Things never go according to plan in life. It’s so annoying. When you’re taken by surprise it makes you flustered. I hate that. I hate it when events don’t follow a predetermined, logical order. I hate things being subject to a series of unexpected accidents.

Here are the three most serious accidents in my life to date:

Lukas being Jewish.

The affection I have for him despite that.

The imminent defeat of the Reich.

The last of these being by far the most aberrant, the most unimaginable, the most unpredictable of all possible events. I still can’t get my head around it.

And yet…

There are rumours that the British landed in Normandy last month, that soon France and Belgium will be liberated. Others say the Soviets are already in Germany. The directors of the Napola haven’t confirmed the rumours, at least not in words, but recent decisions speak for themselves.

Once again the Napola is undergoing changes, little by little losing its primary identity. There’s an air of desertion about the school.

For the younger children, it’s an authorised desertion. Most of them have been sent home. For good. A mass exodus was already organised a few weeks ago, when no one knew for sure that elsewhere the shit was hitting the fan. Parents—those still alive, with a house somewhere in the country, outside the cities under siege from the enemy, and with means of transport—came to collect their sons. Up to now, the children who didn’t hear from their families were gathered in groups from the same region and had to find their own way home, one of them designated as platoon leader and issued with a regulatory travel order.

This return-to-sender system seems to have worked well in the case of the most resourceful children. (Although no one actually knows if they made it home. Perhaps they stepped on a mine, or perished in a bombing raid, or were shot by enemy guns.) In any case, they didn’t come back here, unlike some, the really dumb ones. Just like those dogs, abandoned in the middle of nowhere by their owners, who somehow find their way home, kids arrived back at the school two or three days after leaving. They were in a dreadful state, wretched and starving. Sobbing, they told us how, when they produced their travel order to use as a train pass, the stationmaster sent them packing, telling them they could ‘wipe their bum with it’. They were allowed a few days’ rest at the Napola, before being sent off again.

Manfred is one of a group that is leaving today. Carrying his little case, he heads over to say goodbye to me. I’m quick to put my hand out and avoid him kissing me, which is clearly his intention. (Oh my God, he’s such a faggot!)

‘Why don’t you want to leave with us?’ he asks tearfully.

I am a ward of the state. I have neither parents nor home. Nowhere to go. That’s why I’m the only one of the younger children allowed to stay at the school. But I’m free to leave if I want to. Manfred knows this and launches into an emotional appeal that he hopes will touch me. (He is seriously kidding himself.)

‘What will you do, all alone here with the adults? What’s so great about that?’

‘I’m not alone, I’ve got my brother.’

‘Your brother’s sick, he won’t be able to protect you from the Russians when they arrive.’

‘Who says I need protecting, you piece of shit? Who says my brother’s sick? Who says the Russians are coming? Why are you so full of bullshit?’

Manfred lowers his head at my outburst. ‘I need to be protected,’ he mutters after a moment. He looks at me with eyes filled with tears, and flutters his eyelashes like a girl. ‘I’d feel safer with you than with Erwin. I bet he pisses off on us as soon as we get to the station.’

He’s on the money there. Erwin is the platoon leader assigned to Manfred’s group. He is a total idiot, not the slightest bit reliable. ‘Oh, come on, don’t worry, everything will be all right.’

I have to encourage poor Manfred. I feel sorry for him now. He looks like he’s about to piss his pants, he’s so petrified. He’s never felt at ease at the Napola. I often heard him calling out ‘Mummy’ at night in the dormitory, and now…Now, how do I tell him that it’s highly likely his ‘Mummy’, and his ‘Daddy’, are dead. It’s obvious, otherwise they would have come to collect him while there was still time. But I’m not trying to break his spirit, so I give him a friendly pat on the back.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.’ I force myself to smile, try as hard as I can to reassure him, so that we part on good terms. I do it all in good faith. And then the stupid numbskull goes and puts his foot in it and says exactly what he shouldn’t have said.

‘You know, my parents are really nice. I’m an only child and you’re an orphan. I’m sure Mummy and Daddy would love to adopt you, and then we’d be brothers and we could live together once the war was over.’

Orphan. Adoption.

Those words give me goosebumps. Especially the second one. It’s bloodcurdling. It makes my hackles rise. It makes me crazy. I do not want to be adopted. I have never wanted it, even when I was a baby.

So I smack my fist into Manfred’s face, and finish him off with a kick up the arse in case the message didn’t get through. ‘Your parents are dead. Get out of here!’

