{"product_id":"field-marshal-the-life-and-death-of-erwin-rommel-9781612002972","title":"Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel","description":"\u003cp\u003eErwin Rommel was a complex man: a born leader  brilliant soldier  a devoted husband and proud father; intelligent  instinctive  brave  compassionate  vain  egotistical  and arrogant. In France in 1940  then for two years in North Africa  then finally back in France again  at Normandy in 1944  he proved himself a master of armored warfare  running rings around a succession of Allied generals who never got his measure and could only resort to overwhelming numbers to bring about his defeat.  And yet for all his military genius  Rommel was also naive  a man who could admire Adolf Hitler at the same time that he despised the Nazis  dazzled by a Fhrer whose successes blinded him to the true nature of the Third Reich. Above all  he was the quintessential German patriot  who ultimately would refuse to abandon his moral compass  so that on one pivotal day in June 1944 he came to understand that he had mistakenly served an evil man and evil cause. He would still fight for Germany even as he abandoned his oath of allegiance to the Fhrer  when he came to realize that Hitler had morphed into nothing more than an agent of death and destruction. In the end Erwin Rommel was forced to die by his own hand  not because  as some would claim  he had dabbled in a tyrannicidal conspiracy  but because he had committed a far greater crime  he dared to tell Adolf Hitler the truth.  In Field Marshal historian Daniel Allen Butler not only describes the swirling  innovative campaigns in which Rommel won his military reputation  but assesses the temper of the man who finally fought only for his country  and no dark depths beyond.  Table of Contents  AUTHORS NOTE  PROLOGUE A Fox in the Desert  1 The Birth of a Soldier 2 The Great War 3 An Officer of the Reichswehr 4 The Third Reich 5 Blitzkrieg 6 Afrika Korps 7 Tobruk 8 Crusader 9 Der Hexenkessel 10 African Apogee 11 El Alamein 12 African Perigee 13 The Atlantic Wall 14 Invasion and Conspiracy 15 The Death of a Field Marshal  EPILOGUE The Legend of the Desert Fox APPENDIX: RommelA Timeline ENDNOTES SOURCES\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45280129056821,"sku":"ByrdShop_1612002978","price":87.14,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9781612002972.jpg?v=1780622017","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/field-marshal-the-life-and-death-of-erwin-rommel-9781612002972","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}