War Primer. Bertolt Brecht

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      Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, 61 and a Prussian, helped conquer Poland, Paris and the North Caucasus.

      Field Marshal Hugo Sperrle, 57, Bavarian brewer’s son, commanded air corps in Spain, Poland, Lowlands, France, Battle of Britain.

      Field Marshal Karl von Rundstedt, 66, planned and carried through famous break at Sedan, now has headquarters there.

      Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, 50, is slashing, hard-hitting commander of the German Afrika Corps in Battle of Egypt.

      General Heinz Guderian, 56, a Prussian, had brilliant tank successes in Poland and France, commanded Panzer division from a plane.

      Field Marshal Siegmund List, 62, steely Bavarian master of mobility, knifed through Poland and France.

      Here are six murderers. Now don’t turn away

      And don’t just nod and murmur ‘That’s the truth.’

      Showing them up has cost us to this day

      Fifty great cities and most of our youth.

      Look at the helmets of the vanquished! Yet

      Surely the moment when we came undone

      Was not when they were smitten from our heads

      But when we first agreed to put them on.

      When the “Fox of the Desert,” German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (left) drank this premature toast, his Afrika Korps was still “unbeatable.”

      Here’s to the Fatherland with all its Junkers!

      The German sabre, plus its dividends!

      The German People, armed and in its bunkers!

      The great Misleader – Cheers! – of foes and friends!

      But in his recent flight across Libya, Rommel left behind many of his battered forces. From Allied attack this German vainly dived for cover.

      O thrill of marching bands and banners flying!

      Teutonic myth of swastika-crusaders dying!

      Till all objectives were reduced to one:

      To find yourself some cover. There was none.

      Our masters fight to have you, lovely creature

      They race to seize you in their headlong course.

      Each feels most fit to bleed you white in future –

      Most justified in taking you by force.

      Statesmen at work: Chairman Sol Bloom of the House Foreign Affairs Committee debates with isolationist Holden Tinkham. Behind them: Hamilton Fish.

      Behold us here, antagonists. See how

      Each angry look is like a poisoned dagger.

      A world of difference lies between us now.

      The quarrel is: whose share’s to be the bigger.

      Here’s what we sent, we people of Spokane

      With a brassière to help support our Congress

      In gratitude for their devoted service.

      They asked for it. They’ll know just what we mean.

      Jane Wyman shows her medals, adorning an ‘R A F. blue’ dress designed by a Hollywood patriot who says girls ‘should go military in a feminine way.’ These are reproductions of old war medals and were not pinned on Jane for anything she did.

      A breast curves through her military cut

      Her parts are hung with old war decorations:

      It’s Hollywood v. Hitler. Here we’ve got

      Semen for blood, and pus for perspiration.

      O voice of sorrow from the double choir

      Of gunmen and the victims of the gun!

      The Son of Heaven needed Singapore

      And no one but yourself needed your son.

      An American and the Jap he killed. Pfc Wally Wakeman says: “I was walking down the trail when I saw two fellow talking. They grinned and I grinned. One pulled a gun. I pulled mine. I killed him. It was just like in the movies.”

      We saw each other – it happened very fast –

      I smiled, and both of them smiled back at me.

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