Summary
Running through the chaotic city streets, Jojo meets his best friend, Yorki. When Yorki spots him, he accidentally blows up a nearby building. He tells Jojo that the Allies are winning and Hitler has killed himself. Yorki tells him, "Our only friends are the Japanese. And just between you and me, they don't look very Aryan." Jojo tells Yorki that the Jewish girl living in his attic is basically his girlfriend now, and Yorki congratulates him. They see Rahm nearby giving guns to young Nazi soldiers. She gives Yorki a gun and tells him to go and shoot anyone who looks different.
Rahm gives Jojo a Nazi jacket and goes towards the enemy with a machine gun, before getting blown up. Jojo observes all of the destruction around him as if in slow motion. He sees Klezendorf and Finkel wearing homemade uniforms with pink triangles on them. Jojo runs through the streets, hiding in a small hole under a building. When the bombing is over, he emerges slowly, seeing that the Allies have won. He is rounded up by one of the Allied soldiers and put in line, where he sees Klezendorf. "I'm sorry about Rosie, she was a good person. An actual good person," Klezendorf says, as Jojo cries.
Seeing an opportunity, Klezendorf pushes Jojo aside in front of one of the Allied soldiers and says that Jojo is a "Jew." The soldiers drag Klezendorf away as Jojo screams for them to spare him. Jojo runs home as he hears machine guns firing, and on his way, he runs into Yorki. Yorki says he's going home to see his mother because he needs "a cuddle" and Jojo runs home to find Elsa.
When he enters his house, Jojo finds Elsa, who asks who won. He lies and tells her that Germany won, hoping that she will stay in the house. Elsa begins to cry, as Jojo fabricates another letter from her fiancé, Nathan, saying that he and Jojo have found a way to smuggle her out of Germany. At this point, Elsa tells Jojo that Nathan died long ago.
Jojo tells Elsa that he loves her, and she says that she loves him too, but as a little brother. When imaginary Hitler tries to scold Jojo, Jojo kicks him out of the apartment once and for all, and Elsa and Jojo go outside to the street and dance.
Analysis
The end of the film is marked by the end of World War II, as the Allies manage to gain the upper hand and Hitler commits suicide. This dissolution of the Nazi reign corresponds with Jojo's budding friendship with the Jewish girl living in his attic. Just as Nazi morale falters and the farce of its political ideology is revealed, Jojo comes into a kind of moral consciousness and realizes that he was never a very good Nazi to begin with. His imaginary Hitler has less of a hold on his point of view, and he wanders the streets of the city in civilian clothes rather than his Nazi uniform.
Rather than fight on either side of the war, Jojo elects to remain unaffiliated in the final sequence, choosing to hide in a small hole under a building, waiting for the violence to subside. Caught in between his personal history of vehement Nazism and the combination of his budding alliance with a Jewish girl and his realization that the Nazis have lost, Jojo finds himself in a kind of moral limbo, taking shelter and waiting out the violence rather than jumping into the fray as he might have before. When he emerges, the Nazis have vanished from the city, and people wave American flags.
The ridiculous and cold-hearted Klezendorf becomes an unlikely ally in the final sequence of the film. When he meets Jojo in the line of Nazis who will be punished by the Allied troops, he comforts Jojo about the loss of his mother and then pretends that Jojo is a Jew in order to convince the Allied soldiers to let Jojo leave and go home. For the first time in the film, the buffoonish Klezendorf proves to be kinder than anyone suspected, a consoling and sympathetic listener at a time when he could easily be filled with malice.
In the end, Jojo lies to Elsa and tells her that Germany won, in a last-ditch effort to get her to stay. When he once again pretends that a letter has arrived from Nathan, Elsa confesses that Nathan has long been dead, and that she is alone in the world. The two children share an awkward and sweet affection for one another, as they are all the other has. The ending is a bittersweet one, as we watch two young people step out into a world full of possibility, but that has been ravaged by tragedy and war.
The only possible response to this uncertain world for the two of them is to follow Rosie's advice, and dance. As a German-language version of David Bowie's "Heroes" plays, the two young friends begin to dance, taking pleasure in their ability to be out on the street without harm and honoring the memory of Jojo's mother, a woman who found pleasure even in times of turmoil. This final sequence is a hopeful one, one that suggests that the characters will set off into their futures having been made stronger by the traumas of war.
