War Games

Alan Gratz

63 pages 2-hour read

Alan Gratz

War Games

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2025

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapters 49-59Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains depictions of racism, religious discrimination, anti-gay bias, graphic violence, and physical abuse.

Chapter 49 Summary: “Motivation”

Evie crosses the electrified hallway by swinging on ceiling bars, driven by thoughts of helping Karl, Ursula, Heinz, and herself, as well as robbing the Nazis. Halfway across, at the point where she always falls during practice, she realizes the distractions that cost her the Olympic finals are now her motivation. She says each name aloud with each jump and lands in front of the vault door, and Karl and Ursula celebrate quietly from the other end of the hall. Evie fears the door might be locked, but it opens easily. She unties the rope from her waist, and Karl sends a wooden pulley down. She attaches it inside the vault while Karl mounts a second pulley on the first ceiling bar. Karl uses the pulley system to ferry Ursula across on a crate. While waiting for Karl to cross, Evie explores the vault. The large room contains metal shelves filled with boxes that sparkle with gold, jewels, and cash. She pulls out several boxes and gasps when she realizes the contents are not what they expected.

Chapter 50 Summary: “Saint Heiliger”

Ursula’s crate arrives, and Evie shows her boxes containing gold jewelry with gems pried out, then a box full of gold wedding rings. Karl arrives, and they find paintings, antique furniture, banknotes, flattened silverware, and gold bricks stamped with swastikas. Karl discovers a 1623 Shakespeare edition and other valuable first editions by banned authors.


When Evie recognizes the name Max Heiliger and remembers the receipt that Heinz’s family received for confiscated valuables, the team deduces that everything in the vault was stolen from German Jews. Karl finds a paper that is labeled as a record of the property of “resettled” Jews. He suggests that Max Heiliger is a false name and a cruel joke, as the surname means “saint” in German. He realizes that the German resistance deliberately hid the truth about the vault’s contents. Now, the team wonders whether they are robbing the Nazis or the people from whom the Nazis have stolen.

Chapter 51 Summary: “Whose Gold?”

Evie argues that the gold belongs to the Nazis now and returning it is impossible. She points to the jumbled wedding rings and flattened silverware as proof that the Nazis never intended to return the items. Ursula believes that they should take what they can and use it to fight the Nazis, and Karl agrees. Evie agrees as well, but she does not commit to saying what she will do with her share. They begin carefully packing the two crates with high-value items, separating them according to their plan. Evie finds eyeglass frames without lenses and realizes that the owners were not expected to return from the concentration camps.


Karl uses the pulley system to ferry one crate, along with Ursula and Evie, back across the electrified floor. He then pulls himself and the second crate across. After they are all safely back across the electrified floor, they pause before the next door. Ursula listens and hears nothing, but when Karl turns the handle, the vault door swings open to reveal the Reichsbank guard standing directly in front of them.

Chapter 52 Summary: “The Moat”

The guard screams and runs for an alarm switch. The team pushes one crate across the drawbridge. Evie stops Ursula from throwing her knife at the guard. Ursula hits the elevator call button. As Karl and Evie retrieve the second crate, the alarm sounds. The vault door slams shut, and the drawbridge begins to lift as water rushes in from above. The rising drawbridge helps propel the crate, but it begins sliding sideways. The crate slips from Karl’s grasp and barrels into Evie, knocking her toward the water. Karl grabs Evie’s wrist and saves her. The second crate tips off the drawbridge and spills its contents into the flooding moat. Karl and Evie slide down the tilting drawbridge and land at Ursula’s feet just as the guard draws his pistol. Ursula throws her knife.

Chapter 53 Summary: “Sitting Ducks”

Ursula’s knife smashes the light bulb above the guard, plunging the hallway into darkness. The guard fires blindly. The team takes cover behind the remaining crate as bullets hit it. The elevator arrives empty. They push the crate inside. Evie repeatedly presses the close-door button while Ursula draws another knife. The elevator doors remain open, leaving them exposed in the bright light.

