Escape in the Desert

Escape in the Desert is a 1945 American drama film directed by Edward A. Blatt and written by Marvin Borowsky and Thomas Job. The film stars Jean Sullivan, Philip Dorn, Irene Manning, Helmut Dantine, Alan Hale, Sr. and Samuel S. Hinds. The film was released by Warner Bros. on May 1, 1945.
Plot.
The action takes place in the southwestern United States late in World War II. Four POWs from Nazi Germany escape American custody and eventually wind up taking over a small gas station/hotel in the desert. They plan to obtain a fueled-up vehicle and flee the country. A Dutch military pilot traveling through America on his way to fight in the Pacific is mistaken by some locals as one of the Nazis. Eventually, however, he helps lead the resistance against the Germans.
The setting, some of the characters and a few plot elements are reminiscent of the 1936 film "The Petrified Forest". But while "Escape in the Desert" has occasionally been called a "remake" of the earlier film, the two are in essence very different. The two main male characters are nothing like those in "The Petrified Forest", and their conflict is also dissimilar. Critics at the time noticed the superficial resemblance to the earlier film, but described "Escape in the desert" as basically an action picture, a sort of updated Western with Nazis as the villains.