October 14, 1944: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, implicated in the 20th of July Plot that tried and failed to assassinate Chancellor Adolf Hitler of Germany, is given a choice: A long and public trial, which would result in his disgrace and execution; or committing suicide, with the promise that his death would be told to the Reich as one from battle, and his reputation and his family would be left alone.
He chooses to say goodbye to his family at their home in Herrlingen, in Baden-Württemberg, Southern Germany, and takes a cyanide pill. He was 52 years old.
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel, born on November 15, 1891 in Heidenheim an der Brenz, also in Baden-Württemberg, was a hero of World War I. Initially, he supported Hitler's rise to power, and was vital in Nazi victories in France and North Africa, where, commanding the tank-based unit known as the Afrika Corps, he became known as "The Desert Fox."
He was hailed for his unwillingness to fight dirty, appears not to have shared the anti-Semitic views of the Nazi high command, and did associate with the leaders of the 20th of July Plot. For thess reasons, he was one of the few Germans whose reputation improved after World War II.
But he made a key tactical mistake: In 1937, then-Lieutenant Colonel Rommel published a book, whose English title was Infantry Attacks. Surely, he must have known that Hitler was preparing for another war, at least on a continental scale, and that he would be a commander in it (he was only 46 at the time of the book's publication), and that his tactics might be read and anticipated.
One man who did just that was another man who was then a Lieutenant Colonel, the U.S. Army's George S. Patton Jr., a West Point graduate who never missed a trick. Whether Patton, eventually a full General (4 stars), actually said, as George C. Scott did in playing him in the 1970 film Patton, "Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!" only he knew for sure.
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October 14, 1944 was a Saturday. Also dying in Nazi custody on this day was Tadeusz Gebethner, a Polish former soccer star who had been arrested for protecting Jews. I have a separate entry for that event.
Baseball season was over, ending 5 days earlier with the all-St. Louis World Series, with the Cardinals beating the Browns in 6 games. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season didn't start for another 2 weeks.
There were college football games that day, including the following:
* Number 1 Notre Dame beat Dartmouth, 64-0 at Fenway Park in Boston, making it, technically, a "home game" for the Hanover, New Hampshire-based Dartmouth.
* Number 3 Army beat the University of Pittsburgh, 69-7 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. Army later beat Notre Dame and, unsurprisingly, would win the National Championship.
* Number 4 Randolph Field beat Southern Methodist (SMU), 41-0 at Alamo Stadium in San Antonio. Randolph Field was a base of the U.S. Army Air Forces, predecessor to the U.S. Air Force that was separated from the Army in 1947. Their team included University of Virginia star "Bullet Bill" Dudley, who had already played a pro season with the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was eligible to play against collegiate opposition for Randolph Field because Randolph Field was not a college team.
They finished 12-0 and ranked Number 3, but didn't face ranked opposition until their last 2 games: A 20-7 win over Number 14 March Field (Air Force, Riverside, California) at the Los Angeles Coliseum on December 10, and a 13-6 win over Number 20 Second Air Force (Colorado Springs, later the site of the Air Force Academy) at the Polo Grounds on December 16. They were good, but almost certainly not good enough to beat Number 1 Army or Number 2 Navy.
* Number 5 Great Lakes Naval Training Station beat Western Michigan, 38-0 at Ross Field in Chicago. Great Lakes, whose baseball team included Bob Feller and Phil Rizzuto, and was good enough to be called "the 17th Major League Team," went 9-2, losing only to Ohio State, ranked Number 4 at the time; and Notre Dame, Number 9.
* Number 6 Navy beat Duke, 7-0 at Thompson Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland. Navy would beat Notre Dame, but, ranked Number 2 at the time, would lose to Army at Municipal Stadium in Baltimore.
* Number 7 Purdue lost to Number 11 Iowa Pre-Flight, 13-6 at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana. Iowa Pre-Flight was the Navy flying school set up at the University of Iowa, even though that school kept its team for the duration of The War. On that day, they lost to Number 14 Illinois, 40-6 at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Iowa Pre-Flight beat Iowa, 30-6 at Iowa Stadium, which would later be renamed Kinnick Stadium, after Nile Kinnick, the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner, who was killed in a Navy training flight in 1943.
* Number 8 Ohio State beat Number 19 Wisconsin, 20-7 at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin.
* Number 9 Pennsylvania beat William & Mary, 46-0 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. To someone whose memory of college football only goes back to the 1978 split of NCAA Division I into Division I-A and I-AA (now FBS and FCS, respectively), it seems strange to see an Ivy League team ranked at all, let alone in the Top 10.
* Among teams in the New York Tri-State Area: Columbia lost to Yale, 27-10 at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut; New York University lost to Temple, 25-0 at Ohio Field in The Bronx; City College of New York played the day before, and lost to Boston College, 33-0 at Braves Field in Boston; Rutgers did not start its season until October 28, playing only 5 games, 2 against Lafayette, 2 against Lehigh, and 1 against their own ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program) team; Princeton, until November 11, playing only 3 games; and Fordham had suspended its program entirely.
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