History Literature / CagingSkies

* There's also Kippi, who's real name is never told.

When the tides of the war turn and the Nazis are driven out, Johannes clings to the fleeting power he has left to make sure that he doesn't lose the prestige he's accumulated as Hitler's "zunkuft"[[note]]Future[[/note]] - and more importantly, to make sure he doesn't lose Elsa.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Elsa escapes Johannes, but she's in a whole new world with no money or resources, and Johannes grieves her loss alone.]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Johannes has no redeeming traits whatsoever, as do most of the Hitlerjugend and ordinary German people, the latter who are very self-absorbed and have a high case of LackOfEmpathy.

* LifesavingMisfortune: Johannes' injury allows him to stay home while the rest of his comrades die.

It was very loosely adapted into a film called ''Film/JojoRabbit'' which was directed by Creator/TaikaWatiti.

''Caging Skies'' is a 2004 novel written by Christine Leunens that chronicles Hitlerjugend member Johannes Beltzer finding out that his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa under the floorboards. It was very loosely adapted into a film called ''Film/JojoRabbit'' which was directed by Taika Watiti.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Elsa escapes Jojo, but she's in a whole new world with no money or resources, and Jojo grieves her loss alone.]]

* CatsAreMean: Averted, as Elsa's cat is a very friendly ginger tom.

* GreedyJew: Johannes is taught that Jews are this.
* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Johannes has no redeeming traits whatsoever.
* KidsAreCruel: Johannes and Kippie murder baby chicks as their initiation test into the Hitlerjugend.

* LooseFloorboardHidingSpot: Johannes' parents hide Elsa under the floorboards.

* RacistGrandma: Inverted, it is the young Johannes who parrots and spreads Nazi propaganda, which makes his father very angry and causes debates to spark between them and worries his mother.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Elsa escapes Jojo but she's in a whole new world with no money or resources, and Jojo grieves her loss alone]].
* BookBurning: Johannes does this after Frualein Rahm orders the Hitlerjugend to.
* CatsAreMean: Averted, Elsa's cat is a very friendly ginger tom.
* ChildSoldiers: Being set in Nazi Germany, young children forced into becoming soldiers are a reoccurring theme.

* KillTheCutie: [[spoiler:Kippie, Johannes' best friend, dies in an air raid. Karl the cat too]].
* LifesavingMisfortune: Johannes' injury allows him to stay home while the rest of his comrades die

** The Austrian schools after Der Fuhrer takes over:

[[caption-width-right:304:some caption text]]

%%* ChildSoldiers: Obviously.

* ChildSoldiers: Obviously.

* EvilRedhead: Madeleine, who is a ManipulativeBitch and exploits Wilhelm Beltzher.

* AffectionateNickname: --> ''We called my grandfather from my father's side 'Pimbo' and my grandmother 'Pimmi' followed by the suffix 'chen' which signifies 'Dear little' in German - affection having the curious side-effect of shrinking her some''
* BookBurning: Johannes does this after Frualein Rahm orders the Hitlerjugend to.
* CatsAreMean: Averted, Elsa' s cat is a very friendly ginger tom

* [[spoiler: BittersweetEnding: Elsa escapes Jojo but she's in a whole new world with no money or resources, and Jojo grieves her loss alone]]
* [[spoiler: {{Fauxreigner}}: Johannes and Pimmichen, post Soviet occupation, are told to house two men from Poland named Krzysztof Powszechny and Janusz Kwasniewski. They are actually Russians]].
--> [[spoiler: ''The facts were that their real names were Sergey Karganov and Fedor Kalinin; they were Russians, not Poles; and this document had been forged by an underground organisation helping them to obtain freedom. The bottom line was that the Soviets were claiming back their soldiers...'']]

* GreedyJew: Johannes is taught that Jews are this
* JerkWithAHeartOfJerk: Johannes, he has no reddeming traits whatsoever.

* [[spoiler: KillTheCutie: Kippie, Johannes' best friend, dies in an air raid. Karl the cat too]].

* PropagandaMachine: The Austrian schools after Der Fuhrer takes over
--> ''We learned new, frightening facts. Life was a constant warfare, a struggle of each race against the others for territory, food, supremacy. Our race, the purest, didn't have enough land — many of our race were living in exile. Other races were having more children than we were, and were mixing in with our race to weaken us. We were in great danger, but the Fuhrer had trust in us, the children; we were his future. How surprised I was to think that the Fuhrer I saw at Heldenplatz, cheered by masses, the giant on billboards all over Vienna, who even spoke on the wireless, needed someone little like me. Before then, I'd never felt indispensable. I'd felt like a child, something akin to an inferior form of an adult, a defect only time and patience could heal.''

