Rommelspargel

Rommel's asparagus (German: Rommelspargel) were 13-to-16-foot (4 to 5 m) logs that were placed in the fields and meadows of Normandy to cause damage to the expected invasion of Allied military gliders and paratroopers. Also known in German as Holzpfähle ("wooden poles"), the wooden defenses were placed in early 1944 in coastal areas of France and The Netherlands against airlanding infantry. Rommelspargel were named after Field Marshal Erwin Rommel who ordered their design and usage; Rommel himself called the defensive concept Luftlandehindernis ("Air-landing obstacle").

Though Rommel's forces placed more than a million wooden poles in fields, their effect on the invasion of Normandy was inconsequential. Later, in the French Riviera, only about 300 Allied casualties were attributed to the tactic.

Rommel's asparagus refers specifically to wooden poles used against aerial invasion. The term has also been used to describe wooden logs set into the beaches of the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean to disrupt amphibious landings of troops. These wooden defenses were tested and found to be too weak to stop boats, and were largely abandoned in favor of Hemmbalken ("obstruction beams") and other beach defenses.

In November 1943, Rommel took command of the German Army Group B in occupied France. He also took control of the Atlantic Wall defenses on the French coasts facing the United Kingdom and during a tour of anti-invasion fortifications Rommel concluded that the defenses would have to be improved, and quickly. He ordered millions of wooden tree trunks and logs to be set against airborne forces. Barbed wire and tripwires were to be strung between the poles. On plans that Rommel sent to his subordinates, the complete system of wooden poles and interconnecting wires was called Luftlandehindernis.

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