Heinz Fischer serves as a crucial foil to Evie’s initial naivety, as his secret identity of a member of a persecuted Jewish family highlights The Hidden Realities of Corrupt Regimes. When Evie first meets him, Heinz appears to be a cheerful, earnest, and knowledgeable member of the Hitler Youth who has been assigned to her as an Ehrendienst, or Honorary Service host. His bright white uniform and encyclopedic knowledge of Berlin and the Olympics suggest that he is a consummate proponent of the new Nazi Germany. When Evie later learns that Heinz is secretly Jewish, and that his family is hiding in Berlin and preparing for the day the Nazis will come for them, she must revise her belief in the pristine public image that the Nazi regime has curated for the Olympic Games.

Heinz’s primary role in the narrative is to deliver pointed lessons about the grim truth of life under Nazism. As he guides Evie on a late-night tour of the “real Berlin,” revealing the cracks in the city’s infrastructure and the systemic erasure of Jewish lives, his commentary delivers a broader message from the author, who seeks to educate readers about the historical realities fueling this fictional tale. For example, Heinz explains the purpose of the burned-out Reichstag and the antisemitic propaganda that has been temporarily removed from newsstands, and his words force Evie to confront the reality she would prefer to ignore. He tells Evie, “When you see a Nazi flag from now on… always ask yourself: What is it hiding?” (175), and this warning illustrates his narrative purpose as the moral voice that pulls Evie out of her self-absorption.

While he publicly becomes the literal “poster boy for the Hitler Youth” (120), Heinz lives in a state of constant fear and internal conflict. He performs his role with meticulous care because he knows that any misstep could lead to the discovery of his identity and the doom of his family. However, this double life places an immense psychological burden on him, forcing him to adopt a maturity beyond his years. His participation in the heist is therefore driven by his desperate need to secure a future for his family, and he represents the impossible choices forced upon individuals who live under an oppressive regime.

As the mastermind of the Reichsbank heist, Solomon Monday is the primary antagonist of the novel. He is a British journalist who possesses the intellect and the access to research the athletes and devise a complex plan to rob the bank. However his motivations are based upon a deeply cynical and self-serving philosophy. An orphan who was named after “everyone’s least favorite day of the week” (29), Monday believes that the world is fundamentally divided into the powerful and the powerless, not into camps of right and wrong. Having concluded that the only way to survive is to become a “taker,” he tells Evie, “We shouldn’t be fighting the system. We can’t fight the system. Instead we should embrace it” (116). This defeatist philosophy positions him in contrast to Karl and Ursula, who risk their lives for altruistic reasons.

Monday also functions as a figure of temptation for Evie because he identifies her poverty-fueled desperation and presents the heist as a tempting shortcut to the “gold” she covets. He understands her psychology perfectly and coldly manipulates her by appealing to her desire for power and security. In this matter, he attempts to mold her into a reflection of his own cynicism. His admiration for the Nazis is pragmatic in the extreme, for he respects their effectiveness as “takers” who bend the world to their will, and he sees no moral distinction between their actions and the heist he has planned, viewing both as exercises of power.

Ultimately, Monday’s self-interest leads him to betray the team. When he believes that Evie has ruined the plan by choosing to compete in the gymnastics final, he immediately threatens to expose Heinz’s family to the Gestapo, revealing the depths of his ruthlessness. His final act in the story is to knock Karl unconscious and flee with what he believes is the entire share of the treasure. His character remains unchanged throughout the story; he begins and ends as a man who believes in nothing but his own survival. He is a cautionary figure whose commitment to power at the expense of human connection condemns him to an existence in which he is ultimately left with neither.

Mary Brooks is a pivotal supporting character who functions as a mentor and confidante for Evie. As a Hollywood movie star and a returning Olympic equestrian champion, she embodies the conventional definition of success that Evie so deeply covets. Unlike Evie’s teammates, Mary befriends Evie, taking the younger, isolated athlete under her wing. She provides worldly wisdom and offers a more nuanced perspective on the fame Evie seeks, cautioning her that “All that glitters isn’t gold” (16). Mary’s friendship offers Evie a crucial source of support and guidance as she struggles to navigate the pressures of the Olympics and to overcome her own internal conflicts. Mary is a round, static character whose fundamental decency and loyalty remain constant throughout the novel.

