The German Wife

Calvin pulls Lizzie away from Sofie and privately chastises her, insisting that she support his project at least publicly. When she returns to the picnic, Sofie and her family are leaving, and Lizzie feels a sense of superiority. When she returns home, she tells Henry about her confrontation with Sofie. Henry tells Lizzie about his experience when his unit liberated a concentration camp in Germany. Before he can give her details, Calvin comes home and pushes past them to go to his room. Calvin suggests to Lizzie that maybe the German presence in town is too much and that Henry would be better off somewhere else. When Lizzie goes to Henry’s room, she sees that he’s punched holes in the wall. She becomes worried about this new possibility of violent outbursts.

Sofie visits Jürgen’s great-aunt Adele Rheinberg, who raised him and who has a strained relationship with Sofie. They discuss the election of the Nazi Party and the appointment of Hitler as chancellor, though they never mention him by name. Sofie tries to stay positive, suggesting that people will soon see through the Party’s facade and that they’ll have a new opportunity to vote for something better. Adele insists that the Nazis won’t allow another election, or won’t honor the results, and that Germany has entered a dark and dangerous time. She also brings up Sofie and Jürgen’s money trouble and tells Sofie that they can always move in with her if necessary.

Jürgen and Sofie go to a picnic with Lydia and Karl, in part to pursue a job opportunity that Karl may know about and in part to try to tease out their friends’ true feelings about the Nazi Party. As their children play together, Karl and Lydia dismiss their concerns about violence and dictatorships, arguing that the news is either entirely false or simply overblown. Later that night, Jürgen tells Sofie about the job opportunity from Karl—building rockets for the government. Jürgen has been told that he would be developing the technology to send rockets to space, but he’s aware that the rockets could be used as weapons and is hesitant to accept the position. Sofie and Jürgen agree that he can’t accept a job that could result in harming innocent people.

Before Lizzie and Calvin relocated to Huntsville, they lived in El Paso, Texas, and Calvin was involved in the development of Project Paperclip. He confessed his concerns to Lizzie at the time: Given their advanced knowledge, the German scientists must have been active participants in the Nazi regime. Lizzie strongly opposes Calvin’s participation in this program due to the likelihood that the scientists were Nazi Party members, even SS members, but Calvin insists on working toward developing spaceflight, even without his wife’s approval.

Karl interrupts Sofie and Jürgen’s family dinner one evening to talk to Jürgen and officially offer him a job building rockets with the government. Jürgen asks for an assurance that the rockets wouldn’t ever be used as weapons, but when Karl dodges the question, Jürgen refuses the job. The next day, Jürgen is fired from his teaching position. The day after that, he and Sofie get a letter from the bank threatening to call in the mortgage unless Jürgen can demonstrate employment. After talking with Mayim and Adele, they decide that their only choice is for Jürgen to accept the job.

Sofie and Jürgen help Gisela prepare for her first day at school, while Felix avoids the father he didn’t know until they arrived in Huntsville. After Jürgen takes Gisela to school, Sofie goes to the neighbors’ with a cake to share. Claudia answers the door but is hesitant, and she asks Sofie if Jürgen was involved in Mittelwerk. Sofie’s heart falls, and although she asks to explain, Claudia refuses the cake and makes it clear that she wants nothing to do with Sofie and her family.

Sofie reflects on the slow growth of Nazi power in Germany. She connects it to a memory of a cave on the beach in France. As a child, she asked her nanny how the cave had come to be, and her nanny explained that it had happened slowly and imperceptibly over many years. Sofie becomes especially aware of the changes when Lydia and Karl start to actively exclude Mayim from social outings. When Jürgen and Sofie attend a dinner for Jürgen’s work, Sofie meets his boss, Otto Werner, and is quietly appalled at Otto’s wife’s apparent subservience and Otto’s blatant antisemitism at dinner. She quietly disagrees with Otto under her breath to Jürgen but must quickly cover when Karl hears her speak. After the dinner, Jürgen cautions Sofie not to disagree with the Nazi leadership and instead ignore their extremist views. When they arrive home, Jürgen tells Sofie that Mayim living with them may become a problem in the future.

Soon after, Mayim’s 16-year-old brother, Moshe, is sent to Poland to live with extended family for safety. Sofie and Mayim say goodbye to Moshe with tears in their eyes, and Sofie becomes aware of the threat to her dear friend’s Jewish family.

Lizzie’s mother bakes bread and prepares a family picnic to help lift everyone’s spirits. The family has a happy lunch together before Lizzie’s parents go into town to sell the eggs from their chickens. Lizzie prepares dinner while her parents are gone, and Henry clears the dirt from against the barn following dust storms. When Lizzie steps outside she sees an approaching massive dust storm. Henry and Lizzie hurry inside and prepare the bedroom for the storm, worrying about their parents still out on the road. In the middle of the storm, they hear voices screaming outside and go together to investigate. They find their parents in the car; their mother is overwhelmed by the dust, coughing and barely able to move. They guide their parents inside, and the family huddles in the bedroom. They all know that their mother has inhaled too much dust to survive. Henry tries to go to the doctor, but their father stops him, insisting that they stay safe. Their mother dies in the night, and the next morning, their father shoots himself.

Gisela is having problems at school. She says that the American kids eat different bread and that neither the American nor the German children will associate with her. Sofie decides to contact Avril Walters for help in making Gisela more American food. The next morning, Jürgen discovers the word “Nazi” painted on the road in front of their house. He calls the police, but the officer tells him that it’s to be expected and to invest in paint to cover it up.