Rommel

The End of a Legend
By Ralf Georg Reuth

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) was the most popular soldier of World War II. Under his leadership the German Afrika Korps advanced all the way to Egypt. Known as the ‘Desert Fox’, Rommel  was considered invincible. That is the story told in the history books.

Ralf Georg Reuth paints a different portrait of Erwin Rommel: a picture of a man who owed his fame in part to Nazi propaganda and whose role in the resistance is still unclear; the image of a soldier, who was promoted by Hitler and who continued to stay true to him until the end, when he committed suicide at the behest of his Führer. His personal fate is the mirror image of the German tragedy of that time: ‘to have followed the Führer to the end and to believe that one had thereby done one’s patriotic duty.’
 
This book is also available as a hardback version.

 
‘The legend of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel - the 'Desert Fox' - is threefold: he was a simple soldier who did his duty and knew nothing about Nazism; he was a commander of superlative talent who ran rings about the British in North Africa in 1941-2; he was a leader of resistance to Hitler who gave his life to the cause after the failure of the July 1944 plot.
In this lucid, exemplary volume Ralf Georg Reuth shows that all three of the assumptions are false... and reveals the truth in a brilliant book that, exposes the self-serving role of the Cold War West in promoting the Rommel legend.’
The Independent



 
 
Ralf Georg Reuth wrote his doctoral thesis on German military strategy and the history of World War II. Since then he has published two big biographies on Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. He was also the editor of the diaries of Joseph Goebbels.