'How could they have?' is still the question about Nazi Germany. This is the question Hochhuth now attempts to answer [in A German Love Story], not as it relates to the crimes of the regime as a collective but in terms of small, ordinary people….

Hochhuth's fictional reconstruction is tender and convincing. Zasada, perhaps, doesn't come to life before his death: he remains an innocent, shadowy victim. But the little men and women who obeyed orders are pinned down….

But between the chapters of fictional narrative, Hochhuth sandwiches long discussions of the Nazi State, its leaders, the Battle of Britain, Churchill's genius, the conduct of the war by the commanders on either side. This is the aggressive Hochhuth of 'The Representative' and 'The Soldiers,' flourishing historical documents and daring scholars to challenge his conclusions.

Sometimes it works: the alternation of the love story of Pauline and Stasiek with the frightful pile of directives from the SS and Gestapo defining their 'crime' in every detail and prescribing every question to be filled in during the investigation—that is a brilliant way of showing what care the human race can take to defile itself. Sometimes, as in his adulation of Churchill's infinite foresight and cunning, he both exaggerates and rambles far from his theme. But one of these digressions—about the significance of the Ultra codebreaking—becomes a magnificent appeal for historical justice for Zasada's own people: the Poles who suffered most, whose role in the war in the West is always underplayed….

Perhaps Hochhuth sees Poland as a single Zasada; a human creature doomed to be obliterated physically or academically by indifferent bureaucracies…. Odd that the name Zasada means 'principle' in Polish … or perhaps that is exactly what Hochhuth meant.