Alone in Berlin (original 1947; edition 1947)

Na de dood van zijn zoon, die in de oorlog gesneuveld is, besluit een Berlijnse meubelmaker het Hitlerregime te saboteren door kaarten te schrijven waarin opgeroepen wordt de nazis niet langer te steunen. Het duurt twee jaar eer hij ontmaskerd wordt. Hij wordt samen met zijn vrouw veroordeeld en terechtgesteld. Ook enkele andere mensen die met de zaak geen uitstaans hebben worden het slachtoffer van zijn actie. Het vlot geschreven verhaal is gebaseerd op waargebeurde feiten. De sfeer van angst, brutaliteit en verraad die het nazitijdperk kenmerkten is knap weergegeven. ( )

Nazis: history's equivalent to that team that always gets trounced by the Harlem Globetrotters, the Washington Generals.

Every time you see Nazis in a movie or read of Nazis in book, you know that they're gonna get theirs in the end. It's akin to something like culturally accepted wisdom to dismiss them as caricatures. But they aren't caricatures (Godwin's Law notwithstanding) -- they existed (DO exist), and for a while there it looked like they might even run things. The period of their ascendancy can hardly be over-examined, because we can't afford anything even remotely resembling it coming about again.

Hans Fallada (the nom de plume of Rudolf Ditzen) wrote this book in an astonishing 24 days (about the same amount of time it took me to read it -- OY!) upon being released from an insane asylum after the German surrender in WWII. He did not live to see his novel published. I can't even begin to imagine what he experienced. You can see flashes of his talent throughout, but the whole lacks a certain consistency.

The story is a fictionalized account of the true story of a working class couple that distributed postcards anonymously throughout Berlin urging Germans to revolt, sabotage and generally undermine the Nazis whenever possible. The couple attached great importance to the postcards, believing they were having the desired effect on the populace. Of course the postcards were generally reviled and went unheeded, only holding significance to their authors (think all of us here on Goodreads). Yet even when the couple is captured, learn that their postcard campaign accomplished nothing, and they are condemned to death, Falluda captures their dignity.
( )

I should express thanks to Gudrun Burwitz, for if it was not for her ruthless news, I would not have found a brilliant book that stands for every belief which Ms. Burwitz expels from her very survival. Couple weeks ago, a news article describing Burwitz as the new “Nazi grandmother” made me explore further for its validity. Ms. Burwitz who at the ripe age of 81, still strives hard to support and nurture the most modern breed of Nazis ,keeping alive the malicious work and memory of her father Heinrich Himmler, the chief authority behind the Gestapo operations. “The princess of Nazism ", as one of the historian terms Gudrun, is a despicable bitch loathing the essence of humanity through her narrowed National Socialist mindset. I would not identify her as a cultured human being, let alone a decent citizen of a wonderful country. However, she would have been felicitated for her abhorrence during the Third Reich. In 1940’s Gudrun Burwitz would have been a decent German; the ideal daughter of Deutschland. Not, Otto Quangel, though. He was a traitor, a criminal who committed treason against the Fuhrer. Otto Quangel was the ‘Hogoblin’, whose righteous words were feared by anyone who touched or read them.



Otto and Anna Quangel was a working class couple. Like many other couples they were decent Germans. They obeyed their Fuhrer, you see. Their only son was serving in the army defending Hitler’s gruesome idea of legality of human race. They helplessly saw their neighbors being caught and shipped to concentration camps, while they silently sipped their watery coffee in sheer silence. They had to be tough in life. That was the common justification of every brutality the Gestapo police committed. Then one fine day, the death news of their only son arrived and Anna in a bursts of sorrow shrieked, “you and your Fuhrer!”. For Otto, a man of few words, Anna’s words weighed more than the misery of losing his child. The agony of guilt swelled up Otto’s moralistic integrity overwhelming his internal ethics. Otto proposed an obscure form of anti-Nazi warfare. He would write postcards with slogans against the ongoing atrocities.

“Mother! The Fuhrer has murdered my son! Mother! The Fuhrer will murder your sons too; he will not stop till he has brought sorrow to every home.”

Otto’s heroic resistance to the Nazi Regime magnified only through his personal tragedy. Did the death of his son made him courageous as now he had nothing to lose? Would Otto walk the mutinous path had his son arrived safely home?

Hans Fallada who suffered through his own personal war as Rudolf Ditzen, brings the laudable efforts of Elise and Otto Hampel (1931), a real life couple who wrote anonymous postcards and leaflets to educate people about the ongoing atrocities ,informing to not buying Nazi papers and resist from participating in the war. The writing is trouble-free and the plot predictable; nevertheless, throughout the fictional portrayals of the Quangels, Fallada beautifully enlightens the misery of ordinary Germans who struggled from their own moral battles. Like, Eva Kungel who curses the fact of her birthing children who would eventually end up becoming monsters. The investigation of the Hobgoblin case and the defenselessness of Inspector Escherich expose the disintegration of humanness in a society where the nobleness of a feeble endeavor to capture terror was misplaced.

Otto Quangel was the burning conscience of a guilt –ridden nation. He and Anna were among the few whom were “good corns” sown in the fields of weeds. Fallada signs off the book saying, “But we don’t want to end this book with death; dedicated as it is to life, life always triumphs over humiliation and tears, over misery and death”.

Otto and Anna’s death was inevitable and their efforts although ineffectual were not insignificant. The Quangels did the unattainable and unfortunately their voices were lost among timid tones and pigheaded establishment, contrasting Wael Ghonim the cyber hero whose efforts instigated a revolution finally overthrowing Hosni Mubarak from supremacy.
( )

An amazing novel about ordinary folks doing the small things they can to resist the Nazis in the late 30s in Berlin. The characters are fantastic and the book is steeped in the atmosphere of the opression and deceit that surrounded them.

It's based on an actual SS file that was handed to the author after he was finally released from a Nazi insame asylum at the end of the war. He wrote this impressive, complex novel in 24 DAYS and died immediately afterwards.

It's an important book that viscerally provides a look at street-level life during the horror of the time-- and manages to squeak in some humor and hopefulness... GREAT STUFF!! ( )

This was a pretty amazing book. I don't usually get through books this lengthy in the time that I did, but it was so engaging, so compelling. The main characters in this aren't spectacular, they're not heroic and their actions don't particularly matter in the end, but despite fear they find courage which seems all the more extraordinairy because in Fallada's Berlin, everyone really is quite alone. Even those who think they've picked the winning side. It's an insightful look into the many faces of humankind under pressure. Frightening, but in some ways uplifting because sometimes it's not the impact of the small rebellion that matters, it's the fact that you know you tried and you know you stood up for something. Wonderful book. ( )