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Find out moreCornered in the trenches and vastly outnumbered by the Afrika Korps, The Desert Rats didn’t have it easy. An acclaimed movie of the same name retold the story of the Allied forces at the Battle of Tobruk, who were quite literally stuck between a rock and a hard place during World War Two.
This 1953 film is seen by some as a classic of its time, receiving an Oscar nomination and an NBR Award for Best Actor. It even has a healthy 71% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
But was its portrayal accurate to history?
Here, we analyse what this Tobruk film got right, and what it got wrong, with the help of an historical expert.
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The Desert Rats 1953 Trailer
Tobruk, while relatively small in size, became a monumental battlefield in 1941.
For eight gruelling months, the Allies – consisting of the 9th Australian Division and the British 7th Armoured Division – withstood artillery barrages and tank attacks. During the day, they braved the desert’s blistering heat and vicious dust storms. At night, it was bitter cold that bit.
The soldiers lived in dug-outs and caves, awaiting the next armed attack by a force that far outnumbered-them. While the Allied troops possessed a handful of tanks and armoured cars, they were grossly outmatched by the sheer might of the Axis. However, the German-Italian forces couldn’t gain a foothold on the city, and eventually fell back, abruptly ending the siege.
After suffering a barrage of attacks by the British, the Italians are ordered to fall back into the desert on foot. We see the Italian Generals towards the end, who instruct the bedraggled soldiers to keep fighting. However, they quickly drive off and leave their men to the barren wasteland. This prompts some of the soldiers to get captured by the British on purpose, as they would rather languish in prison than die in the desert.
As the kind of underdog tale Hollywood loves, it’s perhaps no surprise that The Desert Rats was swiftly put into production.
It wasn’t long after the siege’s end that director Robert Wise sought to recreate these events on the big screen.
Did you know?
‘The Desert Rats' movie title refers specifically to the British 7th Armoured Division, who also saw action at El Alamein. The Australian 9th Division was actually known as ‘The Rats of Tobruk’.
Something of a quasi-sequel to 1951’s Erwin Rommel biopic ‘The Desert Fox’, The Desert Rats honours the 9th Australian Division’s role during Tobruk.
The movie follows Captain "Tammy" MacRoberts, a steely-eyed British officer leading a band of ANZAC troops in their battle against the Germans.
When it’s not focused on ferocious warfare and ground-shaking explosions, ‘The Desert Rats’ cleverly highlights the budding relationship between MacRoberts, his motley troops and his old schoolmaster. We are also presented with a picture of army discipline being broken down, and a blossoming friendship between officers and private soldiers.
One of the main draws of the film was its impressive cast, including James Mason, Robert Newton and a 27-year-old Richard Burton, who had recently migrated from working in theatre. ‘The Desert Rats’ would be his first war movie, and only his second Hollywood venture.
In 1951, two years before its release, 20th Century Fox had presented ‘The Desert Fox’, a film about Rommel which also starred Mason. While the film was a box office favourite, many viewers criticised the somewhat heroic portrayal of the German general.
In the Tobruk film, Rommel was presented less sympathetically.
Did you know?
Richard Burton, who starred as MacRoberts, would later claim that his dialogue sounded as if it had been directly lifted from an army training manual.
‘The Desert Rats’ has polarised viewers for years. Some praise it for bringing to a light an oft-forgotten campaign of bravery in WWII, while others have described it as just another film that ‘salutes the glories of war’.
Several critics also felt the movie was far inferior to The Desert Fox. Despite this, it was nominated for Best Story and Screenplay at the 1954 Academy Awards.
It could be argued that the film’s merits come courtesy largely of its stellar cast. Burton makes for a convincing action hero, and critics have noted that this early performance showed off the star-quality and talent that would pave the way for how great of an actor he would become. Though Mason only appears in a few short scenes as Rommel, his performance was also cited as exemplary.
Dr Robert Lyman, author and historian, notes that many of the films in the ‘50s and ‘60s covered WW2 stories where events were exaggerated and changed.
