Beneath Harvey Kurtzman's evocative and exciting cover for Frontline Combat #3 is a story by Kurtzman which seeks to set a record straight, to clarify the understanding of the horror of the Nazis.
General Erwin Rommel is sometimes seen as a "good Nazi" or something like that. He was a German serving his country in time of war and not really all that keen about the atrocities back in the homeland as he pressed his forces across North Africa and elsewhere. He was rumored to have plotted to kill Hitler at one point, though evidence scant. Hitler purger him nonetheless, a little suicide between enemies for the good of the Reich.
With the assist of up and coming artist Wally Wood, Kurtzman tells his story which contrasts the romanticized accounts of Rommel's bravado and cunning with grotesque and gruesome images of the dead and dying and tortured in the land he fought to defend. Kurtzman is specifically saying that there is no "good Nazi", that all share in the blame for the purges and gas chambers and the lot of it. He makes his point quite poignantly.
Note: This post originally appeared at Rip Jagger's Other Dojo.
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That’s a very good point about Rommel, he does have a bit of a mythical reputations being a military genius that just happened to be on the wrong side and was only doing his duty oblivious to the horrors being carried out. I will need to look at picking this p book up it looks more interesting than I thought it might have been on first viewing.
ReplyDeleteI recommend this book. It has real heft and the essays with the stories are strong.
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