily sent the Benedictine monks to Lipari, which gave rise to considerable development on the islands. A cathedral dedicated to Saint Bartholomew was built, as well as the Benedictine monastery in the castle. In 1208 Frederick II of Swabia acceded to the throne of the Kingdom of Sicily. The period of prosperity which followed, ended with the domination of the Angevins and the rebellion of the Sicilians which culminated in the revolt of the Sicilian Vespers. The Aeolians however, remained loyal to Charles of Anjou, and commercial links were established with Naples, the capital of the Angevin kingdom. In 1337 Lipari opened its gates to the French fleet without resistance, and in return obtained various commercial and fiscal benefits. In the mid-15th century, Naples and Palermo united into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies under the crown of Alfonso V of Aragon.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: On June 30, 1544, a fleet of 180 Ottoman vessels under the command of the corsair Hayreddin Barbarossa occupied Lipari and laid siege to the castle. The defenders surrendered. Historically, it is said around 9,000 of the 10,000 citizens of Lipari were captured and enslaved although a couple of more recent scholars have questioned this number arguing for a lower population at the time of Barbarossa. A number of citizens were ransomed in Messina and returned to the islands but most of those captured never returned. Only after the tragedy did the Spanish authorities turn their attention to Lipari and repopulate the city with Sicilian, Calabrian and Spanish families. The city walls and houses were rebuilt and an Aeolian fleet was constructed which was able to successfully defend the Tyrrhenian Sea from the Ottomans.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: In 1693, an earthquake destroyed all the towns in eastern Sicily, causing around 60,000 deaths. After the population invoked the protection of Saint Bartholomew during prayers in the cathedral, there was not a single victim on the Aeolian Islands. The economic conditions of the islands improved greatly during the 17th century with agricultural progress (malvasia grapes), capers, and a variety of fruit, vegetables and fishing). With the Bourbons came the introduction of criminal and political prisoners to the islands. In 1916, the penal colony was closed, but the Fascist regime unsuccessfully tried to reopen it in 1926. The island population reacted by pulling down the remains of the ex-penitentiary in the castle. However, not long after, the castle was converted to accommodate anti-Fascist political prisoners in enforced exile. Liparians fraternised with these exiles until the Allies' liberation. After the war, the same room that had housed the opponents of Fascism became the Aeolian Archaeological Museum.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: Towards the end of the 19th century, the Aeolian Islands were visited by Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria—a friend of the islands and also a man with a profound knowledge of the archipelago. Between the years 1893–96 he published a work of eight volumes on the Aeolian Islands.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: In August 1888, the crater named Fossa on Vulcano erupted and caused many deaths in the sulphur mines. The eruptions continued for 19 months.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: On New Year's Day in 1909, a rumour appeared in international newspapers that the Aeolian Islands had been "swallowed up by the sea" during a time of volcanic activity. While communication with the islands was interrupted for a time, they were not otherwise inconvenienced.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: During World War II, all of the Aeolian Islands were captured by the Allies in August 1943, during the invasion of Sicily.


title: Aeolian Islands

text: The Aeolian Islands were listed by UNESCO in 2000 as a World Heritage Site for providing "an outstanding record of volcanic island-building and destruction, and ongoing volcanic phenomena". Status as a World Heritage Site was threatened by Italy's failure to close the pumice quarry as well as its failure to prevent the building of 4 new harbours. However, , it is still listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage site.


title: McMillions

text: McMillions (stylized as McMillion$) is a documentary miniseries about the McDonald's Monopoly promotion scam that occurred between 1989 and 2001. Directed by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte, the series details how the scam was perpetrated by Jerry Jacobson, the head of security for the agency that ran the promotion, and how he recruited a wide range of accomplices. The series premiered in the US on February 3, 2020, on HBO, and all episodes were made available in the UK on May 27, 2020, on Sky Documentaries. "McMillions" was nominated for five Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.


title: McMillions

text: "McMillions" "examines the $24 million worth of fraud that corrupted the McDonald's Monopoly game between 1989 and 2001, in which there were almost no legitimate million-dollar winners in the contest." Through six episodes, the documentary introduces the FBI and other legal authorities who investigated the Monopoly game heist, as well as the bogus winners and the perpetrators. Using in-depth interviews with those involved in every aspect of the crime, "McMillions" offers an insider’s view into one of the most notorious fraud cases of the 1990s and early 2000s.


title: McMillions

text: The series is executive produced by Unrealistic Ideas' Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson, Archie Gips and written, directed and also executive produced by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte.


title: McMillions

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the series had an 87% rating with an average score of 7.29 out of 10 based on 31 reviews. The site's critical consensus read: "Like something out of a movie, "McMillions" effectively — if not always artfully — captures the chaos of this once-in-a-lifetime, very real con and the colorful cast of characters at its center." On Metacritic, it had a score of 72 out of 100 based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: "The Dance of Dragons" is the ninth and penultimate episode of the fifth season of HBO's medieval fantasy television series "Game of Thrones." The 49th episode overall, "The Dance of Dragons" was written by the series' creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss based on material primarily found on George R. R. Martin's novel "A Dance with Dragons", from which the title of the episode is derived. It was directed by David Nutter, who also directed the season finale.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: In the episode, Jon Snow allows the surviving wildlings to pass through the Wall at Castle Black. Stannis Baratheon allows Melisandre to sacrifice his daughter, Shireen Baratheon, to the Lord of Light. Arya Stark seeks personal revenge in Braavos. Jaime Lannister strikes a deal with Prince Doran Martell of Dorne to allow Myrcella Baratheon to return home. In Meereen, Daenerys Targaryen is ambushed in a surprise attack by the Sons of the Harpy during a tournament in the fighting pits, eventually escaping with Drogon. "The Dance of Dragons" received a positive response from critics, who lauded its conclusion on Daznak's Pit but was polarized by the characterization of Stannis Baratheon.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: In the United States, it received a viewership of 7.14 million in its initial broadcast. It won two Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series and Outstanding Special Visual Effects, and was submitted by actress Emilia Clarke (who portrayed Daenerys Targaryen) to support her nomination for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: This episode marks the final appearances of Joel Fry (Hizdahr Zo Loraq) and Kerry Ingram (Shireen Baratheon).


