now, this book will cause t death of erwin rommel seven ars later. will go into that in a moment. but this book brings rommel to the attention of hitler, and hitler says i want that crackerjack officer to be in command of my future escort, my personal bodyguard of 500 men. that's what happens. world war ii comes with the german invasion of poland in september of 1939. what happens? rommel is there in poland with hitler. hitler is right up almost on the front lines under combat conditions, and there is a long line of we used to call them in the pentagon straphangers, staff officers, escort officers. one of whom is a nazi lackey by the name of martin borman, and he is hitler's right-hand man. and borman is a vicious, nasty nazi as bad as they come and he and rommel have a running because rommel is officer in charge of security. and borman tries but is far ahead of rommel in front of -- between the battlefront in poland and they were coming under combat conditions. rommel shuts down borman. bormann never forgets that. all that is little black book and s

to that end, that same will also sign a field marshal, the youngest in the german army, erwin rommel,and his staff to do an assessment of the atlantic wall. they all agree it's a sham with that von roon step will assign rommel command of the two army groups responsible for calais normandy. this is when the atlantic war really starts to be built as was brought up earlier. there's a lot of study where to, you know, where are we going to build our fence? he who defends everything, defend nothing. so what they do is they look at where are the landed in the past and it's always been ports. so therefore they prioritized ports. ca cherbourg brest. that's where the predominant mounts goes. moreover, for all the reasons we talked about besides under air cover, the closeness to berlin the idea that that is the most likely landing and, the most consequential one, most of the responses or most of the resources go to calais. now, when they start to build that atlantic wall. this is the western defenses. what we should think about this is a living beast. okay when you see these concrete bunkers, th

this one largely the brainchild of erwin rommel, because his experience is different.d he get his fighting? the british in north africa. now he's an armor man, too. but here's the thing. he'll say the war changed. you don't understand. allied is destroying us. we can't do that doctrine. approach all those reserves. put the rear will never make it to the front. allied air will ensure they do not. therefore, we need a new approach. we need to put that armor up at atlantic wall is not a trip. that is the battle line. we fight at the coast. if the allies land and they take a hold for more than 48 hours. we will lose the assumptions inherent of this is we have no german navy and. we have no german air force. now that's the debate that goes back and forth now, be told these guys are going to push back a erwin rommel. that's mildly interesting. here's the thing. africa. europe and not north there's 66 days of cloud cover in. northwest europe, alli a going to be that effective. moreover, this isn't the desert. this is europe. look at all those tree look at the rolling terrain.

background■f■ [applause] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> next a lecture on impact of general george patton and erwin rommel

so interesting little anecdote about omaha beach rommel, of course field marshal erwin rommel, who's responsive for the defense of northern, was commander of army group b. he visits omaha beach and he said it reminded them of salerno, which an allied landing beach in in italy in september 43 because of the crescent shape, the bracketing of the high ground and all that of stuff. so he certainly would anticipated omaha beach anybody who figured that an allied invasion was coming at normandy would look at these actual landing beaches where we land and know that this is we're going to be doing it. so that's why they built the defenses. i didn't mention this during the talk but i probably should have almost all the the german fortification missions in normandy are sort of still kind of in process. the germans are feverishly fortifying up to the last moment. so if rommel were here, i dare he would probably tell us my defenses were not complete as of d-day. and so you think about cost of this and say boy i'm glad they weren't complete imagine if they were. yes, sir. could you talk about the