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The protagonist of this book, Max Auer, is a young intellectual from a middle-class family. He is devoted to philosophical speculation, literature and music. He looks forward to the opportunity to become a writer or teacher, but ultimately chooses to join the Nazi Party. On the battlefield, Max watched soldiers massacre Jewish women and children, and heard the terrible groans in the execution factory beside the trenches in the woods. He discovered that his innocent "serving the country" had earned him the experience of an executioner. As he was executed again and again, he became part of this ugly and crazy blueprint, unconsciously sinking into a nightmare from which he could not wake up. When Berlin was attacked by the Soviet army, Orr killed his best friend Thomas and used Thomas's documents to escape the encirclement. After the war, he escaped capture and trial, became a businessman who produced and sold lace, and lived a comfortable life. For the first time, this book starts from the inner world of the Nazi "executioner" and explores the mental disintegration of people under killing through the memory and narration of a participant in a collective crime.