Trudi has the disability of being a dwarf, and sees the world around her become ugly with Nazism, but people like Frau Abramowitz are very helpful and thoughtful and protective of her. Frau felt "much closer" to Trudi, "with the short, thick body" than to her own children (49), which shows the reader that this is a loving, caring individual. Frau is strong and a mother to Trudi after Trudi's own mother dies; on page 50 Frau Abramowitz held on to Trudi "long after she had fallen asleep. She promised herself to teach Trudi proper manners now that the girl no longer had a mother." Germany needed a mother, so to speak, for all those persecuted and pushed out of the mainstream into the darkness of rejection. .

             Stern's analysis of the "temptation" of Nazism began on page 148 as a promise for a "radical new beginning, a national rebirth," built around the Aryan race. And this new beginning would propel Germany along the path of the progress that had been slowed down since the Treaty of Versailles. The temptation (149) would be to accept Hitler as the nation's savior, as a "pseudo-religious" seeking of salvation. Even the elites "succumbed to this weakness" (150), Stern writes. He needed the backing of the professors, ministers, officers, "landed nobility, civil servants," and he got it. The promise "of absolute authority" and a strong leader who could help find a way out of the Great Depression's aftermath was compelling for many that voted for Hitler in 1932, Stern writes on page 152 and 158. .

             The church publication quoted on page 162 explains that "The National Socialist movement [affirmed] with passion the social commitment, the idea of brotherhood.".

             There were opponents lined up against the Nazis; indeed, "workers handed out fliers; business leaders grumbled among themselves. [and] some bourgeois newspapers continued their criticism" (170). When a member of the Cologne Chamber of Commerce protested the removal of a "non-Aryan colleague" he protested but to no avail.