Invasion of Poland Rundstedt's retirement did not last long. By early 1939 Hitler had decided to force a confrontation with Poland over the
Polish Corridor, and planning for a war with Poland began. In May, Hitler approved Rundstedt's appointment as commander of Army Group South, to invade Poland from
Silesia and
Slovakia. His chief of staff was General
Erich von Manstein, his chief of operations Colonel
Günther Blumentritt. His principal field commanders would be (from west to east as they entered Poland) General
Johannes Blaskowitz (8th Army), General
Walther von Reichenau (10th Army), and General
Wilhelm List (14th Army). Rundstedt's armies advanced rapidly into southern Poland, capturing
Kraków on 6 September, but Reichenau's over-ambitious attempt to take
Warsaw by storm on 9 September was repelled. Soon after, Blaskowitz's exposed northern flank was attacked by the Polish
Poznań Army, leading to the major engagement of the Polish campaign, the
Battle of the Bzura. Rundstedt and Manstein travelled to Blaskowitz's headquarters to take charge, and by 11 September the Poles had been contained in a pocket around
Kutno. By 18 September the Poznan Army had been destroyed, and Warsaw was besieged. Reichenau's forces took
Lublin on 11 September, while List's army was advancing to the east towards
Lvov, where they eventually linked up with Soviet forces advancing from the east under the terms of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Warsaw surrendered on 28 September, and by 6 October fighting in southern Poland had ceased. From the first days of the invasion, there had been incidents of German troops shooting Polish soldiers after they had surrendered, and killing civilians, especially
Polish Jews. Some of these incidents were the work of units of the
SS-VT, forerunner of the
Waffen-SS, but some involved regular Army units. Rundstedt's biographer says: "There is certainly no evidence that Rundstedt ever condoned, let alone encouraged, these acts." Rundstedt told Reichenau that such actions did not have his authorisation. One commanded by
Udo von Woyrsch operated in 14th Army's area. At
Dynów Woyrsch's men herded the town's Jews into the
synagogue then burned it down. By 20 September, over 500 Jews had been killed. In 1939, this was too much for most German Army officers to stand. After complaints from numerous officers, Rundstedt banned Woyrsch's units from the area, but after his departure his order was rescinded. On 20 October Rundstedt resigned his command and was transferred to the western front.
Invasion of France and the Low Countries On 25 October, Rundstedt took up his new post as commander of Army Group A, facing the French border in the
Ardennes mountains sector, and based in
Koblenz. To his north
Army Group B under General
Fedor von Bock faced the Dutch and Belgian borders, while to his south
Army Group C under General
Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb faced the French along the
Maginot Line. Manstein was again his chief of staff and Blumentritt his chief of operations, although Manstein soon departed to command an infantry corps and was replaced by General
Georg von Sodenstern. Rundstedt's main field commanders (from north to south) were Blaskowitz (9th Army), List (12th Army) and General
Ernst Busch (16th Army). Hitler's original plan was to attack in late November, before the French and British had time fully to deploy along their front. The plan, devised by Hitler, was essentially for a re-run of the invasion of 1914, with the main assault to come in the north, through Belgium and the Netherlands, then wheeling south to capture Paris, leaving the French Army anchored on the Maginot Line. Most senior officers were opposed to both the timing and the plan. Rundstedt, Manstein, Reichenau (commanding 6th Army in Army Group B), List and Brauchitsch remonstrated with Hitler in a series of meetings in October and November. They were opposed to an offensive so close to the onset of winter, and they were opposed to launching the main attack through Belgium, where the many rivers and canals would hamper armoured operations. Manstein in particular, supported by Rundstedt, argued for an armoured assault by Army Group A, across the Ardennes to the sea, cutting the British and French off in Belgium. This "
Manstein Plan" was the genesis of the
blitzkrieg of May 1940. A combination of bad weather, the arguments of his generals, and a breach of security when the details of the original plan fell into Allied hands, eventually led Hitler to agree to postpone the attack until early 1940, when it was again delayed by the
invasion of Denmark and Norway. In February, Hitler finally accepted the Manstein Plan. General
Günther von Kluge's 4th Army and General
Maximilian Reichsfreiherr von Weichs's 2nd Army were transferred from Army Group B to Rundstedt's command. General
Ewald von Kleist was now to command
Panzer (Armoured) Group Kleist, consisting of three armoured corps, led by
Heinz Guderian,
Georg-Hans Reinhardt and
Gustav Anton von Wietersheim. These armoured corps were to be the spearhead of the German thrust into France. Although Manstein is often credited for the change of plans, he himself acknowledged Rundstedt's decisive role. "I would stress that my commander, Colonel-General von Rundstedt, agreed with my view throughout, and backed our recommendations to the full. Without his sanction we could never have kept up our attempts to change
OKW's mind." During this hiatus, the group of senior officers who were plotting against Hitler's war plans, led by Halder, renewed their efforts, convinced that an attack in the west would lead to a war which Germany would lose. Brauchitsch agreed with Halder's fears, but continued to vacillate about opposing Hitler – he asked Reichenau and Rundstedt to remonstrate with Hitler, but they refused. Witzleben suggested that Rundstedt, Leeb and Bock should jointly refuse to carry out Hitler's orders to carry out the attack. Two of the conspirators,
Abwehr officers
Hans Oster and
Hans Bernd Gisevius, discussed this with Leeb, who turned them down but did not report them. On 13 March, Himmler came to Koblenz to give the generals, including Rundstedt, an ideological lecture, in the course of which he made it clear that the atrocities against civilians which some of them had witnessed in Poland had been carried out on his orders, and with the approval of Hitler. "I do nothing that the Führer does not know", he said. The attack was finally launched on 10 May. By 14 May, armoured units under
Hermann Hoth and Guderian had crossed the
Meuse and had broken open the Allied front. As planned, the British and French had advanced into Belgium to meet Bock's offensive, and were in danger of being cut off there by a German thrust to the sea. Both Hitler and Rundstedt had doubts about the safety of allowing the armoured corps to get too far ahead of their infantry support, however. Hitler sent the chief of staff of the
Armed Forces Supreme Command (, OKW), General
Wilhelm Keitel, to Rundstedt's headquarters, to urge caution. In Halder's words, Hitler was "frightened by his own success ... afraid to take any chance." Guderian objected vehemently to being ordered to halt, and Rundstedt was forced to mediate between Hitler and his impetuous armoured commanders, who were backed by Halder. By 20 May, Guderian's tanks had reached the sea to the west of
Abbeville and closed the trap on the British and French, who were already in retreat to the
English Channel ports. By this time, however, Kleist's armoured forces were thinly stretched and had suffered losses of up to 50% of their tanks. Kleist asked Rundstedt for a pause while the armoured units recovered and the infantry caught up, and Rundstedt agreed to this. At the same time, Göring attempted to persuade Hitler that the
Luftwaffe could destroy the trapped Allied armies, freeing the German forces to turn south towards Paris. Hitler accepted this view, and on 24 May issued what became known as the
Halt Order, preventing the German armour from rapidly capturing
Calais and
Dunkirk. The Luftwaffe were unable to destroy the Allied armies, however, and the halt allowed the
British Expeditionary Force and many French troops to be
evacuated from Dunkirk. This decision, for which Hitler, Rundstedt and Kleist shared responsibility, proved very costly to Germany's war effort in the long term. After the war, Rundstedt described the Halt Order as "an incredible blunder" and assigned full blame to Hitler. His biographer concedes that this "does not represent the whole truth", because the original impetus for a pause came from Kleist and Rundstedt himself. while touring
The Louvre,
occupied France, October 1940 Attention then turned to the attack on the French armies to the south. On 29 May, Hitler came to Rundstedt's headquarters at
Charleville-Mézières to discuss the new offensive. Bock's Army Group B on the right was to advance on Paris, while Rundstedt's Army Group A, now consisting only of List's 12th Army, Weichs's 2nd Army and Busch's 16th Army, was to attack towards
Soissons and
Rheims. Rundstedt's attack began on 9 June, and within a few days had broken the French resistance. By 12 June, his forces were across the
Marne and advancing south-east towards
Alsace.
