That may be correct. The article seems to hint at it. If so, I missed that also. I always liked Lancaster as an actor. In fact, I liked all that old set of actors and actresses better than I like the current crop. Probably a sign of my age...
True believers do all sorts of weird things. Like migrate to Brazil, for instance.
For commandant of the castle, Wimmer, I nominate Christoph Waltz, after his performance in "Inglourious Bastards." BTW, the reason for the misspelling was that there was already an Italian film with the same name spelled correctly. When we went to Itter, I was unaware that it was a designated R&R destination for American troops stationed in southern Germany. I found out about by bumping into a coffee importer from Berlin in a Restaurant in Austria. He was also on vacation. He spoke no English, but, being from Berlin, his German was very clear. After explaining about it, he said, in German, you can buy Budweiser beer there. I asked him why I would want to buy that beer in Germany and Austria. He seemed surprised at my reaction and said "Budweiser ist gutes Bier." (Budweiser is good beer.) That was because of the Army connection, although we saw no troops while we were there.
I think he did a great job with the role of Hans Landa. The way he can switch from German to French to English to Italian so effortlessly and without much of an accent is remarkable.
Actually, he's co-starred as an American in a fairly recent movie. In his appearances on the late night shows, he's shows a slight Austrian accent in spontaneous exchanges. Of course, I've been told, by Germans, that my German has a slight Austrian accent, since those are the ones I initially learned my conversational German - and it's still the most "transparent" to me. The book is meticulously researched and is surprisingly good reading. It would be good, before reading it, to print out a map, unless you're familiar with the area...
One of my pet peeves in history, especially military history.
I'm intimately familiar with the entire area, which helps. There are some almost super human feats detailed in it...
I finished it yesterday. Only 230 pages. I still recommend it - well researched, but still written in a way as to keep the action moving, not that it needed much. I did think about your remarks while reading it. Why on earth the SS was so intent on capturing the castle and executing all within is a mystery. Of course, at the same time, they were entering towns and villages and dragging the inhabitants out of any house which had a white flag or a red and white Austrian flag and summarily executing them, five days after Hitler's death, so there you have it. Total fanatics. The common Wehrmacht soldiers were pursuing the objectives you mentioned but not the SS. It makes one wonder what kind of life this kind of person could craft for himself after hostilities were actually over. "Operation Werwolf" fell on its face. The Germans simply had no stomach for fighting on. OTOH, the last Japanese soldier surrendered 30 years after the war and only then because they located his former commander to fly to the Philippines to order him to surrender. Despite the hardships of living off the land and what he could steal, he lived to 91 and only died last year. Now that's fanaticism...
A colleague's father was part of the Wehrmacht 7th Panzer (not the SS), which had spent most of the period 1941-1945 on the Eastern Front. I'll tell you what he was doing in the first week of May 1945: trying to find an American unit to surrender to.
All of the old German guys I knew well enough here were doing everything they could do to keep from being captured by the Russians. My next door neighbor, whom I've mentioned before, said they prayed every day for the Americans to arrive. When I asked why, I expected to hear the Russians again, but she said "Because then, the bombing would stop." Her husband was with the Peenemuende crew, who all credited von Braun for delivering them into American hands. She married one of them later, when he went back to Germany, bride-hunting...
Um, perhaps because his is a childrens' book? Or maybe you thought that's where my tastes lay...
