What was the conflict in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas?

The conflict in the book, The Boy with the Striped Pajamas, is that the boy's father, the Nazi officer, has placed his family in a position that caused his actions to ruin his entire family and actually gets his own son killed, along with the prisoners of war that he was in charge of.

The irony of this is inescapable. The father was punished severely for his actions towards the prisoners of war, in that his own child ended up getting executed.

His child had done nothing to deserve being executed, just as the prisoners and their children in the death camp had done nothing to deserve being executed.

The father, and the entire rest of the family, had to suffer the loss of their precious child because of the father's actions.