He says: “We’re now getting to a point in time where we want our stories to be historically verifiable, and many of these early ones weren’t. But not just the films, many of the stories that were written were easily exaggerated and a lot of the direct historical pertinence is lost. Very few of them actually are historically reliable.”
When commenting on this Tobruk movie specifically, Dr Lyman describes it as a “pretty good effort”, however.
“It’s as much a docu-drama as a movie, but it stuck pretty much to the facts. The storyline – of an imported British officer imposed on the Australians – doesn’t work much, but I think it doesn’t detract from the film.”
Did you know?
‘The Desert Rats’ was one of the last films produced by 20th Century Fox in the standard academy format. After just four months, the production company began to release films in the CinemaScope format. This started with "The Robe" (1953), which also starred Burton.
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While ‘The Desert Rats’ was generally well received by British critics at the time, many of them nonetheless complained that the British contribution to the campaign was minimised. Meanwhile, Australian critics were fairly positive despite some historical inaccuracies.
Lyman, author of a book on Tobruk called ‘The Longest Siege’, believes that the depiction of the Allied troops was done well enough given the context of the film.
“I don’t think that the British role was over-emphasised vis-à-vis the Australians,” he says. “The ‘General’ at the centre of the story was the general officer commanding of the Australian 9th Division, Major General Leslie Morshead, and most of his staff were Australians. Unfortunately, one cannot tell today just by listening to the accents who was who.”
Lyman goes on to explain that portraying the Australian soldiers – or at least some of them – as ill-disciplined ‘larrikins’ was unfair, but not insulting.
“The troops were pretty green, despite their experience at Bardia in early 1941,” he adds.
“The only thing that might be conceived of as insulting is the appointment of a British officer on an Australian unit.”
Due to Rommel’s portrayal in the film, many critics and viewers wondered whether he was actually involved in a plot to kill Hitler. In 2018, documents related to German reserve officer Rudolf Hartmann were found, suggesting that Rommel was indeed planning to permanently remove the leader. His motives, however, remain a matter of debate.
When MacRoberts gets wounded and captured, and ends up receiving medical attention, he and Rommel have a back-and-forth in English. Rommel says that the Axis will eventually take Cairo, to which MacRoberts replies that if they can’t take Tobruk, then they can’t take the Egyptian capital. Their banter ends with Rommel promising: ‘when your country is defeated, we may meet again.’
Though this is pure fiction, Rommel did occasionally visit medical centres throughout the desert war. Adding to this, Dr Lyman says that the Tobruk film captured Rommel “pretty well”.
He comments: “The meeting with MacRoberts was contrived of course, but Rommel (though he didn’t speak English) loved meeting and, through an interpreter, talking with Allied prisoners of war.”
Did you know?
All of the desert scenes were shot in California, while much of the film extensively used archive shots from the British documentary compilation film ‘Desert Victory’.
Perhaps one of the most glaring inaccuracies in the film is the Australian troops being led by British generals. The real commander of the 9th Division was Leslie Morshead. However, the General in the Tobruk film isn’t addressed by any specific name and is clearly English.
On the film’s release in Australia, Morshead is reported to have said: ‘The story is wholly foreign to the Tobruk I knew.’
Lieutenant General Leslie James Morshead
Throughout the film, certain German words and phrases have been accused of being seemingly misused or completely wrong altogether.
Rommel is addressed as a ‘Field Marshal’ at the beginning of the film, but he was in fact still a General at the time. He was only promoted to Field Marshal after the eventual capture of Tobruk in 1942, when the war swung back in favour of the German forces.
MacRoberts, meanwhile, is seen wearing a three-pip insignia on his shoulders, indicating a Captain. He is then promoted directly to Lieutenant Colonel. However, he would have needed to be a Major first – wearing a single crown on his shoulders.
Australian troops occupy a front line position at Tobruk
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Interview with Dr Robert Lyman
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0045679/awards/?ref_=tt_awd
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/desert_rats"
https://the-past.com/review/tv-film/war-on-film-the-desert-rats-1953/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045679/trivia?item=tr2198636
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