Foreword

I had an idea for a story and produced a rough outline of the plot. It was to be a simple tale of greed and lust for power. Initially, there was no intent to provide a moral or lesson for the reader. That is still not one my goals. However we do need to remember that organizations with the best of intentions change. After the changes, their goals and activities may not be beneficial for their society and the organization’s supporters may not be aware of the organization’s new direction.

As I began to write The Footlocker, the plot evolved. Greed is still part of the story, but not as originally envisioned. Lust as originally envisioned was forgotten. As the story took shape, a lesson in living one’s life started to emerge.

The lesson of this story is that it is not enough to pick good friends and join good organizations. We need to periodically step back and reevaluate our friends and the organizations that we support. We all change over time, and sometimes those changes are negative.

In The Footlocker, Hans starts out as a young, impressionable, college student, who joins the Nazi Party for good reasons. He doesn’t talk much about his background, and rises to a position of power in the Nazi Party. However, an event forces Hans to reevaluate his actions and those of the Nazi Party. He does not like the changes he sees in the party and he is extremely angry about what the party did to his and his wife’s families. He decides to seek revenge for the wrongs inflicted on him, his wife, and their families. He also decides to make amends, to the best of his ability, to the people he and the party had harmed.