Adam: Hitler's once great army is broken and demoralized, and the end of the war is imminent, yet Jews are still being "evacuated" and soldiers are still being rounded up like criminals and sent to the front. Böll paints war as acts of imbecility, senseless accidents, and bizarre coincidences related only through death.

Train: Twenty-four-year-old Private Andreas boards a troop train to Germany to return to the front. He knows that Hitler has already lost the war and realizes that he is unlikely to survive the war. As Andreas meditates on the futility of war, his early battles, and his regrets, he is shocked to discover that he can still make friends, sleep, eat and drink. Heinrich Böll's first novel.