Opening
Nazi terror presses in from all sides as Michael O'Shaunessey juggles a deadly secret at home and brutal initiation trials in public. A surprise visit from the SS turns the O’Shaughnessy apartment into a trap, and the Hitler Youth tests force Michael and his only friend into a fight that breaks them both.
What Happens
Chapter 36: A Visit from the SS
Right after drugging the Nazi scientist and hiding Lieutenant Simon Cohen, Michael steps into his father’s study and finds SS-Obersturmführer Trumbauer standing there. Michael’s mind races—did he leave the door unlocked? Is the secret room exposed? Trumbauer coolly says he only needs a telephone, but his gaze lingers on everything: Michael’s shaking hands, the empty plate meant for Simon, the room’s edges where danger might be hiding.
Michael scrambles to conceal a banned copy of The Maltese Falcon as Trumbauer makes his call. The officer seems to catalog every detail and every tremor in Michael’s voice. Before leaving, he offers a thin smile and the chilling compliment, “We need more boys like you to join our cause if we’re to succeed.” Michael’s fear spikes; he can almost feel the walls closing in. The encounter distills the suffocating stakes of Deception and Espionage: one slip ends everything.
Chapter 37: Führer Weather
Two days after the dinner party, the sky over Berlin gleams—a propaganda-perfect “Führer weather” day—as Michael and Fritz Brendler line up for their Hitler Youth initiation. Michael tries to dismiss Trumbauer’s visit as paranoia, but his nerves won’t settle. He studies the boys around him and wonders who truly believes and who, like him, only performs belief to survive.
The regime’s reach shows itself when an SRD (junior Gestapo) agent yanks a boy from the line because his father told jokes about Hitler. The boy flees in tears—an image that horrifies Fritz, for whom expulsion is an unthinkable disgrace. Michael, though he despises the Nazis, knows he must pass to maintain his cover. The scene lays bare The Corrupting Influence of Ideology: guilt by association, fear as social glue, and unquestioning obedience as the price of belonging.
Chapter 38: The Tests
The “Intelligence” section demands recitations of party dogma, lines from Mein Kampf, and racist pseudoscience. Michael suppresses his revulsion and complies—an act of necessary duplicity that underscores the Moral Compromise and the Cost of War. He and Fritz pass, but the victory tastes sour.
Physical trials cull the weak. When a boy with asthma falters on the apparatus, leaders snarl, “You aren’t fit to be a Nazi, which means you are unfit to live!” He runs away sobbing. Fritz blanches, imagining himself in that boy’s place; Michael steadies him with a quiet push of encouragement. Yet the worst waits ahead: the high dive for Michael, and the boxing ring for Fritz.
Chapter 39: The Matchup
While they watch other bouts, Michael explains why the Nazis love boxing: it flaunts aggression, the regime’s favorite virtue. Their former Jungvolk leader, Horst, stalks the ring with predatory glee, eager to engineer humiliations. Michael predicts Horst will feed the physically weaker Fritz to the biggest bruiser available.
Horst toys with the crowd, scanning faces with “hungry eyes” before naming a boy a head taller than Fritz—only to twist the knife: “Fritz Brendler, your opponent is … Michael O’Shaunessey!” The announcement weaponizes friendship, forcing a public test of loyalty and strength and setting up a collision between duty and affection—an embodiment of Friendship and Betrayal.
Chapter 40: The Fight
Michael’s first thought is strategy: they can stage a harmless match and get Fritz through. He gives a small nod—but Fritz answers with a sharp, real jab. Jeers rain down on the “mick” as Michael absorbs blows without striking back. Horst calls him soft. Then Fritz leans in and hisses, “We can’t show weakness. You have to fight me for real,” before driving an uppercut into Michael’s gut.
Pain and humiliation unlock an old wound: years of beatings in London, and the day Michael finally exploded to end them. That “righteous strength and brutal rage” floods in now. Instinct takes over. Michael surges and lands a vicious uppercut to Fritz’s jaw, dropping his friend cold. The triumph feels like defeat—a brutal milestone in Michael’s Coming of Age and Loss of Innocence that fractures his closest bond.
Character Development
The pressure cooker of these chapters strips away pretense, exposing what each character clings to when fear, pride, and ideology collide.
- Michael: Terror in the study hardens into grim resolve at the tests. The boxing ring cracks open buried trauma; he discovers he can be as ruthless as he must—at a cost he didn’t anticipate.
- Fritz: His identity hinges on passing. Indoctrination pushes him to sacrifice friendship and endure punishment to prove strength, even if it means inviting real harm.
- Trumbauer: A soft-spoken predator who weaponizes observation. His niceties are threats in disguise, embodying the regime’s quietest, deadliest tactics.
- Horst: A petty tyrant who thrives on sanctioned cruelty. He engineers pain for spectacle and control.
Themes & Symbols
Friendship buckles under state pressure. The ring turns Michael and Fritz into opponents, where personal loyalty loses to public performance. The betrayal cuts both ways: Fritz chooses ideology over intimacy, and Michael, pushed to survive, answers with devastating force. The system wins when it makes boys prove themselves by hurting the people they care about.
Ideology corrupts judgment until cruelty feels like duty. From the SRD’s purge to the leaders’ eugenic taunt, the tests reward aggression and punish vulnerability. Courage also gets twisted: in the ring, “strength” means domination, while Michael’s truer courage—staying undercover, restraining himself—collapses under trauma and provocation, bringing him face-to-face with Courage, Fear, and Confronting Weakness. The boxing match itself becomes a symbol of the Nazi worldview: spectacle, hierarchy, and the ritual of harm as proof of worth.
Key Quotes
“At least you have your appetite back.” Trumbauer’s offhand comment weaponizes politeness. He signals that he notices everything—the empty plate, Michael’s trembling—and that he can turn any detail into suspicion.
“We need more boys like you to join our cause if we’re to succeed.” The compliment is a veiled recruitment and a threat. It marks Michael as watched property—useful to the regime if obedient, disposable if not.
“You aren’t fit to be a Nazi, which means you are unfit to live!” This line distills the regime’s eugenic savagery. The test isn’t about health or merit; it’s about establishing who deserves humanity and who doesn’t.
“Fritz Brendler, your opponent is … Michael O’Shaunessey!” Horst turns friendship into a weapon. The match-up stages a public test of loyalty and lays the groundwork for the betrayal that follows.
“We can’t show weakness. You have to fight me for real.” Fritz’s whisper reveals how deeply the doctrine has colonized him. He values ideological performance over safety, friendship, and strategy.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
This sequence marks a point of no return. Trumbauer’s visit tightens the noose around Michael’s mission, while the initiation exposes the regime’s machinery of fear, humiliation, and selective belonging. In the ring, Michael’s past and present collide, and he crosses a line that complicates his image of himself as a hero. The fallout from the fight isolates him, escalates the danger, and darkens the path ahead, where survival may demand choices as brutal as the world forcing them.