And if they were held for 10 days, how could local commanders not have known?

"What they would be allowed to do is up to the local commander."

"We want to break the power of the local commanders," he said recently.

Local commanders and individual soldiers must make up the rest.

In some areas, the local commander's power is almost unlimited, his word more important than the law.

Local commanders said the northern forces' forward line was now further south, beyond the base.

They had been doing all of those things while the colonel talked to the local commander.

"One guy gets six friends with guns and becomes a local commander."

A man was killed and may have been setting the explosive at the time, the local military commander said.

Mistakes made by the local German commanders did the rest.