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like men on the western front, and they stood ready to battle the Russians at the gates of Berlin. Fritz, like all the young Germans who had joined the Jungvolk at age ten, had sworn a lifelong oath on the Blutfahne—the Reich’s Blood Banner—a flag soaked in the gore of the Nazi martyrs who’d been killed in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923: “In the presence of this Blood Banner, which represents our führer, I swear to devote all my energy and my strength to the savior of our Fatherland, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God!”
    God in heaven.
    God on earth.
    Combined in one man.
    “ Heil Hitler!”
    Fritz Streicher’s idol was Kurt Meyer, the buccaneering daredevil who had led the 12th SS-Panzer Hitlerjugend Division—the so-called baby milk division—on D-Day. “Panzermeyer” was everything that Fritz yearned to be. The youngest divisional commander in the Reich’s armed forces, that SS-Standartenführer was a Hitler Youth veteran of hell-raising tank battles in Poland, Greece, and Russia, where his unorthodox combat style had spearheaded him deep inside enemy lines. His followers—their imaginations filled since childhood with tales of valor, triumph, and sacrifice for führer and Fatherland—were all fanatical furies from the Hitlerjugend. The ferocity of their fighting had spawned the myth of the Hitler Youth: how young Nazis blitzkrieged as if possessed by that battle madness the Vikings called beserkr .
    Fritz’s favorite fantasy cast him in the role of Kurt Meyer after D-Day in Normandy. Commanding the Hitlerjugend, Panzerfritz fought the Canadians, led by that bogus British hero, Montgomery of El Alamein, at the Battle for Caen. Monty and his Desert Rats—a fitting name, Fritz thought, for rats the British were—would never have forced the Desert Fox to retreat in North Africa had the Yanks not armed the Eighth Army with Sherman tanks, and had Rommel’s Afrika Korps not suffered rot in its ranks from swarthy Italian cowards. Fritz, however, gave Monty a cut with German steel at Caen, for that’s what the führer demanded from his Hitler Youth: “Be as slim and slender as greyhounds, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp steel.”
    Bwam! Bwam! Bwam! …
    In his mind, Fritz summarily executed twenty Canadian prisoners of war at Abbey Ardenne, like they said Panzermeyer had, dispatching each with the Walther PPK holstered on his hip.
    A Walther identical to the one his father wore today.
    Like Panzermeyer had, Fritz pitched his Hitlerjugend division of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds into a blazing tank battle with Monty’s Canadians. As night fell, the cannon-fire raged on, and infantrymen shot each other at point-blank range or chased the enemy down into cellars to bayonet hand-to-hand. For thirty-three days, Fritz kept the smug victor of El Alamein from taking Caen. Monty was no match for a titan of Krupp steel with the Iron Cross first and second classes glinting on his heart and the Knight’s Cross at his throat.
    A cross identical to the one his father wore today.
    Hitler Youth not old enough for the 12th SS-Panzer, those who had yet to reach seventeen, were destined for the Volkssturm. Boys fourteen and older—though Fritz had seen some as young as eight—joined men over sixty and soldiers just out of hospital to form the People’s Militia, a last-ditch home guard to defend the Fatherland. Had they both not been the sons of an SS general, Fritz and Hans Streicher might have attacked the U.S. 9th Armored Division as it crossed the Rhine over the bridge at Remagen. A horde of Volkssturm Hitler Youth had hurled themselves at the rumbling tanks of the Yankee invaders, forcing shocked GIs to fight for their lives against armed children young enough to be their own.
    But they were the sons of an SS general.
    So Fritz and Hans were now Werewolves.
    *    *    *
     
    For as long as they could remember, the sons of Ernst Streicher had