Who wrote Arbeit macht frei(other than David Hill Jr.)? Who's voice is this? You can't have in character writing without a character, and if it isn't in character the section is poorly written. It stands as a shining example of the writers and the developer not knowing what they are doing, and not caring about Shadowrun.
Work Brings Freedom is NOT an in-character piece. It is written as an proposed adventure idea that a GM may use for his players.
I did notice before that someone commented on some of the Native American depictions in Shadowrun. If you want you're game to be completely politically correct on all fronts, then go ahead and play that way. You can ignore these four paragraphs in the book and still have a lot of fun with the book. I applaud the design team for working with a subject that many would not touch because of the very nature of the subject. I, for one, would handle an adventure like this very delicately because I genuinely feel for the victims of the camps, just as I feel for the Native Americans and what they went through.
To give you an idea of a touchy subject, one of my former players would get incredibly upset whenever we discussed anything to do with the Titanic sinking. And he wants to kill James Cameron for making his movie. In his case, his (great-?)grandfather died when the ship sank and it was a very personal loss to the family and a very solemn event. To see a movie make a bajillion dollars off something that his family takes very seriously is a big hardship.
And now, a list of events that, if we ban discussion of the Nazi camps, we have to also ban:
Native American genocide and relocation to reservations
Japanese-American concentration camps
"Rape Squads" that have been prominent in Eastern Europe, Africa, Mexico, Latin & South America
Slavery (past AND present)
Australian Aboriginal mistreatment
South African Apartheid
Swiss bank "neutrality" and holding Nazi gold/art/etc. stolen from Jews
The treatment of Catholics by Roman Pantheists
ugh... I could go on, but it's stuff that just pisses people off. Seriously guys, I'd rather they have the guts to say that "this could happen" in the Sixth World, rather than take a politically-correct view and ignore it.
Shadowrun shouldn't avoid subjects that bother people, and it never has. In fact, 4th edition renewed and expanded the list of taboo subjects that Shadowrun covered. I chose to point out, and you're defending one pretty awful section of the book. But I chose that one section because it's pretty clear that it's garbage, should not have been printed and was a good example of the general quality of the book. I point out the authors own attempts to back pedal on it claiming that it's meant as rumors. I argue that is poor writing and shows a lack of understanding of the setting as well as previous material. It leads to the greater problem, the reason I even talk about this here.
My argument is that the handling of these subjects in War! is crap. Not the handling of them in general, or in Shadowrun, but in this book. If you're going to cover something that big and important, that you know people are still sensitive about, then for your own sake you should do the best work you can on it. Titanic(the movie) was a better representation of its event than Arbeit Macht Frei was a reference. Not in a personal taste sort of way, but in the amount of work and care and polish that went into it and the shear level of insult. It's tasteless to use a tragedy as the backdrop to a chintzy love story, but it's repulsive to suggest that you may like to role play someone going into Auschwitz to plunder the place while you destroy the ghosts of the victims of the holocaust. That's a totally different level. That's Uwe Boll making a movie about... oh God.
Ok, I'm stepping aside here. As I was writing the above, and I had no idea that Uwe Boll was making a movie about Auschwitz. Holy shit. That's so bad I... I don't have words. I just did a search to make sure I was spelling his name right, and I found, wow.
Take a breath, and back to the point...
The problem with War! isn't specifically the lack of editing and review. It isn't the generally poor quality of the writing, or the writers lack of familiarity with the setting. Those can explain each other. It isn't even the tasteless, and honestly pointless, inclusion of settings and suggestions that offend without substance. It's all of that. It's the cheap feeling of the layout and low level of quality when compared with other books from the recent past. Remember SR4A and Seattle 2072? You think that War! is going to be winning any awards? It's that War! is the business practices of CGL that cause and perpetuate those problems made manifest. It's that the problems that got them into the mess where they make crap product aren't fixed yet, and War! is their report card.
Is it readable? Yes, but it has a lot of errors.
Is it the best they could do? It had better be, cause they want you to buy it.
Does it stand up to the books of the recent past? No, it stands on them; and hopes you'll keep buying because you're either unaware or too enamored of copyright to care.
Is it worth the money you've spent? No.