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Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945
An astonishing account of the human capacity for survival amid a great cityâs descent into utter annihilation
In 1939, when Ian Burumaâs epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse.
Buruma gives tender attention to the Jewish experience in Berlin during the war, weaving its thread into the broader fabric of this marvelously rich and vivid mosaic of urban life. The distillation of a broad-gauged reckoning with a vast trove of primary sources, including a surprising number of interviews with living survivors, the book is a study in extremesâdepravity and resilience, moral blindness and moral courage, pious bigotry and unchecked hedonism.
By 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. The common greeting of Berliners was now not âAuf wiedersehenâ or âHeil Hitlerâ but âBleiben Sie ĂŒbrigâââStay alive.â And by warâs end Berlinâs population had fallen by almost half.
Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Burumaâs own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labor in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported workers. Buruma gives due weight to his and their experiences, which give the book a special added dimension. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. Itâs a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.
In 1939, when Ian Burumaâs epic opens, Berlin has been under Nazi rule for six years, and its 4.3 million people have made their accommodations to the regime, more or less. When war broke out with Poland in September, what was most striking at first was how little changed. Unless you were Jewish. Then life, already hard, was soon to get unfathomably worse.
Buruma gives tender attention to the Jewish experience in Berlin during the war, weaving its thread into the broader fabric of this marvelously rich and vivid mosaic of urban life. The distillation of a broad-gauged reckoning with a vast trove of primary sources, including a surprising number of interviews with living survivors, the book is a study in extremesâdepravity and resilience, moral blindness and moral courage, pious bigotry and unchecked hedonism.
By 1943, with the German defeat at Stalingrad, ordinary life in Berlin would acquire an increasingly desperate cast. The last three years of the war in Berlin are truly a descent into hell, with a deranged regime in desperate free fall, an increasingly relentless pounding from Allied bombers, and the mounting dread of the approaching Soviet army. The common greeting of Berliners was now not âAuf wiedersehenâ or âHeil Hitlerâ but âBleiben Sie ĂŒbrigâââStay alive.â And by warâs end Berlinâs population had fallen by almost half.
Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Burumaâs own father, a prisoner conscripted into forced labor in the war economy along with 400,000 other imported workers. Buruma gives due weight to his and their experiences, which give the book a special added dimension. This is a book full of tenderness and genuine heroism, but it is by no means again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time. Most people go along. Itâs a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2026
About the author
Ian Buruma
90Â books280Â followersIan Buruma is a British-Dutch writer and academic, much of whose work focuses on the culture of Asia, particularly that of 20th-century Japan, where he lived and worked for many years.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
April 5, 2026
This is a memoir account by the author of spending the years of WW2 with his parents in Berlin. The title refers to a common greeting among people during the ordeal in Berlin about the need for everyone to focus on staying alive. The book is well written and well paced, with short and directed chapters that are easy to move through. The descriptions are all well done and consistent with the works of others about life in Berlin at the time. What got my attention the most, however, was the authorâs account of how an attitude of deep suspicion, coupled with circumspection, came to dominate the social lives of Berliners. It was nearly impossible, apart from longtime friends and acquaintances, to know whom to trust in oneâs interactions. âŠand while almost everybody knew fairly early on that the war was not going well, discussions and announcements took on a muted and euphemistic tone, based on the lack of trust and the potentially lethal consequences of saying the wrong things in front of the wrong people - even for âgoodâ people who were trying to do the right thing in an evil environment. This is of course different from the attitude today regarding politics and the Iran War, although not as different as I had hoped regarding the continuation of principled honesty.
This book is not just personal memoir but has been expanded by extensive interviews with other Berliners who survived the war and could provide their detailed stories and memories of what life in Berlin during the war was like. This story has been told before and Burumaâs book is consistent with these accounts, including accounts of Russian atrocities and rapes after the battle for Berlin.. Most notably are the movie accounts, such as Slaughterhouse Five and most distinctively for me, Downfall, about the final days of Hitler in his bunker.
This book is not just personal memoir but has been expanded by extensive interviews with other Berliners who survived the war and could provide their detailed stories and memories of what life in Berlin during the war was like. This story has been told before and Burumaâs book is consistent with these accounts, including accounts of Russian atrocities and rapes after the battle for Berlin.. Most notably are the movie accounts, such as Slaughterhouse Five and most distinctively for me, Downfall, about the final days of Hitler in his bunker.
