Schweyk in the Second World War

In Jaroslav Hašek's original 'The Good Soldier Švejk', Švejk, a soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, drifts through the carnage of the First World War, a picaresque study in brio that parodies the noble claims of the warring nations, while depicting the horror of their conflict. Brecht masterfully deploys this character in the Second World War as a counter-actor to the Nazi regime decimating Europe. He wrote it while in exile in the US during the Second World War.