“I didn’t think so. You get to recognize that in a man’s eye. It might interest you to know that by 1944 there was no such thing as ‘too young’ for the German army. There was no ‘too old,’ either. And no one was left flying a desk, as you put it, when they could fly a plane, or sit in a tank, or man an antiaircraft battery. Boys of thirteen marched alongside men aged sixty-five and seventy. You see, it wasn’t until the Red Army reached East Prussia that German civilians began to suffer in the way Russian civilians had suffered. This meant that there was more for us to fight for; and it was why men and boys of all ages were conscripted into the army. Nothing and no one was to be spared, least of all ourselves. Total war was what Goebbels called it. And it means what it says, which was rare for him. Total means everything. All in, nothing left out.

“You Amis talk about this Cold War of yours with no understanding of what it means to fight a cold, pitiless war without mercy and against an enemy who never stops coming. Oh, believe me, I know. I was killing Ivans for fourteen months and I can tell you this—there’s no end to them. As many as you can kill, they keep on coming. So remember that if the time ever comes when you have to do the same. Not that anyone believes you’ll stop them. Why would you fight to save Europe, to save Germans? That’s the only reason we fought. To stop the Ivans from slaughtering the population of East Prussia. You might say that this was what we had done to the Jews, and you’d be right. But there were no war crimes trials for Soviet officers, no Ivans here in Landsberg. You would have to see what happens to a crowd of civilians when a Russian tank drives straight through its middle, or watch a fighter strafe a line of civilian refugees, to know what I’m talking about. Sepp Dietrich and his men shot how many Americans at Malmédy? Ninety? Ninety. A war crime you call it. For the Russians in East Prussia, ninety wasn’t even an infraction, it was a misdemeanor. Except that it’s hardly a misdemeanor when the general demeanor of your soldiery is one of barbarous cruelty.”

I was silent for a moment.

“Something wrong?”