Initially Watch on the Rhine was “Die Wacht am Rhein” and was only going to be a long short story or a short novella, 45,000 words tops. But Jim wanted a book. Set in the PosVerse. We decided on doing a companion novella, “Back to Bataan,” that would appear with Die Wacht am Rhein and would concern the Japanese defense of the Philippine Islands against the Posleen. (Which, by the way, we may still do. Time will tell.)
But the story of Hans and Dieter and Anna and Gudrun… and, yes, even that Nazi bastard Krueger, kept growing. It grew until it ate all the time and space allowed for both stories. As it turned out, Jim liked that better. And it’s good to be king. Just ask him. (“My writers love me… pull!” “Arrghhhh!”)
“But why the bloody damned SS?” the sensitive reader asks. Put simply, because they would be there in John’s universe. Deal. “But what about Malmedy?” Go do a google search: “biscari sicily peiper.” Let ye among you. “But the concentration camps? Babi Yar? The holocaust?” To which we would answer, “Horrible things and the men responsible should have all be hanged. But we fail to see why those things would keep desperately needed soldiers out of action, whatever larger organization they belonged to and whatever symbols they wore.”
There is another reason, too. Dear reader, we wanted to shock the hell out of you.
Right now, Western Civilization, however much many of its members may refuse to admit it, is involved in a world war. No, it has seen no entire cities destroyed; no trenches have drawn their scars across entire continents. It is a world war all the same. Moreover, it is a world war that is putting to the test every notion of individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and rule of law that the West prizes. And should we lose we will see, or our grandchildren will, the erasure of all that is good in Western Civilization.
We cannot afford to lose.
Yet winning will have its price, too. Just as the invasion John described is ordained to change humanity into something that one of Hitler’s Waffen SS would recognize and call home, so too will this war change us. Because side by side with the virtues of Western Civilization are paired vices that may destroy us: a narrow legalistic mindset, an emphasis on form over substance, and an unwillingness to do the ruthless and violent things we must if we are to survive. This list is not exhaustive. Perhaps worse than these things, however, the West has nurtured at its own breast a set of execrable, vile, treacherous and treasonous villains that seem to seek at every opportunity to do all they can to ensure its destruction.
Yet there is hope. “Survival cancels out programming.”