Dijon fell on 16 June and
Lyon on 20 June. By this time French resistance was crumbling and on 22 June the French requested an armistice. In July, Hitler announced that Rundstedt and a number of other field commanders were to be promoted to the rank of Field Marshal () during the
1940 Field Marshal Ceremony. Although Rundstedt wished to resume his retirement, he was persuaded by Hitler to stay in France and set up headquarters at
Saint-Germain-en-Laye about outside Paris. There he oversaw the planning for the proposed invasion of Britain,
Operation Sealion, but never took the prospects for this operation seriously, and was not surprised when Hitler called it off in September after the Luftwaffe's setback in the
Battle of Britain. Even then, Rundstedt was not to be allowed to retire, when in October Hitler appointed him Commander-in-Chief West (, or OB West).
Planning the war against the Soviet Union By July 1940, Hitler was turning his mind to the invasion of the
Soviet Union, commissioning General
Erich Marcks to prepare preliminary plans. Although the Hitler-Stalin pact had served Germany's interests well, both strategically and economically, his whole career had been based on anti-communism and the belief that "
Jewish Bolshevism" was the main threat to Germany and the
Aryan race. In December Hitler made a firm decision for an attack on the Soviets the following spring, codenamed
Operation Barbarossa. At this point Rundstedt learned that he was to give up his quiet life in occupied France and assume command of Army Group South, tasked with the conquest of Ukraine. Leeb would command in the north, heading for
Leningrad, and Bock in the centre, charged with capturing
Moscow. On the way, the three army groups were to encircle and destroy the
Red Army before it could retreat into the Russian interior. Rundstedt, like most German officers, had favoured the policy of good relations with the Soviets followed by the commander General
Hans von Seekt during the Weimar Republic years, when the Soviet connection was seen as a counter to the threat from Poland. He was also apprehensive about launching a new war in the east while Britain was undefeated. If so, he did nothing to oppose them, and in this he was in company even with officers who disliked and opposed Hitler's regime, such as Halder, who threw themselves into planning the invasion, and believed it would succeed. Even the most experienced officers shared Hitler's contempt for the Soviet state and army. "You have only to kick in the door," Hitler told Rundstedt, "and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." In March Rundstedt left Paris to set up Army Group South's headquarters in
Breslau. On the way he attended a conference in Berlin at which Hitler addressed senior officers. He made it clear that the ordinary rules of warfare would not apply to the Russian campaign. "This is a war of extermination", he told them. "We do not wage war to preserve the enemy." This gave the generals a clear warning that they would be expected not to obstruct Hitler's wider war aims in the east – the extermination of the Jews and the reduction of the Slavic peoples to serfdom under a new (Master race) of German settlers. As part of this strategy, the
Commissar Order was issued, which stated that all Red Army
commissars were to be executed when captured. Rundstedt testified at Nuremberg about the attitude of the Army to this Order: "Our attitude was unanimously and absolutely against it. Immediately after the conference we approached Brauchitsch and told him that this was impossible ... The order was simply not carried out." This latter statement was clearly untrue, as the Commissar Order was widely carried out. But whether Rundstedt knew this was another matter, and this question was later to figure prominently in the issue of whether to charge him with war crimes. Barbarossa was initially scheduled for May, at the beginning of the Russian spring, but was postponed until June because unseasonably wet weather made the roads impassable for armour (not because of the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April, as is commonly supposed). Rundstedt moved his headquarters to
Tarnów in south-eastern Poland. Since the dividing line between
Army Group Centre and Army Group South was just south of
Brest-Litovsk, he was in command of more than half of the total German-Soviet front. Sodenstern was again his chief of staff. Under his command were (from north to south) Reichenau (6th Army), Kleist (1st Panzer Army) and General
Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel (17th Army). These three armies, bunched between Lublin and the Carpathians, were to thrust south-eastwards into Ukraine, aiming to capture
Kiev and encircle and destroy the Soviet forces west of the
Dnieper. In the south, General
Eugen Ritter von Schobert (11th Army), supported by the Hungarian and Romanian armies, and also an Italian Army Corps, was to advance into
Bessarabia (now
Moldova) and the southern Ukraine. It's unlikely that Rundstedt thought a decisive victory was possible at this point; while saying farewell to the commander of Army Group North in early May, he remarked: "See you again in Siberia."
