title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel's military reputation has been controversial. While nearly all military practitioners acknowledge Rommel's excellent tactical skills and personal bravery, some, such as U.S. major general and military historian David T. Zabecki of the United States Naval Institute, considers Rommel's performance as an operational level commander to be highly overrated and that other officers share this belief. General Klaus Naumann, who served as Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, agrees with the military historian Charles Messenger that Rommel had challenges at the operational level, and states that Rommel's violation of the unity of command principle, bypassing the chain of command in Africa, was unacceptable and contributed to the eventual operational and strategic failure in North Africa. The German biographer Wolf Heckmann describes Rommel as "the most overrated commander of an army in world history".


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Nevertheless, there is also a notable number of officers who admire his methods, like Norman Schwarzkopf who described Rommel as a genius at battles of movement saying "Look at Rommel. Look at North Africa, the Arab-Israeli wars, and all the rest of them. A war in the desert is a war of mobility and lethality. It's not a war where straight lines are drawn in the sand and [you] say, 'I will defend here or die." Ariel Sharon deemed the German military model used by Rommel to be superior to the British model used by Montgomery. His compatriot Moshe Dayan likewise considered Rommel a model and icon. Wesley Clark states that "Rommel's military reputation, though, has lived on, and still sets the standard for a style of daring, charismatic leadership to which most officers aspire." During the recent desert wars, Rommel's military theories and experiences attracted great interest from policy makers and military instructors. Chinese military leader Sun Li-jen had the laudatory nickname "Rommel of the East".


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Certain modern military historians, such as Larry T. Addington, Niall Barr, Douglas Porch and Robert Citino, are sceptical of Rommel as an operational, let alone strategic level commander. They point to Rommel's lack of appreciation for Germany's strategic situation, his misunderstanding of the relative importance of his theatre to the German High Command, his poor grasp of logistical realities, and, according to the historian Ian Beckett, his "penchant for glory hunting". Citino credits Rommel's limitations as an operational level commander as "materially contributing" to the eventual demise of the Axis forces in North Africa, while Addington focuses on the struggle over strategy, whereby Rommel's initial brilliant success resulted in "catastrophic effects" for Germany in North Africa. Porch highlights Rommel's "offensive mentality", symptomatic of the Wehrmacht commanders as a whole in the belief that the tactical and operational victories would lead to strategic success. Compounding the problem was the Wehrmacht's institutional tendency to discount logistics, industrial output and their opponents' capacity to learn from past mistakes.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: The historian Geoffrey P. Megargee points out Rommel's playing the German and Italian command structures against each other to his advantage. Rommel used the confused structure—the High command of the armed forces, the OKH (Supreme High Command of the Army) and the "Comando Supremo" (Italian Supreme Command)—to disregard orders that he disagreed with or to appeal to whatever authority he felt would be most sympathetic to his requests.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Some historians take issue with Rommel's absence from Normandy on the day of the Allied invasion, 6 June 1944. He had left France on 5 June and was at home on the 6th celebrating his wife's birthday. (According to Rommel, he planned to proceed to see Hitler the next day to discuss the situation in Normandy). Zabecki calls his decision to leave the theatre in view of an imminent invasion "an incredible lapse of command responsibility". Lieb remarks that Rommel displayed real mental agility, but the lack of an energetic commander, together with other problems, caused the battle largely not to be conducted in his concept (which is the opposite of the German doctrine), although the result was still better than Geyr's plan. Lieb also opines that while his harshest critics (who mostly came from the General Staff) often said that Rommel was overrated or not suitable for higher commands, envy was a big factor here.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: T.L. McMahon argues that while Rommel no doubt possessed operational vision, he did not have the strategic resources to effect his operational choices while his forces provided the tactical ability to accomplish his goals, and the German staff and system of staff command were designed for commanders who led from the front, and in some cases he might have chosen the same options as Montgomery (a reputedly strategy-oriented commander) had he been put in the same conditions. According to Steven Zaloga, tactical flexibility was a great advantage of the German system, but in the final years of the war, Hitler and his cronies like Himmler and Goering had usurped more and more authority at the strategic level, leaving professionals like Rommel increasing constraints on their actions. Martin Blumenson considers Rommel a general with a compelling view of strategy and logistics, which was demonstrated through his many arguments with his superiors over such matters, although Blumenson also thinks that what distinguished Rommel was his boldness, his intuitive feel for the battlefield.(Upon which Schwarzkopf also comments "Rommel had a feel for the battlefield like no other man.")


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Joseph Forbes comments that: "The complex, conflict-filled interaction between Rommel and his superiors over logistics, objectives and priorities should not be used to detract from Rommel's reputation as a remarkable military leader", because Rommel was not given powers over logistics, and because if only generals who attain strategic-policy goals are great generals, such highly regarded commanders as Robert E. Lee, Hannibal, Charles XII would have to be excluded from that list. General Siegfried F. Storbeck, Deputy Inspector General of the Bundeswehr (1987–1991), remarks that, Rommel's leadership style and offensive thinking, although carrying inherent risks like losing the overview of the situation and creating overlapping of authority, have been proved effective, and have been analysed and incorporated in the training of officers by "us, our Western allies, the Warsaw Pact, and even the Israel Defense Forces". Maurice Remy defends his strategic decision regarding Malta as, although risky, the only logical choice.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel was among the few Axis commanders (the others being Isoroku Yamamoto and Reinhard Heydrich) who were targeted for assassination by Allied planners. Two attempts were made, the first being Operation Flipper in North Africa in 1941, and the second being Operation Gaff in Normandy in 1944.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Research by Norman Ohler claims that Rommel's behaviours were heavily influenced by Pervitin which he reportedly took in heavy doses, to such an extent that Ohler refers to him as "the Crystal Fox" ("Kristallfuchs") – playing off the nickname "Desert Fox" famously given to him by the British.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In France, Rommel ordered the execution of one French officer who refused three times to cooperate when being taken prisoner; there are disputes as to whether this execution was justified. Caddick-Adams comments that this would make Rommel a war criminal condemned by his own hand, and that other authors overlook this episode. Butler notes that the officer refused to surrender three times and thus died in a courageous but foolhardy way. French historian Petitfrère remarks that Rommel was in a hurry and had no time for useless palavers, although this act was still debatable. Telp remarks that, "he treated prisoners of war with consideration. On one occasion, he was forced to order the shooting of a French lieutenant-colonel for refusing to obey his captors"."" Scheck says, """Although there is no evidence incriminating Rommel himself, his unit did fight in areas where German massacres of black French prisoners of war were extremely common in June 1940".""


title: Erwin Rommel

text: There are reports that during the fighting in France, Rommel's 7th Panzer Division committed atrocities against surrendering French troops and captured prisoners of war. The atrocities, according to Martin S. Alexander, included the murder of 50 surrendering officers and men at Quesnoy and the nearby Airaines. According to Richardot, on 7 June, the commanding French officer Charles N'Tchoréré and his company surrendered to the 7th Panzer Division. He was then executed by the 25th Infantry Regiment (the 7th Panzer Division did not have a 25th Infantry Regiment). Journalist Alain Aka states simply that he was executed by one of Rommel's soldiers and his body was driven over by tank. Erwan Bergot reports that he was killed by the SS. Historian John Morrow states he was shot in the neck by a Panzer officer, without mentioning the unit of the perpetrators of this crime. The website of the National Federation of Volunteer Servicemen (F.N.C.V., France) states that N'Tchoréré was pushed against the wall and, despite protests from his comrades and newly liberated German prisoners, was shot by the SS. Elements of the division are considered by Scheck to have been "likely" responsible for the murder of POWs in Hangest-sur-Somme, while Scheck reports that they were too far away to have been involved in the massacres at Airaines and nearby villages. Scheck says that the German units fighting there came from the 46th and 2nd Infantry Division, and possibly from the 6th and 27th Infantry Division as well. Scheck also writes that there were no SS units in the area. Morrow, citing Scheck, says that the 7th Panzer Division carried out "cleansing operations". French historian counts the number of victims of the 7th Panzer Division in Airaines at 109, mostly French-African soldiers from Senegal. Showalter writes: "In fact, the garrison of Le Quesnoy, most of them Senegalese, took heavy toll of the German infantry in house-to-house fighting. Unlike other occasions in 1940, when Germans and Africans met, there was no deliberate massacre of survivors. Nevertheless, the riflemen took few prisoners, and the delay imposed by the tirailleurs forced the Panzers to advance unsupported until Rommel was ordered to halt for fear of coming under attack by Stukas." Claus Telp comments that Airaines was not in the sector of the 7th, but at Hangest and Martainville, elements of the 7th might have shot some prisoners and used British Colonel Broomhall as a human shield (although Telp is of the opinion that it was unlikely that Rommel approved of, or even knew about, these two incidents). Historian David Stone notes that acts of shooting surrendered prisoners were carried out by Rommel's 7th Panzer Division and observes contradictory statements in Rommel's account of the events; Rommel initially wrote that "any enemy troops were wiped out or forced to withdraw" but also added that "many prisoners taken were hopelessly drunk." Stone attributes the massacres of soldiers from the "53ème Regiment d'Infanterie Coloniale" (N'Tchoréré's unit) on 7 June to the 5th Infantry Division. Historian Daniel Butler agrees that it was possible that the massacre at Le Quesnoy happened given the existence of Nazis, such as Hanke, in Rommel's division, while stating that in comparison with other German units, few sources regarding such actions of the men of the 7th Panzer exist. Butler believes that "it's almost impossible to imagine" Rommel authorising or countenancing such actions. He also writes that "Some accusers have twisted a remark in Rommel's own account of the action in the village of Le Quesnoy as proof that he at least tacitly condoned the executions—'any enemy troops were either wiped out or forced to withdraw'—but the words themselves as well as the context of the passage hardly support the contention."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Giordana Terracina writes that: "On April 3, the Italians recaptured Benghazi and a few months later the Afrika Korps led by Rommel was sent to Libya and began the deportation of the Jews of Cyrenaica in the concentration camp of Giado and other smaller towns in Tripolitania. This measure was accompanied by shooting, also in Benghazi, of some Jews guilty of having welcomed the British troops, on their arrival, treating them as liberators." Gershom states that Italian authorities were responsible for bringing Jews into their concentration camps, which were "not built to exterminate its inmates", yet as the water and food supply was meager, were not built to keep humans alive either. Also according to Gershom, the German consul in Tripoli knew about the process and trucks used to transport supply to Rommel were sometimes used to transport Jews, despite all problems the German forces were having. The "Jerusalem Post"'s review of Gershom Gorenberg's "War of shadows" writes that: "The Italians were far more brutal with civilians, including Libyan Jews, than Rommel’s Afrika Korps, which by all accounts abided by the laws of war. But nobody worried that the Italians who sent Jews to concentration camps in Libya, would invade British-held Egypt, let alone Mandatory Palestine."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: According to German historian , Rommel forbade his soldiers from buying anything from the Jewish population of Tripoli, used Jewish slave labour and commanded Jews to clear out minefields by walking on them ahead of his forces. According to Proske, some of the Libyan Jews were eventually sent to concentration camps. Historians Christian Schweizer and Peter Lieb note that: "Over the last few years, even though the social science teacher Wolfgang Proske has sought to participate in the discussion [on Rommel] with very strong opinions, his biased submissions are not scientifically received." The "Heidenheimer Zeitung" notes that Proske was the publisher of his main work "Täter, Helfer, Trittbrettfahrer – NS-Belastete von der Ostalb", after failing to have it published by another publisher.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: According to historian Michael Wolffsohn, during the Africa campaign, preparations for committing genocide against the North African Jews were in full swing and a thousand of them were transported to East European concentration camps. At the same time, he recommends the Bundeswehr to keep the names and traditions associated with Rommel (although Wolffsohn opines that focus should be put on the politically thoughtful soldier he became at the end of his life, rather than the swashbuckler and the humane rogue).


