To that Hans had no honest answer; nothing from his father came without price.
It was a public radio, one with loudspeakers, intended for the address of a crowd. Uniformed HitlerJugend patrolled, keeping order mainly by disciplined example. Not that much example was needed for Germans of the year of our Lord, 1933; they remained the people who had fought half a world to a standstill from 1914 to 1918. Discipline they had, in plenty.
The father observed Hans’ eyes glancing over the uniformly short-trousered, dagger-wielding, hard-faced and brightly beribboned youths.
“Ah, you are interested in the Youth Movement, I see, my son. Never fear. I have arranged for you to be accepted a bit early. They’ll make a man of you.”
Why, how so, father? thought the boy. Do they have stiffer belts? What new favors will you show me, I wonder.
Bad Tolz, Germany, 20 November 2004
“Don’t do me any fucking favors,” snarled Mühlenkampf.
The Kanzler — the Chancellor of the German Federal Republic — ceased perusing the picture of the worn and shriveled shell of a wheelchair-bound man in the file on his desk. He looked up sharply at the brand-new, tall, dark-haired, ramrod-backed and broad-shouldered man before him. To the observer, Mühlenkampf, wearing the insignia of a Bundeswehr major general, appeared no more than twenty. Despite this, there was a harshness about the man’s eyes that spoke of stresses and strains no mere stripling of twenty could ever have undergone.
The chancellor observed, “Amazing, isn’t it, Günter, what taking eighty-four years off of someone’s life will do for his disposition?”
Mühlenkampf snorted in derision. Quickly and determinedly he lashed out. “Fuck you, Herr Kanzler. Fuck all of you civilian bastards. Fuck anybody who had anything to do with dragging me out of that nursing home. Fuck you for giving me a mind back to remember and miss my wife and children with; a mind with which to remember the friends I have lost. Fuck you for sending me back to a war. I’ve had better than thirteen years of war in my life, Herr Kanzler. And never a moment’s peace since 1916. I had thought I was finally past that. So fuck you, again.”