Operation Barbarossa The attack began on 22 June. Despite ample warning from intelligence sources and defectors,
Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Command were caught by surprise, and the Germans rapidly broke through the frontier defences, helped by their total command of the air. But the Soviet commander in northern Ukraine, Colonel-General
Mikhail Kirponos, was one of the better Soviet generals, and he commanded the Red Army's largest and best-equipped force: nearly a million men and 4,800 tanks. The Germans soon encountered stubborn resistance. Rundstedt testified at Nuremberg: "The resistance at the frontier was not too great, but it grew continually as we advanced into the interior of the country. Very strong tank forces, tanks of a better type, far superior to ours, appeared." The Soviet tank armies were in fact stronger than the German panzer divisions, and in the
T-34 they possessed a superior tank: Kleist called it "the finest tank in the world." Rundstedt said after the war: "I realised soon after the attack that everything that had been written about Russia was wrong." But at this stage of the war the Red Army tank commanders lacked the tactical skill and experience of the German panzer commanders, and after ten days of bitter fighting Kleist's armour broke through, reaching
Zhitomir, only 130 km from Kiev, on 12 July. By 30 July the Red Army in Ukraine was in full retreat. Rundstedt and his commanders were confident that they could seize Kiev "off the march," that is, without a prolonged siege. , and Adolf Hitler, Russia, 1941 Despite these successes, the campaign did not go according to plan. The front door was "kicked in", but the Red Army was not destroyed, and the Soviet state did not collapse. Once this became apparent, at the end of July, Hitler and his commanders had to decide how to proceed. Hitler ordered Army Group Centre to pause at
Smolensk, while the panzer divisions were shipped to the north and the south. Although Rundstedt opposed this diversion of forces, he was its beneficiary as attention was shifted to the southern front. He also benefited from disastrous decisions made by the Soviets. On 10 July Stalin appointed his old crony Marshal
Semyon Budyonny commander in Ukraine, with orders to stop the German advance at all costs. Budyonny ordered Kirponos to push his forces forwards to Kiev and
Uman, despite the danger of encirclement, rather than withdraw and make a stand on the Dnieper. Rundstedt therefore decided to break off the advance towards Kiev, and to direct Kleist's armour south-eastwards, towards
Krivoy Rog. By 30 July the Germans were at
Kirovograd, 130 km east of Uman, cutting off the Soviet line of retreat (which had in any case been forbidden by Stalin). Meanwhile, Schobert's 11th Army was advancing north-eastwards from Bessarabia. On 2 August the two armies met, trapping over 100,000 Soviet troops, virtually all of whom were killed or captured. Southern Ukraine was thus left virtually defenceless, and by 25 August, when they entered
Dniepropetrovsk, the Germans had occupied everything west of the Dnieper (except
Odessa, which held out until October). Nevertheless, this had all taken longer than expected, and the Red Army was showing no signs of collapse. Rundstedt wrote to his wife on 12 August: "How much longer? I have no great hope that it will be soon. The distances in Russia devour us." Neither the success at Uman nor what followed at Kiev would have happened had Rundstedt not backed his subordinates and resisted Hitler's interference in the conduct of the campaign. As during the French campaign, Hitler was panicked by his own success. By early July he was full of anxiety that the German armour was advancing too quickly, without infantry support, and that it was exposed to Soviet counter-attacks. On 10 July Brauchitsch arrived at Rundstedt's headquarters at
Brody, with instructions from Hitler that Kleist was to turn south towards
Vinnitsa and link up with Schobert's army there, rather than continue south-east to Kirovograd. This would still have trapped many Soviet divisions, but it would have allowed the mass of Soviet forces at Uman and Kiev to escape. Rundstedt defended Kleist's ability to execute the larger encirclement, and persuaded Brauchitsch that he was right. Brauchitsch then contacted Halder, who succeeded in persuading Hitler to support Rundstedt. This was a sign that Rundstedt still had Hitler's respect, as were Hitler's two visits to Rundstedt's armies during this period. After Uman Budyonny's forces massed around Kiev – over 700,000 men – were left dangerously exposed, with Kleist's 1st Panzer Army regrouping to the south-east and General
Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army (part of Army Group Centre) smashing General
Yeromenko's Briansk Front and advancing south from
Gomel in
White Russia, on a line well east of Kiev. The danger of encirclement was obvious, but Stalin stubbornly refused to consider withdrawal, despite warnings from both Budyonny and Kirponos that catastrophe was imminent. Budyonny has been freely blamed by postwar writers for the disaster at Kiev, but it is clear that while he was out of his depth as a front commander, he warned Stalin of the danger, and was dismissed for his pains. On 12 September Kleist crossed the Dnieper at
Cherkasy heading north-east, and on 16 September his tanks linked up with Guderian's at
Lokhvitsa, nearly 200 km east of Kiev. Although many Soviet troops were able to escape eastwards in small groups, around 600,000 men – four whole armies comprising 43 divisions, nearly one-third of the Soviet Army's strength at the start of the war – were killed or captured, and the great majority of those captured died in captivity. Kiev fell on 19 September. Kirponos was killed in action on 20 September, shortly before resistance ceased. Rundstedt had thus presided over one of the
greatest victories in the history of warfare. But this catastrophe for the Red Army resulted far more from the inflexibility of Stalin than it did from the talents of Rundstedt as a commander or the skill of the German Army.
David Stahel, a recent historian of the Kiev campaign, wrote: "Germany had been handed a triumph far in excess of what its exhausted armoured forces could have achieved without Stalin's obduracy and incompetence." In fact both the German Army and the Red Army were driven more by the dictates of their respective political masters rather than by the decisions of the military professionals. Stahel sums the situation up with his chapter heading: "Subordinating the generals: the dictators dictate." Kirponos could have withdrawn most of his army across the Dnieper in time had Stalin allowed him to do so, and Rundstedt himself acknowledged this. Had this happened, Rundstedt's forces would have been in no state to give chase: they were exhausted after two months of ceaseless combat. Despite their successes, they had sustained high levels of casualties and even higher levels of loss of equipment, both of which were impossible to replace. By September the German Army in the Soviet Union had suffered nearly 500,000 casualties. In a statement to the Army on 15 August, Rundstedt acknowledged: "It is only natural that such great effort would result in fatigue, the combat strength of the troops has weakened and in many places there is a desire for rest." But, said Rundstedt: "We must keep pressure on the enemy for he has many more reserves than we." This was a remarkable admission so early in the Russian campaign, and it showed that Rundstedt was already well aware of how unrealistic the German belief in a quick victory had been. Despite the monumental efforts and initial successes of
Operation Barbarossa, by late 1941, the German advance began to falter significantly. Rundstedt’s forces, along with the rest of the
Wehrmacht, faced an increasingly dire situation as they pushed deeper into Soviet territory. The logistical nightmare became more pronounced, with supply lines overextended and insufficient resources to maintain the pace of the advance. The harsh Russian winter arrived earlier than expected, bringing with it temperatures that plummeted to unprecedented lows, wreaking havoc on both men and machinery. German troops, unprepared for such extreme conditions, suffered from frostbite and hypothermia, severely impacting their combat effectiveness. Equipment and vehicles, not designed for sub-zero temperatures, frequently malfunctioned or were rendered inoperable. The
Red Army, though battered, began to regroup and launch counteroffensives, exploiting the Germans' weakened state. Rundstedt, aware of the grim reality, acknowledged the growing resilience and capability of the Soviet forces. The campaign that was envisioned as a quick, decisive victory was now evolving into a drawn-out war of attrition, with the Germans struggling to maintain their foothold against a resurgent and determined enemy. This shift marked the beginning of a protracted and brutal conflict that would eventually drain the German war effort and contribute to the ultimate downfall of the
Third Reich.
