Recalling the anti-semitic signs seen on entrances during Nazi Germany, the Dragon City announces its racial policy at the city's entrance with a sign that reads, "Attention! Entry by racially impure dragons forbidden on pain of death." Ende spent the summer of 1943 visiting his grandparents in Hamburg, when the allies' serial bombing raids, caused firestorms and damage so catastrophic, the Nazis furloughed 2,000 prisoners for two months. Ende paints the Dragon City as a smoldering "land of a thousand volcanos", a hellish place. The entrance to the city looks like a smoking oven, which the protagonists enter on a train; an overt allusion to the Nazi's concentration camps. Nepomuk, who is only half dragon, is not allowed by the racially pure dragons to enter the Dragon City.