VON RUNDSTEDT - The Forgotten Field Marshal

His name appears in every book dealing with the Second World War in Europe, yet he is undoubtedly the least known of the great Wehrmacht generals. Gerd von Rundstedt (1875–1953), a Prussian aristocrat, veteran of the Great War and the most senior officer in the German armed forces, took part in the principal European campaigns of the conflict, both as architect and executor of the invasion plans: Poland in 1939 — that was him. France in 1940 — that was him as well, in part, as was Russia in 1941.
The remainder of his career proved more difficult: Rundstedt, who preferred to look away from the atrocities committed in the occupied territories, was removed from the Eastern Front at the end of 1941 for having disobeyed a direct order from the Führer. Posted to France from 1942, he was relieved of his command a second time for failing to restore the situation after the Normandy landings. Recalled at the end of the summer of 1944, he presided over the court of military honour before which many of his peers implicated in the 20 July plot against Hitler appeared, and watched as a bystander the Battle of the Ardennes, too often wrongly described as the "Rundstedt Offensive". Finally relieved of his command in March 1945 — having failed to prevent the crossing of the Rhine by the enemies of the Reich — he was arrested by the Americans in Bavaria, where, exhausted and crippled by rheumatism, he was taking a cure.
Laurent Schang here narrates with skill the greatness and the miseries of the Wehrmacht's most senior officer, this Prussian — perhaps too Prussian — for whom the honour of service outweighed every other consideration.