Rommel's Remarkable Tactics at Caporetto

Erwin Rommel with Pour le Mérite

Within two days of the opening of the Battle of Caporetto on 24 October 1917, Lt. Erwin Rommel’s Württemberg Mountain Battalion captured three peaks south of Caporetto and 9,000 Italian soldiers. What was the key to this amazing accomplishment? To answer this, I've had to draw on the  writings of three different militay commentators. This article  is a bit patched together, but I think it captures both the fresh thinking and pure animal energy of the young Rommel.

Since the beginning of his military career, Erwin Rommel showed signs of bravery, intuition, and contempt for higher authority that he felt did not understand the tactical situation. In September of 1914, Rommel was wounded in the leg when, having run out of ammunition, he charged three Frenchmen with a bayonet. After returning to the front lines in the Argonne area in January of 1915, Rommel received his first decoration for bravery, the Iron Cross Class I. In October of 1915, he was transferred to the mountain unit for training. Rommel was posted to the Carpathian Front, in the area of Siebenburgen, in late 1916, where he took part in the assaults on Mount Cosna and Caporetto. For his subsequent outstanding action at Caporetto, Rommel received Germany’s highest award, the Pour le Mérite, Order of Merit, and was promoted to the rank of captain. Rommel was one of few junior officers awarded the Pour le Mérite.  Shortly after, he was posted to a junior staff appointment, where he remained to the end of the war. 

After the war, Rommel went to Stuttgart, where he commanded an infantry regiment and served as an instructor at the infantry school in Dresden. During this time, Rommel wrote and published his book, Infanterie greift (Infantry Attacks), which he based on his experiences during World War I, and, of course there is extensive discussion of Caporetto and the follow-up campaign in which his unit pursued the retreating Italian forces to Monte Grappa.

Several serving infantry officers have commented that the idea of having a large firere-support element and a small assault group is nothing new, and that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was doing it as early as World War I, which Rommel’s own book Infantry Attacks demonstrates. Consider, for example, the German attack on Mt Matajur in October 1917. In mountainous terrain, Rommel’s detachment succeeded in infiltrating successive enemy defensive lines, capturing 9150 prisoners and eighty-one guns for the loss of only six killed and thirty wounded—an astounding casualty ratio for a battle in World War I.   Rommel’s method was to employ "a supporting element, usually consisting of massed machine-guns, in position to suppress enemy forces while a small penetration element created and widened a gap and his exploitation element (which usually consisted of the bulk of his forces) passed through the gap and moved deep into enemy lines’

A careful reconnaissance of enemy lines was always conducted to find gaps or areas where Rommel’s forces could closely approach enemy lines. During the execution of the attack, he always tried to take advantage of terrain, weather, and weaknesses in enemy deployment to move his forces through enemy lines with a minimal amount of contact. In other words, he always tried to infiltrate. If he could infiltrate without any contact or by quietly surprising and dispatching a small enemy position or section of the line, then he did so. If the infiltration option failed, he was always ready to execute a penetration by: (1) having a supporting element, usually consisting of massed machine guns, in position to suppress enemy forces while (2) a small penetration element created and widened a gap and (3) his exploitation element (which usually consisted of the bulk of his forces) passed through the gap and moved deep into enemy lines.

German Soldiers with Italian Prisoners at Caporetto

The infiltration or penetration was not the objective, it was simply a means to an end. The objective was to get through enemy front lines in order to get to logistic and command post areas and key terrain in the enemy rear. Rommel’s reconnaissances were usually made while the men rested, and were almost always conducted by officers and NCOs. These leaders were more lightly equipped and did not suffer the fatigue that the men did, making them available for scouting missions.

The leaders conducting these patrols were usually given the freedom to make and secure gaps in the enemy lines if possible. If these reconnaissance patrols came across enemy elements that were not sufficiently alert, the recon patrol would capture them and thus create their own gap. Often these recon elements, in the purest form of “recon pull,” made the gaps, sent back a runner, and “pulled” the rest of the unit through. Such gaps are a tenuous, ephemeral commodity, and Rommel always took immediate advantage of these opportunities, communicating back to his men a sense of urgency and the feeling that “a second’s delay might snatch away victory.”

In support of his recon pull, Rommel made extensive use of visual observation, using his binoculars more than any other single piece of equipment. In later operations he made excellent use of a powerful (captured) telescope and an ad hoc observation squad to conduct visual reconnaissance prior to attacking.

During the passage of his forces through three enemy lines of mountain defensive positions, Rommel made repeated use of stealthy approaches to surprise the enemy and infiltrate into his positions. On several occasions he took advantage of adverse weather, the fog of war, and fluid front line situations to deceive the enemy into believing that his troops were Italians. In one situation he prepared careful fire support and disposed his troops for a penetration operation, but in hopes of taking it by surprise he ordered a select squad under a handpicked leader to “move up the path as if he and his men were Italians returning from the front, to penetrate into the hostile position and capture the garrison… They were to do this with a minimum of shooting and hand grenade throwing. In case a battle developed they were assured of fire protection and support by the entire detachment.” In this instance they succeeded in silently capturing a hostile dugout with 17 Italians and a machine gun. The gap was widened as dozens of additional Italians were captured by approaching their positions from the flank and rear, and the way was opened to move even deeper into the enemy positions — all without firing a shot.

The stealth of these attacks was maintained at all cost, and if some enemy soldiers chose to run rather than surrender, Rommel’s men “did not fire on this fleeing enemy for fear of alarming the garrisons of positions located still higher up.” Rommel found that “The farther we penetrated into the hostile zone of defense, the less prepared were the garrisons for our arrival, and the easier the fighting.”

As Rommel relates in his Infantry Attacks, his troops’ momentum also let them rely on enemy supplies. He and his men made good use of captured enemy pack animals and bicycles during attacks. (Had he needed vehicular mobility it would have been readily available to him by using the vehicles captured in his ambushes, but his strength was in his ability to approach from unexpected directions over rough terrain.) In a later operation they were even able to acquire clean, dry underwear and sleeping gear from a captured Italian laundry depot, and on several occasions they came to rely “on the abundant weapons and stores of ammunition” captured from the Italians. 

The most common enemy asset, and that which seemed to have given him and his men the most joy, was the enemy’s food. “The contents of the [captured] vehicles offered us starved warriors unexpected delicacies. Chocolate, eggs, preserves, grapes, wine and white bread were unpacked and distributed. The worthy… troopers… were served first… morale two miles behind the enemy front was wonderful!”

If you have any interest in military operations or the personal story of Erwin Rommel, by all means ready his Infantry Attacks. Remember the film Patton, when he says, "Dammit Rommel, I read your book."  Infantry Attacks is that book. 

Lt. Col. David Kilcullan, Australian Army Journal, Vol 1. No. 1; Walter Zapotoczny at wzaponline.com; and David Grossman in On Killing