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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group

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To: JohnM who wrote (94229)	4/17/2003 12:01:24 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (2) of 281500

that's a serious link or not Yes it is a serious link. I am not suggesting that the coalition troops are nazies in any way. The problem is they do not have to be. John Steinbeck explores the roles of the invaded and the invader in his short book (booklet). When it first came out, his book was controversial because it allowed the nazi soldiers to actually think and act like normal human beings in many senses. The book was published in 1942. (WW2) Fact is, being an armed occupying army is a very difficult task over time. The need for control of a population puts you at a serious disadvantage imho. Here is another review.. amazon.com As propaganda, the work was criticized as being too easy on the Germans -- portraying the occupying soldiers as very human and real instead of as cold and heartless. There is no doubt in my mind that this is precisely the reason for its success (and that Steinbeck is a genius in this respect). Steinbeck wrote about the plight of the occupied citizenry in a way that was so real that he reached them. It is also precisely in the occupying army's humanity that Steinbeck places the weapon that ultimately inspires the occupied and destroys the occupier: fear. One of the occupying soldiers articulates the fear very clearly: "The enemy's everywhere! Their faces look out of the doorways. The white faces behind the curtains, listening. We have beaten them, we have won everywhere, and they wait and obey, and they wait" (p. 64). He goes on to liken the occupying army's success to that of flies who conquer flypaper. And of course the novel itself brings the fear to life -- the flypaper ultimately proves quite inhospitable to the flies.

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