Every Man Dies Alone

I had no great expectation of the book when I started it but my wife and I both found it enthralling. When I had finished (not long!), I really felt the need to discuss it with someone who would know how Germans really dealt with the issue at the time. I found a German lady today who confirmed the book's general scenario and gave me similar stories of people who struggled to resist Nazism. Apparently the book was turned into both a film and a play in Germany. I am going to track the film down even if there are no subtitles. The most memorable book I have read this year.

Hans Fallada was the nom de plume of one Rudolf Ditzen, a German novelist whose best known work is probably the Great Depression novel, "Little Man, What Now?", written in 1932 which in its day was a great international success, even leading to a Universal Pictures film adaptation in 1934. Jeder stirbt für sich allein ("Alone in Berlin" also published in the USA as "Every Man Dies Alone") was Fallada's final novel, extraordinarily written in just 24 days in October and November 1946, being completed but not published by the time of the author's death in February 1947. The book takes as its basis the true war-time story of Otto and Elise Hampel who over a period of three years baffled both the Police and the Gestapo by distributing hundreds of postcards all over Berlin, urging acts of civil disobedience and work-place sabotage. Despite the ineffectiveness of their propaganda campaign -- all but a few of their cards were handed into the authorities within hours -- the couple nevertheless enraged the Gestapo, who became convinced that the cards were the work of a large and well-orchestrated underground conspiracy, rather than just two people working silently and alone. Having himself lived through the privations of the Nazi years and suffered their strictures at first hand (particularly as he was not exactly in favour with the Party) Fallada writes with a great incisiveness and authority, not only in his portrayal of officials of the state but also in his depiction of the behaviour of everyday people. "Alone in Berlin" is in part satirical and in part invective but is never less than a highly humanist examination of the times, as well as an honest and frank exploration of the depths to which many Germans had to lower themselves simply in order to survive. Fallada portrays the Nazi Party bigotry and corruption as absolute, permitting not the smallest spark of human decency to remain unpunished. He points up the way in which those few who daily struggled to maintain even a semblance of humanity were left feeling so very much alone and isolated; a state in which they perforce maintained themselves or else perpetually risked denouncement, to be followed inevitably by interrogation, incarceration and possibly execution. And yet isolated pockets of human decency did abound, albeit working in small and quiet ways to try to derail the Fascist hegemony, however futile and dangerous their gestures might actually be. "Alone in Berlin" is a compelling and totally gripping tale, initially of suspense and later of self-discovery and redemption. Fallada portrays at length the mean and petty lives which the Nazi political system created, as well as the hopelessness experienced by many in war-time Berlin; the author fair revels in the crass incompetences and internal bickerings of the authorities which for so long kept them from tracking down the conspirators. Many of the small details of the book are partly auto-biographical -- particularly many of the internal s

It amazes me that this man cranked out this massive work in the dreary, doomed days after WWII in torn and tattered Germany no less--but in 24 days? I am not so sure I can believe that--maybe 124 days but not 24. It would be impossible--plus, this man was besotted by drugs, booze, Godknows what else. Whatever propelled this man to write such a movable feast of a read about various German citizens good and evil, is truly amazing to me. I was entrenched in this book, nary taking a moment to pull away. What truly shows through in this read is the sheer verisimilitude of one who honestly knew what it was like to be there. And yes, one who was German and actually living through those times as a dissenter against the Nazis. If you are tired of the same old lackluster fiction, this is one read worth your precious reading time.

