Killing Rommel

by Steven Pressfield


Reviewed by Annis

Killing Rommel by Steven Pressfield, book cover Killing Rommel is Pressfield’s tribute to the men of the Long Range Desert Group, an elite unit of raiders and deep desert reconnaissance experts. The crews were an eclectic mix of British and Commonwealth soldiers, intrepid, enterprising men with a “can-do” attitude. “A sort of mechanised highway robbery” is how founding member Major Kennedy Shaw described their role in North Africa during World War II.

Late in 1942 the Allied forces were on the run, none more so than in North Africa, an area of vital strategic importance. The Axis army, spearheaded by German Field Marshall Rommel’s formidable Panzer tank units, had the Allies at the point of defeat.

A desperate plan is devised to kill Rommel, the heart and soul of the Afrika Korps. Eliminating the brilliant, charismatic “Desert Fox” would throw his troops into disarray, giving the Allies a breathing space. Who better equipped to take part in such a covert operation than the LRDG? Written in the form of memoirs by an English officer chosen for the mission, this is a tense, gripping thriller, capturing the terror, tedium and knife-edge exhilaration of war with meticulous attention to detail and historical authenticity.

The North African campaign was an extraordinary affair. Rommel dubbed it “war without hate,” a ferocious, bloody conflict, marked nonetheless by mutual respect and a chivalric code of conduct.

Pressfield’s study of parallel tactics used by Alexander the Great’s cavalry units and Rommel’s Panzerarmee inspired Killing Rommel. Alexander's words offer a fitting valediction for the men of both sides forced to fight and kill those who might otherwise have been comrades: “Holy shadows of the dead, I am not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people to fight one another.” (2008, 331 pages, with maps)

More about Killing Rommel from Powell's Books


Other novels about Rommel and the North African Campaign:

Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara More info

City of Gold by Len Deighton More info


Nonfiction about Rommel and the North African Campaign:

War Without Hate: The Desert Campaign of 1940-1943 by John Bierman & Colin Smith More info

Long Range Desert Group by W.B. Kennedy Shaw More info

The Rommel Papers by B.H. Liddell Hart More info


Online:

Interview with Steven Pressfield about how he wrote Killing Rommel

Wikipedia article about The Long Range Desert Group

Stephen Pressfield's YouTube feature about Killing Rommel


Back to Novels of World War II

Back to Directory of Book Reviews

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.