Wilhelm March was the type of student Louis made his mission to weed out from the program. The boy was weak, timid, verweichlicht! His arm was like a limp nudel when he gave the Nazi salute. The other boys in his pod despised him because he was their weakest link. There was no toughening him up, no igniting of German pride. The extra laps, cold-water dunks, ridicule, and taunts had no effect. He was a disgrace to the program and to the Hitlerjugend organization. Louis would not have the verzogenes Gör—spoiled brat—screw up his record of producing physically fit, race-conscious, obedient, self-sacrificing Germans willing to die for their Führer and Fatherland.

“Has your son complained?” Louis had asked the general and could have bitten off his tongue. Now he had given the general grounds to think his son had reason to whine. It could be the man had called simply to ask how he might help to build a fire under his whelp.

But the general had answered, “No, he has not. I heard the complaints from another source.”

“And that would be?”

“The name is of no consequence, Herr Mueller. Three o’clock sharp tomorrow. Give my aide the directions he’ll require to drive us to your office.”

After Louis had hung up, he’d sat a while considering who of Wilhelm’s instructors could have tattled to the boy’s father. The only member of his staff sympathetic to the little wimp was the newcomer Claus Bauer, but he had been here only a week. Would he have dared such a risk when Louis had made clear to him that he had him in his crosshairs?

The instructors’ cubicles were an open field for Louis’s Saturday rummaging. Today he would take a peek in Claus Bauer’s office to see what he could find before Major General March arrived. Ten minutes later, nothing, except some notes that Herr Bauer had written to himself in his day book. “Monday, bring an extra sandwich for W, so he won’t go hungry, poor kid.” Kid? Not kind? Kid was American slang for “child.” Obviously, the W stood for Wilhelm. Why would Herr Bauer feel he must bring an extra sandwich for the boy? The students were well-fed at the academy.