“It’s the Landser I’m most sorry for. You know, he’s the unluckiest invention in this twentieth century of ours…Our men no longer have any ideals…They’re fighting for nothing but their naked lives, for their bedeviled, unfortunate flesh…Flesh is patient. It will suffer anything that is put on it. It can be used;it can be abused.
And it has suffered abuse because it has been lured with the bait of so-called ideals. It has been killed and it has been allowed to kill, until it seems to only exist for its own sake. But behind all that there is the common soldier’s fundamental decency which doesn’t permit him to leave his comrades in the lurch.”
- Willi Henrich in his novel The Cross of Iron.
And it has suffered abuse because it has been lured with the bait of so-called ideals. It has been killed and it has been allowed to kill, until it seems to only exist for its own sake. But behind all that there is the common soldier’s fundamental decency which doesn’t permit him to leave his comrades in the lurch.”
- Willi Henrich in his novel The Cross of Iron.