I walked it, then, in boots with inner soles a fraction thicker than standard issue. Five foot ten inches was the minimum height for soldiers admitted to the Waffen-SS. I fell short by only half an inch, but wasn’t taking any chances. I wanted to be where my brother was, and that was poised alongside three million men on the Western Front, not in the halls of the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin (where I knew more than my lecturers, in any case). You might wonder why, with my blue blood, I chose Himmler’s pet army rather than the Wehrmacht. The Navy was out of the question. I piss enough water, didn’t need to make my home in it. Luftwaffe? Perhaps, but they would not have accepted me. I had a slight astigmatism in my right eye—I say had. They would take me now, would take ten thousand of me. Das Heer then? Der Herr, more like—yes sir, no sir. Not like the SS. The SS aimed to build a different kind of soldier, in the words of Felix Steiner, “a supple, adaptable soldier”.
