For those who like to get a feel for what the desert looked like, and the period propaganda, the AP archive has a lot of Movietone reels online:

First up, Rommel at Bay (with a nice view of the shortened Beaufighter wing referenced in this older post), of 18 December. Quite a bit of staged shots, my favorite being the Italian soldiers forced to climb out of a German Panzer IV…

Jingoistic tone, Germans are ‘gangsters’, and of course gets Ed Duda wrong, as El Duda, who presumably abides. Lots of hardware shots though.

Next up, Rommel on the Run, of 15 January, which of course he wasn’t anymore then.

I used ‘Libya “World War 2″‘ as search terms.

Happy viewing.