At its best, patriotism is a game we play while we try to find and build upon more grounded modes of relating to one another. At its worst, it compels us to degrade and kill people we have no reason to believe we cannot love—people who crave freedom, need healing, play music, laugh with our children, fill chairs at tables which death has grown too large; learn our languages and teach us theirs. War corrodes decency while it co-opts sentiment, forging the weak and dangerous alloy of “duty.” 

Captains de Boeldieu and von Rauffenstein share mutual respect, admiration, even love, and have no reason to oppose one another except that their best qualities, the ones for which they owe each other such warm regard, happen to be refracted across an imaginary line.