Propaganda, war, and the truth about Rommel
He was later alleged to have been involved in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. But he committed suicide after he was arrested by the Nazis and told that he would be put on trial for his offences and face certain death. In Germany and Britain he is still widely thought of as Nazi Germany’s “decent” general.
In an attempt to explore the latter part of Rommel’s life, Germany’s SWR television channel is currently making a new feature film about him. Its director, Niki Stein, told Der Spiegel magazine that the film tries to portray him as the personification of a generation of wartime Germans who “realize only gradually and too late that the person they have served with such passion is a criminal”.
The film, which casts the German actor Ulrich Turkur as Rommel, has yet to be shown on television. However it has already provoked an angry response from Rommel’s 82-year-old son, Manfred, his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren.
In letters to SWR, the family complains that all the advance publicity about the film ignores the chivalrous side of the general and portrays Rommel as “an upstart, a favourite of Hitler and as a Nazi war criminal”.
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