Rommel's guilt

It is a pity that your obituary of the war hero Colonel George Lane (1 April) described Field Marshal Rommel as "humane and a genuine military man who cared little for the whims of his pint-sized, mass-murdering superior". We should stop excusing the German military like this.

It was entirely because of their total support for Hitler's whims, from his first ventures until at least August 1944 when the war was clearly lost, that such "humane" men ensured the war and the Holocaust continued to May 1945, and enabled Stalin to take over all of eastern Europe to add to the Poland which he had dismembered with Hitler in 1939.

JOHN BIRKETT

Horseleys Park

St Andrews