the Allied–West German reconciliation. After the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, it became clear to the Americans and the British that a German army would have to be revived to help face off against the Soviet Union. Many former German officers, including Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel, who had served on Rommel's staff in France, were convinced that no future West German Army would be possible without the rehabilitation of the Wehrmacht. In October 1950, at the behest of West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a group of former senior officers produced the document that later became known as the Himmerod memorandum. Intended as both a planning and a negotiating tool, the document included a key demand for "measures to transform domestic and foreign public opinion" with regards to the German military. Foundational works Rommel's former enemies, especially the British, played a key role in the manufacture and propagation of the myth. The German rearmament was highly dependent on the moral rehabilitation that the Wehrmacht needed. The journalist and historian Basil Liddell Hart, an early proponent of these two interconnected initiatives, provided the first widely available source on Rommel in his 1948 book on Hitler's generals, updated in 1951. Portraying Rommel as an outsider to the Nazi regime in the 1948 edition, Liddell Hart concluded the 1951 text with comments on Rommel's "gifts and performance" that "qualified him for a place in the role of the 'Great Captains' of history". Five Graves to Cairo (film) The 1943 movie Five Graves to Cairo, directed by Billy Wilder, was the only wartime movie that featured a German general as a major character. According to Battistelli, Erich von Stroheim's portrayal of Rommel might "have been far from reality, but it certainly contributed to give rise to Rommel's myth". In June 1943, the magazine Life comments: "It will not win any Academy awards but is an important film for it re-introduces Erich von Stroheim as the screen's arch-villain in a Prussian uniform, this time portraying the Nazi's much-touted Field Marshal Rommel... Forgetting his early caricatures of pompous Prussians, he plays Field Marshal Rommel with much finesse, shows him to be human as well as cunning, brutal and vain." The film "exploits one of the standard wartime German stereotypes, that of the cold, ruthless aristocratic Junker officer", portraying Rommel as a "Wilhelmine officer complete with duelling scars and unbending authority." Film historian Bernard F.