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Jon retreats from Hardhome to the Wall defeated, accompanied by the surviving wildlings. Much to the chagrin of some of the Night's Watch, Jon allows them to pass through the gates and come south of the Wall.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Caught in a snowstorm, Stannis's army is low on morale and supplies after Ramsay Bolton sabotages his resources in the night. Stannis commands Davos to return to Castle Black and ask Jon for supplies and manpower, promising to return the favor when he takes the Iron Throne. As Davos leaves, Stannis reluctantly allows Melisandre to sacrifice his daughter, Shireen, to the Lord of Light for the prospect of better weather, so his army can continue their march to Winterfell.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Jaime secures Myrcella Baratheon's release from Doran Martell's court against an indignant Ellaria Sand. Bronn is also released from captivity by Prince Trystane.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: In the fighting pits, Daenerys Targaryen attends a tournament. To her surprise, Jorah is competing, and he wins. As he does, the Sons of the Harpy attack the stadium of Daznak's Pit in an attempt to assassinate Daenerys Targaryen, who is rescued by Jorah and her largest dragon, Drogon. Leaving Tyrion Lannister and her retainers behind with awe, Daenerys rides the dragon for the first time and flees the city.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: This episode was adapted for television by series co-creators and showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. It contains content from George R. R. Martin's novel "A Dance with Dragons", chapters "The Sacrifice", "The Watcher", and "Daenerys IX". It also contains material from the preview chapter "Mercy" from the forthcoming "The Winds of Winter".


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Like other episodes this season, "The Dance of Dragons" contains original content not found in Martin's novels. This episode features the first instance of containing content that will appear in future, forthcoming novels. Martin confirmed to Benioff and Weiss Shireen would be burned to death as a sacrifice in an unpublished future novel. Benioff said: "When George first told us about this, it was one of those moments where I remember looking at Dan, it was just, like, god it's so, so horrible, and it's so good in a story sense, because it all comes together." Weiss says he believes the decision to kill Shireen in this way is, "entirely [narratively] justified," questioning why "we're all highly selective about which characters deserve our empathy. Stannis has been burning people alive for seemingly trivial reasons since season 2."


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: "The Dance of Dragons" was directed by David Nutter. He also directed the subsequent episode, "Mother's Mercy".


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: "The Dance of Dragons" was watched by an estimated 7.14 million American viewers during its first airing. With Live+7 DVR viewing factored in, the episode had an overall rating of 9.92 million viewers, and a 5.2 in the 18–49 demographic. In the United Kingdom, the episode was viewed by 2.473 million viewers, making it the highest-rated broadcast that week. It also received 0.141 million timeshift viewers.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: "The Dance of Dragons" received highly positive reviews, with many critics praising the episode's conclusion in Daznak's Pit. The showrunners's decision to have Stannis sacrifice Shireen, however, polarized critics, with some praising it as strong character development and others feeling it betrayed Stannis's character. The episode received a rating of 88% on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes from 33 reviews with an average rating of 8.9 out of 10 and the critics consensus reading "Underscored by an especially heartwrenching moment and a spectacular display of power, "The Dance of Dragons" successfully delivers the shock and awe audiences have come to expect from the series' penultimate episodes."


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Matt Fowler of "IGN" heavily praised the episode, awarding it 9.3/10, an "amazing" score. He especially praised the episode's final act, stating "And just the spectacle of Dany climbing on top of Drogon, with care, and then soaring up and off into the sky was remarkable. It's funny that a huge moment for her as a Targaryen and the possible future leader of Westeros came right during one of her most bloody and spectacular failures as a Queen." He summarized his review by saying "GoT delivered another exciting (and unsettling) episode as Stannis made a big decision & Daenerys attended a tournament" and labelled Stannis's decision a strong point of the episode. Charlotte Runcie of "The Daily Telegraph" also reviewed the episode favorably: "Hurling Hollywood-level budgets behind a multi-season TV show paid rich rewards this week, from the enormous "Gladiator"-style sweep of the crowded coliseum arena to thrillingly choreographed fights to the death before a huge, baying audience." Runcie was also impressed with the Shireen sacrifice scene, calling it "one of the most upsetting scenes" in season 5.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Writing for "The A.V. Club", both writers responded positively to the episode. Writing for people who have not read the novels, Brandon Nowalk awarded the episode an A−, praising Stannis's sacrifice of Shireen. He said "Stannis burning his daughter Shireen at the stake is the hardest "Game of Thrones" has hit since the Red Wedding, only this violence is completely drained of excitement. It’s not a shock moment, and there’s no gross-out gore as in Oberyn’s death. Instead it’s a long, cold death march. What’s most impressive is the pacing, which is not the season’s strongest suit." He also praised the episode's conclusion in Meereen by saying "The close-up of Dany taking Missandei’s hand is so vivid I’m practically getting misty now", and further stated "The CGI could use some polish, but nothing short of Shireen can turn my smile upside down." Writing for people who have read the novels, Myles McNutt awarded the episode a B+, praising the Meereen story by saying "It’s a powerful image, rendered as effectively as it could be given the budgetary limitations of the series. Watching Dany soar about the stadium on Drogon is an iconic image, but it’s not one that any other characters could really experience, which is meaningful in and of itself."


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Erik Kain of "Forbes" was more critical of the sacrifice scene. While he praised the episode overall as "thrilling and tragic and intense," he called the sacrifice scene "a horrible, no-good, very bad, infuriating way to ruin Stannis as a character" and "a monstrosity of a writing decision." He also said the scene was "one of the most disturbing, baffling, and unnecessary departures from the books" that the show has so far presented, though he noted that the sacrifice scene had actually been George R. R. Martin's idea and that (with two installments of "The Song of Ice and Fire" still unpublished) it was unclear exactly how much Shireen's death in the show would deviate from her story arc in the books.


title: The Dance of Dragons

text: Finding a middle ground, Alyssa Rosenberg of "The Washington Post" agreed that the sacrifice scene was disturbing, but she found that David Nutter "did a beautiful job" directing it and believed that the scene wondrously developed Stannis as a character who is so fixated on "his own chosenness" that he will do anything to fulfill his claim to the throne. She also noted that the scene departed from the books so far, but would possibly be reconciled in one of the future installments.


title: Nicola Adams

text: Nicola Virginia Adams (born 26 October 1982) is a British former professional boxer who competed from 2017 to 2019. She retired with an undefeated record and held the WBO female flyweight title in 2019. As an amateur, she became the first female boxer to become an Olympic champion after winning gold at London 2012, and the first double Olympic champion following a second gold medal at Rio 2016, both in the flyweight division. As of 27 May 2016 she was the reigning Olympic, World and European Games champion at flyweight, and won the entire set of amateur championships available to her – Olympic, Commonwealth and European Games' titles, and the World, European and European Union championships.


title: Nicola Adams

text: Adams represented Haringey Police Community Club at boxing. She is openly lesbian, and was named the most influential LGBT person in Britain by "The Independent" in 2012 and has been included in the annual "Powerlist", recognition as one of the most influential people of African/African-Caribbean descent in the UK. She also became the first openly LGBT person to win an Olympic boxing gold medal, after her win at the 2012 Summer Olympics.


