German writer Martin Walser, takes a sharply satirical view of the mentality of his people [in his play "The Rabbit Race"].

The first half is a pretty broad swipe at the home-front Nazis as the war ends in 1945. Their chief anxiety is to find a formula by which they can save both their own town and their own skins from the advance of the Allies.

However, in the second half the town's simpleton emerges as the chief figure of the play. His Communism had earned him a spell in a concentration camp under the Nazis and there he had been both indoctrinated with the party philosophy, and unmanned in a medical experiment, for which he had volunteered.

Now that peace reigns in 1950 and the Nazis have returned to civilian life, this simpleton had become the town's pet….

But the town pet suddenly becomes the town pest when, at...