While Mary enjoys the perks of her fame, she is not defined by it. She demonstrates a strong moral compass when she stands up to a lecherous Nazi officer, and later, she even defies Avery Brundage, the head of the American Olympic Committee. Her most significant contribution to the plot is her role in the heist’s final act, in which she boldly impersonates the filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Her final offer to make Evie her stunt double provides the protagonist with a tangible, honorable way to support her family, reinforcing the idea that true success comes from collaboration and mutual respect.

Ursula Diop is a French diver and a key member of the heist team, and her motives for participating in this endeavor arise from intense personal trauma. As a Black German woman from the Rhineland, she has directly experienced the Nazis’ brutal, racist ideology. The regime forcibly sterilized her under the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, a morally reprehensible act that fuels her unwavering resolve to fight back. By joining in the heist, she takes revenge against a system that stole her home, her rights, and her future. This starkly personal motive provides a strong moral weight to the team’s actions, highlighting The Moral Complexities of Survival and Resistance.

Initially, Ursula is guarded and cynical toward Evie, whom she dismisses as a naïve American child. Her tough exterior has been forged by a life of prejudice and persecution; at two different points in the novel, Evie must restrain Ursula from using a knife on Nazi guards. However, as she and Evie face danger together, a bond of solidarity forms between them. Ursula’s fierceness is matched by her capability; she is brave, resourceful, and a crucial asset to the team. Her daring 150-foot dive down the electrified elevator shaft is a testament to her physical skill and her iron determination. As a whole, Ursula serves as a constant reminder of the human stakes involved in the fight against Nazism, and her presence grounds the adventurous heist in a dark and violent historical reality.

Karl Hühnerbein is a German Olympic weightlifter who acts as the “muscle” of the heist team. He is a flat but sympathetic character who provides insider knowledge of the Reichsbank vault, which he helped to construct. Despite his immense physical power, he is gentle, kind, and steadfastly loyal. The irony of his last name, which translates to “chicken leg,” underscores the contrast between his formidable appearance and his gentle nature. Karl’s motivation for joining the heist is entirely selfless: he seeks to raise money for the German resistance in order to free his boyfriend, Paul, from a concentration camp. This makes his participation in Monday’s scheme an act of defiance against a regime that persecutes him and Paul for their identities as gay men.

Karl functions as the heart of the heist team, offering unwavering support and moral clarity. He is the first to believe in Evie’s ability to perform her difficult task in the vault and is consistently encouraging to his teammates. Unlike Monday, who operates from a place of cynicism, Karl is driven by hope and a commitment to justice. He represents the existence of internal German opposition to the Nazis, challenging the monolithic depiction of the country. His quiet courage and profound decency provide a crucial emotional anchor for the group, demonstrating that true strength lies in moral conviction.

The historical figure Leni Riefenstahl appears as a minor character who symbolizes the corrupting influence of power and the theme of The Hidden Realities of Corrupt Regimes. As Hitler’s favored filmmaker, she is granted unlimited access to the Olympic Games to create her propaganda masterpiece, Olympia. She is portrayed as a woman obsessed with aesthetic perfection, carefully crafting images of beauty and strength while remaining willfully ignorant of the ugly truths of the Nazi regime. When Evie confronts her with the reality of Jewish persecution, Riefenstahl dismisses it, stating plainly, “I am not interested in the truth” (243). Her character shows that even art can be weaponized for political purposes, creating a beautiful veneer that masks a rotten core. At the same time, Leni presents a perspective similar to Monday’s, choosing to focus on “winning” and “winners” and ignoring the moral imperative to resist an oppressive regime.

The real-world figure of Jesse Owens, the celebrated Black American track-and-field athlete, plays an important role in the novel. His athletic achievements, including winning four gold medals, publicly refute the Nazi ideology of “Aryan” supremacy, and his presence at the Olympic Games highlights the racist hypocrisies of both Nazi Germany and the segregated United States. Evie is inspired to witness his record-breaking long jump, realizing for the first time the power of an athlete to transcend politics. However, Jesse’s later forced participation in the 4x100 meter relay, replacing one of the team’s Jewish runners, also illustrates the compromises and injustices that athletes faced within the highly politicized environment of the 1936 Berlin Games.