10 Great World War II Movies You've Probably Never Seen

Today, Erwin Rommel is one of the best-known German generals. His string of victories in the North African desert are viewed as a testament to his tactical genius and his character and reputation are largely untarnished by his association with Nazism, despite the close relationship with Hitler that he enjoyed throughout much of his career.

Much of the so-called ‘Rommel myth’ was popularised by Desmond Young’s 1950 biography of the Field Marshal and Henry Hathaway’s 1951 film adaptation of it. These have long since drifted into obscurity, though the image of a honourable opponent who fought a clean war in contrast to his counterparts that it helped to create has endured.

The film certainly makes for interesting viewing, blitzing through Rommel’s time as commander of the Afrikakorps and overseer of the Atlantic Wall before depicting his supposed association with the July 20th plot against Hitler and subsequent suicide.

More successful in Britain than in the US, where the sympathetic portrayal of a German just six years after the war’s conclusion was seemingly less palatable, The Desert Fox has surprisingly never been remade. The war in North Africa and the parallels of Rommel and ‘Monty’ (Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery) are popular subjects in the history section of bookshops, but have never been particularly well explored on film (probably due to a lack of American involvement), leaving this 88 minute biopic as one of the best visual insights going.