Essay #2 Modern Germany PDF

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Essay #2 EUH 3462: Modern Germany Korben William Spurlock

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Korben William Spurlock Dr. Charles Closmann EUH 3462 15 November 2020 Essay #2: Prompt #1

Throughout any political system or style of government, there will always be people who resist the rules, regulations and social norms. There will always be people who don’t agree with the government and how they govern. However, there is a difference in not agreeing with taxes for example, that you have to pay, and the possibility of being killed for having a different view point or religion than the one the state has mandated that you have to have. Within Adolf Hitlers Germany, we see that there where people all across the country that were beat, put in prison, and even killed for voicing a different point of view or holding to a different type of belief other than was mandated by the Third Reich. We see this exact situation within Hans Fallada’s 1947 book “Every Man Dies Alone”. Within Fallada’s book, we see that the main characters Otto and Anna Quangel along with Frau Rosenthal, who is their elderly Jewish neighbor, fall into this group of people who are persecuted under Hitlers Third Reich for not staying in step with the Reich’s beliefs and values. Because of this, they resisted. Not only did they resist, but they made it their mission to try and make others resist by spreading descension throughout their city. But what drove them to resist the Third Reich and their mandated rules? Not only that, but what drove them spread their gospel of dissention and rebellion to their friends, neighbors and fellow citizens? When it comes to Otto and Anna Quangel, they where more or less normal German citizens before their son was killed on the battlefield while serving in the Wehrmacht, which

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was the German Army during World War II. Neither where members of the National Socialist Party, however they both worked in some sort of capacity that assisted in the war effort. Once they received news of their son’s death, something changed within them, especially within Anna. We see that once she receives the news, she states this in Chapter 3;

“The people who are responsible for my son's death aren't going to get away with it. I'm not going to let them...' Otto's not going to decide everything by himself,' she thinks. 'I want to do what I want some of the time, even if it doesn't suit him.” (Fallada CH 3)

This horrible tragedy along with the fact that their neighbor Frau Rosenthal, a Jewish woman living on the fourth floor of their apartment building, is in constant danger of being taken away due to her being Jew, leads Otto and Anna to more or less join the resistance. They decide to resist in a simple way, by writing anti-Nazi propaganda on the back of postcards and leaving them all over town. They do this in order to sow seeds of dissention throughout their fellow Germans. We see here in Chapter 4 what Otto was thinking when he was writing his first card;

“Then he picked up the pen and said softly, but clearly, "The first sentence of our first card will read: Mother! The Führer has murdered my son."....At that instant she grasped that this very first sentence was Otto's absolute and irrevocable declaration of war, and also what that meant: war between, on the one side, the two of them, poor, small, insignificant workers who could be extinguished for just a word or

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two, and on the other, the Führer, the Party, the whole apparatus in all its power and glory, with three-fourths or even four-fifths of the German people behind it. (Fallada CH 4)

Their heart break and absolute hatred for the dictatorial government that got their son killed, led them to constantly break the law just so they can possibly change the minds of just one German citizen. They also resist the government by protecting Frau Rosenthal from being taken away by the police for being Jewish. They could easily be arrested for sheltering a Jew, but instead they choose to help her because they disagree with the Reich’s view on the Jewish people. Frau Rosenthal would be another perfect example of someone who Is driven to resist the German Reich and their rules, however her resistance is a bit different than Otto and Anna’s. Her resistance is simply existing and surviving. Considering her husband was taken to a concentration camp, she lives to survive in defiance of the Reich. The German policy on the Jewish people would have her either killed or sent to a concentration camp, just like her husband. Instead, with the help from her neighbors, she is able to stay alive and safe in her apartment. It isn’t until there are several break ins to her place that her safety is put in jeopardy. She gets to a point where she can’t take a life of isolation and oppression any more and decides to take her own life by jumping out of her apartment 4th story window. Even in death, she was able to resist the Nazis and the Third Reich by choosing when and where she was going to die. In conclusion, Otto and Anna Quangel and Frau Rosenthal both have their own ways to resist the regulations and rules of the Third Reich. The Quangel’s lost their son and blame

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the Reich for their lose. Because of this, they choose a simple, yet effective way to undermine the Reich’s policy. They choose to write anti-fascist propaganda on the back of post cards and leave them around the city so that average German citizens can find them. They do this in order to sow dissention. They also keep Frau Rosenthal safe by not exposing her to the police because she is a Jew. In contrast, Frau Rosenthal’s way of subversion is to simply survive after her husband is taken away and killed at a concentration camp because he is Jewish. Because she is to Jewish, by her staying alive she is directly rebelling and resisting the Third Reich. All three characters resist for one main reason when it boils down to it, the Reich took their world away by killing the ones the love, so they resist at all cost, even if it means their lives....