by Steven Pressfield
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Product Description
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To watch videos featuring the story behind Killing Rommel, visit www.KillingRommel.com
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Steven Pressfield’s quintet of acclaimed, bestselling novels of ancient warfare— Gates of Fire, Tides of War, Last of the Amazons, The Virtues of Wa,r and The Afghan Campaign— have earned him a reputation as a master chronicler of military history, a supremely literate and engaging storyteller, and an author with acute insight into the minds of men in battle. In Killing Rommel Pressfield extends his talents to the modern world with a WWII tale based on the real-life exploits of the Long Range Desert Group, an elite British special forces unit that took on the German Afrika Korps and its legendary commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, "the Desert Fox."
Autumn 1942. Hitler’s legions have swept across Europe; France has fallen; Churchill and the English are isolated on their island. In North Africa, Rommel and his Panzers have routed the British Eighth Army and stand poised to overrun Egypt, Suez, and the oilfields of the Middle East. With the outcome of the war hanging in the balance, the British hatch a desperate plan—send a small, highly mobile, and heavily armed force behind German lines to strike the blow that will stop the Afrika Korps in its tracks. Narrated from the point of view of a young lieutenant, Killing Rommel brings to life the flair, agility, and daring of this extraordinary secret unit, the Long Range Desert Group. Stealthy and lethal as the scorpion that serves as their insignia, they live by their motto: Non Vi Sed Arte—Not by Strength, by Guile as they gather intelligence, set up ambushes, and execute raids. Killing Rommel chronicles the tactics, weaponry, and specialized skills needed for combat, under extreme desert conditions. And it captures the camaraderie of this “band of brothers” as they perform the acts of courage and cunning crucial to the Allies’ victory in North Africa.
As in all of his previous novels, Pressfield powerfully renders the drama and intensity of warfare, the bonds of men in close combat, and the surprising human emotions and frailties that come into play on the battlefield. A vivid and authoritative depiction of the desert war, Killing Rommel brilliantly dramatizes an aspect of World War II that hasn’t been in the limelight since Patton. Combining scrupulous historical detail and accuracy with remarkable narrative momentum, this galvanizing novel heralds Pressfield’s gift for bringing more recent history to life.
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Average Customer Review:
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A good fictional account of the Long Range Desert Group, 2008-08-11
Killing Rommel is Mr. Pressfield's initial WWII historical fiction account. As with his earlier books, Mr. Pressfield takes a person the average reader can possibly relate to and puts him into extraordinary situations. In this case, Mr. Pressfield's main character (Chapman) is a British Lieutenant from an armored regiment who is embedded into a Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) unit. In addition to their normal job of scouting and raiding the Axis forces in North Africa, Lt Chapman's troop is focused on attempting to neutralize the Afrika Korps greatest asset, Rommel.
My Likes:
I'd like to open by saying that this book covers a subject that's largely ignored in many histories, the LRDG. While this is historical fiction, Mr. Pressfield has done an outstanding job of working with the LRDG historical societies to bring the story of the men who served in the LRDG. Mr. Pressfield describes the difficulties the LRDG had in crossing the North Africa sands to scout the Axis rear areas and to raid them. While there are a limited number of actions Mr. Pressfield describes, those that he does provide us are sharp, to the point, and almost as if Lt. Chapman were there telling us about it. The best example of this is when they're raiding an airfield and they're dealing with the confusion of fighting at night and not being sure where all of the enemy forces are.
Mr. Pressfield also does a very good job capturing the language of the era. This is probably best shown when Lt. Chapman is a tank commander and he's talking on the radio with his headquarters section. When reading the dialog I was convinced that Mr. Pressfield had read Brazen Chariots: An Account of Tank Warfare in the Western Desert, November-December 1941 by Robert Crisp and just reformatted it to fit his story. In his credits, Mr. Pressfield cites sources that might have given similar dialog to what Mr. Crisp had in his book.
Other likes include the supporting characters, particularly Collier and his steadfastness and how Mr. Pressfield captured the sense of honor between the Axis and the British in North Africa; it falls very close to what was described in War Without Hate: The Desert Campaign of 1940-43(a historical account of the war in North Africa).
My Dislikes:
My most basic complaint against this book is that Lt. Chapman wasn't fully convincing, particularly when away from combat. Lt. Chapman is to stiff and too formal when he doesn't need to be. There's also to much rebellion in his armored regiment while the regimental commander may not have performed as well as others, most British officers wouldn't disobey his orders directly.