Now I’m alone in my dormitory. They said I could join another one but I don’t want to. I’d feel like a deserter. At least here, as I go to sleep at night, I’m free to imagine things: I’m a hero! I’m the last soldier left on the battlefield. I’m as tough as the Jungmannen who have stayed at the Napola. They’re the fierce ones, the fanatics, those most devoted to the Reich. Those who renounced their parents a long time ago. The Heimführer and the instructors are counting on them to defend the school when the Soviets arrive at our gates. Well, despite my youth, they can count on me, too!

But, try as I might, I just can’t motivate myself. It’s like there’s a broken spring inside me. It’s sinister in the dormitory. The silence is sinister. I’ve almost got to the point where I’m hoping for an air-raid siren at night, to smash the lead weight that’s suffocating me. On top of that, the weather is exceptionally stifling this July.

I’m stewing in my own sweat, and in a torpor.

20th of July, 1944.

I know the date because I make myself say it out loud every morning when I wake up, so I can keep my bearings a little. (Gone are the days when a student wrote the date on the blackboard in class. No more students, no more class, no more anything.)

It’s 6.30 p.m. and the heat is still extreme. I’m hanging around in the dormitory. Late afternoon used to be the time we’d do supervised homework, and I always hated it; now I can’t bear not having it. I wander among the empty beds, talking to myself like an old man, trying to fill the silence, when another voice talks over mine. It takes me a few seconds to realise that it’s a radio announcement broadcast over the school’s loudspeaker system.

Joseph Gœbbels, the Minister for Propaganda, is speaking to the German people. It seems he’s about to say something quite extraordinary.

I freeze. The whole school freezes. Even though I’m alone, I can sense it, as if we were all together in one body. Mine. My blood freezes in my veins. Each slow heartbeat is like a death knell in my chest. I can hear the minister’s voice. I can hear his words, but those words don’t make sense. Or if they do, I refuse to admit it.

What has happened is impossible, inconceivable.

What has happened, says the minister, is that today, 20th of July, 1944, at 12.30 p.m., there was an assassination attempt against the Führer. There was a bomb planted in the room where he was meeting with his generals.

Then, nothing. Amplified crackling of the microphone.

The attempt failed. Only just. It was a miracle, the minister concluded.

The Heimführer takes over, to announce that nothing further is known about this tragic event, and that we will be told as soon as news comes through.

It feels like the ground has been cut from under my feet. I collapse onto my bed and stare at my pillow as if it could fill in the gaps for me. But the damned pillow doesn’t say a thing, apart from reminding me that, a few weeks earlier, it had been my hiding place for the toy Lukas gave me, the farting Führer—that I had broken and chucked in the bin. I can still see it, smashed, in pieces, the strings and springs that held the limbs together all broken. Like a body after a bomb explosion. With that evil toy, did I predict what happened to the Führer? The minister said Hitler survived the attack, but not what state he was in. In pieces? Pieces that somewhere in a hospital doctors are trying to stick together again? And, even if he’s in one piece, wouldn’t he have lost his marbles? Are they going to announce in a few hours that Germany no longer has a Führer? Which would mean that, this time, I really wouldn’t have a father. That I am, once and for all, an orphan and I would have been better off leaving with Manfred?

Assembly in the dining hall at 1 p.m. Everyone is here, but the room seems somehow empty. There’s barely a hundred of us now. This room that I used to think was so dazzling is now a shadow of its former glory: the ceiling has been bombed, the paintwork is cracked, some of the swastikas have lost their colour as well as their arms, and look like cripples. Just like the faces of the Jungmannen: hollow, starving, exhausted.

I notice in passing that Lukas is here, and that he’s clean, dressed and without that moronic look on his face. But I couldn’t care less. I’m not worried about him in the slightest anymore.

Perched on his chair, the Heimführer begins by reassuring us that the Führer is safe and sound. He only sustained a few scratches, nothing more, and didn’t need to be hospitalised. He even honoured his appointment with Mussolini, and went to pick him up from the station, as arranged.

A sigh of relief passes through the rows. Faces relax. The Heimführer explains how the assassination attempt occurred in Rastenburg, in Eastern Prussia. It was more than an assassination attempt, it was an attempted coup d’état, incited by a group of opponents of the regime, who wanted to take power, hasten the end of the war, and hand over Germany to the British. The Führer and his generals were studying maps, when the chief conspirator, the vile traitor, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, Chief of Staff of the Reserve Army, planted a booby-trapped suitcase next to Hitler, under the table, and left the room on the pretext of an important phone call. Fortunately, one of the generals pushed the suitcase out of his way slightly, so that the Führer ended up being protected by the leg of the table when the bomb went off.

