Every Man Dies Alone

Finally translated in 2009, Every Man Dies Alone is a stark novel about life in Nazi Germany, the compromises and complicity of the entire nation, and the dignity of even the most futile act of resistance.

The main story tracks Otto and Anna, an ordinary married couple, who lose their only son in the invasion of France, and decide to launch a quixotic campaign to show that Germany does not support Hitler by leaving anonymous postcards around Berlin. However, the narrative quickly abandons them to track the doings of small time crooks, informers, and petty Nazi party members, as they seek to steal from their elderly Jewish neighbors, sponge off lonely widows, beat their children, and otherwise demonstrate that they are the worst of show more humanity, even without directly participating in the genocide. The pettiness of these people is directly compared to the drunk parties and twisted interrogations of the Gestapo and the supreme People's Court, and the way that the Nazi regime forced the world to match it's low and debased imagination.

Against this is the second half of the book, Otto and Anna in prison, separated, tortured, driven through a long humiliation before and inevitable execution. Even though their crude resistance with the postcards accomplished precisely nothing, they arrive at a sense of peace and mercy against the great injustices committed against them. It's almost bathetic, an undeserved salvation, but somehow it works. We have to believe that there is something left, even when dignity, community, life itself is taken.

My edition has a great historic footnote on Fallada's tragic personal life, and the swerves of his professional life under the Nazis and then the Soviet occupation. This is not an easy book to read, but it might be a great one. show less

This is a brilliant thriller and a truly great work of literature. The atmosphere of fear and the casual brutality between characters is brilliantly evoked by the simple, non-flowery language the author uses. It is rare for a novel set in the Second World War to be set in Berlin before the final fall and the sheer courage of opposing Nazism at its height in 1940 comes across clearly through the very ordinary Quangels' carrying out of the ostensibly small act of resistance of leaving postcards for people to find. This is based on a true if not very well known case (the Hampels), and also reminds one of the better known White Rose students, executed for handing out anti-Nazi leaflets. The Quangels fail but their failure comes across as an show more act of redemption - they succeed in a sense through maintaining their sense of dignity and self-respect in the face of tyranny and insanity. In doing do, they draw strength from small, occasional acts of kindness from individual guards, doctors or chaplains to draw some hope. Powerful stuff. This should be much better known. show less

Nowadays Hans Fallada’s novel Every Man Dies Alone (1947) , a true story of quiet back-room rebellion of a middle – aged couple against the Nazi regime, seems to be included more often than before in canonical lists of German literature.

It is one of those books that was written not solely for the sake of the story but also as an early attempt to show the World and especially the Germans themselves, that there had been a few decent people left in Nazi – ruled Germany. While the story is closely based on true events ( my edition includes pictures and official documents ), a few details are too good to be anything else than an attempt of propaganda: a fellow prisoner in a Gestapo prison, one of the last decent and kind men left, is a show more music conductor whistling a whole range of high Art tunes : Beethoven, Bach and other examples of high German culture. This symbolic featureis respected by both his fellow inmates and prison guards.

I belong to those who in trying to understand what happened in Germany between 1933 and 1945, refuses to separate the Germans from the Nazi’s.To me, with a grandfather executed by Wehrmacht soldiers, it was the same people. Nazism was the rule of the Bully and a mass that let the Bully rule.

The book’s main achievement, beside the merit of a well told story, is without doubt the recreation of the atmosphere of oppression and fear that permeates daily life in Berlin during the darker years of Nazi rule. Fallada narrates the story of the little people and I must confess that the description of how the Nazi rule of law works is often chilling and gives the reader a good idea of how daily life is lived in a Police state, be it under the Nazi’s, Stalin’s Russia or nowadays in the Arabic countries under the rule of an extremist Mullah.

Every Man Dies Alone is a book well worth reading. It is a gripping and well structured story . At moments however it feels a bit like the na
rrative is stretched too much or diverting away too far from the main story line, but at the end all the threads come back into a single horrible knot.

With a last page turned, you remain with a few deep questions : What for instance is the physiology of these acts of resistance. Why do people rebel ? How much bravery goes into it and most of all, is it worth doing it against a much stronger opponent?

The fact that the story is still read and praised is an answer by itself. show less

Hans Fallada was all but forgotten outside Germany when this 1947 novel, Alone in Berlin (US title: Every Man Dies Alone), was reissued in English in 2009, whereupon it became a best seller and reintroduced Hans Fallada's work to a new generation of readers.

I came to this book having read More Lives Than One: A Biography of Hans Fallada by Jenny Williams, which was the perfect introduction into the literary world of Hans Fallada.

Alone In Berlin really brings alive the day-to-day hell of life under the Nazis - and the ways in which people either compromised their integrity by accepting the regime, or, in some cases, resisted. The insights into life inside Nazi Germany are both fascinating and appalling. The venom of Nazism seeping into show more every aspect of society leaving no part of daily existence untouched or uncorrupted.

Alone In Berlin is also a thriller, and the tension starts from the first page and mounts with each passing chapter. I can only echo the praise that has been heaped on this astonishingly good, rediscovered World War Two masterpiece. It's a truly great book: gripping, profound and essential.

5/5 show less

This a compelling, horrifying, fascinating and, at the same time, ultimately uplifting book that takes the reader through several years of Nazi era Berlin. At the center of the story is the small and ultimately futile, but still potentially deadly, resistance carried out by a middle-aged couple, the Quangels, who have been embittered by the death of their son, a soldier, during the invasion of France. But is their gesture really futile? That is the question at the novel's philosophical core. In the meantime, we are shown the inner workings of the Nazi tyranny on a day-to-day level. Honest citizens, street-level grifters, Gestapo inspectors and more all come under Fallada's acute and wry observation, with the grinding effects of the show more relentless months and years of terror, with the threat of arrest, torture, imprisonment and death lurking behind every neighbor's peephole and every knock on the door. To what extent does compliance equal complicity? This question, too, hums below the surface of the narrative like an electrical current. Fallada himself lived through this time and place, intermittently finding employment and harrassment from the Nazi powers, so his attitude toward his characters is far from doctrinaire. I almost never hand out 5-star ratings, but for this book, I did so. show less

My second Fallada and it's brilliant in every way. The writing/translation is crisp, the characterisations realistic, and the storyline itself astoundingly simple and compelling.

The way the lives intertwine in such a simple way and unravels so naturally can be fully attributed to how well Fallada motivated each character. He wound them up so effectively at the beginning, imbued them with their personalities and flaws, before releasing them on their often-crisscrossing paths across the city over the years.

The aptly-placed afterword only served to elevate my admiration for this book and the author's abilities. The afterword could potentially serve as a novella itself, the way it made me gasp out loud and also reevaluate the entire story I show more had just read. show less

For all that Hans Fallada wasn't actively anti-Nazi like some of his fellow writers, this novel makes his feelings pretty clear. He may not have taken a stand during the war (for which he surely would have been executed), but his choice of material and characterization throughout this novel goes to show that sometimes resistence to a dictatorship can be small. Obviously the subjects of the book, the Quangels, are actively subverting the Third Reich, but I found the surrounding characters who each made their personal resistance to the regime equally fascinating. Their small acts may not have brought about social change, but it showcases the resistance of the human character against moral and ethical dilemmas.