This is clearly shown towards the end of the book when the inventor, K.L. Krumper, talks about being injured and in a hospital, watching reconstruction work and thinking. "Now seeing absolutely clearly the feeling of peace sweeping through those labourers as they finished their job, I decided to place all my faith in the demolition of the past...You have to remember that in those days I was just one more of the millions of soldiers surviving from a vanquished army. Belonging to a dead Germany, defeated by shame...We came back to Germany in the slow trains defeated, like strangers ejected from paradise by strangers. The destruction of the past then seemed to me to be the only possible hope."