65 pages • 2 hours read
Mark SullivanThe Last Green Valley
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 23-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 23 Summary
Emil’s sickness persists throughout the beginning of 1945. He questions why his family must suffer. He continues to dream about meeting Major Haussmann in Dubossary in 1941. Emil initially refused to shoot the young Jewish man and girls, but Major Haussmann threatened to kill him as well. Not wanting to abandon his family, Emil agreed to shoot them. At that moment, the narrator says, Emil lost all “belief in a benevolent God” (232).
When Emil wakes up, Adeline tells him about running into Esther in Lodz, claiming that God answered her prayers for help. Emil chooses to believe it is simply a coincidence. The Martels are able to buy food and coal on the black market, allowing everyone to recover from their illnesses. Emil walks by Wahl’s house daily but notices that Wahl has not returned. Emil breaks into Wahl’s house and turns on the shortwave radio. He learns that the Allies won the Battle of the Ardennes Forest and the Battle of the Bulge, while the Soviets reconquered Warsaw. Emil runs into Nikolas on his way home; Nikolas accuses Emil of stealing food from Wahl’s house. At home, Adeline informs Emil that they are being moved closer to Germany the next day.
The Martel and Losing families are relocated to Legnica. Emil buys a shortwave radio on the black market so he can continue following news of the war. Over the next few weeks, Emil hears that the Allies are preparing to invade Germany. One night, he accidentally drops the radio, and it breaks. At the end of February 1945, Emil realizes that the Wehrmacht soldiers are abandoning Legnica, leaving the German refugees to fend for themselves. Adeline and Emil decide it is time to get to the Allied lines in Berlin, but Johann, Karoline, and Rese insist on staying behind.
On March 10, 1945, Emil, Adeline, Lydia, Malia, Marie, and the children prepare to walk to Berlin. As they pack, Emil is stopped by two Polish militiamen who arrest him. The militiamen explain that they have orders to detain all Volksdeutsche men and hand them over to the Soviets. As they take Emil away, he tells Adeline to go west and promises to find her someday.
Part 3, Chapter 24 Summary
As Emil is taken away, Adeline feels her faith in God weaken. She debates whether it is better to stay in Poland or to follow Emil’s plan and travel west. Adeline does not want to further traumatize her children, so she decides that they will stay put until combat subsides. They unpack their belongings, and Adeline informs Emil’s family that he was taken away.
As the militiamen lead him away, Emil remembers when his father returned from a Siberian prison camp. Johann claimed that he survived by trusting few people, eating whatever he was given, and standing as long as he could. Over the next six weeks, Emil and the other thousands of German men who had been arrested are forced to clean up war-torn cities in Poland. The men stay under Polish rule for four weeks until they are handed over to the Soviets, although their work remains the same.
In late April 1945, the Soviets defeat the last of Hitler’s soldiers and conquer Berlin. The boundary between East and West Germany is established; the Soviets maintain control of East Germany while the Western Allies control West Germany. The war ends in May 1945 as Emil works in the town of Kielce, Poland.
Emil and the other prisoners begin a two-week march. Emil spots Nikolas ahead of him. Emil notices a prisoner collapse but is told to keep moving while a Soviet soldier kills the collapsed prisoner. The gunshot causes panic, and several other prisoners attempt to escape. In the commotion, Emil ends up marching next to Nikolas.
Part 3, Chapter 25 Summary
As Emil marches, he dwells on the night he met Major Haussmann in Dubossary. At Major Haussmann’s insistence, Emil prepared to shoot the three young Jewish people when Lieutenant Colonel Nosske arrived and stopped him. The lieutenant colonel explained that Heinrich Himmler, one of the Nazi Party leaders, issued a ruling that no German had to murder a Jewish person unless they wanted to. Helmut took the gun from Emil and shot the three Jewish people. Major Haussmann ordered Emil to shovel lime on top of the dead bodies. That night marked the end of Emil’s belief in God.
Emil collapses on the march but picks himself up. As the German prisoners walk through the city of Lublin, they are harassed by Polish and Russian citizens. The prisoners soon arrive at a train; Emil overhears a conversation that makes him suspect they are being sent to Siberia.
After three days on the train, the prisoners arrive in Poltava, Ukraine. Several prisoners die during the journey. A Soviet officer explains that Hitler used Poltava as a base for his bombers in 1941, and now the German prisoners are going to rebuild the town. They will be sent home when their work is done.
Part 3, Chapter 26 Summary
In June 1945, Poland expels all people of German heritage regardless of their role in the war. The Martel and Losing families have 48 hours to decide if they will return to the east or go west. Johann, Karoline, and Rese decide to return to Friedenstal. Adeline, Lydia, Malia, Marie, and the children decide they will walk to Germany. Adeline leaves a letter at their house for Emil in case he comes looking for them.