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Robert Satloff writes in his book "Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands" that as the German and Italian forces retreated across Libya towards Tunisia, the Jewish population became victim upon which they released their anger and frustration. According to Satloff Afrika Korps soldiers plundered Jewish property all along the Libyan coast. This violence and persecution only came to an end with the arrival of General Montgomery in Tripoli on 23 January 1943. According to Maurice Remy, although there were antisemitic individuals in the Afrika Korps, actual cases of abuse are not known, even against the Jewish soldiers of the Eighth Army. Remy quotes Isaac Levy, the Senior Jewish Chaplain of the Eighth Army, as saying that he had never seen "any sign or hint that the soldiers [of the Afrika Korps] are antisemitic.". "The Telegraph" comments: "Accounts suggest that it was not Field Marshal Erwin Rommel but the ruthless SS colonel Walter Rauff who stripped Tunisian Jews of their wealth."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Commenting on Rommel's conquest of Tunisia, Marvin Perry writes that: "The bridgehead Rommel established in Tunisia enabled the SS to herd Jews into slave labor camps."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: "Der Spiegel" writes that: "The SS had established a network of labor camps in Tunisia. More than 2,500 Tunisian Jews died in six months of German rule, and the regular army was also involved in executions." Caron writes on "Der Spiegel" that the camps were organised in early December 1942 by Nehring, the commander in Tunisia, and Rauff, while Rommel was retreating. As commander of the German Afrika Korps, Nehring would continue to use Tunisian forced labour. Historian Clemens Vollnhals writes that use of Jews by Afrika Korps as forced labour is barely known, but it did happen alongside persecution of Jewish population (although on smaller scale than in Europe) and some of the labourers have died. According to Caddick-Adams, no Waffen-SS served under Rommel in Africa at any time and most of the activities of Rauff's detachment happened after Rommel's departure. Shepherd notes that during this time Rommel was retreating and there is no evidence that he had contact with the "Einsatzkommando" Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Martin Cüppers Smith Addressing the call of some authors to contextualise Rommel's actions in Italy and North Africa, Wolfgang Mährle notes that while it is undeniable that Rommel played the role of a "Generalfeldmarschall" in a criminal war, this only illustrates in a limited way his personal attitude and the actions resulted from that.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: According to several historians, allegations and stories that associate Rommel and the Afrika Korps with the harassing and plundering of Jewish gold and property in Tunisia are usually known under the name "Rommel's treasure" or "Rommel's gold". Michael FitzGerald comments that the treasure should be named more accurately as Rauff's gold, as Rommel had nothing to do with its acquisition or removal. Jean-Christoph Caron comments that the treasure legend has a real core and that Jewish property was looted by the SS in Tunisia and later might have been hidden or sunken around the port city of Corsica, where Rauff was stationed in 1943. The person who gave birth to the full-blown legend was the SS soldier Walter Kirner, who presented a false map to the French authorities. Caron and Jörg Müllner, his co-author of the ZDF documentary "Rommel's treasure" (Rommels Schatz) tell Die Welt that "Rommel had nothing to do with the treasure, but his name is assocỉated with everything that happened in the war in Africa."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rick Atkinson criticises Rommel for gaining a looted stamp collection (a bribe from Sepp Dietrich) and a villa taken from Jews. Lucas, Matthews and Remy though describe the contemptuous and angry reaction of Rommel towards Dietrich's act and the lootings and other brutal behaviours of the SS that he had discovered in Italy. Claudia Hecht also explains that although the Stuttgart and Ulm authorities did arrange for the Rommel family to use a villa whose Jewish owners had been forced out two years earlier, for a brief period after their own house had been destroyed by Allied bombing, ownership of it was never transferred to them. Butler notes that Rommel was one of the few who refused large estates and gifts of cash Hitler gave to his generals.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: At the beginning, although Hitler and Goebbels took particular notice of Rommel, the Nazi elites had no intent to create one major war symbol (partly out of fear that he would offset Hitler), generating huge propaganda campaigns for not only Rommel but also Gerd von Rundstedt, Walther von Brauchitsch, Eduard Dietl, Sepp Dietrich (the latter two were party members and also strongly supported by Hitler), etc. Nevertheless, a multitude of factors—including Rommel's unusual charisma, his talents both in military matters and public relations, the efforts of Goebbels's propaganda machine, and the Allies' participation in mythologising his life (either for political benefits, sympathy for someone who evoked a romantic archetype, or genuine admiration for his actions)—gradually contributed to Rommel's fame. Spiegel wrote, "Even back then his fame outshone that of all other commanders."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel's victories in France were featured in the German press and in the February 1941 film "Sieg im Westen (Victory in the West)," in which Rommel personally helped direct a segment re-enacting the crossing of the Somme River.According to Scheck, although there is no evidence of Rommel committing crimes, during the shooting of the movie, African prisoners of war, were forced to take part in its making, and forced to carry out humiliating acts. Stills from the re-enactment are found in "Rommel Collection"; it was filmed by Hans Ertl, assigned to this task by Dr. Kurt Hesse, a personal friend of Rommel, who worked for Wehrmacht Propaganda Section V Rommel's victories in 1941 were played up by the Nazi propaganda, even though his successes in North Africa were achieved in arguably one of Germany's least strategically important theatres of World War II. In November 1941, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote about "the urgent need" to have Rommel "elevated to a kind of popular hero." Rommel, with his innate abilities as a military commander and love of the spotlight, was a perfect fit for the role Goebbels designed for him.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In North Africa, Rommel received help in cultivating his image from Alfred Ingemar Berndt, a senior official at the Reich Propaganda Ministry who had volunteered for military service. Seconded by Goebbels, Berndt was assigned to Rommel's staff and became one of his closest aides. Berndt often acted as liaison between Rommel, the Propaganda Ministry, and the Führer Headquarters. He directed Rommel's photo shoots and filed radio dispatches describing the battles.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In the spring of 1941, Rommel's name began to appear in the British media. In the autumn of 1941 and early winter of 1941/1942, he was mentioned in the British press almost daily. Toward the end of the year, the Reich propaganda machine also used Rommel's successes in Africa as a diversion from the Wehrmacht's challenging situation in the Soviet Union with the stall of Operation Barbarossa. The American press soon began to take notice of Rommel as well, following the country's entry into the war on 11 December 1941, writing that "The British (...) admire him because he beat them and were surprised to have beaten in turn such a capable general." General Auchinleck distributed a directive to his commanders seeking to dispel the notion that Rommel was a "superman". Rommel, no matter how hard the situation was, made a deliberate effort at always spending some time with soldiers and patients, his own and POWs alike, which contributed greatly to his reputation of not only being a great commander but also "a decent chap" among the troops.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: The attention of the Western and especially the British press thrilled Goebbels, who wrote in his diary in early 1942: "Rommel continues to be the recognized darling of even the enemies' news agencies." The Field Marshal was pleased by the media attention, although he knew the downsides of having a reputation. Hitler took note of the British propaganda as well, commenting in the summer of 1942 that Britain's leaders must have hoped "to be able to explain their defeat to their own nation more easily by focusing on Rommel".


title: Erwin Rommel

text: The Field Marshal was the German commander most frequently covered in the German media, and the only one to be given a press conference, which took place in October 1942. The press conference was moderated by Goebbels and was attended by both domestic and foreign media. Rommel declared: "Today we (...) have the gates of Egypt in hand, and with the intent to act!" Keeping the focus on Rommel distracted the German public from Wehrmacht losses elsewhere as the tide of the war began to turn. He became a symbol that was used to reinforce the German public's faith in an ultimate Axis victory.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In the wake of the successful British offensive in November 1942 and other military reverses, the Propaganda Ministry directed the media to emphasise Rommel's invincibility. The charade was maintained until the spring of 1943, even as the German situation in Africa became increasingly precarious. To ensure that the inevitable defeat in Africa would not be associated with Rommel's name, Goebbels had the Army High Command announce in May 1943 that Rommel was on a two-month leave for health reasons. Instead, the campaign was presented by Berndt, who resumed his role in the Propaganda Ministry, as a ruse to tie down the British Empire while Germany was turning Europe into an impenetrable fortress with Rommel at the helm of this success. After the radio programme ran in May 1943, Rommel sent Berndt a case of cigars as a sign of his gratitude.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Although Rommel then entered a period without a significant command, he remained a household name in Germany, synonymous with the aura of invincibility. Hitler then made Rommel part of his defensive strategy for Fortress Europe ("Festung Europa") by sending him to the West to inspect fortifications along the Atlantic Wall. Goebbels supported the decision, noting in his diary that Rommel was "undoubtedly the suitable man" for the task. The propaganda minister expected the move to reassure the German public and at the same time to have a negative impact on the Allied forces' morale.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In France, a Wehrmacht propaganda company frequently accompanied Rommel on his inspection trips to document his work for both domestic and foreign audiences. In May 1944 the German newsreels reported on Rommel's speech at a Wehrmacht conference, where he stated his conviction that "every single German soldier will make his contribution against the Anglo-American spirit that it deserves for its criminal and bestial air war campaign against our homeland." The speech led to an upswing in morale and sustained confidence in Rommel.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: When Rommel was seriously wounded on 17 July 1944, the Propaganda Ministry undertook efforts to conceal the injury so as not to undermine domestic morale. Despite those, the news leaked to the British press. To counteract the rumours of a serious injury and even death, Rommel was required to appear at 1 August press conference. On 3 August, the German press published an official report that Rommel had been injured in a car accident. Rommel noted in his diary his dismay at this twisting of the truth, belatedly realising how much the Reich propaganda was using him for its own ends.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel was interested in propaganda beyond the promotion of his own image. In 1944, after visiting Rommel in France and reading his proposals on counteracting Allied propaganda, Alfred-Ingemar Berndt remarked: "He is also interested in this propaganda business and wants to develop it by all means. He has even thought and brought out practical suggestions for each program and subject."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel saw the propaganda and education values in his and his nation's deeds (He also did value justice itself; according to Admiral Ruge's diary, Rommel told Ruge: "Justice is the indispensable foundation of a nation. Unfortunately, the higher-ups are not clean. The slaughterings are grave sins.") The key to the successful creating of an image, according to Rommel, was leading by example: "The men tend to feel no kind of contact with a commander who, they know, is sitting somewhere in headquarters. What they want is what might be termed a physical contact with him. In moments of panic, fatigue, or disorganization, or when something out of the ordinary has to be demanded from them, the personal example of the commander works wonders, especially if he has had the wit to create some sort of legend around himself." He urged Axis authorities to treat the Arab with the utmost respect to prevent uprisings behind the front. He protested the use of propaganda at the cost of explicit military benefits though, criticising Hitler's headquarters for being unable to tell the German people and the world that El Alamein had been lost and preventing the evacuation of the German forces in Northern Africa in the process. Ruge suggests that his chief treated his own fame as a kind of weapon.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In 1943, he surprised Hitler by proposing that a Jew should be made into a "Gauleiter" to prove to the world that Germany was innocent of accusations that Rommel had heard from the enemy's propaganda regarding the mistreatment of Jews. Hitler replied, "Dear Rommel, you understand nothing about my thinking at all."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel was not a member of the Nazi Party. Rommel and Hitler had a close and genuine, if complicated, personal relationship. Rommel, as other "Wehrmacht" officers, welcomed the Nazi rise to power. Numerous historians state that Rommel was one of Hitler's favourite generals and that his close relationship with the dictator benefited both his inter-war and war-time career. Robert Citino describes Rommel as "not apolitical" and writes that he owed his career to Hitler, to whom Rommel's attitude was "worshipful", with Messenger agreeing that Rommel owed his tank command, his hero status and other promotions to Hitler's interference and support.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Kesselring described Rommel's own power over Hitler as "hypnotic". In 1944, Rommel himself told Ruge and his wife that Hitler had a kind of irresistible magnetic aura ("Magnetismus") and was always seemingly in an intoxicated condition. Maurice Remy identifies that the point at which their relationship became a personal one was 1939, when Rommel proudly announced to his friend Kurt Hesse that he had "sort of forced Hitler to go with me (to the Hradschin Castle in Prague, in an open top car, without another bodyguard), under my personal protection ... He had entrusted himself to me and would never forget me for my excellent advice."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: The close relationship between Rommel and Hitler continued following the Western campaign; after Rommel sent to him a specially prepared diary on the 7th Division, he received a letter of thanks from the dictator. (According to Speer, he would normally send extremely unclear reports which annoyed Hitler greatly.) According to Maurice Remy, the relationship, which Remy calls "a dream marriage", showed the first crack only in 1942, and later gradually turned into, in the words of German writer Ernst Jünger (in contact with Rommel in Normandy), ""Haßliebe"" (a love-hate relationship). Ruge's diary and Rommel's letters to his wife show his mood fluctuating wildly regarding Hitler: while he showed disgust towards the atrocities and disappointment towards the situation, he was overjoyed to welcome a visit from Hitler, only to return to depression the next day when faced with reality.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Hitler displayed the same emotions. Amid growing doubts and differences, he would remain eager for Rommel's calls (they had almost daily, hour-long, highly animated conversations, with the preferred topic being technical innovations): he once almost grabbed the telephone out of Linge's hand. But, according to Linge, seeing Rommel's disobedience Hitler also realised his mistake in building up Rommel, whom not only the Afrika Korps but also the German people in general now considered the German God. Hitler tried to fix the dysfunctional relationship many times without results, with Rommel calling his attempts "Sunlamp Treatment", although later he said that "Once I have loved the Führer, and I still do." Remy and "Der Spiegel" remark that the statement was very much genuine, while Watson notes that Rommel believed he deserved to die for his treasonable plan.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel was an ambitious man who took advantage of his proximity to Hitler and willingly accepted the propaganda campaigns designed for him by Goebbels. On one hand, he wanted personal promotion and the realisation of his ideals. On the other hand, being elevated by the traditional system that gave preferential treatment to aristocratic officers would be betrayal of his aspiration "to remain a man of the troops". In 1918, Rommel refused an invitation to a prestigious officer training course, and with it, the chance to be promoted to general. Additionally, he had no inclination towards the political route, preferring to remain a soldier ("Nur-Soldat"). He was thus attracted by the Common Man theme which promised to level German society, the glorification of the national community, and the idea of a soldier of common background who served the Fatherland with talent and got rewarded by another common man who embodied the will of the German people. While he had much indignation towards Germany's contemporary class problem, this self-association with the Common Man went along well with his desire to simulate the knights of the past, who also led from the front. Rommel seemed to enjoy the idea of peace, as shown by his words to his wife in August 1939: "You can trust me, we have taken part in one World War, but as long as our generation live, there will not be a second", as well as his letter sent to her the night before the Invasion of Poland, in which he expressed (in Maurice Remy's phrase) "boundless optimism": "I still believe the atmosphere will not become more bellicose." Butler remarks that Rommel was center in his politics, leaning a little to the left in his attitude.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Messenger argues that Rommel's attitude towards Hitler changed only after the Allied invasion of Normandy, when Rommel came to realise that the war could not be won, while Maurice Remy suggests that Rommel never truly broke away from the relationship with Hitler but praises him for "always [having] the courage to oppose him whenever his conscience required so". The historian Peter Lieb states that it was not clear whether the threat of defeat was the only reason Rommel wanted to switch sides. The relationship seemed to go significantly downhill after a conversation in July 1943, in which Hitler told Rommel that if they did not win the war, the Germans could rot. Rommel even began to think that it was lucky that his Afrika Korps was now safe as POWs and could escape Hitler's Wagnerian ending. Die Welt comments that Hitler chose Rommel as his favourite because he was apolitical, and that the combination of his military expertise and circumstances allowed Rommel to remain clean.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Rommel's political inclinations were a controversial matter even among the contemporary Nazi elites. Rommel himself, while showing support to some facets of the Nazi ideology and enjoying the propaganda machine that the Nazis had built around him, was enraged by the Nazi media's effort to portray him as an early Party member and son of a mason, forcing them to correct this misinformation. The Nazi elites were not comfortable with the idea of a national icon who did not wholeheartedly support the regime. Hitler and Goebbels, his main supporters, tended to defend him. When Rommel was being considered for appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in the summer of 1942, Goebbels wrote in his diary that Rommel "is ideologically sound, is not just sympathetic to the National Socialists. He is a National Socialist; he is a troop leader with a gift for improvisation, personally courageous and extraordinarily inventive. These are the kinds of soldiers we need." Despite this, they gradually saw that his grasp of political realities and his views could be very different from theirs. Hitler knew, though, that Rommel's optimistic and combative character was indispensable for his war efforts. When Rommel lost faith in the final victory and Hitler's leadership, Hitler and Goebbels tried to find an alternative in Manstein to remedy the fighting will and "political direction" of other generals but did not succeed.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Meanwhile, officials who did not like Rommel, such as Bormann and Schirach, whispered to each other that he was not a Nazi at all. Rommel's relationship to the Nazi elites, other than Hitler and Goebbels, was mostly hostile, although even powerful people like Bormann and Himmler had to tread carefully around Rommel. Himmler, who played a decisive role in Rommel's death, tried to blame Keitel and Jodl for the deed. And in fact the deed was initiated by them. They deeply resented Rommel's meteoric rise and had long feared that he would become the Commander-in-Chief. (Hitler also played innocent by trying to erect a monument for the national hero, on 7 March 1945) Franz Halder, after concocting several schemes to rein in Rommel through people like Paulus and Gause to no avail (even willing to undermine German operations and strategy in the process for the sole purpose of embarrassing him), concluded that Rommel was a madman with whom no one dared to cross swords because of "his brutal methods and his backing from the highest levels". (Rommel imposed a high number of courts martial, but according to Westphal, he never signed the final order. Owen Connelly comments that he could afford easy discipline because of his charisma). Rommel for his part was highly critical of Himmler, Halder, the High Command and particularly Goering who Rommel at one point called his "bitterest enemy". Hitler realised that Rommel attracted the elites' negative emotions to himself, in the same way he generated optimism in the common people. Depending on the case, Hitler manipulated or exacerbated the situation in order to benefit himself, although he originally had no intent of pushing Rommel to the point of destruction. (Even when informed of Rommel's involvement in the plot, hurt and vengeful, Hitler at first wanted to retire Rommel, and eventually offered him a last-minute chance to explain himself and refute the claims, which Rommel apparently did not take advantage of.) Ultimately Rommel's enemies worked together to bring him down.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Maurice Remy concludes that, unwillingly and probably without ever realising it, Rommel was part of a murderous regime, although he never actually grasped the core of Nazism. Peter Lieb sees Rommel as a person who could not be put into a single drawer, although problematic by modern moral standards, and suggests people should personally decide for themselves whether Rommel should remain a role model or not. He was a Nazi general in some aspects, considering his support for the leader cult (Führerkult) and the Volksgemeinschaft, but he was not an antisemite, nor a war criminal, nor a radical ideological fighter. Historian Cornelia Hecht remarks "It is really hard to know who the man behind the myth was," noting that in numerous letters he wrote to his wife during their almost 30-year marriage, he commented little on political issues as well as his personal life as a husband and a father.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: According to some revisionist authors, an assessment of Rommel's role in history has been hampered by views of Rommel that were formed, at least in part, for political reasons, creating what these historians have called the "Rommel myth". The interpretation considered by some historians to be a myth is the depiction of the Field Marshal as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of Nazi Germany who participated in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler. There are a notable number of authors who refer to "Rommel Myth" or "Rommel Legend" in a neutral or positive manner though. The seeds of the myth can be found first in Rommel's drive for success as a young officer in World War I and then in his popular 1937 book "Infantry Attacks," which was written in a style that diverged from the German military literature of the time and became a best-seller.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: The myth then took shape during the opening years of World War II, as a component of Nazi propaganda to praise the Wehrmacht and instill optimism in the German public, with Rommel's willing participation. When Rommel came to North Africa, it was picked up and disseminated in the West by the British press as the Allies sought to explain their continued inability to defeat the Axis forces in North Africa. The British military and political figures contributed to the heroic image of the man as Rommel resumed offensive operations in January 1942 against the British forces weakened by redeployments to the Far East. During parliamentary debate following the fall of Tobruk, Churchill described Rommel as an "extraordinary bold and clever opponent" and a "great field commander".


