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Podcast: New Books in German Studies
Episode: Mary Louise Roberts, "Sheer Misery: Soldiers in Battle in WWII" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
Description: Marching across occupied France in 1944, American GI Leroy Stewart had neither death nor glory on his mind: he was worried about his underwear. "I ran into a new problem when we walked," Stewart wrote, "the shorts and I didn't get along. They would crawl up on me all the time." Crawling underwear may have been a small price to pay for the liberation of millions of people, but in the utter wretchedness of the moment, it was quite natural for soldiers like Stewart to lose sight of that end. In Sheer Misery: Soldiers in Battle in WWII (U Ch...