Summary
When Jojo returns home, miffed that he cannot fight in Hitler's army, he hears an unusual creaking upstairs in his house. He calls for his mother, but when she does not answer, he goes to investigate in his sister's room. He pries open a small door and finds a girl hiding inside. Startled, he screams and runs into the room. The girl follows him as he runs towards the stairs, and tumbles down the staircase.
When he asks her if she's a ghost, the girl laughs and says, "Sure." As Jojo runs towards the door, the girl pushes him against the wall and threatens him. She reveals that she is Jewish and that Rosie invited her to stay there. He looks towards the telephone, but the girl tells him that if he rats her out, she will tell the authorities that Jojo and his mother helped her, and they will both be hanged. She then pulls out his dagger and threatens to cut his head off. She takes his dagger and goes back upstairs.
Jojo runs to his room, where imaginary Hitler is waiting for him. They discuss the fact that the girl probably used her mind powers to get into the house, and they strategize about what to do next. Jojo puts a pan on top of his head and knocks on the compartment door. When the girl doesn't open up, Jojo yells to her that she ought to find somewhere else to live, but she appears behind him and scares him away.
Jojo runs to his room again, where Hitler tries to offer him a cigarette. "When someone tries to use mind powers on me, know what I do? Use mind powers back on them," says Hitler, giving Jojo some advice. Abruptly, Hitler tells Jojo he has to go home for dinner—tonight he's having unicorn—and advises Jojo to control the Jewish girl while she is living there.
When Rosie arrives home that night, Jojo is still awake. She goes to tie his shoelaces (he does not know how) and he tells her, "I heard her." Rosie is shocked, as he tells her he heard the ghost of his sister, Inge. Relieved, Rosie kisses his forehead and tells him he has gone crazy, before going into the kitchen and looking for some knives.
Later, Rosie tucks Jojo into bed and teaches him to wink. Then she goes to the attic and speaks to the girl, whose name is Elsa. Elsa was a friend of Rosie's late daughter, Inge, and Rosie discusses the fact that she does not want Jojo to be such a Nazi. She mourns the loss of her daughter, hoping she is not just a ghost. "Perhaps we're all ghosts now, we just don't know it," Elsa says. Rosie tells her that no matter what, Elsa must not lose faith, and that as long as she is alive, the Nazis have not won.
The next day, Jojo swims in a pool. We see imaginary Hitler under the water with a gun. After he swims, Jojo lies on a couch as Rahm stretches his legs. Rosie comes over and tells him she needs to go and that she will see him at home. Jojo goes up to Klezendorf and asks what he should do if he sees a Jew. Klezendorf tells him to tell them, they will tell the Gestapo, and then the Gestapo will kill the Jew and probably the people who helped the Jew. "Even if the Jew hypnotized someone to make them hide them in the first place?" Jojo asks, thinking of his mother, but Klezendorf thinks that is unlikely. Rahm moves towards them and tells them that a Jew hypnotized her uncle into being a gambler and an alcoholic.
When he arrives home, Jojo questions Elsa about the Jewish race. "We're like you, but human," she says. As she sits on his sister's bed, Jojo tells her not to, but she insists that she and Inge were friends. "Obviously we are demons who love money," Elsa says, adding that Jews are allergic to all kinds of food. Jojo studiously takes notes, as Elsa tells him that his mother treats her well. As Jojo rises and tries to intimidate her, she grabs him and covers his mouth, telling him that "there are no weak Jews." She whispers in his ear, "I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We are chosen by God!" Abruptly, she pushes him onto the bed and goes back into her attic.
Jojo consults with imaginary Hitler about how it will be harder to write his book about Jews than he thought. Suddenly, they spy Rosie coming in and burning a piece of paper in the fireplace. That night, as Rosie and Jojo have dinner, she seems very happy. She tells him that the Allies are winning and the war will soon be over. Jojo is angered by this, calling his mother unpatriotic. She tells him to eat, but does not eat herself, drinking red wine instead.
Analysis
Things take a turn for the worse when Jojo discovers the Jewish hideaway, Elsa, living in their attic. In this moment, he not only comes face-to-face with a Jew, the most maligned group in Nazi Germany, but also realizes that his mother is part of the resistance, and is helping to protect Jews from the very forces to which he has devoted himself. He is horrified to discover not only that there is someone Jewish in his home, but that his mother had a part in betraying their leader, Hitler, whom he so fervently idolizes. Having already faced the disappointment of not getting to become a Nazi soldier as he's always dreamed, Jojo must now face the shock of discovering that his house is a place of resistance.
Elsa's entrance is like something out of a horror film, and thus reflects the anxiety of Jojo's perspective. As suspenseful music plays, Jojo runs through the house screaming and tumbling down the stairs. At the bottom, Elsa holds his dagger to his neck and taunts him about his distrust of Jewish people. She is not a shy or vulnerable victim, but a formidable bully to the scrawny and awkward Jojo, an older girl who knows how to use a knife and maintains a tough sense of ingenuity through crisis. Her arrival marks a significant shift in the plot; while hitherto the viewer may struggle to understand why they ought to sympathize with a child Nazi, we see that the central narrative concerns Jojo's intersection with the resistance, and his encounter with a Jewish girl fighting for her life under the Nazis.
In Elsa and Rosie's scene we see an emotional earnestness that has been absent from the film up until now. While the rest of the film is goofy, irreverent, and madcap in tone, Rosie and Elsa's scene in the attic is emotional and profound, as they discuss their respective difficulties. Elsa has no one and is on the run from the Nazis, and Rosie is a mother without her husband, grieving the loss of her daughter. They both agree that they are living through especially dark times, but that they can hold onto their hope through the darkness. Rosie tells Elsa, "You're being challenged. They say you can't live, that you won't live. If that comes true, then they win...They'll never win. That's the power you have. As long as there's someone alive, somewhere, then they lose." Their narrative is one of survival and resilience in the face of great discouragement.
These deeper, more emotional moments in the script are contrasted with sudden shifts to the more ridiculous and broadly comic tone that characterizes the bulk of the narrative. No sooner has the scene of Elsa and Rosie conspiring in the attic ended then we are transported to a Nazi swimming pool, where the imaginary Hitler is swimming under the water holding a pistol. It is a farcical and shocking image, especially following the seriousness of the previous scene. In some sense, this sudden shift has the effect of tonal whiplash, but in another sense, it puts the tragedy of World War II into a kind of bizarre perspective, and shows that evil, in its thoughtlessness, can often look ridiculous.
Jojo, in spite of not telling the authorities about the Jewish girl living in his attic, maintains his fiercely anti-Semitic point of view and his friendship with an imaginary Hitler. While his feelings are complicated by his budding if complicated friendship with Elsa and his realization that his mother is part of the resistance, Jojo remains a proud Nazi. As a way of maintaining his silence while also being a good Nazi, Jojo devises a project in which he will do research for a book for the Nazis determining specific Jewish characteristics, using Elsa as his primary subject.
