WHAT IF Field Marshal Erwin Rommel decided to surrender to Eisenhower before D-Day? What if Rommel released an American POW whom he knew before the war, Lt. Max Speigner, and sent him across the English Channel to meet with Eisenhower? What if the Americans and British returned Speigner to France as bait to draw Rommel into a killing zone? Rommel’s Peace, a sequel to Wells’ first novel, Rommel and the Rebel, is based on Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s actual plan to arrange a ceasefire with the Allied High Command. The date is several weeks before D-Day. When Hitler rejects Rommel’s request for a negotiated peace the field marshal acts on his own. He sends Lt. Speigner to deliver a ceasefire offer to England. Eisenhower suspects the Desert Fox is stalling for time, but Winston Churchill agrees to meet with Rommel. Meanwhile, the D-Day invasion has begun. British commandos use the unsuspecting Speigner as bait to assassinate Rommel. Events spiral out of control. Rommel obtains SS General Sepp Dietrich’s promise to obey a ceasefire order but on his way to his headquarters he is strafed and wounded by the RAF. Implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler he is forced to commit suicide. -- “Lawrence Wells is a master of the ‘what if’ genre of literary fiction. Based on historical evidence, Rommel’s Peace is a compelling, fast paced and fascinating look into what might have been. Had Rommel’s ceasefire been allowed to flower, the dreadful casualties of D-Day might have been avoided, and the course of history forever changed.” (Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump)