It is difficult to imagine the impact of Hans Fallada's novel on his German contemporaries in 1947. In the years immediately following World War II, hardly any fiction authors who had remained in the country throughout the Nazi regime were even considering the raw topics of the very recent past because they were more concerned with the shaping of the "new" Germany. Yet Fallada, in his characteristic way of observing and writing about the "little people" *), for which he had been widely read before the war, was bursting with everyday stories of the struggles of working class people of the early forties. For him, writing was like an addiction that enabled him to pen the novel in a mere 24 days. In the fall of 1945, the author came upon a thin Gestapo file on the case of an elderly working class couple and their private futile attempt at stirring resistance against the regime. To honour their memory and to ensure that their suffering was not in vain, Fallada placed Anna and Otto Quangel, as he called them, into the centre of his novel about the struggle for survival of the "little people" during the early war years. He surrounded his heroes with a small, yet diverse and representative group of Berliners, centred around an apartment block in Berlin's working class north. Creating believable characters and vivid scenarios, he conveyed a series of reality snapshots of the social and political conditions of the time. There was the misery of poverty and the constant fear of being denounced, conscripted to the army or sent to a concentration camp for not obeying the orders that controlled people's daily lives. Having experienced much of this himself, Fallada also exposed the internal workings and competing forces within the regular police force, the Gestapo and SS, the judiciary and the prison system. Fallada writes in the language of his characters using different levels of Berliner dialect to reflect their social standing and level of education. While this makes for a very lively dialogue, it can at times seem long winded and cumbersome. Yet, it represents the spirit of the time exquisitely. With the flow of the story's events, the reader is pulled into a combination of intense action and drama alternating with detailed descriptions. At times it reads like a thriller; at others it is a series quiet reflections by his main characters or detached observations by the narrator. Fallada's depiction of the evolving and deepening relationship between the couple, Anna and Otto,is probably one of the most moving aspect of the story; the description of the trial in contrast is the most disturbing. While in prison Otto reflects that everyone, including himself, function as the nuts and bolts of the brutal system, as the smaller or larger wheels that make the machine work. Some just go with the flow; others try to benefit and take advantage of it. Some are natural brutes or obsessed with power; only a few are willing to risk acting like the grit that clogs t

More than sixty years have passed since World War II ended, and to me it sometimes seems that the very over-usage of the terms 'Hitler' and 'Nazism' have facilitated the reduction of these historical phenomena to mere talismans of turpitude. In other words, as an *emblem* of wickedness, the Third Reich is ever-present in our consciousness, whilst the everyday reality of the evils it perpetrated has perhaps receded. Hans Fallada's novel, therefore, is hugely important. As a snapshot of the quotidian reality of life in Nazi Germany - particularly the regime's impact on just a handful of ordinary people - it is a gut-wrenching reminder of just how awful the Third Reich was, even within its own borders. "Every Man Dies Alone" tells the tale of Otto and Anna Quangel, a middle-aged, working-class couple living in Berlin who one day learn via telegram that their only son has been killed during the invasion of France. Their searing grief is infused with a sense of rage that the Nazi regime has destroyed their lives. Yet there is nothing a mere couple can do to resist the Reich. Or is there? Otto and Anna begin to compose postcards with subversive messages which point to the mendacity of the Nazis and which call upon Germans to resist the regime. Carefully, painstakingly, they drop these cards - one at a time - in stairwells and public buildings. If they are caught, it means certain death. They are surrounded, after all, by a brutalized citizenry comprised of the venal and the weak, people ready to turn them in at any moment. Meanwhile, the Gestapo has intercepted the first of the postcards, and the hunt is on. How long can the Quangels hold out? Written in 1947 by an author who himself was oppressed by the Nazis, "Every Man Dies Alone" has - remarkably - only now been translated into English for the first time. Despite all cavils (yes, the characters are somewhat lacking in depth; yes, the prose seldom features any florid touches), this is still an awesome book. It is based on the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel, an uneducated couple living in Berlin who underwent a similar family tragedy and thereafter began a clandestine campaign of anti-Nazism. This edition of the novel features an appendix which reproduces both a sample of the Hampels' postcards and extracts from the Gestapo files on the couple following their arrest. This fascinating addendum helps to ground the story of their fictional analogues in a horrid reality. And that reality is well-represented in every character: the penniless and self-serving informers who are a constant danger to their fellow citizens; the terrified elderly Jewess living on the top floor of the Quangels' apartment building who can hardly do anything but await her fate; the brutal and incurably indoctrinated Hitler Youth member downstairs; the kindly and sagacious retired Judge who does what little he can to help; the imprisoned orchestra conductor whose decency simply cannot be eroded; and of course the pitiless