Political and social conditions in Nazi Germany

Political and social conditions in Nazi Germany shape the Waldvogel family's debate over whether the boys should return to Germany, exposing a widening gap between Delphine's alarm and Fidelis's hope that the country is strengthening for peace. The novel presents that conflict through newspaper reports, family plans, and the practical machinery of travel rather than through an account of political events at a distance.

News from Europe and competing interpretations

Delphine follows developments in Germany and has kept track of reports since the purge of 1934. As new details of terror emerge, she remembers them even as Fidelis and Tante focus on the Saarland's return, the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the family's increased holdings, and the country's apparent prosperity. Their attention falls on different evidence: Delphine registers danger, while her relatives emphasize national strength and material security.

A small item in a Minneapolis newspaper reports a rampage of hatred against Jews and the breaking of glass. Fidelis shakes his head, but after a pause treats such poison as something that has always existed, expressed by a few people. He recalls Johannes as Jewish, without translating or explaining the remark. The brief exchange reveals both his awareness of anti-Jewish hostility and his tendency to frame it as an old, limited prejudice rather than a sign of a larger political danger.

The argument over the boys

The political disagreement becomes urgent when Tante persuades Fidelis to let her take the boys, except Franz, back to Germany. She proposes that they stay with their grandmother, who is lonely, and expects to raise them for a year or perhaps two before Fidelis brings them back. The arrangement also promises relief from the demands of caring for the boys and, in Tante's view, room for the store to flourish. Migration is therefore weighed as a family and economic decision as well as a response to the boys' future.

Delphine believes she has considered more carefully what the boys would face. She is afraid to challenge Fidelis directly, although she intends to speak with him alone before their departure. She points to a newspaper rumor that the new government is keeping Germans who visit; the report is not yet confirmed, but she uses it to raise the possibility that the boys could be trapped if borders close. Her fear is sharpened by the memory of war and by the reports of persecution she has gathered over time.

Fidelis answers with conviction that another war is impossible. Because he has experienced war, he believes Hitler is strengthening the country for peace, and he takes the family's prosperity and ability to buy things for the boys as supporting evidence. His wartime experience does not lead him to Delphine's conclusion: it underwrites his confidence that conflict will not recur.

Travel plans and political stakes

The family makes a detailed plan to drive to Chicago in the DeSoto. Fidelis, Tante, and Delphine will travel in front while the boys ride in the back; Franz is to run the shop for three days. The party will handle passport procedures and consular paperwork over the first two days, then Tante and the boys will take a train to New York City and board a ship the following day. Their reserved cabin, with an additional floor pallet and a small window, makes the journey tangible even while its political implications remain disputed.

At the passport office, the family enters a large stone building divided into small processing offices around a central open shaft. People wait along the corridor for photographs, and Tante insists that the boys need to eat. The scene places the family's intended movement through the official processes of documents and waiting, not simply within the reach of private choice. Delphine's fear that changing conditions could make return impossible gives those routine arrangements a sharper significance.

Migration, security, and the novel's wider frame

The novel sets this planned return against Fidelis's own move in the opposite direction. In 1922, he arrives in New York City carrying smoked sausage made from family resources; after selling it, he buys a train ticket west and makes his way toward the Midwest. His earlier migration depends on selling goods and turning limited resources into passage. The later plan for Tante and the boys likewise requires money, transport, passports, and a family willing to bear the costs of movement.

A bread loaf first alerts Fidelis to the possibilities of America: in Ludwigsruhe, shortly after his marriage to Eva, he sees precisely sliced bread sent from distant relatives and takes it as evidence of what inventive people can make. This memory complements the material calculations surrounding migration, while also contrasting with Delphine's concern that political conditions can close routes and constrain lives. Across the novel, movement between Germany and the United States is at once a pursuit of security and opportunity and a passage governed by changing political realities.