title: Erwin Rommel

text: According to "Der Spiegel" following the war's end, West Germany yearned for father figures who were needed to replace the former ones who had been unmasked as criminals. Rommel was chosen because he embodied the decent soldier, cunning yet fair-minded, and if guilty by association, not so guilty that he became unreliable, and additionally, former comrades reported that he was close to the Resistance. While everyone else was disgraced, his star became brighter than ever, and he made the historically unprecedented leap over the threshold between eras: from Hitler's favourite general to the young republic's hero. Cornelia Hecht notes that despite the change of times, Rommel has become the symbol of different regimes and concepts, which is paradoxical, whoever the man he really was.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: At the same time, the Western Allies, and particularly the British, depicted Rommel as the "good German". His reputation for conducting a clean war was used in the interest of the West German rearmament and reconciliation between the former enemies—Britain and the United States on one side and the new Federal Republic of Germany on the other. When Rommel's alleged involvement in the plot to kill Hitler became known after the war, his stature was enhanced in the eyes of his former adversaries. Rommel was often cited in Western sources as a patriotic German willing to stand up to Hitler. Churchill wrote about him in 1950: "[Rommel] (...) deserves our respect because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works and took part in the conspiracy of 1944 to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant."


title: Erwin Rommel

text: While at Cadet School in 1911, Rommel met and became engaged to 17-year-old Lucia (Lucie) Maria Mollin (1894–1971). While stationed in Weingarten in 1913, Rommel developed a relationship with Walburga Stemmer, which produced a daughter, Gertrud, born 8 December 1913. Because of elitism in the officer corps, Stemmer's working-class background made her unsuitable as an officer's wife, and Rommel felt honour-bound to uphold his previous commitment to Mollin. With Mollin's cooperation, he accepted financial responsibility for the child. Rommel and Mollin were married in November 1916 in Danzig. Rommel's marriage was a happy one, and he wrote his wife at least one letter every day while he was in the field.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: After the end of the First World War, the couple settled initially in Stuttgart, and Stemmer and her child lived with them. Gertrud was referred to as Rommel's niece, a fiction that went unquestioned because of the enormous number of women widowed during the war. Walburga died suddenly in October 1928, and Gertrud remained a member of the household until Rommel's death in 1944. The incident with Walburga seemed to affect Rommel for the rest of his life: he would always keep women distant. A son, Manfred Rommel, was born on 24 December 1928, later served as Mayor of Stuttgart from 1974 to 1996.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: The German Army's largest base, the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks, Augustdorf, is named in his honour; at the dedication in 1961 his widow Lucie and son Manfred Rommel were guests of honour. The Rommel Barracks, Dornstadt, was also named for him in 1965. A third base named for him, the Field Marshal Rommel Barracks, Osterode, closed in 2004. The was named for him in 1969 and christened by his widow; the ship was decommissioned in 1998.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: The Rommel Memorial was erected in Heidenheim in 1961. In 2020, a sculpture of a landmine victim was placed next to the Rommel Memorial in Heidenheim. The city mayor Bernhard Ilg comments that, regarding "the great son of Heidenheim", "there are many opinions". Heidenheim eventually dedicated the Memorial towards a stand against war, militarism and extremism, stating that when the memorial was erected in 1961, statements were added that now are not compatible with modern knowledge about Rommel. The "Deutsche Welle" notes that the 17 million mines the British, Italian, and German armies left continue to claim lives to this day.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In Aalen, after a discussion on renaming a street named after him, a new place of commemoration was created, where stelae with information on the lives of Rommel and three opponents of the regime (Eugen Bolz, Friedrich Schwarz and Karl Mikeller) stand together (Rommel's stele is dark blue and rusty red while the others are light-coloured). The History Association of Aalen, together with an independent commission of historians from Düsseldorf, welcomes the keeping of the street's name and notes that Rommel was neither war criminal nor resistance fighter, but perpetrator and victim at the same time - he willingly served as figurehead for the regime, then lately recognised his mistake and paid for that with his life. An education program named "Erwin Rommel and Aalen" for school children in Aalen is also established.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In 2021, the Student Council of the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) decided to change the name of their Süd-Campus (South Campus, Erlangen) into Rommel-Campus, emphasising that the city of Erlangen stands behind the name and the university needs to do the same. The university's branch of the Education and Science Workers' Union (GEW) describes the decision as problematic considering Rommel's history of supporting the Nazi regime militarily and propagandistically.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: Numerous streets in Germany, especially in Rommel's home state of Baden-Württemberg, are named in his honour, including the street near where his last home was located. The Rommel Museum opened in 1989 in the Villa Lindenhof in Herrlingen. The museum now operates under the name Museum Lebenslinien (Lifelines Museum), which presents the lives of Rommel and other notable residents of Herrlingen, including the poet Gertrud Kantorowicz (whose collection is presented together with the Rommel Archive inside a building on a road named after Rommel), the educators Anna Essinger and Hugo Rosenthal. There is also a Rommel Museum in Mersa Matruh in Egypt which opened in 1977, and which is located in one of Rommel's former headquarters; various other localities and establishments in Mersa Matruh, including Rommel Beach, are also named for Rommel. The reason for the naming is that he respected the Bedouins' traditions and the sanctity of their homes (he always kept his troops at least 2 kilometres from their houses) and refused to poison the wells against the Allies, fearing doing so would harm the population.