April 18, 2026
3.5
âWidow, 33, dark hair, childless, good-looking, with home and money, seeks dependable man for swift marriage. War disability is acceptable. â Personal ad in Völkischer Beobachterâ (Nazi newspaper)
With authoritarianism spreading through the Western world these days, Buruma found himself wondering how people responded to that kind of thing in the past? The question took him quickly (one wants to say "naturally") to Germany in World War Two. What was daily life like in Berlin during the war? What did Berliners think about the regime they were living under? What moral compromises did they make to get by? The questions were timely, of course, but there was a personal component as well: Burumaâs father, Leo, was in Berlin at the time. In 1943 Leo was a law student in the German occupied Netherlands. In 1943, under threat from Nazi officials, he was sent to a labor camp near Berlin.
To gain an understanding of Berlinersâ reaction to the Nazi regime, Buruma scoured German magazines and newspapers from the period, contemporaneous journals and diaries left by participants both high and low, and numerous interviews, including some conducted by him. What comes out of all this is a rich portrait of a society stressed by both internal and external forces.
The title of the book, âStay Alive,â comes from a phrase commonly used during the war instead of âfarewellâ as the Allied bombings intensified. Each chapter focuses on one year beginning in 1939 and ending in 1945. The book begins on the very first day of the war. Official German reports said that âthe crowd exploded in a terrific storm of cheers.â Willam Shirer of CBS Radio, who was there that day, saw a very different reaction: "Some two hundred and fifty people were standing there in the sun. They listened attentively to the announcement. When it was finished there was not a murmur. They just stood there as they were before. Stunned. The people cannot realize yet that Hitler has led them into a world war.â
Life went on as normal that first year. Soccer games were still played, people shopped (though rationing did begin before the year was over), went to work and school and church. Bars, restaurants, movie theaters â all did brisk business. Businesses responded accordingly. Advertisements, couched in martial language, still ran in newspapers and magazines â like this ad for toothpaste: âVictory belongs to the healthiest nation. Almost all serious dental diseases can be prevented by proper care to avoid early tooth decay. This will mean a great advance in public health, which will boost our capacity for work and strength in war.â In short, âAs long as one wasnât Jewish or involved in active resistance, it was almost possible to imagine that life in Berlin was normal.â
Daily life in Berlin grew harder each year. Food was severely rationed to the public (the higher-ups ate just fine on food plundered from occupied countries). One attractive young woman took advantage of her appearance and went to as many diplomatic parties as she could. It was, she wrote her mother, âthe only way to have at least one decent meal a day, as the food in our office canteen has become awful.â Others turned to the black market or turned in their neighbors. Still others â Jews mostly â went into hiding.
Each year, something became harder to get. Each year, something was taken away. Lives, for example. As the casualties mounted and the list of German soldiers killed in action grew, people just wanted it all to be over. One teenaged girl, a member of the girlsâ version of the Hitlerjugend, wrote in her diary, ââIâm a disgusting traitor. . . . I wish for peace, precisely for the sake of the soldiers. Is this the proper attitude for a Prussian, a German woman? No, and no again.â
Buruma details how government oppression worsened as the Wehrmacht lost ground. More and more people were picked up by the Gestapo for one offense or another. Government agents circulated in bars and coffee shops listening into conversations for âdefeatistâ language. It was deadly serious stuff because âdefeatismâ was a capital offense.
Unsurprisingly, cynical jokes circulated among the Berliners. Gallows humor, for how else can one stay sane in such circumstances. Also it was a way of taking the government down a few pegs. One joke went like this one: Hitler asks a laborer how many hours he works in a day. âEight hours.â âI see, and how many hours, if you were to work in an armaments factory?â âSixteen hours.â âAnd if you were to work for our Party?â âTwenty-four hours, of course.â âGood man. What work do you actually do?â âIâm a grave-digger.â
Sometimes humor was a literal lifesaver. Buruma writes of a young musician named âCocoâ Schumann. Coco stayed in Berlin, playing in clubs One evening an S.S. officer approached him. Thinking quickly, Schumann called out, âYou should arrest me. Iâm a minor, and a Jew to boot.â Both these things were true, as it happens, but the S.S., believing Schumann was making an outrageous joke, laughed and walked away.
