The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel

The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel is a 1951 biographical film about Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the later stages of World War II. It stars James Mason in the title role, was directed by Henry Hathaway, and was based on the book Rommel by Brigadier Desmond Young, who served in the Indian Army in North Africa. The film begins with a pre-credit sequence depicting Operation Flipper, a British commando raid whose aim is to assassinate Rommel. It fails. After the credits, the story is introduced by narrator Michael Rennie, who dubs the voice of then Lieutenant-Colonel Desmond Young, who plays... himself in the film. Young is captured and meets Rommel briefly as a prisoner of war; he states that Rommel was not only his enemy at the time, but an enemy of civilization, and makes it his mission after the war to discover what really happened to Rommel during the final years of his life — at the time that Young wrote his book, it was believed that Rommel had died as a result of the wounds he had suffered when an Allied fighter strafed his staff car.
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