Every Man Dies Alone

I found it surprisingly refreshing, uplifting, and particularly poignant in these times to read Hans Fallada's story of Nazi resistance Every Man Dies Alone, published in 1947.

Fallada's novel is based on the true story of a rather simple and quiet German couple, Otto and Ana Quangel, who resisted the Nazis with the very simple and harmless plot of writing subversive postcards that they would leave in public places.

The first postcard is simple enough: "The Fuhrer has murdered my son. PASS THIS CARD ON, SO THAT MANY PEOPLE READ IT!--DON'T GIVE TO THE WINTER RELIEF FUND!--WORK AS SLOWLY AS YOU CAN!--PUT SAND IN THE MACHINES!--EVERY STROKE OF WORK NOT DONE WILL SHORTEN THE WAR!"

The Quangels' son was killed in the war, fighting for Hitler. The "Winter Relief Fund" is Hitler's collections basket for raising money for "the cause." The Quangels try to spread a simple, yet poignant message that won't be seen by many, because anybody who finds a postcard like this in Nazi Germany is going to be terrified for their lives just to hold it.

Otto and Anna, work together to support their little plot, encouraging each other. And it becomes Otto's little mission on his day off work. It's basically what keeps them going. Sunday afternoons, he writes and Ana thinks of new places to drop the cards.

Neither of the Quangels "doubted for one moment that their cards were being passed from hand to hand in factories and offices, that Berlin was beginning to hum with talk about these oppositional spirits." "We will never regret anything. We will stand by what we've done, no matter how they torture us."

In their world, the Germany of the late 30s and early 40s, we see a landscape populated with networks of spies, who are really just neighbors blackmailing neighbors. Children playing in the street, ratting on adults in exchange for a mark or two.

After several years of foiling detectives, the Quangels are nabbed. Otto is caught in the act and eventually confesses. The Inspector notes, "And you fully understand what lies in store for you? A long jail sentence, or possibly death?" And Otto responds, "I know what I've done. And I hope you know what you're doing, too, Inspector!" "Oh, ad what's that, then?" the Inspector replies. "You're working in the employ of a murderer, delivering ever new victims to him. You do it for money; perhaps you don't even believe in the man. No, I'm certain you don't believe in him."

It's truly Otto's most heroic moment. And a triumph for the little person who resists.

Realizing that he has wasted his life, the Inspector blows his brains out in the next scene.

On death row, Quangel befriends his cellmate, a doctor who teaches him chess. The doctor also teaches him Beethoven--"it made him feel strong and brave enough to endure any fate", Mozart--"baffingly lighthearted and cheerful, which he had never been in his life" and Bach--he "would feel a pain in his chest and it would be as though he was a little boy again sitting in church with his mother, with something grand." 

On death row, the doctor and Otto can agree: At least they opposed evil: "You and I and the many locked up here, and many more in other places of detention, and tens of thousands in concentration camps--they're all resisting, today, tomorrow..."

But what good is resisting, Otto asks. The good doctor responds: "Well, it will have helped us to feel that we behaved decently till the end. And much more, it will have helped people everywhere, who will be saved for the righteous few among them, as it says in the Bible. Of course, it would have been a hundred times better if we'd had someone who could have told us. Such and such is what you have to do; our plan is this and this. But if there had been such a man in Germany, then Hitler would never come to power in 1933. As it was, we all acted alone, we were caught alone, and every one of us will have to die alone. But that doesn't mean that we are alone, or that our deaths will be in vain. Nothing in this world is done in vain, and since we are fighting for justice against brutality, we are bound to prevail in the end."

Then we find the Quangels in court and the description of the People's Court is priceless: "The People's Court in Berlin, which had nothing to do with the people and to which the people were not admitted even as silent spectators, for most of its sessions were held behind closed doors--this People's Court was an instance of a perfect system: before any accused person even set foot in the courtroom, that person was for all intents and purposes already condemned, and there was no indication that he or she had anything to hope for in there [...] The public gallery was only one-quarter full: a few Party uniforms, a few lawyers who for inscrutable reasons had chosen to attend these proceedings, and the rest law students, who wanted to learn how justice deals with people whose one crime was to love their country more than the judges did." 

Then there's the lawyer questioning Quangel: "And don't you regret it? Aren't you sorry to lose your life over a stupid stunt like that?"

"At least I stayed decent," Quangel replies. 

"You didn't need the postcards for that," the lawyer needles.

"That would have been a kind of tacit agreement. What was your price for turning into such a fine gentleman, with creased trousers and polished fingernails and deceitful concluding speeches? What did you have to pay?" The lawyer said nothing. Quangel continues, "And you will continue to pay more and more, and maybe one day, like me, you will pay with your life, but you will have done it for your indecency!" 