title: Nicola Adams

text: Adams was born in Leeds, West Yorkshire, on 26 October 1982. She was educated at Agnes Stewart Church of England High School, Ebor Gardens, Burmantofts, Leeds. She also went to Hopwood Hall College in Rochdale.


title: Nicola Adams

text: Adams fought (and won) her first bout at the age of 13, but it was four years before she found a second opponent. In 2001, she became the first woman boxer ever to represent England, in a fight against an Irish boxer. In 2003, she became English amateur champion for the first time, and she retained the title at the next three championships.


title: Nicola Adams

text: In 2007, Adams became the first English female boxer to win a medal in a major boxing tournament, taking silver in the European Championships. She won silver again at the world championships in Ningbo, China, in 2008, which was Britain’s first women’s world championship medal in women’s boxing. The following year she had to abstain from the sport for several months due to a back injury, but she returned to success at the 2010 world championships in Bridgetown, Barbados, taking Silver again, competing now at . Adams struggled to continue her boxing career due to lack of funds. She worked as an acting extra on soap operas such as "Coronation Street", "Emmerdale", and "EastEnders", and worked as a builder before the International Olympic Committee backed funding for women's boxing in 2009.


title: Nicola Adams

text: In November 2010, Adams was victorious in the first-ever GB Amateur Boxing Championship at the Echo Arena Liverpool. In 2011, she won gold at the European Union Amateur Boxing Championships in Katowice. In July 2011, the BBC included Adams in a feature on "6 Promising Britons to watch in the Olympics".


title: Nicola Adams

text: In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Adams defeated Mary Kom from India in the Flyweight semi-final. She went on to defeat Chinese boxer and world number one Ren Cancan in the final to claim the first Olympic women's boxing gold medal.


title: Nicola Adams

text: At the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Adams knocked out Michaela Walsh of Northern Ireland to take the gold medal in the women's flyweight division on a split decision.


title: Nicola Adams

text: At the 2016 Rio Olympic games Adams successfully defended her Olympic title, defeating Sarah Ourahmoune of France in the Final on 20 August.


title: Nicola Adams

text: On 23 January 2017 it was confirmed that Adams had turned professional, having signed with promoter Frank Warren. She made her debut on 8 April, scoring a four-round points decision victory against Virginia Carcamo at the Manchester Arena.


title: Nicola Adams

text: After securing another three wins, all by technical knockout, she faced former world champion Isabel Millan for the WBO interim female flyweight title on 6 October 2018 at the Morningside Arena in Leicester. Fighting beyond four rounds for the first time in her career, Adams defeated Millan via ten-round unanimous decision to capture the WBO interim title. Two judges scored the bout 97–93 and the third scored it 96–94. After the win Frank Warren stated, "She is a champion, there's no going backwards, on 22nd December I'm hoping it will be for the full title".


title: Nicola Adams

text: She was scheduled to challenge for the full world title on 8 March 2019 against reigning WBO female flyweight champion Arely Muciño at the Royal Albert Hall in London. However, the fight was postponed after Adams sustained an injury during training and was forced to withdraw. After Muciño suffered an injury during a successful defence of her title in April followed by an ankle injury sustained in a car crash, the WBO announced that Adams had been elevated from interim to full WBO champion in July 2019 due to Muciño being unable to "participate in active competition".


title: Nicola Adams

text: The first defence of her title came against former world title challenger Maria Salinas. The bout took place on 27 September 2019 at the Royal Albert Hall and was aired live on BT Sport in the UK and ESPN+ in the US. After eleven months out of the ring, in what was the first ever female professional boxing match to be held at the Royal Albert Hall, Adams retained her title with a split draw. One judge scored the bout 97–93 to Adams, another scored it 96–94 to Salinas, while the third scored it even at 95–95.


title: Nicola Adams

text: During the first round of her rematch with Salinas, Adams suffered a torn pupil. She initially thought it to be a minor injury. In an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live Adams said, "I didn't think it would be anything too serious but I had torn the pupil in my eye. I got the injury in the first round of my last fight [against Maria Salinas]. I phoned the doctors a couple of days afterwards. I could take the chance and keep boxing and hope nothing would happen to my eye or an unlucky punch could mean I lose my sight."


title: Nicola Adams

text: She announced her retirement on 6 November 2019 in an open letter in the "Yorkshire Evening Post", saying, "I’m immensely honoured to have represented our country – to win double Olympic gold medals and then the WBO championship belt is a dream come true… But it’s not without taking its toll on my body, and aside from the expected aches and pains - I’ve been advised that any further impact to my eye would most likely lead to irreparable damage and permanent vision loss."


title: Nicola Adams

text: In April 2021, Adams joined fellow British Olympians Greg Rutherford and Kelly Smith, and fitness instructor Mr Motivator in launching the ‘Energy Fit for the Future’ campaign by Smart Energy GB, which aimed at encouraging people to install smart meters in their homes.


title: Nicola Adams

text: In 2012, she became the first female boxer to receive an award from the Boxing Writers' Club of Great Britain. Specifically, she was awarded the Joe Bromley Award for outstanding services to boxing. She was also the first woman ever to be invited to the club's awards ceremony.


title: Nicola Adams

text: In November 2012, she topped the list of "The Independent"s 101 most influential LGBT people in Britain for 2012.


title: Nicola Adams

text: She was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours and later Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to boxing.


title: Nicola Adams

text: In July 2015, she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the University of Leeds. In November 2015, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.


title: Nicola Adams

text: In 2016, Adams was named Number One in the "DIVA" Power List of the UK's most eminent lesbian and bisexual women.


title: Nicola Adams

text: On 2 September 2020, it was announced that Adams would be a contestant on the eighteenth series of "Strictly Come Dancing" and that she would feature in the competition's first same-sex couple alongside professional Katya Jones. On 12 November 2020, they were forced to withdraw from the competition after Jones tested positive for COVID-19.


title: Nicola Adams

text: On 12 July 2022, it was announced that Adams had welcomed her first child, alongside her girlfriend Ella Baig.


title: Rommel myth

text: The Rommel myth, or the Rommel legend, is a phrase used by a number of historians for the common depictions of German field marshal Erwin Rommel as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of Nazi Germany due to his presumed participation in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler, which led to Rommel's forced suicide in 1944. According to these historians, who take a critical view of Rommel, such depictions are not accurate.


title: Rommel myth

text: The description of Rommel as a brilliant commander started in 1941, with Rommel's participation, as a component of Nazi propaganda to praise the and instill optimism in the German public. It was picked up and disseminated in the West by the British war-time press as the Allies sought to explain their continued inability to defeat the Axis forces in North Africa: the genius of Rommel was used by dissenters to protest against social inequality within the British army and by leaders like Churchill to reduce class tensions.


