Wit & Attitude Quote by Erwin Rommel

Rommel’s line is a cold shower aimed at one of war’s most cherished self-myths: that bravery is automatically virtuous. He draws a hard border between courage as a useful tool and courage as theatrical self-indulgence. In his framing, valor only earns its name when it serves military purpose; when it doesn’t, it becomes either “stupidity” (the soldier’s ego, panic, or romantic fatalism) or “irresponsibility” (the commander’s vanity dressed up as moral purity).

The phrasing matters. “Military expediency” is a blunt, almost bureaucratic term, the kind that drains the glamour out of combat and replaces it with logistics, timing, and survivability. Rommel isn’t arguing against courage; he’s arguing against the cult of it, especially when leaders weaponize bravery to compensate for bad planning. That second clause is the knife: if a commander “insists upon” such courage, the moral failure shifts upward. Soldiers can be reckless; commanders have a duty not to demand recklessness as policy.

Context sharpens the cynicism. Rommel built his reputation on audacity and speed, but those qualities worked because they were tethered to operational advantage: surprise, mobility, and exploiting an enemy’s weakness. He’s defending initiative while condemning sacrifice-for-sacrifice’s-sake, a lesson forged in a military culture that often romanticized heroic losses. Coming from a famed battlefield gambler, the quote reads less like timidity and more like professional ethics: heroism that doesn’t improve the situation is not noble; it’s waste.