And this

-->''We were made to look at a chart of the evolutionary scale of the higher species. The monkeys, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas were on the lowest level, and worked their way up. Man was at the top. When Fräulein Rahm began to lecture to us, I realised that some of what I'd taken to be primates were human races drawn in such a way that certain traits were accentuated so we could comprehend their relationship with the simians. She taught us a Negroid woman was closer to the ape than to mankind. Removing the hairs of the ape had proven to scientists to what extent. She told us it was our duty to rid ourselves of the dangerous races halfway between man and monkey. Besides being sexually overactive and brutal, they didn't share the higher sentiments of love or courtship. They were inferior parasites who would weaken us, bring our race down''

* RacistGrandma: Inverted, it is the young Johannes who parrots and spreads Nazi propaganda, which makes his father very angry and causes debates to spark between them and worries his mother
* SensualSlavs: Madeleine's mother falls in love with a Czech man and leaves her life behind in Germany for him
* VillainProtagonist: One who's a Nazi who lies to a Jewish girl he's in love with to manipulate her. It doesn't end well for him.

* VillainProtagonist: One who's a Nazi who lies to a Jewish girl he's in love with to manipulate her

''Caging Skies'' is a 2004 novel written by Christine Leunens that chronicles Hitlerjugend member Johannes Beltzer finding out that his parents are hiding a Jewish girl named Elsa under the floorboards. It was adapted into ''Film/JojoRabbit'' directed by Taika Watiti.

--> ''We learned new, frightening facts. Life was a constant warfare, a struggle of each race against the others for territory, food, supremacy. Our race, the purest, didn't have enough land — many of our race were living in exile. Other races were having more children than we were, and were mixing in with our race to weaken us. We were in great danger, but the Fuhrer had trust in us, the children; we were his future. How surprised I was to think
that the Fuhrer I saw at Heldenplatz, cheered by masses, the giant on billboards all over Vienna, who even spoke on the wireless, needed someone little like me. Before then, I'd never felt indispensable. I'd felt like a child, something akin to an inferior form of an adult, a defect only time and patience could heal.''

that the Fuhrer I saw at Heldenplatz, cheered by masses, the giant on billboards all over Vienna, who even spoke on the wireless, needed someone little like me. Before then, I'd never felt indispensable. I'd felt like a child, something akin to an inferior form of an adult, a defect only time and patience could heal.

We were made to look at a chart of the evolutionary scale of the higher species. The monkeys, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas were on the lowest level, and worked their way up. Man was at the top. When Fräulein Rahm began to lecture to us, I realised that some of what I'd taken to be primates were human races drawn in such a way that certain traits were accentuated so we could comprehend their relationship with the simians. She taught us a Negroid woman was closer to the ape than to mankind.
Removing the hairs of the ape had proven to scientists to what extent. She
told us it was our duty to rid ourselves of the dangerous races halfway
between man and monkey. Besides being sexually overactive and brutal,
they didn't share the higher sentiments of love or courtship. They were
inferior parasites who would weaken us, bring our race down''

--> ''We learned new, frightening facts. Life was a constant warfare, a struggle
of each race against the others for territory, food, supremacy. Our race, the
purest, didn't have enough land — many of our race were living in exile.
Other races were having more children than we were, and were mixing in
with our race to weaken us. We were in great danger, but the Führer had
trust in us, the children; we were his future. How surprised I was to think
that the Führer I saw at Heldenplatz, cheered by masses, the giant on
billboards all over Vienna, who even spoke on the wireless, needed
someone little like me. Before then, I'd never felt indispensable. I'd felt like
a child, something akin to an inferior form of an adult, a defect only time
and patience could heal.

We were made to look at a chart of the evolutionary scale of the higher
species. The monkeys, chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas were on the
lowest level, and worked their way up. Man was at the top. When Fräulein
Rahm began to lecture to us, I realised that some of what I'd taken to be
primates were human races drawn in such a way that certain traits were
accentuated so we could comprehend their relationship with the simians.
She taught us a Negroid woman was closer to the ape than to mankind.

--< ''We learned new, frightening facts. Life was a constant warfare, a struggle

* RacistGrandma: Inverted, it is the young Johannes who parrots and spreads Nazi propaganda, which makes his father very angry and debates to spark between them and his mother worried

* RecognitionFailure: Johannes fails to identify Adolf Hitler during his inauguration. Justified as he's 10.

* [[spoiler: {{Fauxreigner}}: Johannes and Pimmichen, post Soviet occupation, are told to house two men from Poland named Krzysztof Powszechny and Janusz Kwasniewski. They are actually Russians.
--> ''The facts were that their real names were Sergey Karganov and Fedor Kalinin; they were Russians, not Poles; and this document had been forged by an underground organisation helping them to obtain freedom. The
bottom line was that the Soviets were claiming back their soldiers...'']]

--> ''The facts were that their real names were Sergey Karganov and Fedor Kalinin; they were Russians, not Poles; and this document had been forged
by an underground organisation helping them to obtain freedom. The
bottom line was that the Soviets were claiming back their soldiers...''

* [[spoiler: Fauxreigner: Johannes and Pimmichen, post Soviet occupation, are told to house two men from Poland named Krzysztof Powszechny and Janusz Kwasniewski. They are actually Russians.
--> ''The facts were that their real names were Sergey Karganov and Fedor
Kalinin; they were Russians, not Poles; and this document had been forged