It was, as Yeats remarked of the Easter Rising, ‘A terrible beauty’.

The experience of being in the Army changed my whole life, I never believed that an organization such as ours could ever go to war, leave alone win it. It wasn’t all fun, but as you will see, a lot of it was. Some of the revelations are very bawdy but these I have told exactly as they happened. I have used the simple language of the barrack room and used the normal quota of swearing. All the salient facts are true, I have garnished some of them in my own manner, but the basic facts are, as I say, true. Volume III will cover from my demob to my eventual return to England. Volume II will cover from going into action till VJ day.

It will cover the time of my joining the Artillery till the time we landed at Algiers.

This book is the first volume of a trilogy. Milligan says in the preface: 'All the salient facts are true' at the end of the preface: 'There were the deaths of some of my friends, and therefore, no matter how funny I tried to make this book, that will always be at the back of my mind: but, were they alive today, they would have been the first to join in the laughter, and that laughter was, I'm sure, the key to victory.'The book was made into a film with the same title and adapted into a stage play.Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (Memoirs volume 1) (Non fiction) by Spike Milligan 1971ĪCKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to John Counsell for permission to quote from his book, COUNSELL’S OPINION and to the Director of the Imperial War Museum for permission to reproduce three photographs in the Museum’s possession. In Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall, having been stung by a critic who called the biographies unreliable, Milligan wrote, 'I wish the reader to know that he is not reading a tissue of lies and fancies, it all really happened.'The presentation is an unusual format freely mixing narrative anecdotes, contemporary photography, excerpts from diaries, letters, rough sketches and performance programs, along with comic sketches and absurd fake memoranda from ranking Nazi officials the hard facts are usually apparent. The preface anticipates the book will be part of a trilogy years later, the cover of the fourth volume said: 'Don't be fooled this is the last, volume four of the war memoirs.' Ultimately, however, Milligan published seven volumes covering his war service, his first nervous breakdown and reallocation to rear-echelon duties, his demob and early years trying to break into the entertainment industry. The book spans the period from Britain's declaration of war on Germany to when Milligan lands in Algeria as a part of the Allied liberation of Africa. Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall, published in 1971, is the first volume of Spike Milligan's war memoirs.

Spike milligan hitler my part