title: Rommel myth

text: Following the war, the Western Allies, and particularly the British, depicted Rommel as the "good German" and "our friend Rommel", adhering closely to the tenets of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. His reputation for conducting a clean war was used in the interests of West German rearmament during the Cold War and the reconciliation between the former enemies—the United Kingdom and the United States on one side, and the new Federal Republic of Germany on the other. The 1950 biography "" and the 1953 publication of "The Rommel Papers" added to the myth, which has proven resilient to critical examination.


title: Rommel myth

text: This reevaluation has produced new interpretations of Rommel, including his relationship with Nazism, his abilities as an operational and strategic level commander, and his role in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Historians and commentators conclude that Rommel remains an ambiguous figure, not easily definable either inside or outside the myth.


title: Rommel myth

text: Early authors such as Desmond Young and Basil Liddell Hart mention "the Rommel legend" in their respective books. Liddell Hart described British efforts to make counterpropaganda against Rommel's military reputation (while showing respect to his conduct of war): "Thus the British commanders and headquarter staffs were compelled to make strenuous efforts to dispel 'the Rommel legend. As early as 1950, Bernard Montgomery's former deputy referred to the "myth" in an article titled "The Rommel Myth Debunked" where he aimed to address perceived misconceptions regarding the fighting in the North African Campaign.


title: Rommel myth

text: As used by German authors, "Mythos Rommel" (roughly translated into English as "Rommel myth") is a neutral description, as can be seen in works by historians such as Peter Lieb. The term recognizes, per Lieb, that "Rommel is and remains a "Mythos" ... He could not be stuck in a single drawer. At any rate, one should decide for oneself whether one sees him as a role model or not". German authors who use the word "Mythos" in this neutral manner include , , Jörg Echternkamp, Guido Knopp, and Sandra Mass.


title: Rommel myth

text: The origins of the myth can be found first in Rommel's drive for success as a young officer in World War I, and then in his popular 1937 book "Infanterie Greift An" ("Infantry Attacks") that was written in a style that diverged from the German military literature of the time. The book became a bestseller and was supposedly read by Adolf Hitler.


title: Rommel myth

text: Historian Antony Beevor places the start of the "Rommel legend" on 13 May 1940, during the Battle of France, when Rommel's troops crossed the Meuse under fire and established bridgeheads at Houx and Dinant.


title: Rommel myth

text: According to Hans-Ulrich Wehler, the original reason that led to Rommel's high reputation in foreign countries was that people in Allied countries heard that he treated the captured soldiers well.


title: Rommel myth

text: Rommel's victories in France were featured in the German press and in the February 1941 film "Sieg im Westen" "(Victory in the West)", in which he personally helped direct a segment reenacting the crossing of the Somme River. Rommel's victories in 1941 were played up by Nazi propaganda, even though his successes in North Africa were achieved in Germany's least strategically valued theatre of the war. In November 1941, Joseph Goebbels (head of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda) wrote about his intention to have Rommel "elevated to a kind of popular hero". Rommel, with his innate abilities as a military commander and love of the spotlight, was a perfect fit for the role Goebbels designed for him.


title: Rommel myth

text: In North Africa, Rommel received help in cultivating his image from Alfred Ingemar Berndt, a senior official at the Reich Propaganda Ministry, who had volunteered for military service. Seconded by Goebbels, Berndt was assigned to Rommel's staff and became one of his closest aides. Berndt often acted as liaison between Rommel, the Propaganda Ministry and the Führer Headquarters. He directed Rommel's photo shoots and filed radio dispatches describing the battles.


title: Rommel myth

text: In the spring of 1941, Rommel's name began to appear in the British media. In the autumn of 1941 and early winter of 1941/1942, he was mentioned in the British press almost daily. The "Daily Express" and "The Cairns Post" wrote: "No 'von' nonsense about Erich, nor the code of conduct—such as it was—that most Prussian officers have honoured in war. He is a gangster general, trained in a harder school than Chicago. He was Hitler's thug organiser before he came to power ... So Erich became leader of the S.S. Black Guard, Hitler's private army, which executes his private revenges and guards his person ... When at last Poland made a stand for democracy, it was Rommel who led a panzer corps against the Polish horse cavalry with conspicuous gallantry. Later in France Hitler made him a Knight of the Iron Cross for breaking through the Maginot Line at Maubeuge with the 7th Armoured Division. True, French resistance was almost at an end then, but Erich was entitled to his decoration, too." Toward the end of the year, the Reich propaganda machine also used Rommel's successes in Africa as a diversion from the Wehrmacht's challenging situation in the Soviet Union with the stall of Operation Barbarossa.


title: Rommel myth

text: The American press soon began to take notice of Rommel as well, following the United States' entry into the war on 11 December 1941, writing that: "The British ... admire him because he beat them and were surprised to have beaten in turn such a capable general". General Claude Auchinleck distributed a directive to his commanders seeking to dispel the notion that Rommel was a "superman". The Battle of Kasserine Pass during the Tunisian Campaign intensified the GIs' admiration towards Rommel. The cult of personality was so strong that, according to Peter Schrijvers, "for the remainder of the war, German POWs would part with pictures of Rommel as reluctantly as GIs were eager to get them". While Allied troops respected Rommel, civilians held the "widely accepted" negative image of Rommel's origin and his connection with the Nazis. As described by Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck (who debunked the invented story) and "The New York Times" in 1943, "It has been said that Rommel started his career as a Hitler hoodlum and owes his quick rise to his early collaboration with Himmler." This line of propaganda perpetuated until the war ended. According to Atkinson, to counter the "perverse chivalry" ("war without hate", in Rommel's words) that Rommel promoted, the British and American authorities instituted hate training and tried to raise the eagerness to kill the enemies by stressing enemy brutality, as well as spattering slaughterhouse blood in assault training courses. General John Strawson notes the same difference in attitudes to war between the leaderships of the two sides.


title: Rommel myth

text: The attention of the Western and especially the British press thrilled Goebbels, who wrote in his diary in early 1942: "Rommel continues to be the recognised darling of even the enemies' news agencies". Rommel was pleased by the media attention, both domestic and foreign, often discussing it in letters to his wife. Hitler took note of the British propaganda as well, commenting in the summer of 1942 that Britain's leaders must have hoped "to be able to explain their defeat to their own nation more easily by focusing on Rommel".


