"Alone In Berlin" by Hans Fallada

This Second World War classic was published in 1947 soon after its author's death and was largely written in a mental hospital the previous year. It was only translated into English in 2009, since when I have heard nothing but good things about it and finally got to read it. The original title is actually 'Every Man Dies Alone' and it is a shame that was not retained for the English edition.

Set mainly in Berlin during the middle years of the war, there are a host of characters who grapple with life under Nazi totalitarian rule in different ways. Some collaborate, some keep their heads down and some resist. The resistors get treated brutally of course, making this a very tough read as it is filled with violence. But it is thrilling nonetheless, and I am quite sure will remain with me for a very long time.

Sometimes fiction really is the best medium for explaining how people actually lived in a period of history, what really happened and why? This is such a novel. At its heart sit an elderly couple whose sons are killed in the war and whose response is to write postcards with anti-regime messages on them which they then covertly distribute around the city. The lion's share of the novel concerns the SS and gestapo attempts to discover their identity, and latterly their arrests and trial.

The book excels at demonstrating how societal norms were turned upside down by Hitler and his supporters. Greedy men of limited education and no scruples got themselves promoted via party membership and slavish regime devotion, getting to rob from and sometimes torture those who would normally have had social status. Violence was the turn-to method of social control.

It is terrifying, and one is left asking (not for the first or last time) just how can this have happened in a perfectly civilised European country? One is also left asking exactly what reckoning, if any, there was after the war for the many thousands of guilty small-time collaborators. I suspect, for a lot of them, none whatsoever. The big beasts were punished, but not the henchmen.

Not a pleasant reading experience but a completely compelling and unforgettable one.

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