An interim post...

I am still working out the details of my aforementioned McQueen/Hoffman scale, but, in the interim, I wanted to post something that happened to me today.

I am presently reading the memoirs of Otto Skorzeny. If you did not know, Otto Skorzeny was a German soldier who fought in WWII, founded the German special forces and personally conducted several daring SF raids. Fascinating man.

On September 12 1943, he lead a daring glider-based assault on the Campo Imperatore Hotel at Gran Sasso, and rescued from the Italian government Mussolini without firing a single bullet.

In October 1944, Hitler sent him to Hungary when he received word that Hungary's Regent, Miklós Horthy was secretly negotiating his country's surrender with the Red Army. This surrender would have cut off a million German troops fighting in the Balkan peninsula. Skorzeny, in another daring "snatch" codenamed Operation Panzerfaust, kidnapped Horthy's son Nicolas and forced his father to abdicate as Regent. A pro-German government was installed in Hungary which fought alongside Germany until German troops were driven out of Hungary by the Red Army in April 1945.

On October 21, Hitler, inspired by an American subterfuge which had put three captured German tanks flying German colours to devastating use at Aachen, summoned Skorzeny to Berlin and assigned him to lead a panzer brigade. As planned by Skorzeny in Operation Greif, about two dozen German soldiers, most of them in captured American army Jeeps and disguised as American soldiers, penetrated American lines in the early hours of the Battle of the Bulge and sowed disorder and confusion behind the Allied lines. A handful of his men were captured by the Americans and spread a rumour that Skorzeny was leading a raid on Paris to kill or capture General Eisenhower. Although this was untrue, Eisenhower was confined to his headquarters for weeks and Skorzeny was labelled "the most dangerous man in Europe".

Skorzeny surrendered to the Allies in May 1945 and was held as a prisoner of war for more than two years before being tried as a war criminal at the Dachau Military Tribunal for his actions in the Battle of the Bulge. However, he was acquitted when Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas G.C. of the SOE testified in his defense that Allied forces had also fought in enemy uniform. But he was held until he escaped from a prison camp on July 27, 1948.

The man is not only an important figure in military history, but an importantly player in world history. Moreover, from what I read in his memoirs, while he joined the NSDAP, he withdrew his membership before the war because they simply never did anything. The man was a true soldier who lived a fierce and daring life. Yes he fought against us in WWII. However, so did Rommel, and he is generally respected by any historian.

OK, so, I am reading his memoirs on the train. The cover of the book appears exactly as follows:

So, this guy sits down next to me on the train, sees the cover of the book, and gives me a look of disgust, gets up from his seat and moves two seats down the line.

What is that about? I mean, if I was reading a book about Stalin, who caused the death of millions, it would not be a big deal. But, because this is a book about someone who he does not know and is wearing an Iron Cross, I am, somehow, transformed into a Neo-Nazi?

People just piss me off.