I've always liked this movie, but why did they give such an important mission to untrustworthy prisoners? Wouldn't the rangers or OSS have had guys better suited. Can't be because its too dangerous, all secret missions are dangerous, and it wasn't a manpower shortage, there were plenty of able bodied soldiers at the base. Just doesn't make sense. Whole thing seems beyond contrived.
Yes, that's a major plot hole. So much so that Ernest Borgnine's character himself privately comments on the insanity of the mission.
shareThe movie doesn't explain it as well as the book did.
In the novel, the generals wanted to try to train/re-train violent prisoners because the British were doing it, and they didn't want to be left out. So they gave it a shot, with no real notion of what the mission would be, even if the plan were successful.
Reisman is tasked with training them, which he does, and when he's ready he asks what the mission for them will be. The plan was to drop them in pairs behind the lines on the night before the invasion, in German uniforms, and let them basically just go raise hell with no direction. Blow up bridges, destroy supplies, kill troops, blow up vehicles, etc. And they were supposed to continue deeper into enemy territory as the went, essentially ensuring their death.
Reisman was furious about it, and asked Major Armbruster about another plan he'd been part of called Rosedale. Rosedale was the chateaux mission, and Reisman talked them into it. In the book, they don't know that the generals will be there, and in fact, only one is.
So the real reason they got the mission was because Reisman fought for it, they performed well on the fake attack on Breed, and the high command didn't think the Rosedale mission was all that likely to be of importance.
Whores will have their trinkets.
I read the novel, which is significantly different from the film, and it was not much more credible on this subject than the film. Both Rangers or OSS would have been better suited to such a mission. Human weakness is human weakness but with non-criminal, non-insane personnel for example they would not have had Maggott going haywire in the chateau.
Some armies did use cons of various kinds in penal units, but they tended to be cannon fodder, not commandos. Or else they would be sent into low-status work like guarding prisoners, sometimes with unpleasant consequences. Some German-born Jews along with German war prisoners were deported by ship to Australia from Britain, and the British troops guarding them clearly came from different units judging from their shoulder flashes. They were also prone to steal from prisoners and engage in minor acts of brutality, and it is likely that their units had assigned their less desirable members (petty criminals etc.) to prisoner handling because they wanted to get rid of them.
Reisman at one point remarks on getting a bunch of people who are not just criminals but also "rugged individualists" to act as a team. With soldiers who were non-criminals or only had minor criminal records at most, that journey would perhaps not have been necessary at all.
The US Army originally did not induct people with even criminal records for relatively unimportant stuff, but as battle casualties mounted it started drafting such people. So someone like Eddie Slovik was drafted and sent overseas. Slovik never did anything approaching the murders or rapes by the Dozen (leaving aside that one or two of the Dozen, like Jefferson or Wladislaw, had understandable reasons for the situations in which they killed), but Slovik's trajectory from juvenile larceny to reluctant draftee to desertion and finally execution just confirms that it was not a good idea to use such people.
On the other hand, armed forces are often short-handed especially during wartime, and may wonder why a minor record should exclude people from serving. But as commandos in a sophisticated and complex mission? No.
"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."
I'd have thought the qualities that made for a good soldier and good villain had a
lot in common