Chapter 54 Summary: “The Wrong Direction”

A guard peeks around the door, and Ursula throws her last knife as the elevator doors finally close. The team laughs with relief. The elevator opens to an empty underground lobby, but they soon see another elevator’s floor indicator showing soldiers descending. They rush the crate around a corner, then hear the other elevator arrive. Karl whispers that the soldiers are heading to the vault. The team hurries to the room with the secret tunnel entrance. Their handcar is pointed the wrong direction, so they turn it around and load the crate. Before leaving, Karl grabs another handcar and flips it upside down, destroying it to prevent anyone from following them.

Chapter 55 Summary: “Yee-Haw”

The secret door opens into the communications room where Mary and Monday are pretending to film. Mary signals Monday to pack up, and Evie signals that the second crate did not make it. Ursula stops Monday from putting the camera back in the equipment crate and hides inside it. Evie helps Monday hide the camera in the secret tunnel. A senior Nazi officer waits for them at the door and orders them to open the crate of treasure. Monday reaches for his gun, but Mary claims that opening the crate will expose her film and displease the Führer, so the officer relents. In the parking garage, they load the crates into the van. A sudden siren makes them freeze. Monday decides that he and Karl should take the van, while Mary, Evie, and Ursula take the Nazi official’s car. As Karl reassures Evie, Mary drives out of the garage, shouting “yee-haw!”

Chapter 56 Summary: “Under the Autobahn”

Mary parks the stolen sedan, and the three women walk toward the rendezvous point under an Autobahn overpass. Evie notes that the spot feels like a place her father would park their car until the police harassed them. She then recalls that Berlin’s unhoused people were sent to prison camps. The Rundfunk van is not there. Mary points out what looks like a sleeping person. Evie recognizes the person’s large boots and rushes over to find Karl lying unconscious. When Karl awakens, he explains that Monday hit him from behind. Evie blames herself. Karl confirms that Monday has escaped with the crate of treasure.

Chapter 57 Summary: “On the Ball”

As the team walks along the Spreekanal promenade near the Reichsbank area, Evie reflects that Monday likely planned to double-cross them from the start. They approach the Maiden Bridge, where Heinz waits. He confirms that he has been watching and heard the alarm. Suddenly, Heinz points to the river, where sports balls pop to the surface. The team celebrates. Heinz and Evie use vaulting poles that Heinz had rigged with hooks to fish a ball from the water. It is attached to a burlap sack that Ursula tears open, spilling gold jewelry. Mary pulls out another ball filled with jewels. As more balls float downstream, Heinz hugs Evie, who explains the real plan to Mary.

Chapter 58 Summary: “Robbery Rewind”

Evie explains that after her Olympic fall, she conceived a new plan. She told Karl, Ursula, and Heinz that Monday threatened her and knew about Heinz’s family. She then suggested using Mary as a fake Leni Riefenstahl while making Monday think that he had successfully double-crossed them. Meanwhile, Karl acquired sports balls attached to burlap sacks and loaded them into one crate. Inside the vault, Karl filled one crate with gold bars as bait for Monday while Evie and Ursula filled the burlap sacks with the other valuables. Dumping the crate of balls into the moat was part of the plan, as the balls then floated up a pipe to the river, though the execution was nearly disastrous. Ursula had previously removed the grate, and they needed to trigger the alarm in order to initiate the flood that would then carry the balls to the surface.


Now, they divide the recovered treasure into equal shares for the team. Evie gives her entire bag to Heinz to help his family and others escape Germany, and Karl praises her big heart. Evie reflects that she is not selfish like Monday. As for Monday, he will never know there was more treasure, so he will not pursue them.

Chapter 59 Summary: “The Olympic Flame”

As Evie and the US team march into the Olympiastadion for the Closing Ceremonies, she reflects on the Black athletes’ success, which disproved Hitler’s racist theories. Mary joins her, and Evie feels nervous about the Nazi presence, seeing signs of war preparation. Though Mary also gave up her share of the money to Heinz, Evie is going home with nothing. Fortunately, Mary offers Evie a job as her stunt double in Hollywood. Overcome with emotion, Evie accepts.


