On a dark night in late May of 1944, British Army commando George Henry Lane (left), landed on the coast of occupied France to scout German defenses prior to D-Day (edit for clarity - this happened in May, before Rommel left for his wife's birthday).
That night, he was captured.
Although he faced execution as an accused saboteur, Lane instead was taken before Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel (right), who commanded the German defenses along the Atlantic Wall.
When Lane entered the office, the Field Marshal rose to his feet, and asked Lane to join him for tea.
So Lane sat down and had tea with Erwin Rommel...
...as one does.
Lane (who actually was born György Lányi in Hungary to Jewish parents) pretended to speak no German, and he claimed to be Welsh to mask his Hungarian accent.
Lane later recounted that their conversation began like this:
Rommel opened by saying, "So, are you one of those gangster commandos?"
Lane responded, "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a soldier, and commandos are the best soldiers."
Rommel then said to him, "You must realise that you are in a very tricky situation. Everyone seems to think that you are a saboteur."
Lane replied, "Well, if the Field Marshal believed that I was a saboteur he would not have done me the honour of inviting me here."
Rommel asked, "So you think this is an invitation?"
Lane answered, "I do, sir, and I must say I am highly honoured."
Rommel then brought up his belief that Britain and Germany should be allied together in the fight against the Soviet Union. Lane commented that he did not believe their two countries could be allies at the moment, especially because of the way Germany was treating the Jews.
Rommel quickly cut him off and said, "Now you are talking politics. We are soldiers, we don’t concern ourselves with politics."
The two then had a pleasant conversation, with the Field Marshal politely probing for intelligence, and the Commando deftly parrying with feigned ignorance.
At the end of their tea, the two amicably parted company, and Lane was not executed, but instead was taken to a POW prison near Spangenberg, Germany.
A couple months afterward, Rommel was severely wounded when his car was strafed by Allied aircraft. Implicated in a plot to kill Hitler, he was forced to take his own life later that year to protect his family.
As the Allied drive across Europe approached Spangenberg, Lane escaped custody during a prisoner transport and hid in a hospital until U.S. troops overran the area, then he made his way to Paris.
Lane was awarded the Military Cross for his missions behind the lines, and eventually left the British Army as a colonel.
After the war, Lane lived in the United States and England, and died in 2010 at the age of 95.
For the rest of his days, Lane always believed that his life had been spared only through the personal intervention of Erwin Rommel.
MORS TYRANNIS 
