What was the point?

In this excerpt from Pilgrims:  A Wobegon Romance by Garrison Keillor ©2009, Norbert Norlander speaks of his mother's communication with the ghost of her son Gussie, an Allied soldier who was killed in World War II:

She said, 'How was it, Gussie?' He said, 'Not like you think it was.  But it's all over, it doesn't matter,' he said.  And then he'd moan.  That made her cry and he'd say, 'Ma, they all died and it didn't matter.  Nobody cared.  It didn't change a single thing.  The world goes on.  They just went up the road and died in the mud and the filth and then life went on and it didn't matter.  The Germans didn't want Italy and neither did we.  It was all for show.  A big opera except they shot the orchestra.  What was the point of it?'

Maybe it's hitting harder because I just finished Catch-22. 

But it seems like maybe the Nazis really were that bad, but maybe we weren't all that good.