Dismissal Despite the triumph at Kiev, by the end of September Rundstedt was becoming concerned about the state of his command. After three months of continuous fighting, the German armies were exhausted, and the Panzer divisions were in urgent need of new equipment as a result of losses in battle and damage from the poorly-paved Ukrainian roads. As autumn set in, the weather deteriorated, making the situation worse. Rundstedt wanted to halt on the Dnieper for the winter, which would allow the German Army time to rest and be re-equipped. But the German armies could not rest, for fear the Soviet southern armies (now commanded by the stubborn Marshal
Semyon Timoshenko) would regroup and consolidate a front on the
Donets or the
Don. So, soon after the fall of Kiev, the offensive was resumed. Reichenau advanced east towards
Kharkov and Kleist and Stülpnagel headed south-east towards the lower Donets. In the south 11th Army and the Romanians (commanded by Manstein following the death of Schobert) advanced along the
Sea of Azov coast towards
Rostov. The Soviet armies were in a poor state after the catastrophes of Uman and Kiev, and could offer only sporadic resistance, but the German advance was slowed by the autumn rains and the Soviet
scorched earth policy, which denied the Germans food and fuel and forced them to rely on overstretched lines of supply. Rundstedt's armies were also weakened by the transfer of units back to Army Group Centre to take part in the attack on Moscow (
Operation Typhoon). He increasingly resorted to drink to cope with the strain. He was now in the position of having to launch a new offensive against his better judgement, with exhausted troops in very adverse conditions. This was a recipe for defeat, but Rundstedt obeyed Hitler's orders. Kleist, his units reinforced by Waffen-SS General
Sepp Dietrich's
1st SS Division (the ), attacked on 17 November, and
captured Rostov on the 21st. But the Soviets had had time to prepare, and launched a counter-offensive on the 25th. On the 28th Rundstedt authorised Kleist to withdraw from Rostov and establish a front on the
Mius, 70 km to the west. When Hitler heard of this the next day, he ordered that Rostov should be held, although it had in fact already been evacuated. Rundstedt replied by insisting on his decision, and adding: "Should confidence in my leadership no longer exist, I beg to request someone be substituted who enjoys the necessary confidence of the
Supreme Command." Hitler took Rundstedt at his word, and on 1 December he dismissed him, replacing him with Reichenau. The new commander saw at once that Rundstedt was right, and succeeded in persuading Hitler, via
Halder, to authorise the withdrawal. This was the first significant defeat the German Army suffered in World War II, and Rundstedt was the first senior commander to be dismissed. Hitler, however, immediately realised that he had gone too far in arbitrarily sacking the most senior commander of the German Army. He arrived in Poltava on 3 December, where he found both Reichenau and
Sepp Dietrich firm in defending the correctness of Rundstedt's actions. Sodenstern explained the full circumstances of the retreat from Rostov to Hitler, an explanation which Hitler grudgingly accepted. Hitler then met with Rundstedt and excused himself on the grounds that it had all been a misunderstanding. He suggested that Rundstedt take a period of leave, "and then once more place your incomparable services at my disposal." On 5 December, his honour restored, Rundstedt left Poltava, never to return to the Russian front. Shortly after his return to
Kassel, on his 66th birthday, Rundstedt received a cheque from Hitler for 250,000 Reichsmarks. This was part of
Hitler's policy of buying the continuing loyalty of his senior commanders. Many found this offensive, but none turned down these gifts. Rundstedt tried to do the next best thing by failing to cash the cheque. By February this was attracting adverse comment in Berlin, and Rundstedt then cashed it. Some writers have sought to connect Rundstedt's acceptance of this money with his continuing refusal to support the resistance movement against Hitler's regime within the German Army. In fact Rundstedt refused to have anything to do with the money, handing it over to his daughter-in-law, and it was still untouched at his death in 1953.
War crimes in the East In April 1941, during the planning phase of Barbarossa, Himmler and Brauchitsch had agreed that as the Army conquered Soviet territory, it would be handed over at once to the SS and the German Police, now fused under Himmler's leadership in the
HSSPF (Higher SS and Police Leadership). Himmler set up four under the overall command of
Reinhard Heydrich. In Rundstedt's area of command, C, commanded by
Otto Rasch, operated in northern Ukraine, and D, commanded by
Otto Ohlendorf, operated in southern Ukraine. The were initially ordered to establish "security" in the rear areas by killing communists and partisans, but by 1941 the identity between Jews and communism was strongly established in the minds of most SS men and Police officers. In July Himmler told an SS gathering: "This nation [Russia] has been united by the Jews in a religion, a world-view, called Bolshevism." From the beginning, therefore, the mostly killed Jews: initially only adult males, but after a few months indiscriminately. By December 1941, when Rundstedt was dismissed as commander of Army Group South, C and D had killed between 100,000 and 150,000 people. In addition, various units participated in killing 33,000 Kiev Jews at
Babi Yar in September 1941, only days after the city was occupied by the Army. The Army did
participate directly in these mass killings: officers of Reichenau's 6th Army took part in organising the massacre at Babi Yar. On 10 October he issued an order (known as the "Reichenau Order") headed
Conduct of the Troops in the East, in which he said: "The primary goal of the campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevist system is the absolute destruction of the means of power and the eradication of the Asian influence in the European cultural sphere ... Therefore, the soldier must have full understanding of the necessity of hard but just atonement of Jewish subhumanity []." Two days later Rundstedt circulated it to all his senior commanders, with the comment: "I thoroughly concur with its contents." He urged them to release their own versions and to impress upon their troops the need to exterminate the Jews. Since Reichenau's order was widely understood as endorsing the mass killings of Ukrainian Jews which were going on behind the German lines, with which 6th Army at any rate was actively co-operating, Rundstedt's open endorsement of its strongly anti-Semitic language clearly contradicts his later assertions that he did not know what the were doing. He told interrogators in 1946 that he was aware of just one atrocity, at
Berdichev on 30 July. At Nuremberg he sought to portray the issue in terms of
anti-partisan warfare: "Disorderly, irregular warfare behind the front of the Army must bring very great misery to the population of the country affected. No army in the world can tolerate such conditions for any length of time, but in the interests of the security and protection of its own troops it must take sharp, energetic measures. But this should, of course, be done in a correct and soldierly manner." Rundstedt shared the general German Army prejudice against the (Eastern Jews) found in the Soviet Union. He described
Zamość as "a dirty Jewish hole." In September 1941 Rundstedt issued an order that soldiers were not to participate in or take photos of "Jewish operations", indicating awareness of their existence. The killings took place with the knowledge and support of the German Army in the east. Under Rundstedt's command, Army Group South actively participated in the policies outlined in the
Hunger Plan, the Nazi racial starvation policy, by "living off the land" and denying food supplies to Soviet prisoners of war and civilians. German troops "plundered huge quantities of livestock, grain and dairy produce", enough to feed themselves and to create substantial reserves for the Reich. However, due to transportation problems, the supplies could not be shipped to Germany and much of them spoiled during the winter of 1941/1942. As a consequence, mass starvation set in within urban areas, especially in Kiev and Kharkov.
