Although now largely outdated, Desmond Yo ung's first biography Rommel: The Desert Fox (London, 1950) is still a perfectly readable and enjoyable account. Other biographies produced since the 60s have added little to it; amongst these are worth mentioning Ronald Lewin's Rommel as Military Commander (London, 1968) and Kenneth Macksey's Rommel: Battles and Campaigns (New York, 1979). The first detailed, and historically researched account of Rommel's life and military career is David Irving's Rommel: The Trail of the Fox (London, 1977), which provided the core of other biographies to follow. Richard D. Law and Craig Luther's Rommel: A Narrative and Pictorial History (San Jose, California, 1980) is more important for its photographic content, like Christer Jorgensen's Rommel's Panzers: Rommel, Blitzkrieg and the Triumph of the Panzer Arm (Staplehurst, 2003) and Karl Hoffman's Erwin Rommel (Commander in Focus; London, 2004).
More recently, several Rommel biographies have been produced taking into account both his life and career and the relevant issue of his myth; outstanding is David Fraser's Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (London, 1993). After a long interval, Rommel's first German biography was released in 1950 by Lutz Koch, Erwin Rommel. Die Wandlung eines grossen Soldaten (Stuttgart, 1950). More recently new biographies have been released in Germany as well. These are Ralf Georg Reuth's Rommel. Des Fuhrers General (Munich, 1987), Maurice Philip Remy's Mythos Rommel (Berlin, 2002) and Ralf Georg Reuth's Rommel: Das Ende einer Legende (Munich, 2004), the latter also translated into English. Rommel is of course included in several books dealing with German generalship during the Second World War; worth mentioning is Correlli Barnett's edited title Hitler's Generals (London, 1989), with an essay by Martin Blumenson. Recently Rommel's personal history has been put in parallel with those of other famous generals; Dennis Showalter's Patton and Rommel: Men of War in the Twentieth Century (New Yo rk, 2005), and Te rry Brighton's Masters of Battle: Monty, Patton and Rommel at War (London, 2008) definitely sanctioned Rommel's place in the history of great commanders.
Rommel's own work include his Infanterie Greift an (English reprint: London, 1990), the volume Krieg ohne Hass (War Without Hate) edited by his wife and Fritz Bayerlein (Brenz, 1950). Translated into English with additional material, mostly Rommel's letters to his wife, it was edited by Basil H. Liddell Hart, Lucie Marie Rommel, Manfred Rommel and Fritz Bayerlein as The Rommel Papers (London, 1953). Recently selected parts have been reprinted, edited by John Pimlott as Rommel and His Art of War (London, 2003).
A list of books dealing with Rommel, the Afrikakorps, the war in North Africa and in Normandy (just to mention some selected events in his life) would probably take more space than this entire work; worth mentioning are the works by Hans Otto Behrendt Rommel's Intelligence in the Desert Campaign, 1941-1943 (London, 1985) and Friedrich Ruge Rommel in Normandy: Reminiscences (San Rafale, California, 1979). For British commanders in North Africa suggested reading includes Nick Smart's British Generals of the Second World War (Barnsley, 2005), W. G. F. Jackson's The Battle for North Africa 1940-43 (New York, 1975), and David French's Raising Churchill's Army: The British Army and the War against Germany 1919-1945 (Oxford, 2000). Nigel Hamilton's monumental three-volume biography of Montgomery (London, 1981-1986) is the best on the subject.
World History