title: Rommel myth

text: Rommel was the German commander most frequently covered in the German media, and the only one to be given a press conference, which took place in October 1942. The press conference was moderated by Goebbels and was attended by both domestic and foreign media. Rommel declared: "Today we ... have the gates of Egypt in hand, and with the intent to act!" Keeping the focus on Rommel distracted the German public from Wehrmacht losses elsewhere as the tide of the war began to turn. He became a symbol that was used to reinforce the German public's faith in an ultimate Axis victory.


title: Rommel myth

text: In the wake of the British victory at the Second Battle of El Alamein in November 1942, and other military reverses, the Propaganda Ministry directed the media to emphasise Rommel's invincibility. The charade was maintained until the spring of 1943, even as the German situation in Africa became increasingly precarious. In May 1943, to ensure that the inevitable defeat in Africa would not be associated with Rommel's name, Goebbels had the Supreme High Command announce that Rommel was on a two-month leave for health reasons. Instead, the campaign was presented by Berndt, who resumed his role in the Propaganda Ministry, as a ruse to tie down the British Empire while Germany was turning Europe into an impenetrable fortress, with Rommel at the helm of this success. After the radio program ran in May 1943, Rommel sent Berndt a case of cigars as a sign of his gratitude.


title: Rommel myth

text: Although Rommel then entered a period without a significant command, he remained a household name in Germany, synonymous with the aura of invincibility. Hitler then made Rommel part of his defensive strategy for "Fortress Europe" ("Festung Europa") by sending him to the West to inspect fortifications along the Atlantic Wall. Goebbels supported the decision, noting in his diary that Rommel was "undoubtedly the suitable man" for the task. The propaganda minister expected the move to reassure the German public, and at the same time to have a negative impact on the Allied forces' morale.


title: Rommel myth

text: In France, a Wehrmacht propaganda company frequently accompanied Rommel on his inspection trips to document his work for both domestic and foreign audiences. In May 1944, the German newsreels reported on Rommel's speech at a Wehrmacht conference, where he stated his conviction that "every single German soldier will make his contribution against the Anglo-American spirit that it deserves for its criminal and bestial air war campaign against our homeland." The speech led to an upswing in morale and sustained confidence in Rommel.


title: Rommel myth

text: When Rommel was seriously wounded on 17 July 1944, the Propaganda Ministry undertook efforts to conceal the injury so as not to undermine domestic morale. Despite this, the news leaked to the British press. To counteract the rumours of a serious injury and even death, Rommel was required to appear at a press conference held on 1 August. On 3 August, the German press published an official report that Rommel had been injured in a car accident. Rommel noted in his diary his dismay at this twisting of the truth, belatedly realising how much the Reich propaganda was using him for its own ends.


title: Rommel myth

text: Quoting Correlli Barnett ("The Desert War entered the British folk-memory, a source of legend, endlessly re-written as both history and fiction"), the historian Lucio Ceva argues that even though the myth was of British origin, it found its reflections in post-war West Germany. The historian Peter Caddick-Adams suggests that, following his forced suicide, Rommel emerged as the "acceptable face of German militarism, the 'good' German who stood apart from the Nazi regime." The ground was thus fertile for the myth to be reborn after the war, in the interest of the program of the German rearmament and the Allied–West German reconciliation.


title: Rommel myth

text: After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, it became clear to the Americans and the British that a German army would have to be revived to help face off against the Soviet Union. Many former German officers, including Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel, who had served on Rommel's staff in France, were convinced that no future West German Army would be possible without the rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht. In October 1950, at the behest of West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a group of former senior officers produced the document that later became known as the Himmerod memorandum. Intended as both a planning and a negotiating tool, the document included a key demand for "measures to transform domestic and foreign public opinion" with regards to the German military.


title: Rommel myth

text: Rommel's former enemies, especially the British, played a key role in the manufacture and propagation of the myth. The German rearmament was highly dependent on the moral rehabilitation that the Wehrmacht needed. The journalist and historian Basil Liddell Hart, an early proponent of these two interconnected initiatives, provided the first widely available source on Rommel in his 1948 book on Hitler's generals, updated in 1951. Portraying Rommel as an outsider to the Nazi regime in the 1948 edition, Liddell Hart concluded the 1951 text with comments on Rommel's "gifts and performance" that "qualified him for a place in the role of the 'Great Captains' of history".


title: Rommel myth

text: The 1943 movie "Five Graves to Cairo", directed by Billy Wilder, was the only wartime movie that featured a German general as a major character. According to Battistelli, Erich von Stroheim's portrayal of Rommel might "have been far from reality, but it certainly contributed to give rise to Rommel's myth". In June 1943, the magazine "Life" comments: "It will not win any Academy awards but is an important film for it re-introduces Erich von Stroheim as the screen's arch-villain in a Prussian uniform, this time portraying the Nazi's much-touted Field Marshal Rommel... Forgetting his early caricatures of pompous Prussians, he plays Field Marshal Rommel with much finesse, shows him to be human as well as cunning, brutal and vain." The film "exploits one of the standard wartime German stereotypes, that of the cold, ruthless aristocratic Junker officer", portraying Rommel as a "Wilhelmine officer complete with duelling scars and unbending authority." Film historian Bernard F. Dick remarks that Stroheim's Rommel already had sympathetic traits, too, considering Rommel himself was a person screenwriters found hard to vilify or caricaturize.


title: Rommel myth

text: The other foundational text was the influential and laudatory 1950 biography "" by Brigadier Desmond Young. Young had served in North Africa in the Indian Army in a public relations capacity, and was once taken prisoner by Rommel's troops. Young interviewed Rommel's widow extensively and worked with several individuals who had been close to him, including Hans Speidel, with Liddell Hart also supporting the project. Speidel had already written in 1946 that he planned to turn Rommel into "the hero of the German people", to give them a positive role model. Rommel was a suitable candidate, since the manner of his death had led to the assumption that he had not been a supporter of Nazism. Young subscribed to this view, subtly conveying that Rommel served the regime, but was not part of it. The result was predictably positive, "bordering on hagiography", according to the historian Patrick Major.


title: Rommel myth

text: The reception of "The Desert Fox" in Britain was enthusiastic: the book went through eight editions in a year. Young's biography was another step in the development of the Rommel myth, with Rommel emerging as an active, if not a leading, plotter. Speidel contributed as well, starting, from the early 1950s, to bring up Rommel's and his own role in the plot, thus boosting Speidel's suitability for a future role in the new military force of the Federal Republic, the Bundeswehr, and then in NATO.