Command in the West (left),
Alfred Gause (right) and
Bodo Zimmermann (in background) In March 1942 Hitler re-appointed Rundstedt OB West, in succession to Witzleben, who was ill. He returned to the comfortable headquarters in the Hotel Pavillon Henri IV in Saint-Germain, which he had occupied in 1940–41. Rundstedt's command of French and his good relationship with the head of the collaborationist
Vichy regime, Marshal
Philippe Pétain, were considerable assets. But his position was to grow increasingly difficult. Hitler did not intend giving him real authority, seeing him as a dignified figurehead. Although he was commander of the German Army in the west, charged with defending the coasts of France and Belgium against attack by the western Allies, the military governors in Paris and Brussels (Rundstedt's former subordinate Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel and
Alexander von Falkenhausen respectively) were not under his direct command, and he had no control over the Navy or Air Force. He also had no control over the SS and Gestapo operations in France: the HSSPF in Paris,
Carl Oberg, answered only to Himmler. Secondly, the internal situation in France had changed greatly since Rundstedt's departure in March 1941. Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union had led the
French Communist Party to abandon its previous neutrality (its slogan was "Neither Pétain nor
de Gaulle"), and launch active
resistance against the Germans and the Vichy regime. The result was an escalating cycle of assassinations and reprisal killings that rapidly alienated the hitherto quiescent French population. On 20 October French Communists assassinated the German commander in
Nantes, Karl Hotz, triggering the execution of over 100 French hostages. As military governor, Stülpnagel directed the policy of executing hostages. Rundstedt had no direct control over the Army's response to Resistance attacks. Nevertheless, many held him responsible, then and later. Rundstedt had more direct responsibility for the
Commando Order of 1942, which later served as the basis of war crimes charges against him. There were in fact two German orders concerning captured Allied
commandos. The first was issued by Rundstedt in July 1942, and stated that captured Allied
parachutists were to be handed over to the Gestapo, , rather than made
prisoners of war. This was a response to the increasing number of British agents being parachuted into France by the
Special Operations Executive. The second was issued by Hitler personally in October, following the
Dieppe Raid by the British and Canadians on the coast of France. It stipulated that all captured Allied commandos were to be executed, again regardless of whether they were in uniform. As a consequence, six British commandos captured in
Operation Frankton, a raid on shipping at
Bordeaux in December 1942, were executed by the German Navy. Although Rundstedt neither ordered nor was informed of this action, he was later held responsible as German commander in France. Meanwhile, the military situation for the Germans was deteriorating. The entry of the
United States into the war in December 1941 raised the likelihood of an Allied invasion of France. Hitler's response was to order the construction of the
Atlantic Wall, a system of coastal fortifications from Norway to the French-Spanish border, to be constructed by the
Organisation Todt using slave labour. There was also a steady build-up of German forces in France, despite the demands of the eastern front. By June Rundstedt commanded 25 divisions. In November 1942 the Allies invaded
French North Africa (
Operation Torch). When the Vichy authorities in Africa surrendered after token resistance, the Germans responded by occupying all of France and dissolving what remained of the French Army. Rundstedt travelled to Vichy to placate Pétain, who threatened to resign but backed down after soothing words from Rundstedt. At the same time, in the Soviet Union, Rundstedt's old command, Army Group South, was facing disaster at
Stalingrad, the turning point of World War II in Europe. The catastrophe of Stalingrad prompted renewed efforts by dissident German officers to remove Hitler from power while there was still time, as they believed, to negotiate an honourable peace settlement. The conspirators were centered on Halder, Beck and Witzleben, but by 1943 all had been removed from positions of authority. The real movers were now more junior officers:
Henning von Tresckow, chief of staff of Army Group Centre,
Friedrich Olbricht, chief of the Armed Forces Replacement Office, and
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a member of the Replacement Army staff. Their strategy at this time was to persuade the senior field commanders to lead a coup against Hitler. Their initial target was Manstein, now commanding
Army Group Don, but he turned Tresckow down at a meeting in March 1943. Several sources say that Rundstedt was also approached, although they do not say specifically who approached him. In any case, he refused to get involved, although both Stülpnagel and Falkenhausen were recruits to the conspiracy. By one account, he complained: "Why always me? Let Manstein and
Kluge do it." He told
Gerhard Engel, one of Hitler's adjutants, that he was "too old and had had enough." It was true that Rundstedt was well past his best. The military historian
Chester Wilmot wrote soon after the war: "The truth was that Rundstedt had lost his grip. He was old and tired and his once active brain was gradually becoming addled, for he had great difficulty in sleeping without the soporific aid of alcohol." Events in June 1944 showed that this was an exaggeration: Rundstedt was still capable of clear thought and decisive action. But his health was a matter of increasing concern to his staff and his family. His son Leutnant Hans-Gerd von Rundstedt was posted to his command as an aide-de-camp, partly to monitor his health and report back to Bila in Kassel. In one of his letters, Hans-Gerd referred to his father's "somewhat plentiful nicotine and alcohol consumption," but assured his mother that Rundstedt's health was basically sound. Nevertheless, in May 1943 Rundstedt was given leave and was sent to a sanatorium at
Bad Tölz, south of
Munich, which was also the site of an
SS-Junker school. Later he stayed some time at
Grundlsee in
Austria, and was received by Hitler at his summer house at
Berchtesgaden, a sign of Hitler's continuing respect for him. He was back at work by July.
