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Killing Rommel is a 2008 historical fiction novel by Steven Pressfield set in North Africa during World War II. [1] The book follows the actions of the British Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).
The novel begins with the narrator recounting the story of a man named Chapman, who had been schooling in England when the war broke out. He joined the British army and found himself fighting hopelessly against the Germans in North Africa. The Germans were said to have superior leadership, tactics, and equipment, including their much more able tanks. Despite the British struggles to fight off the Germans, at some intervals they find success. However, the leadership of Erwin Rommel is the main driving force of German success and so long as he is around, the allies cannot expect to make much headway.
Chapman volunteers to join the LRDG in his desire to see more action. He joins a motley squadron of Brits, Australians, and New Zealanders, along with other men from commonwealth nations. Also there are some Arab natives who tag along as both guides and warriors. Chapman's squadron is given orders to navigate across barren deserts, find Rommel when he is vulnerable and unsuspecting, and assassinate him.
The group experiences many trials as it travels through hundreds of miles of barren desert, dealing with sickness, fatigue, dehydration, overheating trucks, Axis patrols, and more perils. It is an epic journey of a soldiers overcoming hardship and uniting in fraternity.
In this novel Pressfield presents some of the themes seen before in his works, both fiction and non-fiction. A major motif is the growth and evolution of the individual from "archetype to archetype" through trials. The novel also depicts the 'Warrior Code' that has been a major theme of most of his works and is explicitly outlined in his book The Warrior Ethos .
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel was a German field marshal during World War II. Popularly known as the Desert Fox, he served in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, as well as serving in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the army of Imperial Germany.
The Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) was a reconnaissance and raiding unit of the British Army during the Second World War.
László Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós was a Hungarian aristocrat, motorist, desert explorer, aviator, Scout-leader and sportsman who served as the basis for the protagonist in both Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient (1992) and the movie adaptation of the same name (1996).
Popski's Private Army, officially No. 1 Demolition Squadron, PPA, was a unit of British Special Forces set up in Cairo in October 1942 by Major Vladimir Peniakoff. Popski's Private Army was one of several raiding units formed in the Western Desert during the Second World War. The squadron also served in Italy, and was disbanded in September 1945.
Tobruk is a 1967 American drama war film directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Rock Hudson and George Peppard. The film was written by Leo Gordon and released through Universal Pictures.
Steven Pressfield is an American author of historical fiction, non-fiction, and screenplays.
The Desert Fox is a 1951 American biographical war film from 20th Century Fox about the role of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in World War II. It stars James Mason in the title role, was directed by Henry Hathaway, and was based on the book Rommel: The Desert Fox by Brigadier Desmond Young, who served in the British Indian Army in North Africa.
Five Graves to Cairo is a 1943 war film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Franchot Tone and Anne Baxter. Set in World War II, it is one of a number of films based on Lajos Bíró's 1917 play Hotel Imperial: Színmű négy felvonásban, including the 1927 film Hotel Imperial. Erich von Stroheim portrays Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in a supporting performance.
Gates of Fire is a 1998 historical fiction novel by Steven Pressfield that recounts the Battle of Thermopylae through Xeones, a perioikos born in Astakos, and one of only three Greek survivors of the battle.
The Guns of Navarone is a 1961 adventure war film directed by J. Lee Thompson from a screenplay by Carl Foreman, based on Alistair MacLean's 1957 novel of the same name. Foreman also produced the film. The film stars Gregory Peck, David Niven and Anthony Quinn, along with Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, James Darren and Richard Harris. The book and the film share a plot: the efforts of an Allied commando unit to destroy a seemingly impregnable German fortress that threatens Allied naval ships in the Aegean Sea.
A Good Clean Fight is a 1993 novel by Derek Robinson, and a sequel to Piece of Cake (1983), his famous and controversial novel of the Battle of Britain. It continues the story of RAF Hornet Squadron, now posted to North Africa in 1942, during a lull in the fighting. Some of the characters from the previous novel, such as Squadron Leader "Fanny" Barton and erudite but iconoclastic intelligence officer "Skull" Skelton, reprise their roles. As the squadron engages in increasingly suicidal ground attacks in an effort to lure the Luftwaffe into a fight, Captain Jack Lampard leads an SAS patrol behind enemy lines and Paul Schramm, a German intelligence officer, tries to concoct his own scheme to beat the SAS at their own game.
Operation Flipper was a British commando raid during the Second World War, mainly by men from No. 11 (Scottish) Commando. The operation included an attack on the headquarters of Erwin Rommel, the commander of Panzergruppe Afrika in North Africa. It was timed for the night of 17/18 November 1941, just before the start of Operation Crusader. The operation failed as Rommel had left the target house weeks earlier and all but two of the commandos who landed were killed or captured. One member of the Special Boat Section team, who had secured the beach for the commando party, also escaped.
The Key to Rebecca is a novel by the British author Ken Follett. Published in 1980 by Pan Books (ISBN 0792715381), it was a best-seller that achieved popularity in the United Kingdom and worldwide. The code mentioned in the title is an intended throwback from Follett to Daphne du Maurier's famed suspense novel Rebecca.
Brigadier Edward Cecil Osbaldeston Mitford Military Cross was a British officer in the British Army during the Second World War and after. He was an explorer of the Sahara desert before the war which was instrumental in his becoming one of the original members of the Long Range Desert Group. He later commanded five armoured regiments and an armoured brigade. He was also a member of the Mitford family from Northumberland.
Sonderkommando Blaich was a German unit consisting of s Heinkel He 111H medium bomber supported by an Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.82 transport aircraft and a Messerschmitt Bf 108. In January 1942 the Heinkel raided the Free French–controlled Fort Lamy in the Chad region of French Equatorial Africa. The raid against a target 1,250 mi (2,010 km) from Axis bases in North Africa was a success but on its return flight the Heinkel ran out of fuel and had to make an emergency landing; the crew and aircraft were rescued a week later.
The Profession is a 2011 thriller novel by Steven Pressfield. Set in 2032, the novel depicts a highly militarized future where there is severe conflict in the Middle East. A reviewer in the Los Angeles Times favorably compared the novel to Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II's 1964 novel Seven Days in May. Kirkus Reviews called the novel "A book that paints an all-too-plausible future in which America outsources its dirtiest jobs."
Resistance is a mythical concept created by American novelist Steven Pressfield that illustrates the universal force that he claims acts against human creativity. It was first described in his non-fiction book The War of Art and elaborated in the follow-up books Do The Work and Turning Pro, and in other essays. It is also a recurring theme in some of his fiction novels such as The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Virtues of War.
Southern Rhodesia, then a self-governing colony of the United Kingdom, entered World War II along with Britain shortly after the invasion of Poland in 1939. By the war's end, 26,121 Southern Rhodesians of all races had served in the armed forces, 8,390 of them overseas, operating in the European theatre, the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre, East Africa, Burma and elsewhere. The territory's most important contribution to the war is commonly held to be its contribution to the Empire Air Training Scheme (EATS), under which 8,235 British, Commonwealth and Allied airmen were trained in Southern Rhodesian flying schools. The colony's operational casualties numbered 916 killed and 483 wounded of all races.
The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life is a 1995 American novel by Steven Pressfield that was adapted into the 2000 film The Legend of Bagger Vance.
The Rommel myth, or the Rommel legend, is a phrase used by a number of historians for the common depictions of German field marshal Erwin Rommel as an apolitical, brilliant commander and a victim of Nazi Germany due to his presumed participation in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler, which led to Rommel's forced suicide in 1944. According to these historians, who take a critical view of Rommel, such depictions are not accurate.
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