Day 87: Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada

In contrast to my last two postings, which were children’s novels involving unusual chickens, Fallada’s novel is a serious work of fiction based on the true story of Otto and Elise Hempel (here fictionalized as Otto and Anna Quangel) who left hundreds of handwritten anti-Nazi postcards around Berlin. Most of the cards were turned in to the police and the Gestapo initiated a huge investigation, believing, erroneously, that they were dealing with a syndicate, not a single couple. The two are caught and tried. Otto is executed but Anna dies in an allied bombing while on death row.

Perhaps the main takeaway of this long (450 pages in English) is an understanding of the pervasive fear Germans lived with under the Nazis. The postcards themselves are unsophisticated, often have spelling and grammar errors, and, ultimately, had almost no effect on the regime. Yet the act of writing them triggered the Gestapo into a criminal investigation and prosecution resulting in execution.I found the book, after the first hundred pages or so, to be a real page turner. The narrative is straightforward and there is nothing experimental about the storytelling. But once the story starts, it really does cook.

Anote about the author. 

Hans Fallada was a pseudonym for Rudolf Ditzen, a man who struggled with addiction, mental health challenges, and, more than likely, homosexuality which was banned by the Nazis. Fallada was in both prisons and psychiatric hospitals multiple times in his life. He wrote the manuscript for Every Man Dies Alone in a three month period while in a mental institution. He died in 1947 after completing the manuscript but before it was published at the age of 53. The book was popular in Germany, and is believed to be one of the first anti-Nazi novels published in German. It was only translated into English in 2009.

September 2018. kindle. 544 pgs.