They drafted the journalists, not just embedding them, but making them controllable members of the military.

EVERYBODY in that war thought they were fighting for “freedom” and their “rights.” Every damn one of them was fighting for resources and territory. It was the last of the colonial wars — with the white people attacking themselves, and one of the colonized (or attempted colonized) people coming back and giving us a taste of our own medicine. Columbus started WWII.

Much more like our own – ahem – “correctional facilities.” That’s how the camps started out. As places to put Germans who needed to be “recovered.” Dachau was built to scare Germans into good behavior and quietness. They have to go for the main population before they really go for the minorities.

Migraines while running a labor camp. With full power over people’s lives, it’s amazing such a person wouldn’t just shoot everybody. Including the troops.

The actual history Americans should have been studying was German history. The full-blown death camps just didn’t happen overnight. They developed, like all diseases.

Anybody here working at a prison?

These two in collusion against authority was just too much fun to write.

Drawing the flies was always loads of fun. Note the poor SS liaison, trying to not see.

This is why I enjoy George McDonald Fraser’s army stories over his Flashman stories. I get tired of brutal silly after a few paragraphs, but these stories are perfectly balanced. And recognizable. To me, anyway.

This is why I can’t review books — I’m always aware I have to begin it with: ACCORDING TO MY TASTE before going on.

Or, as the Jesuit who wrote the wine guide said: “If YOU like Annie Greensprings, then it’s good wine.”

I love this incident. It’s just Rommel’s style.

Don’t even ask me where I got this story, or how many of the actual details I’m using.

As was whispered to me once in a hotel, AWAY from the walls — “This stuff is classified! Where are you getting this?”

All good writers are journalists. We can get stuff. And we’re NOSY. And busy-bodies.

Now it’s all going to come out, everything he’s been doing since he’s been in Africa. And everybody he’s been drafting into his “efforts.”

I’m sure everybody knows I’m not really writing just about Germany, here.