Hitler's Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was one of the great military commanders. This is the first biography to rely on the original records of the period. David Irving's exhaustive research led him to a dusty personnel file on the young Rommel—applying and being turned down—for army commissions; the long lost Rommel Diaries covering the momentous years of his campaigns in North Africa and Normandy, and other private papers. From them emerges the highly-praised picture of an outstanding soldier and military commander, whose tactical genius and extraordinary exploits captured the world, and of the private man—Rommel as a husband and father.