Defeat in Normandy , December 1943 The
Allied invasion of Italy in September 1943 removed Rundstedt's fears that France would be invaded that summer, but he could not have doubted that the
massive build-up of American troops in Britain meant that a cross-channel invasion would come in 1944. In October Rundstedt sent Hitler a memorandum on the defensive preparations. He placed no faith in the Atlantic Wall, seeing it merely as useful propaganda. He said: "We Germans do not indulge in the tired
Maginot spirit." He argued that an invasion could only be defeated by a defence in depth, with armoured reserves positioned well inland so that they could be deployed to wherever the invasion came, and launch counter-offensives to drive the invaders back. There were several problems with this, particularly the lack of fuel for rapid movements of armour, the Allied air superiority which enabled them to disrupt the transport system, and the increasingly effective sabotage efforts of the French resistance. Hitler was not persuaded: his view was that the invasion must be defeated on the beaches. Characteristically, however, he told Rundstedt he agreed with him, then sent Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel to France with orders to hasten the completion of the Atlantic Wall; while Rundstedt remained the commander in France, Rommel became the official commander of Army Group B. Rundstedt was extremely angered by this decision; although he admired Rommel's tactical skill, he knew from his colleagues that Rommel was notoriously difficult to work with and would mostly be able to ignore Rundstedt's authority thanks to his patronage by Hitler and
Goebbels. Rommel in fact agreed with Rundstedt that the Atlantic Wall was a "gigantic bluff", but he also believed that Allied air power made Rundstedt's proposed defense plan impossible; like Hitler, he believed the invasion could only be stopped on the beach itself. By the spring of 1944 Rommel had turned the mostly nonexistent 'Wall' into a formidable defensive line, but since he believed the invasion would come somewhere between
Dunkirk and the mouth of the
Somme, much of his work was directed at strengthening the wrong area, although in late 1943 he had focused on Normandy. As fears of an imminent invasion mounted, conflict broke out among the commanders. Rommel wanted the armoured divisions positioned close to the coast, mostly in the area he considered at highest risk. The commander of armoured forces in France, General
Leo Freiherr Geyr von Schweppenburg, backed by Rundstedt, strongly disagreed, wanting his forces to be positioned inland to preserve their manoeuvrability. Eventually Hitler intervened, imposing a compromise: half the armour would be allocated to the Army Groups defending the beaches, and half would be kept in reserve under Geyr von Schweppenburg; the latter, however, were not to be deployed without Hitler's direct order. Hitler made matters worse by appointing Rommel commander of Army Group B, covering all of northern France. This unworkable command structure was to have dire consequences when the invasion came. The
invasion duly came before dawn on 6 June 1944, in
Normandy, far to the west of the sector where Rundstedt and Rommel had expected it. Rommel was on leave in Germany, many of the local commanders in Normandy were at a conference in
Rennes, and Hitler was asleep at Berchtesgaden. But Rundstedt, now 68, was up before 03:00, trying to take charge of a confusing situation. He immediately saw that the reported Allied airborne landings in Normandy presaged a seaborne invasion. He contacted OKW and demanded that he be given authority to deploy the armoured reserves, but OKW could not agree to this without Hitler's approval. Hitler's refusal came through at 10:00, followed by his change of mind at 14:30, by which time the Allies were well ashore and the cloud cover had lifted, preventing the armour from moving until dusk. In mid-afternoon Rundstedt ordered that "the Allies [be] wiped out before the day's end, otherwise the enemy would reinforce and the chance would be lost", but it was too late. Rundstedt's biographer concludes: "If Hitler had released the Panzer reserves as soon as Rundstedt had asked for them, the Allies would have experienced a much harder day on 6 June than they did." The historian
Stephen E. Ambrose wrote: "The only high-command officer who responded correctly to the crisis at hand was Field Marshal Rundstedt, the old man who was there for window-dressing and who was so scorned by Hitler and OKW ... Rundstedt's reasoning was sound, his actions decisive, his orders clear." Being right was little consolation to Rundstedt. By 11 June it was evident that the Allies could not be dislodged from their beach-head in Normandy. Their total command of the air and the sabotage of roads and bridges by the Resistance made bringing armoured reinforcements to Normandy slow and difficult, but without them there was no hope of an effective counter-offensive. Supported by Rommel, he tried to persuade Keitel at OKW that the only escape was to withdraw from Normandy to a prepared defensive line on the
Seine, but Hitler forbade any withdrawal. On 17 June Hitler flew to France and met Rundstedt and Rommel at his
command bunker near
Soissons. Both Field Marshals argued that the situation in Normandy required either massive reinforcements (which were not available) or a rapid withdrawal. Remarkably, they both also urged that Hitler find a political solution to end the war, which Rommel told him bluntly was unwinnable. Hitler ignored all their demands, requiring "fanatical" defence and a counter-attack with whatever was available. Rommel warned Hitler about the inevitable collapse in the German defences, but was rebuffed and told to focus on military operations. It was during the desperate German attempts to bring reserve units to the front that men of the SS Panzer Division destroyed the village of
Oradour-sur-Glane in central France, in retaliation for partisan attacks in the area. Rundstedt was German commander-in-chief in France, had ordered to head north to Normandy, and had previously condoned tough action against partisans who had killed or tortured German officers or personnel, including the shooting of hostages. He also authorised the use of terror against civilians. This was enough for the French government to demand after the war that he stand trial for the massacre at Oradour. On 29 June Rundstedt and Rommel were summoned to Berchtesgaden for a further meeting with Hitler, at which they repeated their demands, and were again rebuffed. On his return to Saint-Germain, on 30 June, Rundstedt found an urgent plea from Schweppenburg, who was commanding the armoured force at
Caen, to be allowed to withdraw his units out of range of Allied naval gunfire, which was decimating his forces. Rundstedt at once agreed, and notified OKW of this decision. On 1 July he received a message from OKW countermanding his orders. In a fury, he phoned Keitel, urging him to go to Hitler and get the decision reversed. Keitel pleaded that this was impossible. "What shall we do?" he asked. Rundstedt is said to have replied "" (one version of the story as told by Blumentritt did not include the ""). This literally means "End the war, you idiots!", but has commonly been reported in English-language accounts as "Make peace, you idiots!" There has been some doubt raised as to whether Rundstedt actually said this, but
Wilmot says the incident was recounted to him and
Liddell Hart by Blumentritt, who was present. Keitel conveyed to Hitler that Rundstedt felt unable to cope with the increased demands, and Hitler relieved him of his command, replacing him with Kluge. It is likely that Hitler had already decided that Rundstedt should be replaced after the meetings of 17 and 29 June. It was officially given out that Rundstedt was retiring on the grounds of age and ill-health. Hitler wrote him a "very cordial" letter, and awarded him the Oak Leaves to his
Knight's Cross, one of the highest of the new decorations created in 1940. Rundstedt departed Saint-Germain for the last time on 4 July, accompanied by his son, and was driven back to the sanatorium at Bad Tölz, to be reunited with his wife. He told Rommel on departing that he would never hold another military command.
Plot to kill Hitler Rundstedt had resisted all attempts to recruit him to the various conspiracies against Hitler that had been operating inside the German Army since 1938. Although he had not denounced or reported any of the officers who had approached him, he had shown no sympathy with their appeals. By June 1944 the conspirators had given up on him (and indeed on all the senior field commanders), so he was not approached by the group around Tresckow and Stauffenberg who hatched the unsuccessful
plot to kill Hitler with a bomb at the
Wolf's Lair (), his headquarters in
East Prussia, and had no inkling of what was planned. When he heard of the attempt on 20 July, his reaction was very hostile. A year later, in June 1945, he told the investigating commission preparing for the Nuremberg Trials: "I would never have thought of such a thing, that would have been base, bare-faced treachery." Since he had every reason to try to put himself in a sympathetic light at Nuremberg, this certainly reflects his view in June 1944. He also argued, however, that the attempt to kill Hitler was pointless, because the German Army and people would not have followed the conspirators. "The Army and also the people still believed in Hitler at that time, and such an overthrow would have been quite unsuccessful." He reiterated his traditional sense of his duty as a soldier: had he supported the plot, he said, "I would have emerged and been considered for all time the greatest traitor to my Fatherland." Officers like Rundstedt who argued that a
coup against Hitler would not have won support in the Army or among the German people were, in the view of most historians, correct.
