In writing the script , the author , Charles Wood , borrowed themes and dialogue from his surreal and bitterly dark ( and banned ) anti-war play '' Dingo '' . In particular the character of the spectral clown ' Juniper ' is closely modelled on the Camp Comic from the play , who likewise uses a blackly comic style to ridicule the fatuous glorification of war . Goodbody narrates the film retrospectively , more or less , while in conversation with his German officer captor , ' Odlebog ' , at the Rhine bridgehead in 1945 . From their duologue emerges another key source of subversion – the two officers are in fact united in their class attitudes and officer-status contempt for ( and ignorance of ) their men . While they admit that the question of the massacre of Jews might divide them , they equally admit that it is not of prime concern to either of them . Goodbody 's jingoistic patriotism finally relents when he accepts his German counterpart 's accusation of being , in principle , a Fascist . They then resolve to settle their disagreements on a commercial basis ( Odlebog proposes '' selling '' Goodbody the last intact bridge over the Rhine ; in the novel the bridge is identified as that at Remagen ) which could be construed as a satire on unethical business practices and capitalism . This sequence also appears in the novel . Fascism amongst the British is previously mentioned when Gripweed ( Lennon 's character ) is revealed to be a former follower of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists , though Colonel Grapple ( played by Michael Hordern ) sees nothing for Gripweed to be embarrassed about , stressing that " Fascism is something you grow out of " . One monologue in the film concerns Musketeer Juniper 's lament &ndash; while impersonating a high-ranked officer &ndash; about how officer material is drawn from the working and lower class , and '' not '' ( as it used to be ) from the feudal aristocracy
the massacre of Jews
The Holocaust
How I Won the War