The Nazis were not (and are not) merely a cult of garden variety racists and anti-Semites. They required an adherence to an extreme form of racial purity. A hardened, serious form of masculinity and violence was romanticized. When they wooed young men into their ranks, they didn’t lead with mass murder, but with knightly honor, dreams of purging a corrupt and decadent modernity from all things, including their own souls.
Softness, sweetness, pleasure, friendship: in this environment, all of them are weapons. Love is the water that wears down the bricks. It is not easy to win a fight that way, and victory isn’t certain. In the darkest part of the Second World War, these people have nothing left to fight with. No matter where they are now, they were all friends once, growing up with fascism being the only world they know, muddling along.
A lot of research went into this story. Nothing startled me more in my life than to find members of the community who lived through this period say to me, “How did you know this? We never talk about it.” Most of us would like to think we’d be better. Look around us. We’re not. We’re just muddling along too.
