The novel offers the reader multiple glimpses of Schindler’s outward appearance to those who did not know him well. This motif begins as early as the opening scene, in which he emerges from a fine apartment building in formal clothes emblazoned with a Nazi insignia. Here, his external image makes him seem morally questionable, as though he’s financially benefitting from unethical political affiliations, when in fact, the reality is more complicated.

The reader gets another look at Schindler from an outside perspective in Chapter 3, when Pfefferberg nearly mistakes him for a Gestapo and nearly kills him:

Leopold retreated to the kitchen and looked through the crack in the door at the visitor. He saw the formidable size of the man, the fashionable cut of his suit. He returned to his mother in the living room. He had the feeling, he said, that the man was Gestapo. 

Sedlacek, a dentist with Zionist affiliations, offers a similarly skeptical first impression of Schindler in Chapter 17:

What the dentist wanted to know, without any financial coloring, was what Herr Schindler knew and thought about the war against Jewry in Poland.

Once Sedlacek had the question out, Schindler hesitated. In that second, Sedlacek expected a refusal. Schindler’s expanding workshop employed 550 Jews at the SS rental rate. The Armaments Inspectorate guaranteed a man like Schindler a continuity of rich contracts; the SS promised him, for no more than 7.50 Reichsmarks a day per person, a continuity of slaves. It should not be a surprise if he sat back in his padded leather chair and claimed ignorance. 

Both Pfefferberg and Sedlacek see Schindler, a wealthy German, and assume he’s promoting the Nazi agenda. By providing many such examples of how Schindler was perceived by those who didn’t know him, the novel illustrates how he appeared to most people during the war: like another German carrying out Nazi orders. While misleading to potential allies, the fact that Schindler blended in allowed him to protect his Jewish workers without arousing too much suspicion—and often with the cooperation of other, less sympathetic Nazi officials.