Another truly heroic moment for Otto. 


Just as it is for the Quangels, this time for Americans can be our finest moment as American citizens.  To remain decent. There is a lot to renounce and resist. And it's wonderful to see a factory foreman and his wife resist in a very quiet and simple way, no matter if it is effective or not. 

Currently, we're living under a regime that was put in place by the Russians purely to undermine our democracy, to destroy us, and every value that we hold dear. This plot has been exposed and documented, yet we have a Congress that has made a Faustian bargain with someone they think they can control, and they will do little to expose the plot because, one would assume, Congress is either directly or indirectly involved. It's a sad state of affairs and one with enough power can just hurl the epithet "fake news" at any piece of information that they disagree with. 

Check, check, and check.

As an American, I'm an optimist. The optimist in me believes that the moral arc of history bends toward justice. We've made some small incremental changes over the past 241 years of our very brief social experiment. We made many huge (for me, mostly positive for the most part) changes during the 8 years we had Obama as a President. They were a shock to the system, no doubt. Certainly, Obama had many failures, but I think we can agree that the man led us with dignity and grace.

Admittedly I'm a fiscal conservative. I wanted the fascist loofah-faced shit gibbon to lose the election not because I don't like conservatism. But because I'd like to see Republicans lean toward a more a sane, fiscal conservative in office. I'm a firm believer in market solutions and limited government, but sadly the GOP has alienated several generations of voters and they chose not only the opposite but  a potential despot whose damage in the first weeks of his regime will take decades to recover from. 

Sometimes it's good to look outside of domestic journalism--there's just too much hysteria from both sides when you're too close to the subject. Across the pond, The Economist rightly identifies the problem with our current president and a continuing weakness in our system of checks and balances: Because of increasing power given the office of the executive, the office of president has gone “from an 18th-century notable to a 19th-century party magnate to a 20th-century tribune to a 21st-century demagogue.” W and Obama have certainly pushed the limits of what a president does, to far extremes, too. The difference with our sexual predator in chief is that "both former presidents honoured the constitutional system; when their edicts were checked, they retreated. That is not an attitude Mr Trump’s rhetoric suggests he shares." In fact, he's done just the opposite: he's cajoled, insulted, and bullied the courts or anybody that points out his lies and blatant distortions of truth.


The media sells hysteria. It's been shown repeatedly that watching TV increases the perception that other places, particularly cities, are far more dangerous than they are.

The media likes events and circuses and bowl games, because they have a beginning and an ending, and because they can be programmed and promoted. They invite us into the situation room, alarm us with breaking news and then effortlessly move onto the next crisis. 

It's truly a race to the bottom and we, the customer, are getting stiffed.

We're somewhere in which reality is somewhere between hysteria and a reasonable time to sound the alarms. I would say we're really in the latter, but for the sake of argument let's open up the possibility that it's just hysteria. This imagining of a Trump autocracy fairly sums up a very plausible future. And it's concerning. 

We also have a case of the missing news, too. Remember how we learned that in fact Russian operatives interfered with our democracy and influenced the election? And how the Trump campaign allegedly had a series of "improper contacts" with Russia during the campaign. Where did this news go? Why are we not beating the drum? Where did the media hide to not hound this very concerning piece of news that should bother Americans of every political stripe?

We just learned that a lot of the dossier has been corroborated by operatives across Europe, but Trump's army of trolls are busy burying this with ever increasing bizarre orders and edicts. Whether or not there were improper contacts with Russia or not, it should bother all American citizens of all political stripes that indeed Russia did somehow tamper with our election, an act of covert warfare. To me, if they can prove "improper contact," which of course they can't and won't because Senate and Congress are controlled by the party of spineless twerps who have made a Faustian bargain with the con man-in-chief, but if they could, that's treason, and we should hang the fucker. Too many "ifs" in my long run-on sentence, I recognize.  Nevertheless, the lack of uproar over this not-so-tiny detail gives Putin a blank check to interfere with our country however he sees fit. And here we lost. All of us. 

I'm not trying to equate #Twitler to the real Hitler. Our reality TV host-in-chief is just a clown who doesn't even appear to want the job. Friends of his have recognized that he ran for president just to increase his ratings for "The Apprentice." It's been insinuated by many that he was rooting for Hillary anyways. And equating any of our leaders to Hitler or the Nazis is an offense to those millions who perished by the hands of those killers. People who do so need a timeout. But he's checking off a number, if not all, of the early warning signs of fascism, as spotted in the holocaust museum in DC.