title: Rommel myth

text: The book was not without its detractors. The review in "Time" magazine noted the legendary status Rommel had achieved in his lifetime and quoted another review that described Rommel as "the British army's favorite German general." The "Time" reviewer concluded that the book was "just this side of hero worship". Quoting Ernest Bevin, a noted Labour politician, it alluded to the book being an example of the "trade union of generals" in action: Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck, in a foreword to the book, honoured Rommel "as a soldier and a man", and Field Marshal Archibald Wavell included him "among the chosen few, among the very brave, the very true". The reviewer noted the obvious admiration Young had for the German generals, and that the book may well "have been written by [one]". Richard Crossman, a Labour MP, objected to the portrayal of Rommel as an anti-Nazi, writing:


title: Rommel myth

text: As a nation, we deceive ourselves into believing that there are two sorts of Germans—the Good German and the Bad German. The "Bad Germans" are Nazis, militarists, anti-democratic, and perpetrators of atrocities. The "Good Germans" are peace-loving democrats and real gentlemen. "Ergo", since Rommel was a clean fighter, he must have been anti-Nazi, and men like him would make good allies of democracy against the Russians.


title: Rommel myth

text: The historian Hugh Trevor-Roper commented that "the danger now is not that 'our friend Rommel' is becoming not a magician or a bogy-man, but too much of a hero". He pointed out Rommel's early proximity to Hitler; he described Rommel as representative of the connection between Nazism and the Wehrmacht and the support that the German officer corps offered for "Hitler's politics and Hitler's war".


title: Rommel myth

text: The 1951 film "", based on Young's biography, portrayed Rommel in a sympathetic way, as a loyal, humane soldier and a firm opponent to Hitler's policies. The film played up Rommel's disputed role in the conspiracy against Hitler, while omitting Rommel's early association with the dictator.


title: Rommel myth

text: Writing in "The Daily Telegraph", under the title "Rommel: A Flattering and Unconvincing Portrait", the journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who had served in intelligence in North Africa during the war, commented that the film represented "a tendency towards collective schizophrenia whereas ... 'chivalry' towards a captured brigadier is in no wise incompatible with a foreign policy of perfidy and the brutal disregard for all the elementary decencies of civilised behaviour". Critical and public response in the U.S. was muted, but it was a commercial success in Britain, along with a less known 1953 film "The Desert Rats", where James Mason reprised his portrayal of Rommel.


title: Rommel myth

text: The film received nearly universally positive reviews in Britain, while protests at the cinemas broke out in Vienna and Milan. Liddell Hart watched the film with a group of high-ranking British officers and reported being "pleasantly surprised". Patrick Major argues that the desert war indeed proved a suitable space to effect the reconciliation among the former enemies. The British popular history focused on that theatre of war, almost to the exclusion of all others. He states that "The Desert Fox" had a "catalytic effect" in creating an image of the German armed forces that would be acceptable to the British public. Rommel was thus successfully integrated into the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. Petra Rau argues that Mason's Rommel (Contrasting with "Five Graves to Cairo", Rommel here was presented as representation of British virtues and thus a sympathetic figure), like other "Good Germans" in popular culture, is not portrayed as representative of Germans, but rather, an exceptional case who was surrounded by real Nazis.


title: Rommel myth

text: 1953 saw the publication of Rommel's writings of the war period as "The Rommel Papers", edited by the British journalist and historian B. H. Liddell Hart, the former Wehrmacht officer Fritz Bayerlein, who served on Rommel's staff in North Africa, and Rommel's widow and son. The volume contained an introduction and commentary by Liddell Hart.


title: Rommel myth

text: The historian Mark Connelly argues that "The Rommel Papers" was one of the two foundational works that lead to a "Rommel renaissance" and "Anglophone rehabilitation", the other being Young's biography. The book contributed to the perception of Rommel as a brilliant commander; in an introduction, Liddell Hart drew comparisons between Rommel and Lawrence of Arabia, "two masters of desert warfare".


title: Rommel myth

text: Meanwhile, Liddell Hart had a personal interest in the work: by having coaxed Rommel's widow to include material favourable to himself, he could present Rommel as his "pupil" when it came to mobile armoured warfare. Thus, Liddell Hart's "theory of indirect approach" became a precursor to the German "blitzkrieg" ("lightning war"). The controversy was described by the political scientist John Mearsheimer in his work "The Weight of History", who concluded that, by "putting words in the mouths of German Generals and manipulating history", Liddell Hart was in a position to show that he had been at the root of the dramatic German successes in 1940.


title: Rommel myth

text: The trend continued with other uncritical biographies, such as "Rommel as Military Commander" (1968), by the former British soldier and author Ronald Lewin, and "Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel" (1994), by the former British general David Fraser. These works focused on Rommel's military career, depoliticising it and presenting him strictly as a soldier.


title: Rommel myth

text: In another work on the North African campaign, the 1977 "The Life and Death of the Africa Korps", Lewin wrote that it was "necessary to assert that ... the purity of the desert purified the desert war", while Fraser focused on Rommel's battlefield performance and described him as a hero. Fraser's biography remains a work of high reputation, with Pier Paolo Battistelli praising it for the outstanding handling of the issue of Rommel's myth as well as his life and career in general. However, the work has been criticised by historian Mark Connelly as "encapsulat[ing] the post-1945 hagiographic approach". Connelly offers the example of Fraser's description of Rommel as one of the "great masters of manoeuvre in war", whose personality "transcends time" and "cuts like [a] sabre through the curtains of history".


title: Rommel myth

text: The historian Patrick Major points out that a recent work, the 2002 book "Alamein: War Without Hate" by Colin Smith and John Bierman, borrowed the name of Rommel's posthumous memoirs for its subtitle. Connelly includes works by Sir John Squire and General Sir John Hackett in the uncritical tradition. In contrast, German biographies, such as by the journalist Wolf Heckmann, were far less sympathetic.


title: Rommel myth

text: Some early authors who wrote about Rommel during the war and post-war biographers use the word "legend" or "myth" when describing various pieces of propaganda and rumours that the Nazi government and the Allied press spread about the life and character of Rommel. These rumours usually ignored his middle-class background and highlighted his connection with the lower classes and his early adherence to National Socialism or Hitler, using several invented anecdotes. The most notable of these, according to Charles F. Marshall, was that Rommel was a storm trooper (which was designed by Nazi propaganda to show "what heights a storm trooper could claim" and promote the impression of Rommel as an ardent Nazi supporter at the same time), that several American encyclopaedias still published a decade after the war.


title: Rommel myth

text: According to the historian Mark Connelly, Young and Liddell Hart laid the foundation for the Anglo-American myth, which consisted of three themes: Rommel's ambivalence towards Nazism; his military genius; and the emphasis of the chivalrous nature of the fighting in North Africa. Their works lent support to the image of the "clean Wehrmacht" and were generally not questioned, since they came from British authors, rather than German revisionists. The leading German news magazine "Der Spiegel" describes the myth as "Gentleman warrior, military genius".


