SBS - Hitlers Warriors (1998) Part 4 Rommel The Hero

Since the early 1980s popular German TV journalist and presenter Guido Knopp has unearthed a wealth of new material about the leading figures of the Third Reich. Subsequent to the successful series “Hitler - A Profile” and “Hitler's Henchmen”, Guido Knopp and his team continue this significant television analysis of the Nazi period with a series of the six most important German generals. He has spoken to countless contemporaries and eyewitnesses, relatives and friends of these men, and has been given access to documents that until now have been kept under lock and key. In this series, Guido Knopp's reassessment of Germany's guilty past, turns to the careers of six key military leaders of the Third Reich, and their relationships with Hitler. Profiling these men, the series continues to pose the question as to why it all happened. Rommel, Canaris, Keitel, Paulus, Udet and Manstein. Six careers caught in the tangle of Nazi political intrigue and ultimate disaster. What led all these officers to put their military talents at the service of a murderous dictator? To what depth was their involvement in Hitler's crimes? To what limits did their obedience lead them?

Part 4 Rommel The Hero

The Nazi-propaganda fashioned a legend out of him which was longer lasting than the Reich to whose service he intended to devote his entire life. The legend of the “Desert Fox”, of the brilliant commander of the Afrika Korps, to this day finds admirers among friend and foe. As a reward, the dictator promoted him to the rank of field marshal, the youngest of the Wehrmacht. Only a very few perceived that Rommel with open eyes favor rextended his lines of supply and, as a result, he himself set the stage for the fall of the “Afrika Korps”. Field-Marshal Erwin Rommel, the hero of North Africa, fitted perfectly with the cliches of Nazi propaganda. In October 1944, however, Rommel was forced to take his own life, as Hitler was convinced that the 'Desert Fox' was implicated in the July Bomb Plot.

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