Without trying to stereotype German man, Robert Merle seeks to share the thinking of an individual indoctrinated among others, like so many others. A male prisoner of a past suffering, a present conviction and a future of hope; a future to build on the ruins of a world ruled corrupt.
Like a good worker applied to his task on the construction site of a state to rebuild, the main character (I can not name even when the "hero") we ice the blood by his actions and his thoughts, but allows us to better "understand" what happened in the head and the existence of millions of Germans in the interwar period to reach this human and political catastrophe that has not yet finished traumatize us.
