Rommel's asparagus (German: Rommelspargel - the German word Spargel means '"asparagus") were 13-to-16-foot (4 to 5 m) logs which the Axis placed in the fields and meadows of Normandy to cause damage to the expected invasion of Allied military gliders and paratroopers. Also known in German as Holzpfähle ("wooden poles"), the wooden defenses were placed in early 1944 in coastal areas of France and the Netherlands against airlanding infantry. Rommelspargel took their name from Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who ordered their design and usage;[1] Rommel himself called the defensive concept Luftlandehindernis ("air-landing obstacle").
Though Rommel's forces placed more than a million wooden poles in fields, their effect on the invasion of Normandy was inconsequential.[2] Later, in the French Riviera, only about 300 Allied casualties were attributed[by whom?] to the tactic.
Rommel's asparagus refers specifically to wooden poles used against aerial invasion.[3] The term has also been used[by whom?] to describe wooden logs set into the beaches of the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean to disrupt amphibious landings of troops. Testing found these wooden defenses too weak to stop boats, and they were largely abandoned in favor of Hemmbalken ("obstruction beams") and other beach defenses.[3]
Contents
1 Design and development 2 Operational history 2.1 Normandy invasion 2.2 Southern France 3 Atlantic Wall defenses 4 References
Design and development To his subordinate commanders, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel sent plans for wooden log and wire defenses.
In November 1943, Rommel took command of the German Army Group B in occupied France. He also took control of the Atlantic Wall defenses on the French coasts facing the United Kingdom and during a tour of anti-invasion fortifications Rommel concluded that the defenses would have to be improved, and quickly. He ordered millions of wooden tree trunks and logs to be set against airborne forces.[4] Barbed wire and tripwires were to be strung between the poles.[1] On plans that Rommel sent to his subordinates, the complete system of wooden poles and interconnecting wires was called Luftlandehindernis.[5]
Along inland fields and meadows where enemy gliders could land, Rommel specified that 6-to-12-inch (150 to 300 mm) diameter wooden poles were to be set into the ground with some 8–12 feet (3–4 m) of the pole projecting upward. In every 0.4 square miles (1 km2) there would be placed approximately 1,000 such defenses. The wooden poles were to be made from tree trunks or very thick tree branches. The tops of the poles were often connected by tripwires, and every third log carried a mine or hand grenade on top.[4] Not only were tree trunks used as poles but steel rails were put to the same purpose in some locations.[6]
Air-landing obstacles were not the only tactic Rommel used against aerial invaders. Rommel ordered the flooding of some fields so that glider troops and paratroops landing in the water would drown. He ordered machine gun crews to cover the exits of fields that were bounded by bocage—tall, dense hedgerows—so that glider infantry and paratroopers would come under fire as they moved out of their landing area.[7] The bocage hedgerows themselves were the worse hazard to safe glider landings, and caused more glider casualties than Rommelspargel.[2]
Rommel reported after an inspection tour in April 1944[8] that "The construction of anti-paratroop obstacles has made great progress in many divisions. For example, one division alone has erected almost 300,000 stakes, and one corps over 900,000."[9] Rommel emphasized that "Erecting stakes alone does not make the obstacles complete; the stakes must be wired together and shells and mines attached to them... It will still be possible for tethered cattle to pasture underneath these mined obstacles."[9]