One thing caught my special attention in Buruma's portrait of Nazi Berlin. Interestingly, very special treatment was given to the film industry. Goebbels loved movies and considered himself a genius, so he gave filmmakers free rein (though they still had to work on making weapons when not on the set). Some of the anecdotes Buruma shares are astonishing. One involved a film with long song and dance number âshowing angels in feather boas.â It turns out that of the members of the chorus line were Hitlerâs SS bodyguards âdressed in full drag.â Apparently the filmmakers were unable to find dancers tall enough for the leading man.
My favorite film story took place very late in the war. It also captures the extraordinary license given the film industry. There was a movie intended to be âan entertaining account of the last-minute efforts to construct military defenses around Berlin.â It wasnât, though. It was an attempt by the film people to buy extra time as the Allies approached. Actors and crews jumped at the chance to avoid having to fight. Many days were wasted scouting locations and preparing the script for a movie that still lacked a title. Shooting finally began in February. Even as the Soviet armies were closing in, the cameras kept rolling, day after day, week after week, without any film inside.
Needless to say, there was more darkness than light as time passed. People were summarily executed if they were overheard saying something viewed as âdefeatist.â Young children and the elderly were armed â often inadequately â and told upon pain of death to fight against the advancing Russians. And sometimes the veil of silence was briefly parted. Buruma tells the haunting story of a woman who happened to share a train compartment with an SS officer. After traveling in silence for a time, he began telling her â a total stranger â about his time in a death squad in Poland: âDo you know what it meansâto kill Jews, men, women, and children as they stand in a semi-circle around the machine guns. . . . What do you say when I tell you that before such a killing, a little boy, no older than my youngest brother, stood to attention and asked me âDo I stand straight enough, Uncle?â â
Nazi Germany is long gone now, of course, and itâs reasonable to view it as a special case. But that doesnât mean it was entirely alien to our own time, not with the populist far right gaining so much ground in politics. Buruma sums up his purpose in writing the book this way: âIf there is a warning contained in the following chapters,â he says, âit is not just about the human capacity for cruelty, as well as bravery, which is hardly news, but about the temptation to look away.â
My thanks to Penguin Press and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
âWidow, 33, dark hair, childless, good-looking, with home and money, seeks dependable man for swift marriage. War disability is acceptable. â Personal ad in Völkischer Beobachterâ (Nazi newspaper)
With authoritarianism spreading through the Western world these days, Buruma found himself wondering how people responded to that kind of thing in the past? The question took him quickly (one wants to say "naturally") to Germany in World War Two. What was daily life like in Berlin during the war? What did Berliners think about the regime they were living under? What moral compromises did they make to get by? The questions were timely, of course, but there was a personal component as well: Burumaâs father, Leo, was in Berlin at the time. In 1943 Leo was a law student in the German occupied Netherlands. In 1943, under threat from Nazi officials, he was sent to a labor camp near Berlin.
To gain an understanding of Berlinersâ reaction to the Nazi regime, Buruma scoured German magazines and newspapers from the period, contemporaneous journals and diaries left by participants both high and low, and numerous interviews, including some conducted by him. What comes out of all this is a rich portrait of a society stressed by both internal and external forces.
The title of the book, âStay Alive,â comes from a phrase commonly used during the war instead of âfarewellâ as the Allied bombings intensified. Each chapter focuses on one year beginning in 1939 and ending in 1945. The book begins on the very first day of the war. Official German reports said that âthe crowd exploded in a terrific storm of cheers.â Willam Shirer of CBS Radio, who was there that day, saw a very different reaction: "Some two hundred and fifty people were standing there in the sun. They listened attentively to the announcement. When it was finished there was not a murmur. They just stood there as they were before. Stunned. The people cannot realize yet that Hitler has led them into a world war.â
Life went on as normal that first year. Soccer games were still played, people shopped (though rationing did begin before the year was over), went to work and school and church. Bars, restaurants, movie theaters â all did brisk business. Businesses responded accordingly. Advertisements, couched in martial language, still ran in newspapers and magazines â like this ad for toothpaste: âVictory belongs to the healthiest nation. Almost all serious dental diseases can be prevented by proper care to avoid early tooth decay. This will mean a great advance in public health, which will boost our capacity for work and strength in war.â In short, âAs long as one wasnât Jewish or involved in active resistance, it was almost possible to imagine that life in Berlin was normal.â
Daily life in Berlin grew harder each year. Food was severely rationed to the public (the higher-ups ate just fine on food plundered from occupied countries). One attractive young woman took advantage of her appearance and went to as many diplomatic parties as she could. It was, she wrote her mother, âthe only way to have at least one decent meal a day, as the food in our office canteen has become awful.â Others turned to the black market or turned in their neighbors. Still others â Jews mostly â went into hiding.
