Alan Gratz’s young-adult historical novel War Games (2025) is a heist thriller set during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The story follows 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris, who arrives in Germany hoping that winning a gold medal will rescue her family from the poverty of the Dust Bowl. Her dream is complicated when she is recruited by a team of international athletes to rob the German national bank. As Evie is drawn more deeply into the plot, she must confront the brutal realities of the Nazi regime. The novel explores The Hidden Realities of Corrupt Regimes, The Moral Complexities of Survival and Resistance, and Redefining Victory Beyond Medals and Money.

Gratz is a bestselling author known for his well-researched historical fiction for young readers, with acclaimed titles including Refugee, Allies, and Projekt 1065. War Games continues his work of exploring major historical events through the eyes of young protagonists.

This guide refers to the 2025 Scholastic Press edition.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide contain depictions of racism, religious discrimination, anti-gay bias, graphic violence, physical abuse, child death, and illness.

Plot Summary

Evelyn “Evie” Harris, a 13-year-old American gymnast, prepares for the Parade of Nations at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She feels alienated by her East Coast teammates but befriends Mary Brooks, an older equestrian athlete and Hollywood movie star. Evie recalls finding a mysterious note that someone slipped under her door, inviting her to the Maiden Bridge to “take home the gold” (5). During the march into the massive Olympiastadion, Evie is struck by the spectacle of Nazi swastika flags and the fervent German crowd chanting for Adolf Hitler. The US team is unwilling to give the Nazi salute, so they place their hats over their hearts instead. Evie watches filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl documenting the event and tells Mary about her dream of winning a gold medal to become famous and rich. After the ceremony, Evie heads to the Maiden Bridge alone.

On the streetcar ride to the bridge, Evie has a flashback to “Black Sunday,” the 1935 dust storm that destroyed her family’s farm in Oklahoma. The memory details their poverty and the death of her younger brother, John, from dust pneumonia; these experiences now fuel her desperate need for money. At the bridge, she meets Solomon Monday, a British journalist, and Karl Hühnerbein, a German Olympic weightlifter. Monday knows about her impoverished background and proposes a bank heist. He wants Evie to use her gymnastic skills to help them rob the nearby Reichsbank, in which the Nazis have a newly completed, gold-filled vault, which Karl helped to build. Evie refuses, still believing that she can achieve her goals by winning an Olympic medal.

The next morning, anti-Nazi pamphlets urging a boycott appear in the Olympic Village, but the US team matron confiscates them and forbids the team members from engaging in any political talk. Distracted by the heist offer, Evie falls during practice. Her teammates ignore her, but her assigned German host, Heinz Fischer, helps her up.

Later, during the gymnastics qualifiers, Evie performs well but finishes in fifth place, failing to make the final team; her Olympic dreams are crushed. After two days of despair, Mary encourages her by reminding Evie that “there’s usually more than one trail up the mountain” (67). This inspires Evie to find Karl and agree to participate in the heist.

That night at the Opernplatz, Karl introduces the fourth team member, Ursula Diop, a Black French diver. Karl explains that the Nazis sent his boyfriend, Paul, to a concentration camp because of his sexuality; Karl plans to use his share of the gold to fund the resistance to the Nazis. Monday arrives and details the plan. They will enter the vault through a secret tunnel connected to the Olympiastadion. The vault’s defenses include an electrified elevator shaft that Ursula will dive down, a combination lock based on the bank manager’s son’s birthday, and an electrified hallway that Evie must cross by swinging on ceiling bars. Karl reveals that the Youth Services Hosts, including Heinz, are spies for the Gestapo (the Nazis’ police force). Suddenly, their meeting is cut short by the Gestapo’s approach.

Evie and Ursula escape together. Ursula reveals that her mother is German and her father is a Black French soldier. Back at the Olympic Village, Evie practices on a vine-covered arbor that mimics the electrified hallway, but she fails to cross it.

The next day, Evie and Monday search the Olympiastadion for the hidden tunnel entrance. In the Langemarckhalle, a World War I monument, Monday reveals that he admires the Nazis for being takers. Meanwhile, Evie ditches the persistent Heinz by forcing him into a Jewish-owned hat shop and then escaping over the rooftops. However, as she and Karl steal a Rundfunk television van for the getaway, she sees Heinz on a street corner, watching her as they drive away.

Worried that she has been discovered, Evie is shocked when Heinz covers for her with the team matron. She arranges a late-night meeting with Monday, but when she sees Heinz sneaking through the city, she decides to follow him instead. She tails him back to the same hat shop, where he enters through a secret door in a fireplace. Evie follows and discovers Heinz’s family, who are Jewish. She learns that Heinz is only pretending to be a loyal Hitler Youth member to protect them while they build a secret room to hide in after the Olympics. His sister, Gretel, a champion high jumper, was used as a “token Jew” for the Olympic trials before being cut from the team. The family’s valuables were confiscated, with a receipt signed by a “Max Heiliger.” Heinz gives Evie a tour of the “real Berlin,” showing her the persecution hidden behind the Olympic façade.

The next night, Evie, Mary, and Ursula attend a party at the Reichsbank president’s home, and Ursula reveals that the Nazis forcibly sterilized her. Evie befriends the host’s young son, Gerhard, who inadvertently gives her the vault combination (his birthday). The following day, Heinz points out a guarded door in the stadium. They get past the guard and eventually find the tunnel entrance: a sliding wall panel.

When Evie’s teammate is injured, she is put back in the competition. Monday confronts her, demanding that she deliberately lose, as the finals conflict with their only window for the heist. During her final qualifying routine, Evie is torn but ultimately performs perfectly, securing her team a spot in the finals. Enraged, Monday threatens to expose Heinz’s family in retaliation, but Evie convinces him to give her 24 hours to salvage the heist.

Later, while filming with Leni Riefenstahl, Evie is disillusioned by the director’s refusal to expose the Nazis’ crimes. During the gymnastics finals, Evie grows distracted, loses focus, and falls, and the US team finishes fifth. Devastated but resolute, Evie gathers her friends and outlines a new plan to rob the bank that night during the final Nazi rally.

The team uses Mary, who is disguised as Leni Riefenstahl, to gain access to the stadium, smuggling Ursula inside a camera crate. They bluff their way into the communications room and enter the secret tunnels. At the Reichsbank, Ursula dives down the elevator shaft. They open the vault door, and Evie swings across the electrified hallway. Inside, they find valuables stolen from Jewish families under the name “Max Heiliger.” They load two crates, one with gold bars and another secretly filled with sports balls attached to burlap sacks of treasure. A guard triggers an alarm, causing the room to flood. They intentionally drop the crate with the sports balls into the moat, knowing that the balls will float up a pipe into the Spreekanal.

At the rendezvous point, they find Karl knocked out and realize that Monday has betrayed them and fled with the crate of gold bars. The team proceeds to the Maiden Bridge, where Heinz is waiting. The sports balls containing the real treasure begin to surface in the canal, and Evie and Mary give their entire shares of the gold to Heinz to help his family and others escape Germany. At the Closing Ceremonies, Mary offers Evie a job as her stunt double in Hollywood, giving her a new future. Evie receives a final, thankful note from Heinz and watches the Olympic flame extinguish.