Joachim Fest, writing of Tresckow, said: "Even officers who were absolutely determined to stage a coup were troubled by the fact that everything they were contemplating would inevitably be seen by their troops as dereliction of duty, as irresponsible arrogance, and, worst, as capable of triggering a civil war." On the attitude of the people, Fest wrote: "Most industrial workers remained loyal to the regime, even as the war ground on." Rundstedt was thus above suspicion of involvement in the 20 July plot, but he could not escape entanglement in its bloody aftermath. A large number of senior officers were directly or indirectly implicated, headed by Field Marshals Kluge, Rommel (very peripherally) and Witzleben, and Generals Falkenhausen,
Erich Fellgiebel,
Friedrich Fromm,
Paul von Hase,
Gustav Heistermann von Ziehlberg,
Otto Herfurth,
Erich Hoepner,
Fritz Lindemann,
Friedrich von Rabenau,
Hans Speidel,
Helmuth Stieff, Stülpnagel,
Fritz Thiele,
Georg Thomas and
Eduard Wagner, as well as Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris. Many of these would have been known personally to Rundstedt. Witzleben was an old colleague, and Stülpnagel had been his subordinate in Ukraine and his colleague in France. These considerations do not seem to have influenced his conduct at all. Hitler was determined not only to punish those involved in the plot, but to break the power, status, and cohesion of the Prussian officer corps once and for all. Since traditionally German officers could not be tried by civilian courts, he decided that the Army must expel all those accused of involvement. They could then be tried before the
People's Court (), a special court established in 1934 to try political crimes and presided over by the fanatical Nazi
Roland Freisler. Hitler therefore ordered the convening of a "
Court of Honour" () to carry out the expulsions, and appointed Rundstedt to head it. The other senior members were Generals Keitel and Guderian,
Walther Schroth, and
Karl-Wilhelm Specht. This court considered only evidence placed before it by the Gestapo. No defence counsel was permitted, and none of the accused was allowed to appear. On this basis, several officers were expelled from the Army, while others were exonerated. Among those the court declined to expel were Halder (who had no involvement in the plot), and
Hans Speidel, Rommel's chief of staff (who was deeply implicated). Those expelled appeared in batches before the People's Court, where after perfunctory trials
most of them were executed by hanging. Rundstedt and Heinz Guderian have been singled out as the two who most contributed to Rommel's expulsion from the army, especially as both had good reason to dislike him; however, Rommel and Rundstedt had always had a grudging respect for one another, and Rundstedt later served as Hitler's representative at Rommel's
state funeral in
Ulm. No incident in Rundstedt's career has damaged his posthumous reputation as much as his involvement in this process.
John Wheeler-Bennett wrote in 1967: "To such a nadir of supine degradation had come the child of
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau and
Moltke." He called the Court "the final farce of casuistry" and accused the officer corps of washing its hands,
Pilate-like, of their comrades. Rundstedt's biographer writes: "This was something for which some Germans, while they were prepared to forgive him everything else, could and cannot excuse him." Speidel, despite the fact that he was spared, was bitterly critical of Rundstedt after the war, when he became a senior officer in the new
West German Army.
Blumentritt, always loyal to his old , complained in 1953: "He has had to endure vindictiveness and jealousy even up to and after the hour of his death."
Return to the West The aftermath of the 20 July plot coincided with the rout of the German armies in both the east and the west. In the east
Operation Bagration destroyed Army Group Centre and drove the Germans out of Byelorussia and eastern Poland: they were also forced out of the Balkans. In the west, the Americans, British and Canadians broke out of the Normandy pocket and swept across France, taking Paris on 25 August and Brussels on 3 September. The German command in the west was reorganised following the suicide of Kluge, the arrest of Stülpnagel and the incapacitation of Rommel. Field Marshal
Walter Model, known as "the Führer's fireman" for his reputation for stabilising dangerous situations, was appointed both OB West and commander of Army Group B on 16 August, but even he could not do justice to both jobs. At Blumentritt's urgent request, supported by Model, Hitler agreed to ask Rundstedt to resume his post as OB West, which at a meeting on 1 September he agreed to do, saying "My Führer, whatever you order, I shall do to my last breath." The appointment of Rundstedt was at least in part a propaganda exercise. He was the most senior and one of the best known German Army commanders, both in Germany and abroad. His formidable reputation inspired confidence at home and trepidation among the enemy. His appointment was designed to impress the Allies, reassure the German people, and bolster the morale of the officer corps after the shock of 20 July and the subsequent purge. The Allies believed Rundstedt to be a far more powerful and influential figure than he in fact was, regarding him with "respect, almost awe" as the master strategist of the German Army – something he would not find helpful after the war. He had already appeared on the cover of
Time magazine in August 1942, and did so again in August 1944, when it was suggested, quite wrongly, that he was behind the 20 July plot. There were even suggestions that he would take over leadership of the German state. But Hitler saw Rundstedt as a figurehead: he intended that operational control on the western front remain with the energetic and ruthless Model, a committed Nazi. Rundstedt, on the other hand, saw himself as the voice of experience, restraining the younger Model, whom he described as "courageous but impulsive." With the comforts of Saint-Germain no longer available, Rundstedt established his headquarters near
Koblenz. His chief of staff was now the capable General
Siegfried Westphal. Under Rundstedt was Model, commanding Army Group B and facing the British and Canadians as they advanced through Belgium and into the Netherlands, and the Americans as they advanced into the Ardennes in southern Belgium and Luxembourg. Further south,
Army Group G, commanded by General
Hermann Balck, faced the Americans in Lorraine and Alsace, down to the Swiss border. In October, Army Group H in the north was split off from Model's very extended front, and was placed under the command of the paratroop general
Kurt Student. Rundstedt believed even at this stage that an effective defensive line could only be established on the
Rhine, but this would have meant giving up large areas of German territory, and Hitler would not countenance it. He insisted that a stand be made on the
West Wall (known to the Allies as the Siegfried Line), a defensive system built along Germany's western frontiers in 1938–40, but partly dismantled in 1943–44 to provide materials for the Atlantic Wall. Model told OKW that this would require 25 divisions of fresh troops, but these were no longer to be had. Instead the line was held by patched-up divisions escaping from the debacle in France, and
Volksgrenadier divisions made up from transferred Navy and Air Force personnel, older men and teenagers: these units were fit for static defence, but not much else. Nevertheless, the Germans now had certain advantages. In military terms, it is easier to defend a fixed line than it is to take one by storm. They were now fighting in defence of their own frontiers, and this stiffened resolve. They no longer had to deal with partisans sabotaging their supply lines, and they were close to their own sources of supply in Germany. The Allies on the other hand had severe logistical problems, with their supply lines running all the way back to the Normandy beaches. The great port of
Antwerp was in their hands, but the Germans still controlled the mouth of the
Scheldt, so the Allies could not use it as a supply port. In September the American tank armies in Lorraine literally ran out of fuel, and during October the Allied offensive gradually lost momentum and came to a halt on a line well west of the German border in most sectors, although the frontier city of
Aachen fell on 21 October. With the failure of the British attempt to force a crossing of the Rhine at
Arnhem (
Operation Market Garden) in late September, the chance of invading Germany before the winter set in was lost, and Rundstedt was given time to consolidate his position.
