Rundstedt-Hitler Question?

Okay, since it's June 6th I decided to pop in "The Longest Day" and watch it. Midway through the movie, I believe it's after the Point Du-Hoc scenes, General Blumentritt informs Field Marshall von Rundstedt that the panzer reserves have not been released and suggests a call from the Field Marshall to Hitler himself would get the reserve release. In response to this Rundstedt calls Hitler "that Bohemian corporal" and refuses to even crawl on his knees to him to get the panzers released. Now I already know one of the problems The Germans faced in Germany was that they had to ask Hitler to release the panzer reserve, so that's not the question. The question is is that how Rundstedt really felt about Hitler or is it something Hollywood felt would be appropriate? Rundstedt had ordered earlier in the movie to send word to Berlin to release the reserve and at that point in the movie he's angry about how the battle is progressing so it could just be something Hollywood put in, but I'm curious if Rundstedt didn't really have that kind of contempt for Hitler in real life.

John de Witt2017-06-07T01:13:29Z

Favorite Answer

von Runstedt led a group to block the appointment of von Reichenau as chief of staff on the basis of the latter being too Nazi. He was also in opposition to Goering and Himmler in the matter of the Blomberg-Fritsch affair. Hitler fired him multiple times. Simply put, the two were not on the best of terms.

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Anonymous2017-06-07T05:08:29Z

No, you're very confused. It was Linda Rundstedt who sang "Happy Birthday, Mein Fuehrer" to Hitler in episode 5 of "The High Man in the Castle."

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?2017-06-06T23:08:16Z

Oh yes - the generals had a LOT of contempt for Hitler by the end of the war. The generals were generally of the upper class - Hitler the lower. So there was that. But what had seemed like a miraculous war-winning ability of Hitler early in the war soon became a dismal waste of German life on all fronts.

So I can imagine that Mr. Rundstedt was pretty disgusted by Hitler by 1944. Hitler was also monumentally lazy and slept late - and you can imagine how those high-class Germans would have dealt with that!

A really fantastic book is "Adolf Hitler" by John Toland - if you haven't read it. Great information in there.

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