BERLIN (Reuters) - Erwin Rommel, the World War Two German field marshal celebrated as the brilliant and humane "Desert Fox", is portrayed in a new film as a weak man torn by his loyalty to Adolf Hitler and the dawning realization that he was serving a devil.

The drama, due to be broadcast on the public ARD television on Thursday, has angered Rommel's son and granddaughter who believe it underplays his role in the resistance against Hitler.

Rommel was forced to commit suicide in 1944 after Hitler suspected the general of being linked to the July 1944 plot to kill him, though historians disagree about how close he was to the failed assassination attempt.

Nazi propaganda feted Rommel as a military genius after his successful, bold offensives against the Allies in North Africa from 1941 until late 1942 when his Afrikakorps was defeated at El Alamein, a battle commemorated in London last week by the dwindling band of surviving British and Commonwealth veterans....