title: Erwin Rommel

text: In Italy, the annual marathon tour "Rommel Trail", which is sponsored by the Protezione Civile and the autonomous region of Friuli Venezia Giulia through its tourism agency, celebrates Rommel and the Battle of Caporetto. The naming and sponsoring (at that time by the center-left PD) was criticised by the politician Giuseppe Civati in 2017.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Theodor Seuss Geisel (; March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American children's author and cartoonist. He is known for his work writing and illustrating more than 60 books under the pen name Dr. Seuss (). His work includes many of the most popular children's books of all time, selling over 600 million copies and being translated into more than 20 languages by the time of his death.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel adopted the name "Dr. Seuss" as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College and as a graduate student at Lincoln College, Oxford. He left Oxford in 1927 to begin his career as an illustrator and cartoonist for "Vanity Fair", "Life" and various other publications. He also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for FLIT and Standard Oil, and as a political cartoonist for the New York newspaper "PM". He published his first children's book "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" in 1937. During World War II, he took a brief hiatus from children's literature to illustrate political cartoons, and he also worked in the animation and film department of the United States Army where he wrote, produced or animated many productions including "Design for Death", which later won the 1947 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: After the war, Geisel returned to writing children's books, writing classics like "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950), "Horton Hears a Who!" (1955), "The Cat in the Hat" (1957), "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" (1957), "Green Eggs and Ham" (1960), "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" (1960), "The Sneetches and Other Stories" (1961), "The Lorax" (1971), "The Butter Battle Book" (1984), and "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" (1990). He published over 60 books during his career, which have spawned numerous adaptations, including 11 television specials, five feature films, a Broadway musical, and four television series.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 for "Horton Hatches the Egg" and again in 1961 for "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street". He received the Regina Medal award from the Catholic Library Association in 1982. Geisel's birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association. He also received two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Children's Special for "Halloween Is Grinch Night" (1978) and Outstanding Animated Program for "The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat" (1982).


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel was born and raised in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Henrietta ("née" Seuss) and Theodor Robert Geisel. His father managed the family brewery and was later appointed to supervise Springfield's public park system by Mayor John A. Denison after the brewery closed because of Prohibition. Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in his first children's book "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street", is near his boyhood home on Fairfield Street. The family was of German descent, and Geisel and his sister Marnie experienced anti-German prejudice from other children following the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Geisel was raised as a Missouri Synod Lutheran and remained in the denomination his entire life.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel attended Dartmouth College, graduating in 1925. At Dartmouth, he joined the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and the humor magazine "Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern", eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief. While at Dartmouth, he was caught drinking gin with nine friends in his room. At the time, the possession and consumption of alcohol was illegal under Prohibition laws, which remained in place between 1920 and 1933. As a result of this infraction, Dean Craven Laycock insisted that Geisel resign from all extracurricular activities, including the "Jack-O-Lantern". To continue working on the magazine without the administration's knowledge, Geisel began signing his work with the pen name "Seuss". He was encouraged in his writing by professor of rhetoric W. Benfield Pressey, whom he described as his "big inspiration for writing" at Dartmouth.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Upon graduating from Dartmouth, he entered Lincoln College, Oxford, intending to earn a Doctor of Philosophy (D.Phil.) in English literature. At Oxford, he met his future wife Helen Palmer, who encouraged him to give up becoming an English teacher in favor of pursuing drawing as a career. She later recalled that "Ted's notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him; here was a man who could draw such pictures; he should be earning a living doing that."


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel left Oxford without earning a degree and returned to the United States in February 1927, where he immediately began submitting writings and drawings to magazines, book publishers, and advertising agencies. Making use of his time in Europe, he pitched a series of cartoons called "Eminent Europeans" to "Life" magazine, but the magazine passed on it. His first nationally published cartoon appeared in the 16 July 1927, issue of "The Saturday Evening Post". This single $25 sale encouraged Geisel to move from Springfield to New York City. Later that year, Geisel accepted a job as writer and illustrator at the humor magazine "Judge", and he felt financially stable enough to marry Palmer. His first cartoon for "Judge" appeared on October 22, 1927, and Geisel and Palmer were married on November 29. Geisel's first work signed "Dr. Seuss" was published in "Judge" about six months after he started working there.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In early 1928, one of Geisel's cartoons for "Judge" mentioned Flit, a common bug spray at the time manufactured by Standard Oil of New Jersey. According to Geisel, the wife of an advertising executive in charge of advertising Flit saw Geisel's cartoon at a hairdresser's and urged her husband to sign him. Geisel's first Flit ad appeared on May 31, 1928, and the campaign continued sporadically until 1941. The campaign's catchphrase "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" became a part of popular culture. It spawned a song and was used as a punch line for comedians such as Fred Allen and Jack Benny. As Geisel gained notoriety for the Flit campaign, his work was in demand and began to appear regularly in magazines such as "Life", "Liberty" and "Vanity Fair".


title: Dr. Seuss

text: The money Geisel earned from his advertising work and magazine submissions made him wealthier than even his most successful Dartmouth classmates. The increased income allowed the Geisels to move to better quarters and to socialize in higher social circles. They became friends with the wealthy family of banker Frank A. Vanderlip. They also traveled extensively: by 1936, Geisel and his wife had visited 30 countries together. They did not have children, neither kept regular office hours, and they had ample money. Geisel also felt that traveling helped his creativity.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's success with the Flit campaign led to more advertising work, including for other Standard Oil products like Essomarine boat fuel and Essolube Motor Oil and for other companies like the Ford Motor Company, NBC Radio Network, and Holly Sugar. His first foray into books, "Boners", a collection of children's sayings that he illustrated, was published by Viking Press in 1931. It topped "The New York Times" non-fiction bestseller list and led to a sequel, "More Boners", published the same year. Encouraged by the books' sales and positive critical reception, Geisel wrote and illustrated an ABC book featuring "very strange animals" that failed to interest publishers.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 1936, Geisel and his wife were returning from an ocean voyage to Europe when the rhythm of the ship's engines inspired the poem that became his first children's book: "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street". Based on Geisel's varied accounts, the book was rejected by between 20 and 43 publishers. According to Geisel, he was walking home to burn the manuscript when a chance encounter with an old Dartmouth classmate led to its publication by Vanguard Press. Geisel wrote four more books before the US entered World War II. This included "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins" in 1938, as well as "The King's Stilts" and "The Seven Lady Godivas" in 1939, all of which were in prose, atypically for him. This was followed by "Horton Hatches the Egg" in 1940, in which Geisel returned to the use of verse.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: As World War II began, Geisel turned to political cartoons, drawing over 400 in two years as editorial cartoonist for the left-leaning New York City daily newspaper, "PM". Geisel's political cartoons, later published in "Dr. Seuss Goes to War", denounced Hitler and Mussolini and were highly critical of non-interventionists ("isolationists"), most notably Charles Lindbergh, who opposed US entry into the war. One cartoon depicted Japanese Americans being handed TNT in anticipation of a "signal from home", while other cartoons deplored the racism at home against Jews and blacks that harmed the war effort. His cartoons were strongly supportive of President Roosevelt's handling of the war, combining the usual exhortations to ration and contribute to the war effort with frequent attacks on Congress (especially the Republican Party), parts of the press (such as the "New York Daily News", "Chicago Tribune" and "Washington Times-Herald"), and others for criticism of Roosevelt, criticism of aid to the Soviet Union, investigation of suspected Communists, and other offences that he depicted as leading to disunity and helping the Nazis, intentionally or inadvertently.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 1942, Geisel turned his energies to direct support of the U.S. war effort. First, he worked drawing posters for the Treasury Department and the War Production Board. Then, in 1943, he joined the Army as a captain and was commander of the Animation Department of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces, where he wrote films that included "Your Job in Germany", a 1945 propaganda film about peace in Europe after World War II; "Our Job in Japan" and the "Private Snafu" series of adult army training films. While in the Army, he was awarded the Legion of Merit. "Our Job in Japan" became the basis for the commercially released film "Design for Death" (1947), a study of Japanese culture that won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film. "Gerald McBoing-Boing" (1950) was based on an original story by Seuss and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: After the war, Geisel and his wife moved to the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, where he returned to writing children's books. He published most of his books through Random House in North America and William Collins, Sons (later HarperCollins) internationally. He wrote many, including such favorites as "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950), "Horton Hears a Who!" (1955), "If I Ran the Circus" (1956), "The Cat in the Hat" (1957), "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" (1957), and "Green Eggs and Ham" (1960). He received numerous awards throughout his career, but he won neither the Caldecott Medal nor the Newbery Medal. Three of his titles from this period were, however, chosen as Caldecott runners-up (now referred to as Caldecott Honor books): "McElligot's Pool" (1947), "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" (1949), and "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950). Dr. Seuss also wrote the musical and fantasy film "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.", which was released in 1953. The movie was a critical and financial failure, and Geisel never attempted another feature film. During the 1950s, he also published a number of illustrated short stories, mostly in "Redbook" magazine. Some of these were later collected (in volumes such as "The Sneetches and Other Stories") or reworked into independent books ("If I Ran the Zoo"). A number have never been reprinted since their original appearances.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In May 1954, "Life" published a report on illiteracy among school children which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. William Ellsworth Spaulding was the director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin (he later became its chairman), and he compiled a list of 348 words that he felt were important for first-graders to recognize. He asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and to write a book using only those words. Spaulding challenged Geisel to "bring back a book children can't put down". Nine months later, Geisel completed "The Cat in the Hat", using 236 of the words given to him. It retained the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the imaginative power of Geisel's earlier works but, because of its simplified vocabulary, it could be read by beginning readers. "The Cat in the Hat" and subsequent books written for young children achieved significant international success and they remain very popular today. For example, in 2009, "Green Eggs and Ham" sold 540,000 copies, "The Cat in the Hat" sold 452,000 copies, and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" (1960) sold 409,000 copies—all outselling the majority of newly published children's books.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel went on to write many other children's books, both in his new simplified-vocabulary manner (sold as Beginner Books) and in his older, more elaborate style.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel joked that he would now have to sign "Dr. Dr. Seuss". His wife was ill at the time, so he delayed accepting it until June 1956.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's wife Helen had a long struggle with illnesses. On October 23, 1967, Helen died by suicide; Geisel married Audrey Dimond on June 21, 1968. Although he devoted most of his life to writing children's books, Geisel had no children of his own, saying of children: "You have 'em; I'll entertain 'em." Dimond added that Geisel "lived his whole life without children and he was very happy without children." Audrey oversaw Geisel's estate until her death on December 19, 2018, at the age of 97.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel was awarded an honorary doctorate of Humane Letters (L.H.D.) from Whittier College in 1980. He also received the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal from the professional children's librarians in 1980, recognizing his "substantial and lasting contributions to children's literature". At the time, it was awarded every five years. He won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1984 citing his "contribution over nearly half a century to the education and enjoyment of America's children and their parents".


