Rommel and Patton

D.A. Curtis was a Toronto freelance writer.

Suppose ... that the German generals, in the latter years of World War II, were driven to disloyalty to the Führer by the incontrovertible demonstration of his megalomania and determination to sacrifice the German people to his vainglorious, impossible dream of conquest. Suppose that the most respected of all Hitler’s generals, Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, a man held in high esteem even by his enemies, had been enlisted in an attempt to strike an armistice with the Allies in the West, to end the slaughter, without the Führer’s consent. There is ample evidence that Rommel was totally disillusioned with the German High Command: certainly Hitler believed Rommel to be implicated in the assassination attempt on his life, July 18, 1944.

Was Rommel on his way to seek a separate peace when his staff car was strafed, and he was left dangerously wounded? According to Rohmer’s non-fiction epilogue, there is a startling secret about the reconnaissance pilot who spotted Rommel’s staff car, and whose action may have changed the history of Europe.

Rommel and Patton is a grim story, as war stories must be: it is tautly written, utterly convincing, and as immediate and urgent in its appeal as today’s news headlines.