Neuchl....(Spoilers)


Why did the four thugs beat up on Neuchl. There did not appear to be any reason for it taking place when it did, unless Schluter thought he would grass them in.

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He didn't accept Schlueter's leadership, so Schlueter put it about that he was homosexual. Schlueter also told an officer (Kranz?) who complained about the treatment of Neuchl that "that flying fairy is a bad German". Schlueter had his thugs attack him to punish him for being an opponent - Schlueter after all is a keen Nazi. There was some opposition to Schlueter, especially among Luftwaffe crew, and assaulting Neuchl was probably designed to intimidate them. What was not expected was that the badly beaten Neuchl would be rescued by the British, requiring Phase 2. "Acht-und-zwanzig Kriegsmarine - Schweine!"
Although fiction, parts of the film have a factual basis. There were escape attempts by captured Germans, though mainly in Canada, with at least one being successful, and the Neuchl story may be based on an incident at a POW camp in Comrie, Scotland, where an anti-Nazi German prisoner was murdered by keen Nazis in the camp. After the war, several of them were executed.

"Chicken soup - with a *beep* straw."

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