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel died of cancer on September 24, 1991, at his home in the La Jolla community of San Diego at the age of 87. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. On December 1, 1995, four years after his death, University of California, San Diego's University Library Building was renamed Geisel Library in honor of Geisel and Audrey for the generous contributions that they made to the library and their devotion to improving literacy.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: While Geisel was living in La Jolla, the United States Postal Service and others frequently confused him with fellow La Jolla resident Dr. Hans Suess, a noted nuclear physicist.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 2002, the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden opened in Springfield, Massachusetts, featuring sculptures of Geisel and of many of his characters.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 2017, the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum opened next to the Dr. Seuss National Memorial Sculpture Garden in the Springfield Museums Quadrangle.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 2008, Dr. Seuss was inducted into the California Hall of Fame. On March 2, 2009, the Web search engine Google temporarily changed its logo to commemorate Geisel's birthday (a practice that it often performs for various holidays and events).


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 2004, U.S. children's librarians established the annual Theodor Seuss Geisel Award to recognize "the most distinguished American book for beginning readers published in English in the United States during the preceding year". It should "demonstrate creativity and imagination to engage children in reading" from pre-kindergarten to second grade.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: At Geisel's alma mater of Dartmouth, more than 90 percent of incoming first-year students participate in pre-matriculation trips run by the Dartmouth Outing Club into the New Hampshire wilderness. It is traditional for students returning from the trips to stay overnight at Dartmouth's Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, where they are served green eggs for breakfast. On April 4, 2012, the Dartmouth Medical School was renamed the Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine in honor of their many years of generosity to the college.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Dr. Seuss's honors include two Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, the Inkpot Award and the Pulitzer Prize.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Dr. Seuss has been in "Forbes" list of the world's highest-paid dead celebrities every year since 2001, when the list was first published.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's most famous pen name is regularly pronounced , an anglicized pronunciation inconsistent with his German surname (the standard German pronunciation is ). He himself noted that it rhymed with "voice" (his own pronunciation being ). Alexander Laing, one of his collaborators on the "Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern", wrote of it:


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel switched to the anglicized pronunciation because it "evoked a figure advantageous for an author of children's books to be associated with—Mother Goose" and because most people used this pronunciation. He added the "Doctor (abbreviated Dr.)" to his pen name because his father had always wanted him to practice medicine.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: For books that Geisel wrote and others illustrated, he used the pen name "Theo LeSieg", starting with "I Wish That I Had Duck Feet" published in 1965. "LeSieg" is "Geisel" spelled backward. Geisel also published one book under the name Rosetta Stone, 1975's "Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo!!", a collaboration with Michael K. Frith. Frith and Geisel chose the name in honor of Geisel's second wife Audrey, whose maiden name was Stone.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel was a liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. His early political cartoons show a passionate opposition to fascism, and he urged action against it both before and after the United States entered World War II. His cartoons portrayed the fear of communism as overstated, finding greater threats in the House Committee on Unamerican Activities and those who threatened to cut the United States' "life line" to Stalin and the USSR, whom he once depicted as a porter carrying "our war load".


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel supported the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II in order to prevent possible sabotage. Geisel explained his position:


title: Dr. Seuss

text: After the war, Geisel overcame his feelings of animosity and re-examined his view, using his book "Horton Hears a Who!" (1954) as an allegory for the American post-war occupation of Japan, as well as dedicating the book to a Japanese friend, though Ron Lamothe noted in an interview that even that book has a sense of "American chauvinism".


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 1948, after living and working in Hollywood for years, Geisel moved to La Jolla in San Diego, a predominantly Republican community.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel converted a copy of one of his famous children's books, "Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!", into a polemic shortly before the end of the 1972–1974 Watergate scandal, in which United States president Richard Nixon resigned, by replacing the name of the main character everywhere that it occurred. "Richard M. Nixon, Will You Please Go Now!" was published in major newspapers through the column of his friend Art Buchwald.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: The line "a person's a person, no matter "how" small!!" from "Horton Hears a Who!" has been used widely as a slogan by the pro-life movement in the United States. Geisel and later his widow Audrey objected to this use; according to her attorney, "She doesn't like people to hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view." In the 1980s Geisel threatened to sue an anti-abortion group for using this phrase on their stationery, according to his biographer, causing them to remove it. The attorney says he never discussed abortion with either of them, and the biographer says Geisel never expressed a public opinion on the subject. After Seuss's death, Audrey gave financial support to Planned Parenthood.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel made a point of not beginning to write his stories with a moral in mind, stating that "kids can see a moral coming a mile off." He was not against writing about issues, however; he said that "there's an inherent moral in any story", and he remarked that he was "subversive as hell."


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's books express his views on a remarkable variety of social and political issues: "The Lorax" (1971), about environmentalism and anti-consumerism; "The Sneetches" (1961), about racial equality; "The Butter Battle Book" (1984), about the arms race; "Yertle the Turtle" (1958), about Adolf Hitler and anti-authoritarianism; "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" (1957), criticizing the economic materialism and consumerism of the Christmas season; and "Horton Hears a Who!" (1954), about anti-isolationism and internationalism.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In recent times, Seuss's work for children has been criticized for presumably unconscious racist themes.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel wrote most of his books in anapestic tetrameter, a poetic meter employed by many poets of the English literary canon. This is often suggested as one of the reasons that Geisel's writing was so well received.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units called anapests, each composed of two weak syllables followed by one strong syllable (the beat); often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end. An example of this meter can be found in Geisel's "Yertle the Turtle", from "Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories":


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Some books by Geisel that are written mainly in anapestic tetrameter also contain many lines written in amphibrachic tetrameter wherein each strong syllable is surrounded by a weak syllable on each side. Here is an example from "If I Ran the Circus":


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel also wrote verse in trochaic tetrameter, an arrangement of a strong syllable followed by a weak syllable, with four units per line (for example, the title of "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish"). Traditionally, English trochaic meter permits the final weak position in the line to be omitted, which allows both masculine and feminine rhymes.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel generally maintained trochaic meter for only brief passages, and for longer stretches typically mixed it with iambic tetrameter, which consists of a weak syllable followed by a strong, and is generally considered easier to write. Thus, for example, the magicians in "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" make their first appearance chanting in trochees (thus resembling the witches of Shakespeare's "Macbeth"):


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's early artwork often employed the shaded texture of pencil drawings or watercolors, but in his children's books of the postwar period, he generally made use of a starker medium—pen and ink—normally using just black, white, and one or two colors. His later books, such as "The Lorax," used more colors.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's style was unique—his figures are often "rounded" and somewhat droopy. This is true, for instance, of the faces of the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat. Almost all his buildings and machinery were devoid of straight lines when they were drawn, even when he was representing real objects. For example, "If I Ran the Circus" shows a droopy hoisting crane and a droopy steam calliope.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel evidently enjoyed drawing architecturally elaborate objects, and a number of his motifs are identifiable with structures in his childhood home of Springfield, including examples such as the onion domes of its and his family's brewery. His endlessly varied but never rectilinear palaces, ramps, platforms, and free-standing stairways are among his most evocative creations. Geisel also drew complex imaginary machines, such as the "Audio-Telly-O-Tally-O-Count", from "Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book", or the "most peculiar machine" of Sylvester McMonkey McBean in "The Sneetches". Geisel also liked drawing outlandish arrangements of feathers or fur: for example, the 500th hat of "Bartholomew Cubbins", the tail of "Gertrude McFuzz", and the pet for girls who like to brush and comb, in "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish".


