Max mimed putting a steel helmet on his head. As he did so, he could almost feel himself becoming a real soldier. He filled his lungs with air, puffed out his chest and stuck out his jaw.

Then he pointed at Erich, still sitting on the ground. ‘Sieg Heil!’ he shouted. ‘Get up! Lazy Jew!’

Erich held his hands up in front of him and laughed. ‘Hey, all right, all right. I’m getting up,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize we’d started playing.’

Max was firmly in role before Erich had even stopped laughing. He shouted even louder this time. ‘Get up! NOW!’ He felt the soldier inside him fizzing through his veins. Max tried to remind himself it was a game. But to him it was so much more. It was training. It was preparation. It was enacting the words that he said out loud in front of the mirror each morning. The speech that every member of the Hitler Youth knew by heart.

The German boy of the future must be slender and supple, swift as a greyhound, tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel.

Those words guided his actions and defined his ambitions. Next year, he and Erich would join the senior ranks of the Hitler Youth and Max could hardly wait to take everything he had learned to the next level. Games like this were his chance to hone his skills to the finest point possible, prove himself to his father – and to Hitler.

Erich dragged himself off the ground. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, standing up and straightening his jacket.

‘March!’ Max barked at his friend, almost spitting the words out. ‘Now!’

Erich sloped across the field. As he walked, he bent a finger in front of his face in the shape of a massive hooked nose, just like the Jewish caricatures on the Nazi posters that lined every wall of their city. Every now and then, he stopped to hold his arms out in a wide, exaggerated shrug. ‘Oh, poor me. I’m a dirty Jew,’ he’d say. ‘I am a despicable human being. I am worse than a human being. I am a dog, a rat. I am a stain on society.’

The way he did it was so over the top Max couldn’t help laughing. Then he shook himself and got back into role. ‘Come on,’ he said, giving Erich a prod. ‘Keep marching.’

Max taunted and shouted and called his friend names all the way across the field. And with every step and with each insult he hurled, he felt waves of relief flood over him that he had won the race.

Erich looked so dejected by the time they reached the other side, Max wasn’t sure if his friend was playing his own part well or if Max had made such a good job of playing soldier that Erich was genuinely fed up.