Could I have been a Nazi?

I like a book that gets me thinking and ‘Alone in Berlin’ certainly got me thinking.  ‘Could I have been a Nazi?’ I wondered.

It is Hans Fallada’s brilliantly told tale of Otto and Anna Quangel’s small act of resistance against Hitler’s regime in World War Two Berlin.  His portrayal of Berlin society at that time is terrifying: neighbours spying on neighbours, eager to ingratiate themselves with the Nazi authorities; arrogant young Nazi up-starts indoctrinated in the right of Hitler’s cause; and the ever-present threat of incarceration, torture and murder at the cruel, sadistic and mad hands of the Gestapo.

Into this frightening world step the Quangels and a handful of others intent on resisting the Nazi regime in their own small ways, and for the sake of their integrity more than with any real hope of bringing about the collapse of the Reich.  In fact, the Quangels know from the beginning that they will likely be caught and killed.  Like most of the other resistors in the story, their efforts are tragically futile, except that – as Otto’s cellmate, Reichardt notes near the end – they could hold their heads high, knowing they had maintained their decency until the end.  Hitler’s henchmen could strip them of everything, but not their honour.

Remarkably, there is truth to the Quangels’ story.  There really was a couple in war-torn Berlin who went to their deaths for writing and distributing subversive postcards.  It’s the courage that took that I find remarkable.  Like Fallada’s Quangels, the Hampels surely knew that the odds were stacked against them – every postcard risked their lives – yet this ordinary couple persisted in their far-from-ordinary defiance.  It’s this that got me wondering what I would have done.

Had I lived in terror-ridden Berlin, knowing as I surely would have that I was being watched and listened to and that the slightest utterance against the regime could take me to the Alexanderplatz basement and from there to a concentration camp or the Plotenzee guillotine, I think I may not have had the courage to write one postcard, let alone hundreds.  Moreover, if I’d found one of the postcards, a cowardly shudder may have gone up my spine and maybe I would have handed it in to the Police – an accomplice to the case against the Hampels or the Quangels.

It’s too easy to read a story like ‘Alone in Berlin’ and picture yourself as the brave hero, striking out against authoritarian brutality.  Of course, the reality is that the Third Reich rose because people like me stood meekly by or were easily seduced by power or couldn’t resist the security of Nazi Party membership.  How frighteningly easy it must have actually been to become a Baldur Persicke, an Inspector Escheriche or an Obergruppenfuhrer Prall.

Thank God I never lived through anything so awful, and please God, I’ll never be tested in that way.  Just as it’s too easy to imagine myself as a resistance hero, I fear it’s too easy to imagine that darkness couldn’t descend again.

There’s something a little chilling about the way our post-war rights are often spoken of as taken for granted.  Are we so blasé about them that we could even turn a blind eye as they are set aside?  It occurred to me as I read ‘Alone in Berlin’ that those rights enshrined in the UN Declaration and protected by such things as the UN itself, NATO and the European Union are all post-war constructs, forged while the horrors of that war were still raw in people’s memories.  They are not old and might not be as embedded as we think.  In many of our prosperous, western, liberal democracies, they have not been seriously tested, yet minority groups can still be marginalised, vilified, discriminated against, oppressed and abused.  (Suddenly, we find ourselves seriously asking what is more British: to respect Muslim women and their choice of what to wear or to laugh off crass jokes about them looking like letterboxes and bank robbers.)  Where our rights have been tested elsewhere in the world – be it Palestine, Syria, Rwanda, Bosnia or China – they have been found wanting.  Many people don’t deploy their democratic rights, me included – there have been times I haven’t voted, I deplore injustice and I’ll occasionally write about my concerns to my Member of Parliament or someone, but I’ve never taken part in a serious protest.

Take LGBT+ rights as an example.  Towns the length and breadth of the country have a Pride festival and, whilst they’re colourful, fluffy, glittered-up and fun, thousands of people join in.  Even now though, like the majority of those taking part, you’ll only find me cheering from the sidelines, not proudly marching with my brothers and sisters.  I’ve long thought that the tolerance we celebrate in Pride month teeters on a knife-edge.  Latent homophobia (at best) remains rife – just look at the glittering, red-blooded world of football’s World Cup or England’s Premiership or Championship (and probably – by extension – many children’s leagues) where apparently, there are no gays and a rainbow flag would look decidedly out of place.  Scarily, I doubt it would take much for intolerance and hatred to take hold once more and if Pride marches were met with baton-wielding riot Police and snarling dogs instead of smiling, cheering, flag-waving crowds, how many people would march then?  Where would I be, I wonder?

With direct memories of the Second World War fading and with our links to it becoming ever-more distant and weak, populism is on the rise, extremists reach for the populists’ coat-tails, our rights seem to be questioned more and more and the mechanisms designed to protect them are under threat, whether that’s from Trump, Brexit, Europe’s far-right or Putin.  Are we blindly stumbling into darkness once again?  Where would I stand as it falls?  Would I slink into the shadows, cowardly and complicit, or could I find the courage to confront it like a Quangel, maintaining my decency until the end?