The War File: Rommel The Desert Fox (2004) DVD
 
"A tireless fighter in the cause of the Fuehrer and the Reich" So said General Von Runstedt of Erwin Rommel, Germany's most gifted general and one of the most distinguished and respected soldiers of the Twentieth Century. For his inspired leadership of the Afrika Corps, he would forever be known by friend and foe alike as the Desert Fox. Rommel showed early signs of this potential when, in 1915, he earned the coveted Iron Cross 1st Class for an audacious battlefield action. Early 1940 found him waist-deep in the River Meuse, heading the 7th Panzer "Ghost Division" in Belgium. Rommel would never ask his troops to do what he himself would not. Using revolutionary tactics, he rewrote the rules of tank warfare and many times overcame superior odds. But it was at the head of Panzer Group Afrika - The famed Afrika Corps - that Rommel shaped history, single-handedly revering the course of the North African war. In a theatre were the elements also constituted a very real enemy, Rommel remained one step ahead of both adversaries until El Alamein. After failing to persuade Hitler to abandon the doomed Fortress Europe strategy, Rommel took poison when he was implicated in a murder plot to save his leader the embarrassment of public trail - a noble end to a legendary career. They story of that career is told here using rare archive footage, much of which has been unavailable in the West since World War II.