One of the most famous soldiers to fight in World War II, Erwin Rommel achieved immortality as the Desert Fox in the sands of Africa, but his first field command was the 7th Panzer Division, the so-called Ghost Division. During the 1940 campaign in France, the unit suffered more casualties than any other German division and at the same time inflicted heavy losses on the Allies, taking almost 100,000 prisoners. The Ghost Division's success owed much to Rommel's subordinates, who aided Rommel more than he admitted in his papers and whom historians have generally overlooked. This book remedies that oversight....

General Erwin Rommel arrived in Africa's Western Desert in February 1941 to head the elite German Afrika Korps in its efforts to bolster its battered Italian allies. Disobeying orders to remain on the defensive, Rommel attacked, nearly pushed the numerically superior British out of Libya, and besieged the critical port of Tobruk. Unable to capture it, Rommel's forces defeated two British attempts to relieve the garrison before being forced to withdraw at the end of 1941. Seasoned by months of desert warfare, Rommel stood ready to achieve his greatest successes in 1942....

In July 1944, after fighting in most of Germany's campaigns--Poland, France in 1940, the Eastern Front--and then serving as Heinz Guderian's troubleshooter, General of Panzer Troops Hans Eberbach took command of Panzer Group West near the vital city of Caen in the British sector of Normandy. During the next two months, Eberbach led German tanks against the Allied onslaught in an ultimately vain attempt to stop the breakthrough into France's interior. Captured by the British at the end of August, Eberbach nevertheless secured himself a place among Germany's best panzer leaders....