Every Man Dies Alone

 

I can’t remember having read anything more compelling in my life. This is the perfect novel. The plot weaves the experiences of a variety of characters to provide a disturbingly accurate depiction of life in a totalitarian state. The two primary characters, Otto and Anna Quangel, receive a letter informing them that their son, a soldier in the German Wehrmacht, has been killed in the invasion of France. The Quangels later decide to engage in a secret plan to inform Germans about the reality of Nazism—leaving anonymous messages on postcards in places throughout Berlin—a decision that sets off a series of events and an intense manhunt that demonstrates what life was really like in the Third Reich. The characters include neighbors like a distraught Jewish woman, a retired prosecutor, a family of hard-core Nazis, a small time criminal informer and his sometime accomplice. Others range from a somewhat sympathetic Gestapo investigator, a prison chaplain based on the Tegel prison pastor Harald Poelchau and a Nazi judge, Feisler, based on the notorious Roland Freisler. Hans Fallada (pseudonym of Rudolf Ditzen) was a troubled writer who remained in Germany during the Third Reich—a decision that was condemned by Thomas Mann. But his story is so believable because only one who lived through the day-to-day reality of Nazi Germany could have described the incongruities and gray areas that everyone experienced. The moral of the story is that resistance, whatever its form, preserves that dignity and worth of humanity in an inhuman world. Fallada’s story is loosely based on a real-life couple. He wrote the book in less than four weeks in November 1946. He died as a result of various addictions on February 5, 1947. This edition, which restored a number of edits from the original published edition, came out 60 years later. Although we Americans are prone to hyperbole and love to rank everything, I won’t write that it was best book I’ve ever read. But I do have a hard time naming any that are its equal. Five stars don’t seem adequate for this truly majestic, humanistic novel.

I can\’t explain even to myself why I didn\’t enjoy this novel. It has all the makings of an important, gripping story: Based on true events. Written in clear language by someone who actually lived through it. A detailed peek into the daily lives of average working class people in Berlin during the war. An otherwise banal couple eluding the Gestapo for two years! A fine portrayal of the detection process, followed by courtroom drama. Then why did I have to force myself to read? As stated in the Afterword, there are many books which portray \”the banality of evil\”, examining how otherwise normal people are sucked in to doing unimaginably horrible things; whereas this novel is all about \”the banality of good\”. The main character of Otto Quangel is as banal a character as one can ever expect to find. The detailed exploration of the motives and actions of someone who does the same thing over and over, never really changing in any significant way, while remaining a wholly irritating personality throughout, does not make for gripping reading. This is almost made up for by the same detailed exploration of his Gestapo pursuer, because at least those sections of the book raise interesting questions and contradictions. Almost. By the end of the 500+ pages I was just as exasperated by Otto and Anna Quangel as the \”bad guys\” were, and was almost relieved when (view spoiler) My German is pretty good, but not good enough to endure a book like this from beginning to end. But comparing the first chapter in the original to the English translation gave me faith that the translation is quite good. So I can\’t blame the translation for my diminished appreciation of this novel. This remains an important novel, inspired by real people and events, written by someone who was actually there at the time. But alas, for me it\’s yet another book to admire far more than I enjoyed.

Falada\’s historical novel was published in the years immediately after the fall of the Third Reich and is rich in its personal knowledge of life in Germany while Hitler was in power. This long book held my interest as it delved into the details of the day-to-day lives of a wide range of characters — an elderly Jewess, a rising star in Hitler\’s youth movement, an SS detective, young resisters, a ne\’er-do-well con man, a retired judge, and a middle-aged German couple who become silent parts of the resistance after their only son is killed in battle in France. This book brought me a much deeper understanding of German society in the late 30\’s and through the war. Any serious student of the war owes it to himself or herself to add this book to a collection.

The most remarkable book ever written about life in the Third Reich. Not only does it transport the reader into that pit of inconceivable oppression, but it celebrates the courage of \”average\” people to put their life on the line to affirm their disgust, even in very small and ultimately futile ways. You can read all the good historical works about nazism and watch every documentary but will not begin to comprehend the sickness of the regime until reading Every Man Dies Alone.

Do not confuse this book with Alone In Berlin. Because it\’s the same book, one published in the US, the other in the UK. Maybe they thought people in Ohio would think it was a travel guide. For all the name confusion meaning I ended up with two copies of the same book with different titles, read this. It\’s a true story. You can smell the cabbage and potato soup, the damp, the soot and the total despair of knowing there\’s only you and the front door between the entire apparatus of the state. The couple at the centre of the story did die alone. But not for nothing. Not in any way for nothing. The best book you can read about living in a totalitarian society. If you think getting out of the EU is a brilliant idea, see why the EU is a better one. It stopped this happening again.

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