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's illustrations often convey motion vividly. He was fond of a sort of "voilà" gesture in which the hand flips outward and the fingers spread slightly backward with the thumb up. This motion is done by Ish in "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" when he creates fish (who perform the gesture with their fins), in the introduction of the various acts of "If I Ran the Circus", and in the introduction of the "Little Cats" in "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back". He was also fond of drawing hands with interlocked fingers, making it look as though his characters were twiddling their thumbs.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel also follows the cartoon tradition of showing motion with lines, like in the sweeping lines that accompany Sneelock's final dive in "If I Ran the Circus". Cartoon lines are also used to illustrate the action of the senses—sight, smell, and hearing—in "The Big Brag," and lines even illustrate "thought", as in the moment when the Grinch conceives his awful plan to ruin Christmas.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's early work in advertising and editorial cartooning helped him to produce "sketches" of things that received more perfect realization later in his children's books. Often, the expressive use to which Geisel put an image, later on, was quite different from the original. Here are some examples:


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel wrote more than 60 books over the course of his long career. Most were published under his well-known pseudonym Dr. Seuss, though he also authored more than a dozen books as Theo LeSieg and one as Rosetta Stone. His books have topped many bestseller lists, sold over 600 million copies, and been translated into more than 20 languages. In 2000, "Publishers Weekly" compiled a list of the best-selling children's books of all time; of the top 100 hardcover books, 16 were written by Geisel, including "Green Eggs and Ham", at number 4, "The Cat in the Hat", at number 9, and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish", at number 13. In the years after his death in 1991, two additional books were published based on his sketches and notes: "Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!" and "Daisy-Head Mayzie". "My Many Colored Days" was originally written in 1973 but was posthumously published in 1996. In September 2011, seven stories originally published in magazines during the 1950s were released in a collection titled "The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories".


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel also wrote a pair of books for adults: "The Seven Lady Godivas" (1939; reprinted 1987), a retelling of the Lady Godiva legend that included nude depictions; and "You're Only Old Once!" (written in 1986 when Geisel was 82), which chronicles an old man's journey through a clinic. His last book was "Oh, the Places You'll Go!", which was published the year before his death and became a popular gift for graduating students.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the organization that owns the rights to the books, films, TV shows, stage productions, exhibitions, digital media, licensed merchandise, and other strategic partnerships, announced on March 2, 2021, that it will stop publishing and licensing six books. The publications include "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" (1937), "If I Ran the Zoo" (1950), "McElligot's Pool" (1947), "On Beyond Zebra!" (1955), "Scrambled Eggs Super!" (1953) and "The Cat's Quizzer" (1976). According to the organization, the books "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong" and are no longer being published due to racist and insensitive imagery.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: For most of his career, Geisel was reluctant to have his characters marketed in contexts outside of his own books. However, he did permit the creation of several animated cartoons, an art form in which he had gained experience during World War II, and he gradually relaxed his policy as he aged.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: The first adaptation of one of Geisel's works was a cartoon version of "Horton Hatches the Egg", animated at Warner Bros. in 1942 and directed by Bob Clampett. It was presented as part of the Merrie Melodies series and included a number of gags not present in the original narrative, including a fish committing suicide and a Katharine Hepburn imitation by Mayzie.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: As part of George Pal's Puppetoons theatrical cartoon series for Paramount Pictures, two of Geisel's works were adapted into stop-motion films by George Pal. The first, "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins", was released in 1943. The second, "And to Think I Saw It on Mulberry Street", with a title slightly altered from the book's, was released in 1944. Both were nominated for an Academy Award for "Short Subject (Cartoon)".


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 1959, Geisel authorized Revell, the well-known plastic model-making company, to make a series of "animals" that snapped together rather than being glued together, and could be assembled, disassembled, and re-assembled "in thousands" of ways. The series was called the "Dr. Seuss Zoo" and included Gowdy the Dowdy Grackle, Norval the Bashful Blinket, Tingo the Noodle Topped Stroodle, and Roscoe the Many Footed Lion. The basic body parts were the same and all were interchangeable, and so it was possible for children to combine parts from various characters in essentially unlimited ways in creating their own animal characters (Revell encouraged this by selling Gowdy, Norval, and Tingo together in a "Gift Set" as well as individually). Revell also made a conventional glue-together "beginner's kit" of The Cat in the Hat.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: In 1966, Geisel authorized eminent cartoon artist Chuck Jones—his friend and former colleague from the war—to make a cartoon version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" Geisel was credited as a co-producer under his real name Ted Geisel, along with Jones. The cartoon was narrated by Boris Karloff, who also provided the voice of the Grinch. It was very faithful to the original book and is considered a classic to this day by many. It is often broadcast as an annual Christmas television special. Jones directed an adaptation of "Horton Hears a Who!" in 1970 and produced an adaptation of "The Cat in the Hat" in 1971.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: From 1972 to 1983, Geisel wrote six animated specials that were produced by DePatie-Freleng: "The Lorax" (1972); "Dr. Seuss on the Loose" (1973); "The Hoober-Bloob Highway" (1975); "Halloween Is Grinch Night" (1977); "Pontoffel Pock, Where Are You?" (1980); and "The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat" (1982). Several of the specials won multiple Emmy Awards.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: A Soviet paint-on-glass-animated short film was made in 1986 called "Welcome", an adaptation of "Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose". The last adaptation of Geisel's work before he died was "The Butter Battle Book", a television special based on the book of the same name, directed by Ralph Bakshi.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: A television film titled "In Search of Dr. Seuss" was released in 1994, which adapted many of Seuss's stories. It uses both live-action versions and animated versions of the characters and stories featured; however, the animated portions were merely edited versions of previous animated television specials and, in some cases, re-dubbed as well.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: After Geisel died of cancer at the age of 87 in 1991, his widow Audrey Geisel took charge of licensing matters until her death in 2018. Since then, licensing is controlled by the nonprofit Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Audrey approved a live-action feature-film version of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" starring Jim Carrey, as well as a Seuss-themed Broadway musical called "Seussical", and both premiered in 2000. "The Grinch" has had limited engagement runs on Broadway during the Christmas season, after premiering in 1998 (under the title "How the Grinch Stole Christmas") at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, where it has become a Christmas tradition. In 2003, another live-action film was released, this time an adaptation of "The Cat in the Hat" that featured Mike Myers as the title character. Audrey Geisel spoke critically of the film, especially the casting of Myers as the Cat in the Hat, and stated that she would not allow any further live-action adaptations of Geisel's books. However, a first animated CGI feature film adaptation of "Horton Hears a Who!" was approved, and was eventually released on March 14, 2008, to positive reviews. A second CGI-animated feature film adaptation of "The Lorax" was released by Universal on March 2, 2012 (on what would have been Seuss's 108th birthday). The third adaptation of Seuss's story, the CGI-animated feature film, "The Grinch", was released by Universal on November 9, 2018.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Five television series have been adapted from Geisel's work. The first, "Gerald McBoing-Boing", was an animated television adaptation of Geisel's 1951 cartoon of the same name and lasted three months between 1956 and 1957. The second, "The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss", was a mix of live-action and puppetry by Jim Henson Television, the producers of The Muppets. It aired for two seasons on Nickelodeon in the United States, from 1996 to 1998. The third, "Gerald McBoing-Boing", is a remake of the 1956 series. Produced in Canada by Cookie Jar Entertainment (now DHX Media) and North America by Classic Media (now DreamWorks Classics), it ran from 2005 to 2007. The fourth, "The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!", produced by Portfolio Entertainment Inc., began on August 7, 2010, in Canada and September 6, 2010, in the United States and is producing new episodes . The fifth, "Green Eggs and Ham", is an animated streaming television adaptation of Geisel's 1960 book of the same title and premiered on November 8, 2019, on Netflix, and a second season by the title of "Green Eggs and Ham: The Second Serving" is scheduled to premiere in 2021.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: Geisel's books and characters are also featured in Seuss Landing, one of many islands at the Islands of Adventure theme park in Orlando, Florida. In an attempt to match Geisel's visual style, there are reported "no straight lines" in Seuss Landing.


title: Dr. Seuss

text: "The Hollywood Reporter" has reported that Warner Animation Group and Dr. Seuss Enterprises have struck a deal to make new animated movies based on the stories of Dr. Seuss. Their first project will be a fully animated version of "The Cat in the Hat".


