 Film historian Bernard F. Dick remarks that Stroheim's Rommel already had sympathetic traits, too, considering Rommel himself was a person screenwriters found hard to vilify or caricaturize.The other foundational text was the influential and laudatory 1950 biography "" by Brigadier Desmond Young.Young had served in North Africa in the Indian Army in a public relations capacity, and was once taken prisoner by Rommel's troops.