As they walk, Marie’s infant twins, Rutger and Hans, become increasingly sick with a fever. Adeline takes charge of their group in Emil’s absence, but her faith in both God and herself continues to waver. Several days later, they stop for the night in an abandoned silo, where they are shot at by drunk Soviet soldiers. When the soldiers leave, Adeline realizes that Marie is upset; her son, Rutger, has died. Adeline and Malia help Marie bury Rutger.
A few days later, in early July 1945, Hans dies while the family walks toward the German border. Adeline and Malia bury Hans by the railroad tracks. An hour later, trucks of Soviet soldiers begin harassing the German refugees, especially the women. Full of grief, Marie climbs into one of the trucks, where the Soviet soldiers hand her a bottle of vodka.
Part 3, Chapter 27 Summary
In Poltava, Emil must sleep in the basement of the museum alongside 600 other prisoners. Emil and Nikolas are assigned to a unit that must rebuild the hospital. Emil is put to work mixing cement to make concrete. He tries to find a means of escape.
Adeline, Lydia, Malia, and the boys arrive in Cottbus, a town in Soviet-held eastern Germany. Lydia declares that she will stay in Cottbus; Malia decides to stay with her. Lydia tells Adeline that Karoline was right and that it is foolish to try to escape to the West. Adeline, Walt, and Will continue walking until they reach Berlin. Adeline convinces a Soviet soldier to let them through a checkpoint into the British Zone. She tries to seek help, but most of the British soldiers do not speak Russian or German. A British soldier that speaks some Russian directs her back to the Soviet area of Berlin.
Part 3, Chapters 23-27 Analysis
The second portion of Part 3 represents a major turning point. These chapters explore The Cruelty of War for those who are left in the aftermath. As the Allied forces encroach on German territory, the Nazi soldiers stationed in Legnica leave to assist in protecting Berlin. Emil realizes that the refugees who were promised so much for leaving Ukraine are now on their own. With the chances of victory leaning toward the Allies, the Martels decide to seek the Allied forces and surrender.
As the Martels prepare to head for Berlin and the Allies, Polish militiamen arrest Emil. The militiamen explain that they have orders to round up all German men and turn them over to the Soviets, who will put them to work rebuilding towns destroyed during the war. Adeline begs the militiamen not to take Emil, claiming that “he’s done nothing wrong […] He’s not a soldier” (240). Despite her protests, Emil is taken into custody because of his German heritage. In war, even the innocent are punished.
This section also demonstrates that the cruelty of war can have ripple effects that last beyond the end of the war. World War II ends in May 1945, but Emil and the other German prisoners are not released. Instead, they arrive in a prison camp in Poltava, Ukraine, where they are instructed to “make amends for Adolf Hitler’s destructive acts of aggression against the Soviet people” by rebuilding the town (263). All of the men, regardless of their actions during the war, must pay for the violence inflicted by the Nazis.
Emil’s capture echoes the gendered experiences of war established in Part 1. Not knowing if Emil will ever return, Adeline now finds herself facing the same uncertainties that plagued Lydia and Karoline. Upon hearing the news, Karoline’s reaction is defeat: “This is what they do to our men and to us” (246). Lydia reinforces this sense of defeat, reminding Adeline that she wasted years hoping that her husband, Adeline’s father, would return. While Adeline has always maintained The Importance of Faith, Emil’s capture rocks her to the core; Adeline realizes, the narrator says, that “her faith in God, in life, in herself, lay in total jeopardy” (243).
Adeline and her cousin, Marie, represent the new generation of Volksdeutsche women who have been widowed by the war and Stalin’s forces. When Adeline, Marie, Lydia, Malia, and the boys decide to go to Berlin, Adeline struggles to stay strong. Though she had relied on God to protect them through their journey out of Ukraine, now, the narrator says, “[s]he realize[s] it was Emil who had really walked at her side, and with him gone, she [feels] abandoned, thrown to the wind, forgotten by grace” (269). Adeline and Marie’s experiences reflect the different ways that people respond to hardship. While Adeline remains strong through her grief, her cousin Marie is unable to cope with the pain of losing her husband and sons.
The second portion of Part 3 reveals crucial details about Emil’s confrontation with Major Haussmann in 1941. Although Emil initially refused to shoot three Jewish people, Major Haussmann issues an ultimatum: “They die one way or another. Your choice is whether you live or die with them” (232). Though Emil abhors the thought of murder, he finds himself facing Moral Ambiguity and Compromise as he wonders what would happen to his family if he died: “Would dying instead of killing these people do Adeline and the boys any good? Adeline would be a widow. Walt and Will would be fatherless” (232). Though Emil was stopped before he had to pull the trigger, he is left to confront the fact that he compromised his moral code to protect his family.
Emil’s flashbacks provide context for his lack of faith. He recalls preparing to murder the Jewish people and how, the narrator says, that moment “blew away whatever convictions he had always held true, and with them went his belief in a benevolent God” (232). Believing that God abandoned him when he needed it most, Emil’s worldview shifted; from then on, his constant refrain became “I can only rely on myself” (248).
