The people's voice. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1939-1969, 1944-06-23

must hate 1t to destroy 1t, does not
blind him to the fact that first of all
the writer must identify what 1t has
done, specifically, to human beings.
All political systems are to be judged
by their concrete effect on the nature
of man. True, vicious systems are
sometimes historically sound, but for
the novelist they are always material
for literary identification.
Weiskopf has woven a rich web of
allusion about the lives of his protag-
onists, and only those who know Ger
many well can realize what a wealth
of reference there is about each of
these obscure men. The translation,
limpid, salty, vivid, carries this flavor
into English. The translator is to be
congratulated. Through the evolution
of a Sudeten German, told in the first
person his comrades in arms in
small platoon reveal every type of
German soldier, the middle-aged re-
servist, the postured aristocrat, the
simon-pure Nazi, stuffed with the
lingo and insistence of his dominant
SiOup, lWO thCto III titC pidtOOIs anu
four or five others collaterally asso-
ciated.
The story pattern centers in the
time of Heydrich's assassination, and
the sickening and consistently de-
structive effect ON the platoon of the
shooting (by way of reprisaD of limo
cent men in clay pit. Along with |
this story centering, the relation of |
Holler, the reciter, to his family and |
setting are unforgettably given. Weis-
kopf has a Rembrandt sense of brown
ness and shadow in his painting: a
large part of the story seems to be
going on at night even when it is not.
There is no adventitious love story
erudely imported into the grisly mar
rative: the book lacks all Fictitious
ievice; it is a masterpiece of integ-
'ity. The soldiers look at sex as such
men must, their romantic fixations
md loyalties have that strangely err
ant appearance one notes in bar
acks.
The central theme is unmistakable
The Nazis are compound of savage
with a long train of
hrases, but the men they command,
hough cowardly, brutal, obedient to |
performing shameful deeds, q
re not so involved With the excep- q
ion of Dietz, the Nazi type, whose
JUNCTION is clear from the outset and a
Tho cannot show mutability flor he I
) the enemy of life) the others are
lasses of reservation, of carryovers. n
induced doubts, of shames, of 4
capabilities, thwarted souls t
hose one common character is an
bsence of that simple ingredient, t
lanhood They would rather live IL
ian disobey: they seek to conserve e
leir mean existences by doing that c
which, as individual men, they Ii
ould not even conceive. But they r.
'e not consciously so. b
In many as with the aristocrat Cha \
-un, the old Prussian class allegiance II
their insistence, insothers, as with c.
eelke, it is bourgeois sentimentality II
Id regard for his stricken family.
ut since they seek to preserve them
lives by hurting others, patrolling, o.
pressing, even massacring the inno- m
mt, they all meet suicide, arrest,
,ath by vengeance, death by sur b
Use, humiliation, death on the battle NJ
elds or are crippled for life, as is
Q narrator. Above them all looms II
e dread of the Soviet people, of that
eat socialist commonwealth they
I'VE so grievously wronged Never
a novel, has there been better illus
ated the words of Jesus that he who
We his life at any cost, must there
lose it.
Socially, too the source of Nazi
wer is illustrated one sees that
pm aristocrat to petty bourgeois,
ere was no health in the cowed
position. From Weiskopfs book
e lesson is clear: the Nazi system
IL yield only to viii greater than
own, and those who exente its
1ers, must answer to the full, what
er their inner resistances while they
| their hideous deds. But from 1t
10 energies that necessary lesson of
,rcy and understanding that has re-
lined with Stain, who, with fresh
emory of their countless crimes in
ssia, has yet urged that the German
ople will go on forever though Hit
s come and go and that it is not
the interest of victory that they
permanently degraded Though they
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