Ardennes Offensive Hitler, however, had no intention of staying on the defensive in the west over the winter. As early as mid-September he was planning a counter-offensive. By October, with the front stabilising, he had decided on an
attack in the Ardennes, designed to split the British and American fronts at a weakly held point, cross the Meuse and recapture Antwerp. On 27 October Rundstedt and Model met with General
Alfred Jodl, chief of operations at OKW, and told him flatly that they considered this impossible with the available forces. Instead they suggested a more modest operation to destroy the Allied concentrations around Liège and Aachen. Jodl took their views back to Hitler, but on 3 November he told them that the Führer's mind was made up, and that he wanted the attack to begin before the end of November. The spearhead was to be the
6th Panzer Army, commanded by Sepp Dietrich and largely made up of Waffen-SS units such as the , and , and the
5th Panzer Army, commanded by General
Hasso von Manteuffel. Model persuaded Jodl that the deadline was unrealistic, and on 2 December he and Westphal went to Berlin to argue their case with Hitler. Rundstedt refused to go, because, he said, he hated listening to Hitler's monologues. This marked his effective abdication as a military leader: he was now only a figurehead, and apparently content to be so. After the war he disowned all responsibility for the offensive: "If old von Moltke thought that I had planned that offensive he would have turned over in his grave." Hitler arrived on the western front on 10 December to supervise the offensive, which was now set for 16 December. He gave orders directly to the army commanders, bypassing both Rundstedt and Model. Manteuffel said: "The plan for the Ardennes offensive was drawn up completely by OKW and sent to us as a cut-and-dried Führer order." Taking advantage of surprise and poor weather (which helped neutralise the Allies' command of the air), the offensive made initial progress, breaking through the weak American formations in this quiet sector of the front. But the Allies were quick to react, and the Germans were soon falling behind their ambitious timetables. To the north, Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army was blocked by stubborn defence at
St. Vith and
Elsenborn Ridge and advanced little more than 20 km. Manteuffel, in the centre, did better, reaching
Celles, a few kilometres short of the Meuse, on 25 December. This was a penetration of about 80 km, less than halfway to Antwerp, and on such a narrow front as to create an indefensible salient. The resistance of the American garrison at
Bastogne greatly delayed the advance, making a forcing of the Meuse impossible. When the cloud cover lifted on 24 December, the Allied air forces attacked with devastating effect. Rundstedt urged OKW to halt the offensive, lest the "bulge" created by the German advance become a "second Stalingrad", but Hitler was determined to press on. A few days later U.S. forces attacked from the north and south of the bulge, forcing the Germans first to halt and then to retreat. Waffen-SS units under Rundstedt's overall command committed war crimes during the campaign in the West, including the
Malmedy massacre, which was perpetrated by troops under the command of
Joachim Peiper. His unit of the SS division was under the command of
Wilhelm Mohnke. Peiper's battle group () was charged with seizing the bridges over the Meuse ahead of the advance of the 6th Panzer Army. On 17 December, near
Malmedy, a group of Peiper's men, opened fire on a large group of unarmed U.S. prisoners of war, killing 84. Responsibility for this crime ran from Peiper to Mohnke to Dietrich to Model to Rundstedt, although none of them had been present and none had ordered such action. When Rundstedt heard about it, he ordered an investigation, but in the chaos of the failing offensive nothing came of this. Although such occurrences were commonplace on the Eastern Front from both sides, they were a rarity in the West, and the outraged Americans were determined to prosecute all those with responsibility for this massacre. Here Rundstedt's problem was his reputation. The Ardennes offensive was known to the Allies as "the Rundstedt offensive", and the Allied press routinely described him as being in charge of it. The British commander in Europe, Field Marshal
Bernard Montgomery, said on 7 January 1945: "I used to think that Rommel was good, but my opinion is that Rundstedt would have
hit him for six. Rundstedt is the best German general I have come up against." Since Rundstedt, as far as the Allies knew, was in charge of the offensive, it followed for them that he was responsible for what his subordinates did during it.
Defence of the Rhine On 8 January, Hitler authorised Manteuffel to withdraw from the tip of the bulge, and on 15 January he gave up the whole enterprise and returned to Berlin. By the end of January the Germans were back where they had started. But the offensive had burned up the last of Rundstedt's reserves of manpower, equipment and fuel, and as a result neither the West Wall nor the Rhine could be properly defended. On 18 February, as the Allies entered Germany, Rundstedt issued an appeal to the German Army to resist the invader, urging the troops to "gather round the Führer to guard our people and our state from a destiny of horror." Hitler rewarded his loyalty with the Swords to his Knight's Cross. Despite fierce resistance in places, the Germans were forced back from the West Wall during February, and a series of Allied offensives, rolling from north to south, drove across the
Rhineland towards the great river. On 2 March the Americans reached the Rhine near
Düsseldorf. Rundstedt had been aware as early as September of the importance of the many bridges over the Rhine, and of the necessity of denying them to the enemy. He made careful plans for the bridges to be blown up if the enemy reached the Rhine. On 7 March, however, these plans failed when the Americans
captured the
Ludendorff Bridge at
Remagen intact, and rapidly established a bridgehead on the eastern bank. This could hardly be blamed on Rundstedt, but he was the commander and Hitler needed a scapegoat.
Relief of command On 9 March Hitler phoned Rundstedt and told him he was to be replaced by
Albert Kesselring, to be transferred from Italy. That was the end of Gerd von Rundstedt's military career after 52 years. On 11 March Rundstedt had a final audience with Hitler, who thanked him for his loyalty. He then returned to his home in Kassel, but bombing and the Allied advance into western Germany made him decide to move his family, first to Solz, a village south of Kassel, then to
Weimar, then to
Bayreuth, and finally back to the sanatorium at Bad Tölz where he had stayed several times before. Rundstedt's heart condition had worsened and he also suffered from arthritis. There was no attempt at further escape: Rundstedt, accompanied by Bila and Hans Gerd and a few staff, stayed at Bad Tölz until it was occupied by American forces on 1 May, the day after Hitler's suicide in Berlin. That evening he was made a prisoner of war by troops from the
36th Infantry Division. Rundstedt complained publicly several times during and after the war: "Without Hitler's consent, I can't even move my own sentry from my front door around to the back!" Privately with other generals he referred to Hitler as that
Bohemian corporal.
Wilhelm Keitel once asked Hitler "Do you realise that Rundstedt called you a Bohemian corporal?" and Hitler replied "Yes, but he's the best field marshal I have." ==Post-war==