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Red Notice is a 2021 American action comedy film written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber starring Dwayne Johnson alongside Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot and Ritu Arya. It marks the third collaboration between Thurber and Johnson, following "Central Intelligence" (2016) and "Skyscraper" (2018). In the film, an FBI agent reluctantly teams up with a renowned art robber in order to catch an even more notorious robber.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Originally planned for release by Universal Pictures, the film was acquired by Netflix for distribution. It began a limited theatrical release on November 5, 2021, before digitally streaming on the platform on November 12, 2021, where it received mixed reviews from critics. Netflix claims the film became the most-watched film in its debut weekend, as well as the most-watched film within 28 days of release on the platform in Netflix. It also became the 5th most-streamed movie title of 2021. Two sequels are in development and will be filmed back-to-back with Johnson, Reynolds, Gadot, and Thurber expected to return.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: During the 1st century BC, Roman general Mark Antony gifts Egyptian queen Cleopatra three bejeweled eggs as a wedding gift to show his devotion. The eggs are lost in time until two are found by a farmer in 1907, but the last one remains lost.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: In the present day, John Hartley, apparently an FBI agent, is assigned to assist Interpol agent Urvashi Das in investigating the potential theft of one of the eggs on display at the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome. The head of security dismisses the concerns, but Hartley reveals the egg is a forgery and the real egg has been stolen. Before the room is sealed shut, international art thief Nolan Booth manages to escape with the egg. Arriving at his home in Bali with the egg, he finds Hartley, along with Das and an Interpol strike team there. They arrest Booth and take the egg into custody. Unbeknownst to everyone, his main competition, Sarah "The Bishop" Black, disguised as one of the strike team members, swaps the real egg with another forgery. The next day, Das confronts Hartley and has him incarcerated in a remote Russian prison in the same cell as Booth, believing he's responsible for the theft.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Shortly after arrival, Black proposes that Booth work with her to find the third egg as he knows about its whereabouts. He declines her modest offer, so Hartley suggests they work together to defeat her; if Booth helps him imprison her, Booth will be the number one art thief in the world. The pair escapes from prison, heading to Valencia to steal the second egg, in possession of notorious arms dealer Sotto Voce who is having a masquerade ball. They find Black, who is also there to steal it. The three arrive in Voce's vault where Hartley and Booth fight her. Voce arrives with his security detail while Black reveals she is working with Voce. They torture Hartley until Booth reveals the location of the third egg. Black betrays Voce and leaves for Egypt where Booth claims it is. After leaving Valencia, Booth reveals to Hartley that the egg is actually in Argentina, a location only he knows as it was inscribed on his late father's beloved watch which had once belonged to Adolf Hitler's personal art curator Rudolph Zeich.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Searching the jungle, they find a secret bunker containing countless Nazi artifacts, including the third egg. Black arrives and steals the egg from them, only to be interrupted by Das and a team of local police. Hartley, Booth and Black escape in an antique 1931 Mercedes-Benz 770, chased by Das in an armored vehicle. Eventually, they exit near the top of a waterfall where they jump. Booth swims to shore with the egg, only to discover that Hartley is a conman like his father, not an FBI profiler, and shares the Bishop mantle with Black. Booth surrenders the egg and they leave him handcuffed. In Cairo, Hartley and Black deliver the three eggs to an Egyptian billionaire, in time for his daughter's wedding although she is more excited for the wedding singer Ed Sheeran. The wedding is subsequently interrupted by an Interpol raid by Das, who arrest the billionaire, his daughter, and Sheeran.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Six months later, Hartley and Black are met again by Booth in Sardinia, who informs them that he told Das about their Cayman Islands account containing the $300 million payout, which Das freezes leaving them with no money. Booth also reveals that Interpol is on their way to capture them, but offers a chance to escape if they help him with a new heist, which requires three individuals to pull off. They agree and escape, where Das places red notices on all three of them as they begin their heist at the Louvre in Paris.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Additionally, Daniel Bernhardt has a cameo appearance as Drago Grande, and singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran makes an uncredited cameo as himself.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: On February 8, 2018, it was announced that major studios were fighting a bidding war for the rights to an action comedy from Dwayne Johnson and writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber. Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Sony Pictures and Paramount Pictures were all considered. The film would be produced by Beau Flynn through his Flynn Picture Company, and by Johnson, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia through their Seven Bucks Productions banner, along with Thurber's Bad Version Inc., with Wendy Jacobson executive producing. The following day, it was announced that Universal and Legendary had won the bidding war.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Gal Gadot was confirmed to star opposite Johnson in June 2018, and Ryan Reynolds was added in July 2019. Ritu Arya and Chris Diamantopoulos were also cast in February 2020.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Johnson, Reynolds, and Gadot were each paid $20 million to star in the film, while Thurber was paid $10 million to write and direct. After working on the film, Gadot became the third highest-paid actress in the world in 2020.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Principal photography began on January 3, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia. Production on the film was previously expected to start in April 2019, after Johnson wrapped filming on "". On July 8, 2019, filming was delayed to early 2020. A planned shoot in Italy was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. On March 14, it was announced production had been halted indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic overall.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Filming resumed on September 14, 2020. Reynolds and Gadot completed filming their scenes by the end of October. Production in Atlanta was completed on November 14, before moving to Rome and Sardinia, Italy for a week of shooting. Filming in Italy was completed on November 18. The film was greenlit with an estimated production budget of $160 million and by the time it was released the reported cost had reached $200 million, making it the most expensive film in Netflix's history.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Visual effects artist Richard R. Hoover served as the overall visual effects supervisor for the film.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: "Red Notice" is one of the first feature films to extensively use the first-person view (FPV) drone flying for cinematography. FPV drone pilot Johnny Schaer participated in filming.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: On February 26, 2020, Steve Jablonsky was announced as the composer for "Red Notice". Jablonsky previously collaborated with director Rawson Marshall Thurber scoring "Skyscraper" in 2018. Other pieces include "Sabotage" by the Beastie Boys, "Época" by the Gotan Project, "Amado Mio" by Pink Martini, "Downtown" written by Tony Hatch, The Raider's March by John Williams, "Libertango by Astor Piazzolla", "Perfect" by Ed Sheeran, and "Notorious B.I.G." by The Notorious B.I.G., with "On the Run" by Naz Tokio heard throughout the closing credits.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Universal originally scheduled the film for release on June 12, 2020. The date was postponed by five months to November 13, 2020. Netflix then took over on July 8, 2019, moving the film to an unspecified date in 2021. As part of a video and letter to its shareholders in April 2021, Netflix's co-chief executive officer and chief content officer Ted Sarandos confirmed that the film would premiere sometime in Q4 2021. The film received a limited theatrical release on November 5, 2021, prior to streaming on Netflix on November 12, 2021. Reynolds requested that Welsh language subtitles be provided for the film's Netflix release.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: In the Philippines, the SM Mall of Asia's globe was reportedly stolen by a helicopter on November 13, 2021. The Pasay city police issued a statement that the globe was not stolen and was just "undergoing maintenance for marketing strategy". The globe was covered in scaffolding. The mall management released a statement a day later that the globe is "back" and revealed that the supposed theft was staged as part of a publicity stunt to promote "Red Notice". The marketing promotion caused the globe to be a trending subject on Twitter.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: The film also saw a promotional tie-in with professional wrestling promotion WWE, the company where Dwayne Johnson had wrestled and became famously known as "The Rock". In addition to promoting the film during their Survivor Series event on November 21, 2021, a storyline was also played out involving one of Cleopatra's eggs that was stolen during the show.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Due to the film's $200 million production budget and Netflix's global film chief Scott Stuber's statement that the company's "big-budget tentpole films [need] to draw an audience of more than 70 million viewers within the first 28 days of availability," "The New York Observer" estimated "Red Notice" would need to total around 200 million hours (about 83 million household viewers) to be deemed a success.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: The film became the most-viewed film on Netflix during release day. According to Samba TV, the film was watched by 4.2 million households in the United States, 721,000 in the United Kingdom, 332,000 in Germany, and 42,000 in Australia over its first three days of release. TV Time reported that it was the second most-streamed film in the United States during its debut weekend. The top 10 Netflix weekly rankings for English-language films showed that it was the most-streamed film with 148.72 million hours watched. This was the highest viewership for any film on Netflix during its debut weekend. It was also ranked in the top 10 Netflix charts in 94 countries. According to Nielsen it was the most-streamed film in the United States, with 1,843 million minutes viewed and age ranges of 18–34, 35–49 and 50–64 making up a quarter each of its audience.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: In the second week of release it had a viewership of 129.11 million hours, making it the second-most-watched film on Netflix within 28 days of release. It retained its position on the Nielsen chart for films, with a viewership of 1,710 million minutes. Within eleven days of its release, it displaced "Bird Box" to become the most-watched film on Netflix within 28 days of release. It retained its position on the Netflix chart in the third week with 50.65 million hours viewed. It also remained in the top 10 Netflix rankings in 94 countries during the second and third week, while TV Time reported that it was the most-streamed film in the United States during both the weeks. According to Nielsen, it remained the most-streamed-film in the United States in the third week with a viewership of 953 million minutes.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: The fourth week saw "Red Notice" being displaced to the third position on Netflix's chart with 25.4 million hours viewed, while according to TV Time it remained the most-streamed film in the United States during the week. It also fell to the third position on Nielsen's chart, with a viewership of 353 million minutes. The following week it rose to the second position on Netflix's chart with a viewership of 18.01 million hours, while dropping to the second position on TV Time's rankings. According to Nielsen, it remained the third-most-streamed-film in the United States with a viewership of 280 million minutes. In the sixth week it dropped to the fourth position on Netflix with a viewership of 12.71 million hours, while also dropping to the fourth place on TV Time's rankings.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: Netflix revealed on December 28, 2021, that "Red Notice" accumulated a viewership of 364.02 million hours in its first 28 days of release. According to Samba TV, the film was watched in 9.8 million households in its first 30 days of release. In the seventh week, the film dropped to the seventh position on Netflix's weekly rankings for English films, with 12.14 million hours viewed, while also being ranked seventh on TV Time's chart for most-streamed-films for the week in the United States. Nielsen stated that it was the fifth most-streamed-film in the US in 2021 with 5,528 million minutes viewed.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: In the eighth week it rose to the fifth position on Netflix's weekly rankings with a viewership of 14.54 million hours, while per Nielsen it was the seventh most-streamed-film in the United States with a viewership of 288 million minutes. In the ninth week it occupied the sixth spot with 11.09 million hours viewed. It retained its position in the following week with 8.71 million hours viewed. In the eleventh week it dropped to the eighth rank with a viewership of 7.31 million hours. The following week it rose to the sixth position despite the viewership dropping to 6.54 million hours. It remained in the top 10 rankings for English-language films on Netflix for three months since its release before dropping out.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: While Netflix does not disclose theatrical box office grosses of their films, "Deadline Hollywood" reported the film made $1.25–$1.5 million from 750 theaters in its opening weekend. By November 15, the running theatrical gross was "well north" of $2 million.


title: Red Notice (film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 36% of 173 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critics consensus reads, ""Red Notice"s big budget and A-list cast add up to a slickly competent action comedy whose gaudy ingredients only make the middling results more head-scratching." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 37 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews."