The Informer is a short one-act play by the famous German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht also wrote the famous play The Threepenny Opera, which you might have heard of.

Back to The Informer. The play centers on a teacher, Karl, and his wife in Nazi Germany. It's a rainy Sunday afternoon, and their son has just left. As with most children in Nazi Germany, the son is a member of the Hitler Youth.

Karl and his wife are concerned that their son will tell Nazi authorities about how Karl has been critical of the Nazi attacks against the church, the Nazi civil defense program, and what he reads in the Nazi newspapers. "You know that they listen," says the wife. "They're under orders to report everything."

Karl and his wife are increasingly critical of the regime and worried about what their son is doing. Karl tries to downplay his criticisms by saying that it

can't be interpreted as an attack [....] wherever there are men, there are imperfections. I never suggested anything more than that, and that only in the mildest form.

When their son returns, he has a bag of chocolates. "Have you only been buying chocolate?" asks the wife.

"Sure," says the boy. But his parents aren’t sure if they can believe him.