Historical Accuracy
The book which the film is based on is only vaguely based on real events, and takes significant artistic licence with historical facts. The main story is loosely based on events concerning the light cruiser SMS Königsberg which was sunk after taking refuge in Rufiji Delta in 1915. However the German ship is renamed the Blücher, a vessel which did not serve in Africa. The film implies that Portugal became a co-belligerent with Britain against Germany when the First World War broke-out in August 1914. In fact, Portugal remained neutral until 1916 (see Portugal in World War I). Portugal's status as an ally seems to be confirmed in the film when the Portuguese supply O'Flynn and Oldsmith with a marked Portuguese plane with a Portuguese pilot to conduct surveillance in German territory. In reality, the Portuguese would not have allowed this as it would have violated their neutrality.
Although the motives for killing Fleischer are personal, Sebastian Oldsmith is in fact the only one of the major characters among the protagonists who is a citizen of a nation actually at war with Germany.
Read more about this topic: Shout At The Devil (film)
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“What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a Man ... by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts?”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“U.S. international and security policy ... has as its primary goal the preservation of what we might call “the Fifth Freedom,” understood crudely but with a fair degree of accuracy as the freedom to rob, to exploit and to dominate, to undertake any course of action to ensure that existing privilege is protected and advanced.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)