After his father's death, Manfred Rommel was conscripted to the paramilitary work service until his desertion and capture by the French First Army in April 1945. After the war, Manfred Rommel studied law at the University of Tübingen. In 1974 he was elected mayor of Suttgart and began a much-publicized friendship with U.S. Army Major General George S. Patton IV, the son of his father's World War II adversary, George S. Patton. He was also friends with David Montgomery, the son of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery.
