Having recently watched a number of mildly enjoyable Italian WWII "B" films from the same era BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN (1969), EAGLES OVER London (1969) and CHURCHILL'S LEOPARDS (1970) I decided to check this one out as well, given also that it featured Anton Diffring in the lead (surprisingly, not cast as a Nazi but a British officer!). It turned out to be not as worthwhile then again, the only other films I'd seen from this director where a couple of sci-fi turkeys from the 1970s, so I guess I shouldn't have expected much from it to begin with; even so, I'd still like to catch a reportedly good giallo of his NAKED GIRL KILLED IN THE PARK (1972) someday
Anyway, from the title it's obvious that the plot deals as did BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN with Rommel's African Campaign; in fact, halfway through the picture, a suicidal attempt is made on his life by the Allies but their target turns out to have been merely a decoy (interestingly enough, another low-brow war epic I watched not too long ago CASABLANCA EXPRESS [1989] featured a similar ruse, only the victim in its case was to have been Winston Churchill)!
While the film offers pretty much standard excitements throughout, with a few of the action sequences being quite competently handled, its central focus lies in the battle-of-wits between martinet Diffring and a 'rebellious' American soldier commissioned to his outfit (blandly played by Carl Parker) which feels somewhat like 'MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY In The Sand'; still, the comments the film makes about the impossibility of maintaining a code of ethics in wartime are perceptive enough
but, then, the introduction of a sympathetic German soldier in the second half (captured by the Allies but who ends up having to take care of the wounded survivors of the group through a good part of their desert trek!) seems rather too good to be true.
