The Rats of Tobruk (1944)

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The film's dedication and opening prologue states: "For eight months at Tobruk in 1941 fifteen thousand Australians and eight thousand British and Indian troops held a German army seven times their number and in seven time their armour. The Germans, understanding machines, but not these men, flung an insult to them in a name - "The Rats of Tobruk." This insult they carried on their bayonets right into the ranks of the oncoming German hordes. It has become one of the finest epitaphs of the war. To these men who could never be driven from their firing posts before Rommel, we pay homage - - "THE RATS OF TOBRUK"."
The men look at a picture (off-screen) of a naked woman in the barber shop, calling her Chloe. This is a reference to a well-known painting kept in Young and Jackson's Hotel in Melbourne.
The name "The Rats of Tobruk" of the film's title refers to the World War II soldiers, mostly Australian, who held-out against Rommel's Nazi Afrika Corps at the North African Libyan port of Tobruk during 1941. This was during the so-called Siege of Tobruk which began on 10th of April 1941 and concluded in November of that year. The Rats of Tobruk held out for a massive two hundred and fifty days before being they were relieved by more Allied British forces.
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