Each year, something became harder to get. Each year, something was taken away. Lives, for example. As the casualties mounted and the list of German soldiers killed in action grew, people just wanted it all to be over. One teenaged girl, a member of the girlsâ version of the Hitlerjugend, wrote in her diary, ââIâm a disgusting traitor. . . . I wish for peace, precisely for the sake of the soldiers. Is this the proper attitude for a Prussian, a German woman? No, and no again.â
Buruma details how government oppression worsened as the Wehrmacht lost ground. More and more people were picked up by the Gestapo for one offense or another. Government agents circulated in bars and coffee shops listening into conversations for âdefeatistâ language. It was deadly serious stuff because âdefeatismâ was a capital offense.
Unsurprisingly, cynical jokes circulated among the Berliners. Gallows humor, for how else can one stay sane in such circumstances. Also it was a way of taking the government down a few pegs. One joke went like this one: Hitler asks a laborer how many hours he works in a day. âEight hours.â âI see, and how many hours, if you were to work in an armaments factory?â âSixteen hours.â âAnd if you were to work for our Party?â âTwenty-four hours, of course.â âGood man. What work do you actually do?â âIâm a grave-digger.â
Sometimes humor was a literal lifesaver. Buruma writes of a young musician named âCocoâ Schumann. Coco stayed in Berlin, playing in clubs One evening an S.S. officer approached him. Thinking quickly, Schumann called out, âYou should arrest me. Iâm a minor, and a Jew to boot.â Both these things were true, as it happens, but the S.S., believing Schumann was making an outrageous joke, laughed and walked away.
One thing caught my special attention in Buruma's portrait of Nazi Berlin. Interestingly, very special treatment was given to the film industry. Goebbels loved movies and considered himself a genius, so he gave filmmakers free rein (though they still had to work on making weapons when not on the set). Some of the anecdotes Buruma shares are astonishing. One involved a film with long song and dance number âshowing angels in feather boas.â It turns out that of the members of the chorus line were Hitlerâs SS bodyguards âdressed in full drag.â Apparently the filmmakers were unable to find dancers tall enough for the leading man.
My favorite film story took place very late in the war. It also captures the extraordinary license given the film industry. There was a movie intended to be âan entertaining account of the last-minute efforts to construct military defenses around Berlin.â It wasnât, though. It was an attempt by the film people to buy extra time as the Allies approached. Actors and crews jumped at the chance to avoid having to fight. Many days were wasted scouting locations and preparing the script for a movie that still lacked a title. Shooting finally began in February. Even as the Soviet armies were closing in, the cameras kept rolling, day after day, week after week, without any film inside.
Needless to say, there was more darkness than light as time passed. People were summarily executed if they were overheard saying something viewed as âdefeatist.â Young children and the elderly were armed â often inadequately â and told upon pain of death to fight against the advancing Russians. And sometimes the veil of silence was briefly parted. Buruma tells the haunting story of a woman who happened to share a train compartment with an SS officer. After traveling in silence for a time, he began telling her â a total stranger â about his time in a death squad in Poland: âDo you know what it meansâto kill Jews, men, women, and children as they stand in a semi-circle around the machine guns. . . . What do you say when I tell you that before such a killing, a little boy, no older than my youngest brother, stood to attention and asked me âDo I stand straight enough, Uncle?â â
Nazi Germany is long gone now, of course, and itâs reasonable to view it as a special case. But that doesnât mean it was entirely alien to our own time, not with the populist far right gaining so much ground in politics. Buruma sums up his purpose in writing the book this way: âIf there is a warning contained in the following chapters,â he says, âit is not just about the human capacity for cruelty, as well as bravery, which is hardly news, but about the temptation to look away.â
My thanks to Penguin Press and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
April 10, 2026
This wonderful book is a social history of Berlin during its darkest years that reconstructs life in the Reich capital through letters, diaries, and notes from a diverse group of its inhabitants. the list ranges from heroes to convinced National Socialists and It includes everyone in between: the victims of a criminal state as well as the decent people who despite a lack of heroism tried to accommodate themselves to life in such a system.
