Watch on the Rhine

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Federal Chancellor, the chief executive of the Federal Republic of Germany.

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Germany’s World War II armed forces: Army, Navy and Air Force.

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Guest workers. Think Mexican fruit pickers but in a more regularized system. Many of them are Turks and Kurds. And yes, in 1997 the German legislature voted to ban soldiers from wearing their uniforms in public.

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Two exemplary former regular officers who entered into, and commanded large formations of the Waffen SS. Steiner is also notable for remaining a staunch and devout Roman Catholic.

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Hooked Crosses, swastikas.

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The silver dual lightning bolts of the SS.

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A contemptuous name for Heinrich Himmler, head of all the branches of the SS, to include the Waffen, or Armed, SS.

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A Tir is a mid-level Darhel corporate executive.

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To a large degree German boys get a choice of Army or some form of alternative service.

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“Killers of elves.” The Darhel are the elves.

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“Highest.” Colonel.

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Economic Miracle; the recovery of Germany after World War II

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Officer Candidate School for the Waffen, or armed, SS.

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This is from the strictly forbidden “Horst Wessel Lied.”

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Raise the banner, hold the ranks steady.

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This is from Baldur von Schirach’s “Fahnenlied.”

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Center, face

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Lieutenant General Mühlenkampf speaks.

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A Kessentai who has forsaken, or for cowardice been driven from, The Path of Fury.

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Forward, forward, Blow the bright trumpets

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Attention, Attention, anti-tank guns in the direction of…

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As you command, Dieter.

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Dear God in Heaven!

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Boys.

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The wife of a German Army friend of one of the authors, who was once Ribbentrop’s secretary, describes him as a “weenie.”

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War economy.

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Execution place.

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Little dear.

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Attention, Tank. Roll.

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Armored Recon Brigade, Florian Geyer.

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Hunters. Think, U.S. Army Ranger

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Shit, shit, shit!

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Don’t shoot.

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Private Genjiro Shirakami was a bugler with the Imperial Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War. Mortally wounded during an assault on Port Arthur’s defenses, Private Shirakami continued blowing the charge until he succumbed to his wounds. When his body was later found, the bugle — pointing heavenward — was still pressed to his lips.

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Certainly not.

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Hamburg’s red-light district.

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Comradeship.

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“The Watch on the Rhine.” A German patriotic song, almost a second national anthem, as “Stonewall Jackson’s Way” was throughout the American South, until quite recently, both.

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Hard to translate. Gemütlichkeit is a sort of smarmy, comradely, soft and tender good feeling that perhaps only Germans are truly subject to.

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In English, perhaps only the word “grunts” carries quite the same connotations.

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Rye meal. For many decades, in war and peace, the Germans made a sort of ersatz, or replacement, coffee out of roasted rye meal. Less popular now than formerly, one could still expect them to fall back upon it in hard times.

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Private.

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Battle groups.

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Combat engineers.

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Leave it suffice that these were the formations that did most of the really ugly work behind lines on the Eastern Front. The Totenkopfverbaende, Death’s Head Bands, ran the camps.