A Proper Tribute To The Desert Foxby Anonymous

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June 16, 2004: Henry Hathaway's 1951 film on Erwin Rommel, NAZI Germany's most brilliant tactician whose indirect involvement in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler resulted in his untimely death. The film is a character study and focuses more on Rommel's relationship with Hitler and the German High Command as opposed to his achievements as a military tactician. Because the nature of his death wasn't very well known at that time, the film focuses on Rommel's deteriorating relationship with Hitler and his eventual participation in the assassination plot. This is normal since, with the film being made only 6 years after the end of WWII, audiences would have been quite unreceptive to a film glorifying a German general's military exploits against allied forces. All in all, James Mason delivers a brilliant performance as a man who is struggling with his conscience. Is his duty as a general to just obey Hitler or to protect Germany from destruction? What should he do when Hitler's megalomania is a greater threat to Germany than the Allies themselves? How can he be a good soldier and live with himself by committing treason: even if treason is the only logical alternative? Although the film isn't entirely accurate in its history, it succeeds in capturing all of the internal conflicts Rommel must have suffered in deciding what to do. The film is also accurate in portraying the impossible dilemma faced by Von Runstedt and others in the German High Command with Hitler's incessant meddling in military planning and execution. As the movie shows, by 1944 Hitler assumed direct control of virtually all military operations in the major theaters with disastrous results (i.e. insisting that most heavy guns and panzer divisions remain in Calais even when the D-Day invasion was well underway). This dilemma was dealt with humor in the movie when Von Runsted sarcastically tells Rommel about how corporals (i.e. Hitler) are such brilliant strategists and tacticians who clearly know far more about waging war than your run-of-the-mill Field Marshalls: 'You know how rigid those corporals can be.' Altogether a great film that sheds light on the character of one of the greatest military tacticians of the 20th Century. A film not to be missed.