This is a

CVS I on the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Lloyd Clark.

His new book is The Commander's The Leadership Journey of George Patton, Bernard Montgomery and

Erwin Rommel. These are professional soldiers. They devote themselves to understanding warfare.

And yet, politics. The course for U and Rommel is deeply compromised by the rise of the National

Socialist, the Nazis.

And it is surprising to learn that right away Ramo establishes what you'd have to say is a

manipulative relationship with the Furer, with Adolf Hitler. And he goes through periods of admiring him and not admiring him, being punished by him and not admire, not being punished by him.

Professor, this is the strangest part because once you associate Rama with Hitler he's not the quite he's not the

same inspirational figure he was before. It's it's troubling only because it's impossible to remove the fact that he would have known of the remarks that Hitler said, repeated again and again treating human beings as worthy of being destroyed, particularly the Jews, but many more people than that.

Did Rommel reflect on that in his letters to Lucy, the anti-Semitism? Did he talk about it?

No, I think he tended to gloss over what we might describe as the most extreme excesses of

of Hitler's politics and personality.

And as you say, he had this love-hate relationship

with Hitler.

There were very few people, if any,

that Ronald venerated more in his career.

Most of the admiration that Ronald shows for anyone in a superior position to his own is directed wholly towards Hitler, his leadership,

what he is perhaps providing Germany with to become a world-class power again.

When he falls out of love with Hitler,

it's not really for his politics, which as I say he glosses over.

It's because he has let the army down or let Romul down it's about

...