There’s chatter among the assembly now; everyone is hugely relieved. The de rigueur cheerfulness emerges again. Everyone has a theory about what happened. No, the Führer wasn’t protected by a common or garden chair leg, he was protected by the Germanic gods! In fact the Führer doesn’t even need protection, nothing can touch him, this is the proof: he’s immortal!

The voices get louder, the sound punctuated by a rallying cry: Heil Hitler! They roar is repeated several times and the Heimführer joins in his students’ chorus. He doesn’t silence them, because he knows that his young boarders have just had a terrible fright and need some relief from their tension.

The Jungmannen shake hands, pat each other on the back, and break rank without receiving the order, some even taking the liberty of going to sit down, their heads between their hands, sobbing for joy.

The Heimführer suddenly raises his hand. Silence! He’s just heard that the Führer himself is on the radio.

We all stand to attention. An edgy voice echoes through the hall. I only remember one sentence of the long speech: There will be severe reprisals.

Another assembly a few days later. This time in the projection room, where we watch pictures of the traitors’ trial. One is particularly memorable: a general, whose name I’ve forgotten, standing before the judges, has to hold his pants up with both hands, because he doesn’t have his belt any longer. When the judge orders him to stand to attention to hear his sentencing, his pants fall down and we see his underpants.

Everyone in the courtroom laughs, echoed by the Jungmannen in our room.

The Heimführer informs us that the traitors were executed straight after the trial, in the courtyard of the Benderblock. The conspirators were executed one after the other and their bodies hung on butcher’s hooks.

And that’s exactly when the thing I wasn’t thinking about anymore happens.

Even though the images of the trial, and of the executions, which I can easily imagine, are playing in a loop in my mind; even though I can still hear the Führer’s voice announcing the severe reprisals; even though I’m desperately hoping one of the Jungmannen next to me doesn’t suddenly take out of his pocket my smashed farting Führer and hold it up, pointing an accusing finger at me and shouting, ‘Him, he’s another conspirator! Look what he did!’—it turns out that what happens is none of those things.

One of the Jungmannen does stand up, but not just any old Jungmann. It’s Lukas. He stands in the middle of the room and, in front of us all—students, teachers, and the Heimführer—he unthreads the belt on his pants, which fall round his ankles, just like the general in the film. As if that wasn’t enough, Lukas then takes off his underpants and leans forward to stick his bum out at the whole assembly. ‘Long live the conspirators!’ he starts shouting. ‘Your Führer has just about had it! He’ll be dead soon! It’s all over! Listen up! I’m not German, I’m Polish. Polish and a Jew!…A Jew! A Jew!’

There’s panic in the room. A speechless panic. Nobody says a word as Lukas, out of his mind, keeps on and on, repeating his last sentence, in Polish! ‘Jestem Polakiem! Polakiem i Zydem! Zydem! Zydem!’

Everyone is staring at him, agape, incredulous.

Finally, under orders from the Heimführer, the first one to react, two Jungmannen grab Lukas and drag him off to an isolation cell.

This time he’s really done it. He’ll be executed too. He’ll hang on a butcher’s hook in the courtyard.

So the scandal broke, but not how I’d imagined it would. Just like I said before, things never happen as expected. This is unbearable.

And that wasn’t it for surprises.

I’m asleep, overwhelmed by nightmares. All the images I saw during the day are jumbled into some kind of diabolical dance. There’s Hitler with his pants down, showing his bum to the German nation. There’s Lukas being shot, slumped, bleeding, his body riddled with bullets. As for me: I’m hanging off a butcher’s hook like a giant ham, while starving Jungmannen with knives circle me, chopping off bits of my flesh, tearing them into strips and eating them. Just as I’m about to scream, I’m woken up by someone shaking me violently.

What’s the matter? An earthquake? An air raid?

No, it’s Lukas, completely together, alert, in a hurry, and carrying a suitcase. He puts it on the ground, opens it and rummages in my drawers, tipping everything into the case, higgledy-piggledy. ‘Got any money?’

I point under the mattress where my stash is hidden.

He yanks me out of bed and grabs the notes. ‘Hurry up! Get a move on!’ he shouts as he throws me my clothes. ‘Get dressed, we’re getting out of here.’

‘What do you mean, we’re getting out of here? Where to? How did you get out of the cell?’

‘I never went,’ he says, showing me his dagger of honour covered in blood. ‘I bumped off those two guys. And, five minutes ago, I set fire to the school. So, if you don’t want to end up barbecued, Skullface, follow me!