Friedl’s Frankfurt neighborhood has become subject to the dark side of war. Bomb shelters, rationed food, and blackouts become regular events. The rise of Adolf Hitler - which began when Friedl was about eight years old - has turned her world upside down. Friedl’s father regarded Hitler and his National Socialists Works Party as a gruesome joke, but as her family soon learns, his rise to power would have an ominous effect on everyone’s lives.

This chapter introduces the reader to teenaged Friedl’s first experience wearing the uniform of the German army. As she rides in a railroad passenger car enroute to German-occupied Poland, the train is strafed by RAF aircraft. Friedl gets her first glimpse of the ravages of war including wounded passengers, danger and death, but she remains calm and true to her inner core of strength. On a personal level, she is forced to deal with the family crisis of her younger sister’s coma caused by typhoid fever.

Sent to Warsaw in her new capacity as a “conscripted” member of the German army, Friedl encounters a nightmarish train trip that precedes her arrival (on foot) in the once beautiful city of Warsaw. Sharing quarters with other female members of the army, Friedl quickly learns to be wary of frankly discussing most anything, and to share the German fear of the advancing Russian troops.

While serving in Warsaw, Friedl gets promoted to Code Clerk, with top-secret security clearance. This means that she’ll serve as one of the few people trusted to decipher secret messages to her unit’s Obersturmbannführer and other high-ranking officers. Within weeks, she has gone from being merely a “private” to becoming a trusted code-clerk, privy to the most sensitive information coming in or going out of the military command in Warsaw.

This chapter traces Friedl’s awareness of how the Nazis poisoned her countrymen against the Jews. From Kristalnacht onward, Friedl learns that Jews (even those held at Rosenstrasse because they were married to Aryans), are in danger. In this chapter we learn of Friedl’s aunt and uncle who ran a print shop in Frankfurt (and even did printing for Hitler), but hid an elderly Jewish employee - who ultimately outlived Hitler.

During the 1940’s meat, dairy products, and eventually all foodstuff and necessities were rationed in Germany. As the RAF and Americans began to bomb German cities, meager supplies dwindled sharply. In Warsaw, however, Friedl was able to enjoy a relatively deprivation-free life, but when she becomes a part of a group targeted by snipers, the reality of being a “hated German” comes to life.

In 1943, Friedl began to de-code messages detailing the annihilation of Jews. Up until that point, she- like many of her countrymen- had been unaware of the “Final Solution.” At this time, she also learned of how the SS in Czechoslovakia had retaliated for the assassination of one of its generals. Himmler ordered extreme reprisals and more than 1,300 people were immediately executed. Friedl begins to quietly rejoice in the fact that the Allies are steadily advancing, but at the same time she fears the Russians might get there first.

The German troops in Warsaw are suddenly ordered to Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately for Friedl, no transportation arrangements whatsoever have been made for female soldiers. They are expected to make their own way to their next posting, while the men are given travel vouchers and assigned transportation plans. Angry, homesick, and generally fed up, Friedl decides to return home until she absolutely must report for duty. Planning to travel alone, until three other “abandoned” female soldiers show up at her office wondering what they should do, she reluctantly tells them of her decision. While Friedl forges their “official orders”, she assigns the three other women to “requisition” a general’s Mercedes, warm clothing, and enough gasoline to get them close to home.

Friedl was the only one of the four women who knew how to drive a car, so she assumed the role of responsibility for her three fellow servicewomen. Although they were officially “deserters” they managed to return to their war torn home for a week, where they experienced their families’ frenzied life amid falling bombs and ruptured gas mains. When a fellow serviceman phoned to let Friedl know the officers were looking for her, the women reluctantly left Frankfurt and traveled independently to Prague.

Friedl’s barracks in Prague had once been a jewelry factory; with three other roommates, she lived there in fear of the advancing Russian troops, who were routinely, unspeakably brutal to captured Germans. German soldiers began to arrive at Friedl’s Prague installation singly or in small groups, and the physically and mentally wounded veterans invariably told horror stories of how the victorious Russians hanged captured German soldiers by their necks from light posts, brutally raped and tortured women and children, and even nailed some Germans on makeshift crosses in sadistic crucifixions.

On May 3, 1945, with sounds of the advancing Russians on two fronts, Friedl’s commanding officer informed his troops that, although no surrender had been made, their services would no longer be required and, as soon as the unit was secured, they would be released to return to their homes. This began Friedl’s determination to leave Prague and make her way back to Frankfurt, her family, and her home.

Friedl’s return home was complicated by a variety of irritating transportation delays. The disrupted train service, however, allowed her to view the Danube and Salzburg in a special way that would have been impossible only a few years earlier. Resorting to traveling alone on foot, Friedl earned her room-and-board by becoming a temporary farm hand.

Farm work near the scenic Chiemsee and the Simsee lakes allowed Friedl to slowly work her way toward home. At this point, she learned that, even though she was a German, she would have to present proper paperwork to the American army in control of the border to be permitted to travel into her country. Friedl also learned that Hitler was dead, she had just barely escaped the Russian capture of Prague, and that the war was indeed over.

In this chapter, Friedl settles in at a farm where she almost serves as a doppleganger for the farm-family’s deceased daughter. Here in Rosenheim, Friedl meets American army sergeant Dave Jackson at the U.S. Army’s headquarters in Rosenheim where she repeatedly traveled in her quest to gain entrance into Germany.

Working the Kruger farm for her room-and-board and making thrice-weekly horse-and-buggy trips into Rosenheim to gain American army permission to return to Frankfurt, Friedl finds herself soothing the American soldiers’ loneliness through her beautiful music. She and German-speaking Sergeant Dave Jackson become close friends and, through their conversations, we learn about Friedl’s childhood and about growing up under Hitler’s rule and war on her doorstep.

Friedl and the Krugers visit Sergeant Jackson at the army base and invite him to a home-cooked meal at their farm. This gives Friedl a chance to tell Dave more about life in Germany before the war.

Dave-- whose mother emigrated to America-- continues to learn about Friedl’s life before the war. She tells him about her music studies, her parents, and her concerns about her family’s welfare back in Frankfurt- or wherever they are.

The American servicemen host a dance party and invite the local girls. Sgt. Jackson is surprised to learn that young German women have never learned to dance; using Friedl as his partner, he conducts a class. After the party, he learns of Friedl’s brave, youthful rejection of Hitler’s Youth-- BdM.

Dave learned how Friedl was forced to stop attending the Schule fur Musiker and became a conscripted member of the German army. WWII begins and coffee (at $20.00/pound on the black market) becomes more valuable than the Reichsmark.

Friedl returns home after the dance and tells the Krugers about her fun evening. Realizing that they stayed up until she was safely home, Friedl recognizes just how deeply they cared. The elusive Major Brooks returns to his office and, finally, Friedl has the necessary clearance to return to Frankfurt.

Friedl’s last day at the Kruger farm is bittersweet. The Krugers have served as surrogate parents for Fried,l and she has been a temporary replacement for their deceased teen-aged daughter. Their tearful farewell at the train station is heart wrenching.

The seven hour train trip to Frankfurt was harrowing, but Friedl was relieved to finally be back in her city. Still carrying her cardboard box of belongings, she was shocked at the retaliatory devastation that Hitler had brought to her beloved Frankfurt.

Chapter 23:

Friedl manages to find her home which miraculously survived the war. With tears in her eyes, she rings the doorbell and is finally, joyfully, reunited with her family. Friedl watches her loved ones prepare for their first postwar meal together and she finds herself seated at her beloved piano, which is exactly where she wants to be.