Erwin Rommel Leadership Capstone

Leadership Capstone Essay

Erwin Rommel was born on November 15, 1891, in Heidenheim, Germany. His father Erwin Rommel Senior, a school headmaster, encouraged Rommel to become a military officer from a young age. In 1910, Rommel fulfilled his father’s wishes and joined the German army as an infantry officer in WWI. Early in his career, Rommel showed an uncanny promise as an infantry officer. His unorthodox trench warfare maneuvers of infiltration, flanking, surprise attacks, and violence of action made him a very effective tactician and leader. Throughout the war, he rejected further advancement in rank, choosing to remain as a frontline the infantry officer until the war ended.

At the pinnacle of Erwin Rommel’s military career, he achieved the military rank of Gerneralfeldmarschall within the German Wehrmacht. During WWII, Rommel became a military icon within Nazi Germany. Yet, he was never a full Nazi supporter. He admired Hitler for his leadership abilities, but did not believe in the Nazi propaganda of eradicating Jews. Rommel cared more about his career, then politics.

He was renowned for being a gallant

Many of his fellow generals even called his tactics reckless or uncanny of a German officer. However, this tactics were effective and efficient at neutralizing Allied forces with what little he had. His leadership style would be best described as Transformational, yet his personal interaction with individual soldiers would be Transactional. He was a transformational because he led the men by example, he believed that a commander should be more physically robust then his men, that commanders should always show them the example. He even gave up some special privileges to "live hard" with the men to raise morale and understand their conditions. Hence the men under his command were inspired and motivated on completing the missions at