Rommel

Erwin Rommel is the best-known German field commander of WWII. Repeatedly decorated for valour during the First World War, he would go on to lead the German Panzer divisions in France and North Africa. To his British opponents – admirers of his apparent courage, chivalry and leadership – he became know by the sobriquet `Desert Fox’. His death, in October 1944, would give rise to speculation for generations to come on how history should judge him. To many he remains the ideal soldier, but as Reuth shows Rommel remained loyal to his Führer until forced to commit suicide, and his fame was largely a creation of the master propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Stripping away the many lays of Nazi and Allied propaganda, Reuth argues that Rommel’s life symbolises the German tragedy: to have followed Hitler into the abyss, and to have considered that to be his duty.