Another problem Mr. Pressfield had were a few historical inaccuracies: The three worst ones were when he mentioned that the Afrika Korp had panzerfaust (they initially came out in late 1942 but were limited to the Russian Front and we're that effective), that British tanks didn't have HE (high explosive) rounds (the US supplied tanks did, meaning M-3 Stuarts and M-3 Grants), and the time line didn't seem to flow with the historical timeline. An officer detached to a unit as long as Lt. Chapman was would have been considered as no longer a part of the regiment.
The Rating:
I went into this book looking for it to meeting Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylaeand I'm sorry to say that it's not. I was in love with parts of this book and bored by others. This makes rating this one a little trickier than in the past. I'll call it 3.5 stars and round up to 4 only because of the uniqueness (dealing with the LRDG) and because of the intense descriptions when Lt. Chapman was in combat and with the LRDG. If it wasn't for those the rating would be 3 stars.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Killing Rommel, 2008-08-08
Interesting Read.Strictly for WW2 fans.Takes a while before you can really get into it though.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 a pale and wan freddy forsyth, 2008-07-31
I don't know what came over the "Publishers Weekly" in giving this a starred review- I found it cliched and repetitive. The title is unnecessarily dramatic- Rommel has only a walking on role at the very end of the book: an ending that is ridiculous and hammy. The woman's role is shallow and I had to force myself to finish it. Forsyth writes about British soldiery far better than this. To Pressfield and PW- boo hiss
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
WWII desert warfare through the eyes of a British soldier, 2008-07-26
Steven Pressfield has mastered the art of telling military history from the point of view of a "common" soldier. Four of his five novels of ancient Greece were told from the perspective of a "grunt" who just happened to fight alongside the giants of history - Leonidas, Alexander, Alcibiades, or Theseus. Pressfield only broke form with "The Virtues of War," as told by Alexander the Great himself.
With "Killing Rommel," Pressfield returns to form as he spins the story of (fictional) Lawrence "Chap" Chapman, a young Brit who is trained as to fight in tanks but gets assigned to the intrepid Long Range Desert Group for a super-secret mission - to assassinate Erwin Rommel during the North Africa campaign. While "KR" may be Pressfield's shortest military history novel, it is also replete with action, despair, and romance.
This is an excellent book.
Pressfield almost always reveals his characters' strengths by putting them into positions of hopeless despair. In "Tides of War," he puts the reader into Sicilian jail-pits with defeated Spartans. In "The Afghan Campaign," he puts the captured narrator at the mercy of murderous Afghan tribes. In "Last of the Amazons," the reader experiences of horror of being completely, totally outmatched by a military foe. In "KR," our heroes experience the tortures of fighting the perils of the North African desert, where a flash flood can be as murderous and shocking as a flight of Messerschmitts. I had thought Bartle Bull's novels of Africa were the high-water mark for describing the harsh life in Africa, but while Bull's novels are much more romantic, he's got nothing on Pressfield when it comes to capturing the harsh realities of surviving the desert.
Why only four stars? I hate to admit it, but Pressfield was too successful in assuming the tone of his narrator. To Pressfield, the hallmark of a British soldier is that he never embellishes the truth and plays down his own achievements. And so the novel adopts a clipped tone that in many respects honors Joe Friday's mantra, "Just the facts, ma'am." Overall, this book is not as riveting a read as Pressfield's Greek history novels, although there are quite a few passages where Pressfield allows Chapman to wax a bit more poetic - and these passages pack a wallop.
For Chapman is a terrific character - he goes to war full of the zeal of a young man who has not seen war. And through fighting against one of the greatest soldiers of all time, he emerges from that war a wiser, more sober man . . . who becomes all the more romantic a figure.
I am a huge fan of Mr. Pressfield's books - he's one of my favorite authors. I strongly recommend this book to anyone - my only criticism (perhaps unfair) is that it's not my favorite of Pressfield's books. I'm grading on a curve here, though - an A-minus book by Pressfield is far better than the best novel of most other writers. While I hope Mr. Pressfield writes another novel about WWII, really I just hope he keeps writing.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Killing Rommel, 2008-07-25
As the old saying goes you can never tell a book by its cover. It was certainly true in this case. I had minimal expectations since I had never heard of Pressfield and the title wasn't much and the cover was sort of garish, but I had read some reviews which were pretty good and since historical novals are my favorite genre and World War II is of special interest to me I thought I'd give it a try. WOW!!!! This book grabbed me from the beginning and didn't let go. I'm usually reading 4 or 5 books at a time but I always know when a book is special because I tend to forget the other books and finish that one. I've read lots and lots of World War II books and this certainly ranks with the very best. It's all in the details. The details makes you think that the author was actually there. I cannot say enough good things about this book. I became strangely emotional as I read the postscript which is really unusual. Anyone that has an interest in World War II absolutely has to read this book. I am now going to get some of Pressfield's other books.
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