What did The Boy Who Dared Dare to Do? #2

The author makes it clear, through the title of the book, and the opening scene in the prison cell, that Helmuth stood up for something he believed in, and was punished for it, but leaves the reader asking, what could he have done that was so awful that he was sent to prison?

In the early portion of the book, Bartoletti leads the reader to assume that Helmuth was excited to be a part of the Nazi movement. The first proof of this was when the announcement came in school that “Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as the new chancellor of the Reich...Music swelled and something inside Helmuth swells too.” (12) Later when he is given a leaflet by a German storm trooper, and the soldier says to Helmuth, “Germany needs soldiers like you to fight for the Fatherland,” he feels proud and “Electric with excitement, knowing someday he will fight for the Fatherland.” (16)

Bartoletti also left cracks in the story for the reader to wonder why Helmuth felt so strongly about supporting Hitler. The cracks indicate to the reader there might be room for Helmuth to change his way of thinking. Even though Helmuth was raised understanding both his mother’s point of view, which was to support Hitler, and his grandparents and others fears of Hitler, the reader can’t yet answer why he chose his mother’s view. The feeling that opposing Hitler may have been the right decision was inferred later, when Opa’s Mormon friend, Heinrich Worbs, visited after the Reichstag was burned. Worbs was overcome with worry about what he read in the newspaper. “This new decree takes away our freedoms. Freedom of speech, gone! Freedom of the press, gone! Right to privacy, gone!”(25) When Helmuth told Worbs, “Hitler wants to protect us.” Worbs replies, “It’s not the Communists we must fear, now we must fear what we say in our own homes, what we say over the telephone, what we write.” (26) The reader can still question why Helmuth would support Hitler?

The story began to shift when the SS troops postered the store windows owned by Jews with banners reading, “Germans, do not buy from Jews! World Jewry is out to destroy us!”(31) Helmuth was sickened when he was kept from entering his friend, Herr Kaltenbach’s bakery by a storm trooper, simply because the baker was a Jew. The author was suggesting to the reader that this may be a turning point for Helmuth’s opinion of the Nazi regime.