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The Eagle and the Iron Cross
The Eagle and the Iron Cross
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Film rights to The Eagle and the Iron Cross are owned by Horizon Pictures, famed film producer Sam Spiegel's production company, now folded into Columbia Pictures/Sony. Mr. Spiegel produced The Bridge On the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, among many other well-known films.
The Eagle and the Iron Cross opens in a WW II prisoner-of-war camp. It centers upon a fierce struggle -- a battle both physical and moral -- waged by two young escapees against a foe at once relentless and sadistic. It takes its place among the probing war novels of our time, but one that offers the reader a jolting shock. For this POW camp is located in Arizona. And the two escapees are German soldiers named Matthe Teege and Albert Pomtow, both barely out of their teens. For them geo-politics was a jumble of words, and war is slaughter without meaning. They want to escape the bonds of barbed wire, not to fight for the Third Reich, but to flee the Fourth Reich that has been set up withing the prisoners' camp. Their haven is to be "America" -- or at least their image of America culled from Western novels and the words of our founding fathers.
But it is another America these POW's discover. They dream of joining the proud Indian tribes of the Wild West; instead the Indians with whom they take refuge have only a terrible captivity to share. One of them, Matthe, finds love -- but the girl is a teenage, gum-chewing Indian prostitute. The pair of Germans seek justice and are tracked by a group of ranchers -- vigilantes for whom torture and murder of their quarry is the highest form of patriotism. Finally, in a climax of explosive action and cutting irony, the one surviving young German, in alliance with a young Indian who has all but lost his manhood, must enter into a war with the Americans, a war that becomes a vivid counterpoint of the other war, with all moral roles reversed. The Eagle and the Iron Cross charts the breaking of an illusion; it is a gripping escape story, tragically based upon fact.
Glendon Swarthout did research on the old German POW camps during WW II and afterwards, even interviewing one of the old prisoners still living in Arizona. He utilized his own knowledge of WW II, having served as an infantry Sergeant in the famed 3rd Divison of Audie Murphy's during its Italian campaign, and worked in some of his personal observations about armed conflicts and their effects on the young men drafted to fight our wars. Totally original once more, this was the very first novel written about this provocative subject, set in America's prisoner-of-war camps, and from young Germans' points-of-view. Consequently, The Eagle and the Iron Cross became quite a controversial book in some reviewers' opinions.
The Eagle and the Iron Cross opens in a WW II prisoner-of-war camp. It centers upon a fierce struggle -- a battle both physical and moral -- waged by two young escapees against a foe at once relentless and sadistic. It takes its place among the probing war novels of our time, but one that offers the reader a jolting shock. For this POW camp is located in Arizona. And the two escapees are German soldiers named Matthe Teege and Albert Pomtow, both barely out of their teens. For them geo-politics was a jumble of words, and war is slaughter without meaning. They want to escape the bonds of barbed wire, not to fight for the Third Reich, but to flee the Fourth Reich that has been set up withing the prisoners' camp. Their haven is to be "America" -- or at least their image of America culled from Western novels and the words of our founding fathers.
But it is another America these POW's discover. They dream of joining the proud Indian tribes of the Wild West; instead the Indians with whom they take refuge have only a terrible captivity to share. One of them, Matthe, finds love -- but the girl is a teenage, gum-chewing Indian prostitute. The pair of Germans seek justice and are tracked by a group of ranchers -- vigilantes for whom torture and murder of their quarry is the highest form of patriotism. Finally, in a climax of explosive action and cutting irony, the one surviving young German, in alliance with a young Indian who has all but lost his manhood, must enter into a war with the Americans, a war that becomes a vivid counterpoint of the other war, with all moral roles reversed. The Eagle and the Iron Cross charts the breaking of an illusion; it is a gripping escape story, tragically based upon fact.
Glendon Swarthout did research on the old German POW camps during WW II and afterwards, even interviewing one of the old prisoners still living in Arizona. He utilized his own knowledge of WW II, having served as an infantry Sergeant in the famed 3rd Divison of Audie Murphy's during its Italian campaign, and worked in some of his personal observations about armed conflicts and their effects on the young men drafted to fight our wars. Totally original once more, this was the very first novel written about this provocative subject, set in America's prisoner-of-war camps, and from young Germans' points-of-view. Consequently, The Eagle and the Iron Cross became quite a controversial book in some reviewers' opinions.
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