The International Olympic Committee president announces that the 1940 Olympics will be held in Tokyo, Japan: another country on the brink of war. Evie wonders about Karl and Ursula’s futures. As the Olympic flame is extinguished, she finds Heinz in the stands, and the two share a final wave. Evie rereads Heinz’s thank-you note, which is signed “Ketchup.” She reflects that she has made a difference in people’s lives through friendship and solidarity, echoing the IOC president’s closing words about Olympic values.

Chapters 49-59 Analysis

The climax of the heist serves as the final step for Evie’s character development, completing her transformation from a self-interested individual to a committed altruist who is willing to fight for a moral cause. As she performs the most physically demanding part of the heist, her internal monologue reveals that while she had previously focused only on improving her family’s situation, she now vocalizes the names of her newfound friends to keep herself moving forward. This internal evolution culminates in her decision to give her entire share of the treasure to Heinz, prompting Karl to exclaim, “[L]ook how big little Evie’s heart is!” (337). In the end, Evie’s inner journey demonstrates the ideals of solidarity and mutual support, for she achieves a moral victory more significant than any gold medal could ever be.


The contents of the Reichsbank vault function as a critical example of The Hidden Realities of Corrupt Regimes. Although the team expects to find sterile gold bars (a symbol of state wealth), they instead discover a chaotic collection of personal belongings: evidence that behind the veneer of Nazi power lies a tangible archive of stolen lives and destroyed identities. This discovery forces the protagonists to confront the moral weight of their actions, as exemplified when Ursula asks, “If we steal the gold from this vault, are we robbing the Nazis or the people the Nazis stole it from?” (302). While the narrative offers no easy answer to this question, Evie’s altruistic decision to give her share of the money to Heinz’s family offers a partial solution, for she returns the wealth to the marginalized group of people from which it was originally stolen, symbolically rectifying any remaining element of wrongdoing in the team’s actions.


In accordance with this development, the symbolism of gold undergoes a radical redefinition in these final chapters, charting the protagonists’ moral trajectory. Initially, gold is a straightforward symbol of wealth, as Evie alternately fantasizes about winning an Olympic gold medal or completing a successful heist in order to free herself and her family from poverty and obscurity. However, when the team enters the vault and beholds the jumbled personal artifacts that the Nazis stole from countless German Jews, this grim new vision of gold morphs into a symbol of human tragedy, communal loss, and the trauma of genocide. Faced with the vile implications of the stolen wealth in the vault, Evie must fully commit to Redefining Victory Beyond Medals and Money. When Evie and Mary give their shares to Heinz, the meaning of the gold shifts yet again, becoming a tool for salvation and resistance because it will fund the escape of Jewish families from Germany.


This resolution is amplified by the novel’s narrative structure, particularly the dramatic reversal in the “Robbery Rewind” chapter. In these scenes, the author constructs the narrative in a way that forces the reader to experience Monday’s betrayal and the apparent loss of the treasure alongside the protagonists. This structure builds tension and a sense of despair before Evie explains the team’s secret counter-plan. This delayed revelation highlights the group’s ingenuity and solidarity even as Monday’s self-serving greed is revealed. The plan’s success ultimately hinges on collective trust and intricate coordination, reinforcing the power of their alliance.


The novel concludes by combining the superficial pomp of the Olympic closing ceremony with Evie’s newly acquired understanding of the world. As the Olympic flame is extinguished, Evie reflects on the IOC president’s closing remarks about building a “better, more peaceful world through friendship, solidarity, and fair play” (345). Earlier in the novel, these words might have sounded hollow, but after forging genuine bonds and risking her life for others, Evie has earned a deep, personal understanding of these ideals. Her final perspective is layered with the grim reality that the Nazis’ pageantry is merely the prelude to war. With a promising lead on a collaborative career as a stunt double for Mary, Evie has won a prize far more valuable than gold: a moral compass, a chosen family, and a purpose that extends beyond herself.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text

Unlock all 63 pages of this Study Guide

Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.

  • Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
  • Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
  • Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs