In Schenzinger's novel, Herbert Norkus is named Heini Völker. With a "völkisch" undertone, the opening chapters describe the hardships of Norkus' youth in a working class district of Berlin, characterised by the Great Depression, the unemployment of his father and the suicide of his mother. The contemporary communist youth ("Rote Jungfront", "Red Young Front") is portrayed as a disorderly gang devoted primarily to alcohol, tobacco and sex. In contrast, the Nazi youth ("Hitlerjugend", "Hitler Youth") is portrayed as an orderly organisation, superior in morals. Schenzinger lets Heini Völker's father force his son to attend a camping weekend organised by a communist youth group, North Star Moabit. Heini is disgusted and flees the camp, only to encounter a Hitler Youth group in the woods. Deeply impressed, and in an atmosphere of nationalistic pathos, Heini learns of the Nazi movement, "Führerprinzip" ("leader principle"), comradeship and "Volksgemeinschaft" ("the people's community"). On "the happiest day of his life", Heini joins the Hitler Youth, and Schenzinger has the Bannführer (group leader) symbolize Nazi ideology when he hands over Heini's uniform to him: ""uniform is the clothing of the community, of comradeship, of our ideology, of our unified organisation! [...] It makes us all equal, and gives the same to all and demands the same from all. He who wears such a uniform does not have desires of his own anymore, he has only to obey.""