Sahara is a 1943 American action war film directed by Zoltán Korda and starring Humphrey Bogart as an American tank commander in Libya who, along with a handful of Allied soldiers, tries to defend an isolated well with a limited supply of water from a Libyan Afrika Korps battalion during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II.

The story is based on the novel Patrol by Philip MacDonald,[3] and an incident depicted in the 1936 Soviet film The Thirteen by Mikhail Romm.

Forced to head south across the Libyan Desert, Gunn and his crew, Doyle and "Waco", come across a bombed-out field hospital, where they pick up British Army medical officer Captain Halliday, four Commonwealth soldiers and Free French Corporal Leroux.

Riding on the tank, the group soon comes upon Sudan Defence Force Sergeant Major Tambul and his Italian prisoner, Giuseppe.

En route, Luftwaffe pilot Captain von Schletow strafes the tank, seriously wounding Clarkson, one of the Commonwealth soldiers.

They receive news of the Allied victory at the First Battle of El Alamein, turning back Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps.

The lead role was initially offered to Gary Cooper, Glenn Ford and Brian Donlevy before Bogart.

The cast and crew spent eleven weeks on location in the Imperial County, California, portion of Anza-Borrego Desert State Park near the Salton Sea.

In 1992, Kurt Kreuger was quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle on the emotions inherent in making the film, in which he portrayed a stereotypical Nazi: I was running across the dunes when Tambul jumped on top of me and pressed my head into the sand to suffocate me.

[11] Makeup artist Henry Pringle devised a technique to imitate facial perspiration by coating the actors' faces with vaseline and then spraying them with water.

[14] Reviews of Sahara generally were positive, with Variety noting, "Script [adapted by James O'Hanlon from a story by Philip MacDonald] is packed with pithy dialog, lusty action and suspense, and logically and well-devised situations avoiding ultra-theatrics throughout.

Bell, in The Washington Post, called it "one of the best-balanced of the starker war pictures ... that by turns is tortured, compassionate, thrilling and always of engrossing interest.

"[16] The Boston Globe called the film "brilliantly acted ... 'Sahara' doesn't spare the punches–they hit you in the face emotionally and it is literally impossible to sit unmoved through this vivid story.

"Those rugged, indomitable qualities which Humphrey Bogart has so masterfully displayed in most of his recent pictures—and even before, in his better gangster roles—have been doubled and concentrated in 'Sahara,' a Columbia film about warfare in the Libyan desert, which came to the Capitol yesterday.

"[17] New York Herald Tribune critic Otis Guernsey Jr. praised Bogart's understated style, calling it "exactly what is needed in war melodramas, which have too often been overstated to the point of ridicule.

The action and pictorial footage is more important than the dialogue ..."[18] John Livadary was nominated for the Oscar for Best Sound, Rudolph Maté for Best Cinematography (Black-and-White), and J. Carrol Naish for Best Supporting Actor.

Tree (Dan Aykroyd) in director Steven Spielberg's World War II comedy film 1941 is named Lulubelle as a homage to Sahara.