Editing Gerd von Rundstedt (section)

===Last years===
Rundstedt was now a free man after four years in custody, but it brought him little joy.{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|loc=ch. 15}} 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 [[Bebra#Constituent communities|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."<ref>{{harvnb|Messenger|2011|p=296}}</ref>

Meanwhile, Rundstedt was in a hospital in [[Hanover]] with nowhere to live, and the new [[Social Democratic Party of Germany|SPD]] administration in [[Lower Saxony]] had no interest in helping ex-Field Marshals of the Third Reich at a time when there was an acute housing shortage across Germany.{{efn|Self-government in the German states had been restored in 1947. Lower Saxony became an SPD stronghold, and the government's attitude reflected the strong anti-militarist mood in Germany in the wake of the war. The Minister-President, [[Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf|Hinrich Kopf]], said he "would not lift a finger for a war criminal".{{Sfn|Messenger|2011|p=300}}}} He and Bila were temporarily housed in an elderly persons home near [[Celle]].

[[File:Grab Gerd von Rundstedt.jpg|thumb|right|Grave in Stöcken]]
In the last years of his life, Rundstedt became a subject of increasing interest and was interviewed by various writers and historians. His former chief of staff, Günther Blumentritt, visited him frequently, and began work on an apologetic biography, which was published in 1952. In 1951 he was portrayed sympathetically by [[Leo G. Carroll]] in a film about Rommel, ''[[The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel|The Desert Fox]]''.<ref>https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043461/ {{User-generated source|certain=yes|date=June 2022}}</ref> Blumentritt and Liddell Hart raised money to provide nursing care for the Rundstedts. Bila died on 4 October 1952; Rundstedt died of heart failure on 24 February 1953 in Hanover. (He had already been at retirement age when the [[Second World War]] began.) He was buried in the [[:de:Stadtfriedhof Stöcken|Stöcken City Cemetery]].{{citation needed|date=February 2020}}