The narrative zooms in and out of different social circles and groups, and as we get familiar with the attitudes and reactions of one set the author quickly pulls us away to those of another, which complicates any image of a monolithic uniformity that is broadly representative of the whole.
The author keeps orbiting around the idea of maintaining decency while living in a criminal state. His verdict is that for the most part it comes at a cost: that of compromise. The very nature of this system throws on its members (whether these members were willing participants or not is immaterial) a bunch of moral dilemmas that must be solved if one wishes to remain uncorrupted and true to him/herself (something that, as a member of an 'unfree state', I can relate to).
If we define decency as the state of being true to oneâs principles, then living in an unfree or criminal system thus becomes a humiliation ritual whereby one is forced to act against his better judgment and moral impulses that come naturally with existence. This corruption (which henceforth I shall call 'humiliation') is what results from forcing a compromise, where being in harmony with oneself is suppressed and subordinated to the practical need of 'getting by'.
Anyhow, I digress.
We can isolate two more themes from this account:
I/ Normalization (or "to pretend that life in a criminal state is normal") :
This pretense of normality was central to the propaganda machine under Goebbels, the idea being to distract the people from the uncomfortable reality of war via entertainment without boring them with too much propaganda ( though towards the end there was an abundance of the latter as opposed to a scarcity of the former). Normality, or more accurately, the normalization of the abnormal, was not an exclusive prerogative of the state, it was exploited for different purposes: The state used it to legitimize itself, the people to hide their humiliation. to paraphrase VĂĄclav Havel; it helps people conceal from themselves the low foundations of their obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something familiar, and that something is the sense of normality.
II/ adapting:
Wartime Berlin is a study of the human ability to adapt to circumstances no matter how monstrous or inhumane they get, and the different testimonies that make up this book show us how an urban population, pressed by war conditions, can bring itself to construct a routine (indeed a life) centering around getting your rations, going to theatres, partying, and finishing just in time to spend the night in a raid shelter. even the novelty of being bombed, strafed, and seeing dead bodies pile up wears off with time. But more important is that repeated exposure to such horrors is enough to strip ideology of its allure, or as the saying goes, a hungry stomach turns a man practical... It sure did for the Nazis at the end, since the unfiltered horrors of death and destruction did more than any piece of Allied propaganda to turn them practical.
The book reads nicely and it's easy to follow once you're familiar with the names in its pages, I also liked the way it treats the intersection between culture and the war effort.
Iâd recommend checking 'Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945â1955' by Harald JĂ€hner after this one.
The UFA movies mentioned in the present book are available on YouTube, where youâll also find a fine analysis of the antisemitic 'Jud SĂŒĂ' under the title âPropaganda in Film | Suss The Jew (1940)â.
Rating: 3.5/5.
The narrative zooms in and out of different social circles and groups, and as we get familiar with the attitudes and reactions of one set the author quickly pulls us away to those of another, which complicates any image of a monolithic uniformity that is broadly representative of the whole.
The author keeps orbiting around the idea of maintaining decency while living in a criminal state. His verdict is that for the most part it comes at a cost: that of compromise. The very nature of this system throws on its members (whether these members were willing participants or not is immaterial) a bunch of moral dilemmas that must be solved if one wishes to remain uncorrupted and true to him/herself (something that, as a member of an 'unfree state', I can relate to).
If we define decency as the state of being true to oneâs principles, then living in an unfree or criminal system thus becomes a humiliation ritual whereby one is forced to act against his better judgment and moral impulses that come naturally with existence. This corruption (which henceforth I shall call 'humiliation') is what results from forcing a compromise, where being in harmony with oneself is suppressed and subordinated to the practical need of 'getting by'.
Anyhow, I digress.
We can isolate two more themes from this account:
I/ Normalization (or "to pretend that life in a criminal state is normal") :
This pretense of normality was central to the propaganda machine under Goebbels, the idea being to distract the people from the uncomfortable reality of war via entertainment without boring them with too much propaganda ( though towards the end there was an abundance of the latter as opposed to a scarcity of the former). Normality, or more accurately, the normalization of the abnormal, was not an exclusive prerogative of the state, it was exploited for different purposes: The state used it to legitimize itself, the people to hide their humiliation. to paraphrase VĂĄclav Havel; it helps people conceal from themselves the low foundations of their obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something familiar, and that something is the sense of normality.
