He remembered the early days: the parades in Munich, the flowers thrown from balconies, and the intoxicating belief that they were the vanguard of a new age. Now, looking at the hollowed eyes of the boys in his squad—some no older than eighteen—the glory felt like a thin veneer over a deepening exhaustion.
Josef didn't answer. He just checked his Kar98k. He knew the ideology that drove the war—the speeches about blood and soil—but here, in the shivering silence of the forest, the war was reduced to the man to his left and the man to his right. A whistle pierced the air. The command to advance. Hitler's Soldiers: The German Army in the Third...
To the high command in Berlin, the German Army was an invincible symbol of destiny—a flood of field-grey moving across maps of Europe. But to Josef, it was the smell of damp wool, the metallic tang of machine oil, and the rhythmic thump-thump of boots on frozen earth. He remembered the early days: the parades in