Gerd Von Rundstedt - Last Years

Last Years

Rundstedt was now a free man after four years in custody, but it brought him little joy. He was 73, frail and in poor health. He had no home, no money and no income. The family home in Kassel had been requisitioned by the Americans, and the Rundstedt estate in Saxony-Anhalt was in the Soviet Zone and had been confiscated. His wife was living in Solz, but this was in the American Zone, where he could not travel because the Americans (who were displeased by the British decision to release him) still regarded him as a Class 1 war criminal under the denazification laws then in force. Likewise, his money, in a bank account in Kassel, was frozen because of his classification, which also denied him a military pension. The British had assured him that he would not be arrested or extradited if he stayed in the British Zone, but the Americans had made no such guarantee. "It is an awful situation for me and my poor wife," he wrote to Liddell Hart. "I would like to end this life as soon as possible."

Meanwhile, Rundstedt was in a hospital in Hannover with nowhere to live, and the new SPD administration in Lower Saxony had no interest in helping ex-Field Marshals of Third Reich at a time when there was an acute housing shortage across Germany. He and Bila were temporarily housed in an old people's home near Celle. It was not until August 1951 that Rundstedt was finally granted a military pension by the new German federal government. At the same time his daughter-in-law, Ditha, was able to rent an apartment in Hannover, where the Rundstedts moved. This was to be his last home.

In the last years of his life Rundstedt became a subject of increasing interest, and he was interviewed by various writers and historians, although he tired easily and his memory was fading. His former chief of staff, Günther Blumentritt, visited him frequently, and began work on a highly sympathetic biography, which appeared in 1952 (though not in Germany). In 1951 he was portrayed sympathetically by Leo G. Carroll in film about Rommell, The Desert Fox, for which he was paid DM3,000 by 20th Century Fox. In January 1952 Bila suffered a stroke which left her partially paralyzed, and Rundstedt himself could hardly walk. Blumentritt and Liddell Hart raised money to provide nursing care for the invalid couple, whose main pleasure in life was by then visits from their grandchildren. Bila died on 4 October. After her death Rundstedt felt he had little left to live for, and declined rapidly. He died at home of heart failure on 24 February 1953.