title: Rommel myth

text: According to Watson, the most dominant element in the Rommel myth is Rommel the Superior Soldier, the second being Rommel the Common Man, and the last one Rommel the Martyr. Rosie Goldschmidt Waldeck, writing in 1943, also takes note of the image of the general who fought with common soldiers, with an indelible youthfulness and apparent invulnerability.


title: Rommel myth

text: Historian Sandra Mass considers the Rommel myth a hero cult, a synthesis of old and new hero cults and traditions culled primarily from Germany's largely imaginary colonial past, in particular the proletarian hero cult originally represented by Carl Peters and the bourgeois one represented by Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Rommel, as portrayed by this hero cult, was both chivalrous and ruthless, young and old, harsh and gentle, strong and righteous. Calder, Duffy and Ricci opine that Rommel's military brilliance provoked a masochistic tendency to romanticise a worthy opponent, that because he was skilled at his profession, he must have been an anti-Nazi hero.


title: Rommel myth

text: Post-1990s scholarship examined Rommel's attitude towards National Socialism, his performance as a military commander, his role in the 20 July plot and his motivations, leading to a more diverse range of interpretations of Rommel and the elements of the myth.


title: Rommel myth

text: Rommel was not a member of the Nazi Party. However, like other Wehrmacht officers, he welcomed Hitler's seizure of power. During his time in Goslar, he clashed with those "Sturmabteilung" (SA) men who attacked the Jews and others who supported them. Rommel thus showed sympathy towards Hitler's elimination of the SA, believing the worst was now over, although he opined that in the future the Führer should learn to see his own true strength and refrain from such illegal processes. Remy dated Rommel's support for Hitler as 1935, noting a speech in which Rommel praised Hitler for restoring the Germans' self-respect and establishment of the way towards an honourable and righteous peace, as well as efforts in alleviating the disadvantaged people's problems.


title: Rommel myth

text: The historians Ralf Georg Reuth, David T. Zabecki, Bruce Allen Watson and Peter Caddick-Adams, state that Rommel was one of Hitler's favorite generals and that his close relationship with the dictator benefited both his inter-war and war-time career. Robert Citino describes Rommel as "not apolitical" and writes that he owed his career to Hitler, to whom his attitude was "worshipful", while the historian Charles Messenger describes Rommel's "growing admiration" towards Hitler following the invasion of Poland. Speaking at The National WWII Museum's 2012 International Conference on World War II, the author Nigel Hamilton referred to Rommel as "quite a Nazi". This sympathy did not extend to the Party though. In this regard, he was similar to many other Wehrmacht soldiers, who, with encouragement from Hitler, erroneously believed the army to be the most important element of the regime. Rommel showed particular resentment towards the SA and later, the SS, for their brutality and absorption of resources and personnel.


title: Rommel myth

text: The historian Alaric Searle recasts Rommel's early involvement with the Nazi regime, including his role as a liaison between Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht. Young's biography had described Rommel's role in strictly military terms and alluded to a falling out between him and the Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach on ideological grounds. In fact, Rommel had twice proposed a plan that would have subordinated Hitler Youth to the army, removing it from the NSDAP control. That went against Schirach's wishes, resulting in Rommel's quiet removal from the project. Searle describes as "patently false" another of Young's assertions, namely that Rommel first became close to Hitler because Hitler had read "Infantry Attacks" and wanted to meet the author in the fall of 1938. This casts doubt on the rest of Young's narrative as it pertains to Rommel's relationship with the dictator. Searle writes that, by this time, "Like many other front-line officers, with little awareness of the military planning underway, Rommel was simply trying to carry out his orders." Remy points out that the incident of Rommel using tanks to protect a journey of Hitler, which has been used by Reuth and Irving to prove that Rommel came to Hitler's attention in 1936, actually happened in 1939. In 1936, according to Remy, Rommel was only a part of the elaborate spectacle that welcomed Hitler, and there was no evidence for the interaction between the two.


title: Rommel myth

text: Searle argues that Rommel not only "found favor with the Nazi regime, but ... was delighted with the preferential treatment he was receiving", including access to Hitler during the 1939 invasion of Poland. During the campaign, Rommel served as commander of the "Führerbegleitbrigade" battalion, tasked with guarding Hitler and his field headquarters. He attended Hitler's daily war briefings and had opportunities for one-on-one conversations with the dictator, which he proudly reported in letters to his wife. In a sign that he "lost touch with reality", as Searle puts it, Rommel wrote to his wife in October 1939 from the devastated Warsaw, where he was organising a victory parade: "There has been no water, no power, no gas, no food for two days. They have erected numerous barricades which blocked civilian movement and exposed people to bombardments from which they could not escape. The mayor estimated the number of the dead and injured to be 40,000 ... The inhabitants probably drew a breath of relief that we have arrived and rescued them."


title: Rommel myth

text: In 1939, Rommel received a promotion from Hitler to the rank of "Generalmajor" ahead of more senior officers. Showalter notes that even at this early stage, Hitler already regarded Rommel as a model for the fusion of Germany's new and old orders. With an intervention by Hitler, Rommel was subsequently able to obtain command of an armoured (Panzer) division despite having been turned down by the army's personnel office, which had offered him command of a mountain division. Rommel's unprofessional conduct was noted by his fellow officers and added to his growing reputation as one of Hitler's favoured commanders. After the Fall of France, Rommel sent to him a specially prepared diary on the 7th Division and received a letter of thanks. Unknown to Rommel though, Hitler had barely looked at his diary and the letter was written by an adjutant. Remy remarks that by this time, Hitler still did not treat Rommel as a significantly important person.


title: Rommel myth

text: When Rommel was being considered for appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in the summer of 1942, Goebbels wrote in his diary that Rommel "is ideologically sound, is not just sympathetic to the National Socialists. He is a National Socialist; he is a troop leader with a gift for improvisation, personally courageous and extraordinarily inventive. These are the kinds of soldiers we need."


title: Rommel myth

text: Rommel "exercised an almost hypnotic influence on Hitler", according to Albert Kesselring, and another colleague called him "the Führer's marshal". American writer Rick Atkinson concludes that Rommel was "loyal in his own fashion and as beguiled by Hitler as steel filings by a magnet ... Hitler was a bulwark against bolshevism, [Rommel] had told staff officers." Despite this intimate relationship, he was not provided with basic information on Germany's strategic plan: "Rommel did not know that smashing the Soviet Union and major territorial acquisitions in the East would be the cornerstone of this plan. Nor did Rommel realise that Hitler saw no conflict of interest between Germany and the maritime power Great Britain, which he hoped to make an ally." He also had only a week's warning before the launch of Case White at the start of 1943. Messenger argues that Rommel's attitude towards Hitler changed only after the Allied invasion of Normandy, when Rommel came to realise that the war could not be won.


title: Rommel myth

text: Historian Thomas Vogel opines that Rommel was not a Nazi, if one uses the definition the Nazis themselves used, considering that although he did everything in his power to make his country strong again, he showed no support towards the racial policies or other aspects of the regime.


title: Rommel myth

text: British military and political figures contributed to the heroic image of the man as Rommel resumed offensive operations in January 1942 against the British forces weakened by redeployments to the Far East. Speaking in the House of Commons, Churchill addressed the British defeats and described Rommel as an "extraordinary bold and clever opponent" and a "great field commander". The trend continued after the war following the publication of "The Desert Fox", which also portrays staff officers like Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl and Franz Halder, who opposed Rommel on strategic issues, as having ulterior motives in smearing him. Former military opponents in Britain described Rommel as a brilliant commander and a resistance fighter, the "good German", with one senior military figure comparing Rommel to legendary military leader Belisarius. The praise led Bernard Montgomery's former deputy, Brian Horrocks, to argue in his 1950 article "The Rommel Myth Debunked" that the Eighth Army beat Rommel's Afrika Korps "fair and square". In 1977, Martin van Creveld started the reevaluation of Malta's impact on supply situations and concluded that Rommel was largely responsible for his supply problems (caused by overextended supply lines which prevented the Afrika Korps from receiving the supplies that the Italians were able to provide in adequate numbers). According to Creveld, the capacity of Libyan ports were too small and the distances to be overcome too great for Rommel to advance a more ambitious plan than Hitler's original one of defending a limited area.


title: Rommel myth

text: Certain modern historians, such as Larry T. Addington, Niall Barr and Robert Citino, are skeptical of Rommel as an operational, let alone strategic, level commander. They point to Rommel's lack of appreciation for Germany's strategic situation, his misunderstanding of the relative importance of his theatre to the German High Command, his poor grasp of logistical realities, and, according to the historian Ian Beckett, his "penchant for glory hunting". Citino credits Rommel's limitations as an operational level commander as "materially contributing" to the eventual demise of the Axis forces in North Africa, Meanwhile, Addington focuses on Rommel's disobedience and struggle over the North Africa strategy, whereby his initial brilliant success resulted in "catastrophic effects" for Germany in this theatre of war.


title: Rommel myth

text: The historian Geoffrey P. Megargee refers to Rommel as a "talented tactical leader", but points out his playing the German and Italian command structures against each other to his advantage. Rommel used the confused structure of the OKW (Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht), the OKH (Supreme High Command of the Army) and the "Comando Supremo" (Italian Supreme Command) to disregard orders that he disagreed with or to appeal to whatever authority he felt would be most sympathetic to his requests. Rommel often went directly to Hitler with his needs and concerns, taking advantage of the favoritism that the Führer displayed towards him and adding to the German High Command's distrust of him.


title: Rommel myth

text: Military practitioners have also questioned Rommel's abilities at the operational level. While nearly all acknowledge Rommel's excellent tactical skills and personal bravery, many officers came to accept that Rommel was "possibly the most overrated commander of an army in world history", writes U.S. major general and military historian David T. Zabecki of the United States Naval Institute, quoting the opinion of Wolf Heckmann. Zabecki notes that Rommel's brilliant tactical moves were logistically unsustainable, which eventually led to a strategic defeat. General Klaus Naumann, who served as Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, agrees with Charles Messenger that Rommel had challenges on the operational level, and states that Rommel's violation of the unity of command principle, bypassing the chain of command in Africa, was unacceptable.


title: Rommel myth

text: Some historians, such as Zabecki and Peter Lieb, also take issue with Rommel's absence from Normandy on the day of the Allied invasion, 6 June 1944. He had left France on 5 June and was at home on the 6th celebrating his wife's birthday. Rommel either planned to proceed to see Hitler the next day to discuss the situation in Normandy. Zabecki calls his decision to leave the theatre in view of an imminent invasion "an incredible lapse of command responsibility".


title: Rommel myth

text: More sympathetic authors point out complex situations that Rommel had to face. Brian Hanley, from USNI's Editorial Board of Directors, comments that Rommel was beaten the moment he arrived in Africa, considering the Allied troops outnumbered the Afrika Korps and they worked under a much more straightforward chain of command, while orders sent from Berlin to North Africa were rarely kept confidential. Hanley sees Rommel turning German and Italian military authorities against each other as turning liabilities into advantages and that he repeatedly created operational miracles that made a strategic investment in the Africa theatre attractive in 1942. Also, according to Hanley, if Rommel stood still, his enemy's strength would accumulate while his own, depending on an uncertain supply line, would diminish, thus he needed the British stocks of supply to deal with his logistical problems.


title: Rommel myth

text: Daniel Allen Butler writes that if Rommel was not a formally trained strategist, he developed himself into one, becoming able to grasp strategic opportunities that others missed. Starting as a compulsive commander who imperilled his command, and his superiors' plans in Africa, he realized that his opponent's army was the main objective and not the mere holding of territory. Butler writes that it was unfair to blame Rommel considering that he had been kept ignorant of Operation Barbarossa. Butler also questions the need to obey his superiors' higher strategy, considering that Hitler never had a coherent grand strategy. opines that Rommel actually had approval of his German (and later Italian) superiors (including Hitler and the High Command) in conducting the Afrika Korps as a mobile striking force and for his offensives. With such a weak force, he came to depend on an automaticity (that required constant successful attacks) that ceased to function once he gradually lost equipment superiority, air cover and good intelligence (which, in combination with good leadership, allowed the possibility to offset numerical inferiority to some extent). This applied also in the case of Malta: even if the island had been captured, the army's condition would not have been improved immediately, but holding the ground meant Rommel would lose the initiative forever. According to Maurice Remy, Rommel should not be blamed regarding strategic matters, considering Hitler and Mussolini had prepared the African offensive strategy from the beginning, despite the warnings of Brauchitsch and Halder regarding the planned invasion of Russia (that Rommel was not informed of). As the African campaign progressed, Rommel became aware of the strategic and supply situation, but his superiors (among them Kesselring) continued to ask him to advance further and promise that the supplies would reach the battlefield in time. Like Hanley and Stumpf, Remy saw Rommel's successes as working against him: his superiors assumed that despite his constant requests for more forces and supplies, he could manage with the minimum. Remy also opines that Rommel's plan for the defence of the Atlantic coastline was the correct one, although he too made a mistake in seeing Calais as the main landing zone.