Enemy's Men

German news agencies announced the Wehrmacht's final line-up of top commanders to oppose the invasion. Contrary to Nazi party rumor, Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt, 68-year-old, frosty-eyed Junker veteran of the "old Army," stayed on as supreme commander in the west.

Directly under him are two of Germany's younger generals: Field Marshal Johannes Blaskowitz to command the front-line defense of the Atlantic Wall; Field Marshal Erwin Rommel to lead the interior army of shock and maneuver which must be thrown wherever the main Allied effort develops.

In the assignment of traditional Strategist Rundstedt over ambitious Tactician Rommel, who was once a Nazi cop, London observers thought they could see a victory for the German General Staff over Adolf Hitler's military intuitions and his party followers. They also agreed that it was probably a sound decision.

The Luftwaffe in the west is to be led by balding Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, veteran air general, but his command, too, is completely under Rundstedt's direction. The Germans unquestionably plan to use their own tough, mobile airborne troops to meet Allied airborne thrusts, and this phase of the campaign will be commanded by Lieut. General Kurt Student, professionally respected paratroop leader who planned and executed the Crete invasion.

Field Marshal Blaskowitz' appointment was regarded as a special triumph for Rundstedt. After an outstanding military performance in the Polish campaign, Blaskowitz led an Army group during the Battle of France. But he later quarreled with Hitler's judgment (reportedly over Gestapo excesses which were complicating the

Army's tasks in Poland) and virtually called the Fuehrer a fool to his face.

For this outrage he was promptly sacked, and-has recently been living in retirement. Rundstedt was unable to save Blaskowitz' career at the time; now he has clearly been strong enough to force his colleague's recall to duty.

But if the old-line generals were in the ascendancy at the Army's top, the Nazi party bosses had no intention of losing their control over the rank & file. Unabashedly they borrowed an old idea from their bitter Russian enemy: an arti. cle in Hermann Goering's Essener National-Zeitung disclosed that political commissars were being assigned to Wehrmacht divisions to bolster German soldiers' morale, political philosophy and will to resist throughout the war's "decisive phase."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.