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

It’s 1940 and Otto Quangel’s life revolves around his job as foreman at a Berlin furniture factory and his wife, Anna, whom he loves unequivocally. He’s a quiet, undemonstrative man, preferring his private ruminations to mindless chatter with those around him. Yet when they receive word that their son has been killed at the front and Anna, in her initial stage of grief, refers to “you and your Fuhrer,” Otto knows he must do something to show her how wrong she is. He is not even a Party member, which she knows; what can he do to assure her and the world of his hate for the Nazi Party that is turning the lives of all Germans into a private hell? He devises a plan and Anna enthusiastically joins him in it, even after he warns her show more that if they are caught they will probably be charged with treason and executed.

Based on the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel, the tale that Fallada tells is the compelling story of that plan: its inception, its execution and its final outcome. The book gets to the heart of the struggle that the average German faced every day, from food shortages and ration cards, to terror of suspicion by the mighty Gestapo, no one was safe. He paints a chilling portrait of wartime Berlin as the Quangels carry out their plan. That the book is a riveting page turner goes without saying. But this reader found herself admiring the quiet courage showed by those German people who attempted to save their fellow citizens and the country they loved from the crazed military that had taken over their lives. Can a single citizen bring about change even as all citizens are living in mortal fear?

Fallada, who refused to leave Germany at this time, demonstrates a fluid storytelling ability with a bleak irony. Certainly as in other wartime situations, your situation is improved if you know the right people, have an in. Consider this as the author describes how

“Baldur Persicke, the most successful scion of the Persicke clan, had pulled all the strings he could....and in the end he had succeeded in having the whole rotten business discreetly set aside....so the Persicke honor remained unstained. While the Hergesells were being threatened with violence and capital punishment for a crime they hadn’t committed, Party member Persicke was forgiven for one he had.”

The way in which Fallada is able to demonstrate the horror and brutality of the time with vignette’s about the lives of stunningly vivid characters makes you think you are on the streets of Berlin with them. And yet, it’s the love of a man and woman for each other and their country that makes this story so memorable. This harrowing saga should be at the top of your list of WWII literary accounts of life in Nazi Germany. Very highly recommended. show less

Every Man Dies Alone is disturbing, engrossing, and powerful. Based on the real experiences of a married couple's resistance to the Nazis, it is an insightful story of love, standing up for one's beliefs, and the atrocities committed by power that is fed by fear.

Enno and Anna Quangel are middle-aged, working-class Berliners whose son is killed in France. Together they launch a private war against the Führer, dropping anonymous postcards around Berlin in an attempt to expose the Nazis as insane bullies and destructive liars. As their campaign advances, their lives entwine with dozens of other Berliners' in unimaginable ways, some compassionate, some desperate, some despicable. Their commitment to resistance is tested again and again, show more but Anna and Otto demonstrate how vital to human being are integrity, honour, kindness, and courage.

The novel evokes consistent tension in the reader; it also speaks with immediacy and an almost ultra-real level of detail. The action is relentless, unflinching. Readers may find the novel reminiscent of Marge Piercy's Gone to Soldiers (1987) in its entwining of various plots and of Ursula Hegi's Stones from the River (1994) in its look at the daily lives of Germans under Nazism, but it is stylistically distinct. The author uses some interesting technique in tense shifting to bring the reader into the moment of the action, and the diction is exquisitely managed to enrich character, setting, and situation (kudos to the translator!).

This is a long novel — some 500 pages — but it moves extremely quickly and kept me consistently wanting to know what would happen next. The footnotes and afterword are nice touches. I was not familiar with some of the more obscure elements of Germany society under the Nazis, and greatly appreciated learning more about the author, Hans Fallada, whose work is new to me. This is a masterful novel, and learning that Fallada wrote it a matter of weeks makes it even more impressive.

Anyone interested in the Second World War, social justice, or the psychology of fear should enjoy this novel, as should anyone who simply wants a compelling read. It is extremely well written and will leave a reader with much on which to reflect. show less

Hans Fallada wrote Every Man Dies Alone in 1947, but it was translated into English only last year. The novel is based on a true story of a couple, Otto and Elise Hampel, who resisted the Nazi party. There's a really interesting afterword about Hans Fallada (Rudolf Ditzen) and the Hampels. Fallada was an alcoholic and a drug addict who ended up in an insane asylum near the end of WW2 after threatening his wife with a gun (and drinking 12 bottles of wine in 3 days). His own behaviour during the Nazi Party's time in power was a mix of collaboration and resistance.

The book opens with Eva Kluge, the postie, delivering a letter to Otto and Anna Quangel, quiet, frugal working-class Berliners whose son Otto is away fighting in France. This is show more a book with tons of characters, all vividly showing different ways of surviving in Nazi Berlin. There's a retired judge on the ground floor of their apartment building, the Persicke family - a thoroughly nasty bunch, especially their son Baldur - on the 2nd, the Quangels on the 3rd, and Mrs Rosenthal, who's Jewish, on the 4th. The postie's scumbag husband plays a big part too. There are subplots and many more characters all over the place, but the main story is about the Quangels.

Otto is a foreman in a carpentry factory that, by the end of the book, is making coffins. He's very shy and not particularly political - he and Anna thought Hitler wasn't too bad in the 1930s - but a comment she makes to him after she reads the letter that's delivered in Chapter 1 makes him come up with a scheme to resist the Nazis. He decides to drop postcards around Berlin with anti-Hitler messages, and he quickly convinces Anna that this is worthwhile. They imagine that their postcards will cause others to resist the regime. This isn't what happens at all.

The book is extremely tense from the first page, and very easy to read. Occasionally, for a couple of sentences, I'd forget that the police are evil here, then I'd remember that this wasn't a normal crime novel. It's fascinating watching them try to figure out who's dropping the postcards - then it's just horrible knowing that they are getting closer. It really makes you wonder what you would have done if you'd been alive when Hitler was in power, because a normal life with moral integrity came at such huge risk - keeping out of trouble without supporting the regime was enough to put you in danger. Highly recommended if you want to read a book about survival in Germany in WW2, and the best fiction I've read this year. 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.