GRGR(5) Katje and the Nazis

[calbert at pop.tiac.net]

Mark Wright:

> b) Reference to SS, clear as a bell.  Clear as an azure sky of deepest
> summer.

Not universally recognized, in spite of your insistence. No-one 
questions the fact that P's prose is laden with suggestive imagery 
which plays to major themes, but on occasion an S spoked wheel is 
just..... it is one of those sort of "anchoring" images he often 
serves up with which his readers can readily identify. We spoke 
before of those scenes where we as audience are left to ask, "how the 
hell did he know that" or "how can he describe the very sensation I 
had yesterday", I suspect that having everyone passing those words 
and seeing exactly the same antiquated design, along with that flush 
of familiarity.
 
> c) Reference to OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, which is
> referred to directly later in GR (where I can't recall just now). This
> is more obscure, but the linkage is intended, I think, to imply some
> possible equivalence between the two organizations.  CIA = american
> fascist pigs; very 60's.

Wish I had my Worlds Second Oldest Profession handy ( a great read 
for those who want to learn about the relatively recent development 
of national intelligence services) but as I recall the OSS was hardly 
an established outfit, even late in the war. Individual branches of 
the service had their own intelligence functions, and the effort to 
consolidate them had mixed results. Will Bill Donovan was the guy 
chosen to create a unified branch, which he set about trying to do 
with the aid of one young Bill Casey.

> d) Countering the reading of moral equivalence in c above, would be the
> reading of the nested Ss within a circle as Yin/Yang, which implies SS
> and OSS as opposites in balance in a universal order.  (This is a more
> appropriate reading IMO)

I prefer the SS carved into the mountain. The SS was not an 
intelligence outfit, that was the work of the Abwehr (sp) led by yet 
another high minded Junker who despised his boss. When he was 
discovered to have been a participant in the july 1944 plot, Hitler 
had him strung up with piano wire, and the process filmed. I'm afraid 
that the OSS-SS link is extremely tenuous.

love,
cfa