Setting the scene: Max Detweiler, a long time Von Trapp family friend reveals his great concern for Naval Captain, Georg Von Trapp after the Captain has been informed that he must leave his family and report to the Nazi Naval Headquarters in Bremerhaven, Germany. As a newlywed husband, a renewed loving father and proud nostalgic Austrian, Georg is irrevocably disgusted and opposed to all of Hitler's hateful, tyrannical ideology. Georg never disguises his contempt in every interaction with the Third Reich from ripping down their hideous flag hung without his permission from his homes balcony to trading insults with his egotistical, paranoid "superiors". All the while Max, Maria and the Von Trapp children are sensing and observing how fearful and hostile the world is becoming as the men surrounding Georg feel threatened and angry over any type of resistance.
Max, wanting to appease the rising power, perhaps for his own selfish motives, pleads with Maria, "He's got to at least *pretend* to work with these people. You must convince him." Maria, although aware of the danger her husband and family face responds with one of the most compassionate and courageous lines describing the constant struggle for love and human justice, "I can't ask him to be less than he is."
