Col. Pitts - Larry Hagman

The "good Germans" theme makes more sense in the novel because of a few things that the film does NOT include and thus undermines the "good Germans" undercurrent.

1-One reason why Steiner is forced to head this operation is because his father, an anti-Nazi general has been arrested and is being tortured. Doing this is the only chance he has of saving him (but the Gestapo have him murdered anyway, which he never learns)

2-The big difference of the ending. In the book, Steiner never pulls the trigger on "Churchill." Even when he has finally succeeded against all odds in being in position to fulfill his objective.....he hesitates. The film opted for a more cinematic ending but its one that undermines the story's theme of the "good Germans".

Regarding Larry Hagman's "Colonel Pitts" (in the novel his name is Robert Shafto), I think they went too far in making him a buffoon and in fact it doesn't surprise me that the earlier VHS releases of the film cut almost all of his scenes that show him at his silliest. It just works against the tone of the film completely.

Colonel Pitts was meant to be a classic example of pre-war 'deadwood' - a career-minded, gung-ho, over-the-top firebrand who'd internalised too many stories of battlefield glory and was so eager to win medals that he didn't bother with any form of tactical thinking beyond "Charge!" That's why he was being relieved - his superiors had realised that he was entirely the wrong man to train a battalion of Rangers for real-life combat, much less lead it into action.

He was written and directed that way to highlight the quiet, mature professionalism of both Captain Clark and Colonel Steiner; where Pitts rushed headlong into battle in a display of juvenile bloodthirstiness, resulting in his force being cut to ribbons and achieving damned little, both Harry and Steiner approached war as something to be handled methodically and efficiently. Both Steiner's defence of the village and Clark's assault on the village demonstrated a first-class grasp of fundamental tactics - the power of automatic weapons firing from cover, the use of heavy weapons to neutralise such strong-points, infantry fire-and-manoeuvre, and so forth. (I can't find mention of who the movie's technical advisor was, but the cast and crew obviously paid close attention to him when it came to those sequences, and bloody good on them for it!)

Even Pitts' ignominious end furthered this demonstration. In his circumstances, a properly trained soldier would have thrown the grenade first and worried about taking a prisoner much, much later - but even after the debacle in the village, Pitts had visions of salvaging a few shreds of his career by capturing her. In a way, seeing him head-shot was almost a symbolic execution of all adolescents who think war is a 'game' and its objective is to 'score points' (or of politician-soldiers who think war is waged mainly to get them promoted), while the grown-up professionals (the forces of Captain Clark and Oberst Steiner) showed us that at this level, war is a bloody business that is about accomplishing the objective. Clark's men were there to capture or kill all of the fallschirmjager, and did so with the skill of thorough training if not experience, while the Germans (all of them veterans) willingly laid down their lives to buy time for Steiner to escape and continue the mission.