"Merely corroborative detail intended to add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."
Your quoting The Mikado makes me wonder if you've seen the film "Topsy-Turvy". Despite the completely unnecessary 20 seconds of nudity, one of my all-time favorite period pieces.

This reminds of the Hitler routine from the album Don Adams Meets the Roving Reporter

hehehehehehehe
scuttles off to pass that link around

Hey, where'd my comment go? Type pad is so untrustworthy.

AWESOME!
That's the funniest WW2 thing I've read since this:
(WARNING: STRONGLY PROFANE LANGUAGE)
http://www.strategypage.com/humor/articles/militar...
Basically, that link is to a funny post. What if WW2 was a real-time-strategy game? What would the on-line conversation look like?

Who...Who....Who DOCTOR WHO! :) EXTERMINATE!

Ages ago Analog magazine did something similar in the form of a lecture doing a "text criticism" of ancient documents purporting to be the history of an actual 20th century war.
Of course, text critics are too smart to accept any narrative at face value so the whole thing is an allegory for the victory of Beauty (Rose-field), Faith (Church-hill) and Fortitude (Man of Steel) over villains so evil their names are meaningless syllables; Hitler and Tojo.

That's hilarious (and all that other stuff you said)!
The thing is... reality is weird. People sometimes do inexplicable things that would look absolutely absurd on paper.
If it hadn't actually happened, no one would believe WWII. In a couple thousand years, probably all the professional historians will put 90% of it down to "myth". Kind of the way a lot of experts have done with the New Testament.