II/ adapting:
Wartime Berlin is a study of the human ability to adapt to circumstances no matter how monstrous or inhumane they get, and the different testimonies that make up this book show us how an urban population, pressed by war conditions, can bring itself to construct a routine (indeed a life) centering around getting your rations, going to theatres, partying, and finishing just in time to spend the night in a raid shelter. even the novelty of being bombed, strafed, and seeing dead bodies pile up wears off with time. But more important is that repeated exposure to such horrors is enough to strip ideology of its allure, or as the saying goes, a hungry stomach turns a man practical... It sure did for the Nazis at the end, since the unfiltered horrors of death and destruction did more than any piece of Allied propaganda to turn them practical.
The book reads nicely and it's easy to follow once you're familiar with the names in its pages, I also liked the way it treats the intersection between culture and the war effort.
Iâd recommend checking 'Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945â1955' by Harald JĂ€hner after this one.
The UFA movies mentioned in the present book are available on YouTube, where youâll also find a fine analysis of the antisemitic 'Jud SĂŒĂ' under the title âPropaganda in Film | Suss The Jew (1940)â.
Rating: 3.5/5.
March 21, 2026
So many interesting parallels are obvious between the crazed attitude of the Nazi government and the behaviour of certain world leaders today. Once again ordinary people are used to the advantage of megalomaniacs and suffer the consequences.
April 7, 2026
It pains me to give this book 2 stars because the premise cannot be more timely and the theme so prescient. As we live in today's world, what people are we, those who live in safety and comfort, when we know that unimaginable atrocities are happening.
The premise of this book is a good one. However, the book itself, in my mind, failed to deliver on its promise and did not offer any new insight into the human condition. It gave no distinctive discourse on why people behaved the way they did, why some acted heroically or some feigned ignorance, so on and so forth. We have a lot of beautifully written prose with vignettes of life in Berlin between 1939 and 1945. We stay with a few characters and follow them through the years and beyond. Some passages are poignant and very moving, for example, the confession of an SS soldier on a train, and another who recalled a boy, a camp prisoner, asking if he was standing tall, straight enough. Yet, other passages stood out strangely. For example, there were repeated mentions of homosexual people seeking encounters in public bathrooms (this was mentioned more than once, as if that is just what all gay people do - it was off-putting and weirdly unsettling). The people of Berlin continued to lead a hedonistic lifestyle of cocktail parties, going to the movies and shows, all the way almost until the end. Hitler was a failed artist himself (this was not even mentioned in the book) but indulged in the arts and had wanted his people to be entertained with glamorous movies - great - that reminds me that I need to read The Director by Daniel Kehlmann sooner rather than later.
I craved more insight into what all of those types of behavior meant and what it means for us today, because history is supposed to provide us a glimpse of a lesson, perhaps an understanding of what we did wrong or how we can do better, but instead we just had hundreds of pages of recounting of facts. Honestly, if the answer is that people are just the way they are, then what is the point of this book at all? Reading the title, Stay Alive, is probably just enough to explain the citizens in Berlin during that era. Maybe the same justifies how the othering of certain peoples/groups is increasingly normalized nowadays. The author never quite makes this connection. Ok, he was never even close, and thus renders the title kind of useless without a point.
The book almost ventured from simplistic to the complex in two instances. The first, there was a brief exchange between two resistance members debating whether it was necessary to just kill off Hitler, or whether it was necessary to reform the entire country of Germany. The author attributed the difference in opinion to the fact that one person was a German and the other was not. The discussion was left off just as that without further contemplation. The second, more interesting thread, occurred when the author questioned whether his father could have been antisemitic. His father was Dutch. It was frequently implied that it was not appropriate for him to associate with "inferior peoples" such as Russians or to date a Ukrainian woman. This could have been the start of some very dark and difficult dives into his own family's psyche, but alas, all we got was, "oh he never said anything later in life" and that was about it. This was ironic, considering that his father's letters home during these years seemed to be exactly the excuse that started this whole book in the first place. It almost feels like the author could not make those letters quite meaty enough and had to put everything into grandiose terms for a book like this to have been noticed...featured everywhere as a hotly anticipated new non-fiction? I admit I picked this up after reading a review in The New York Times. Big premise like this one, however, just led to a let-down for me. For his father's letters, I would have preferred this book to have been an intimate query and journey into his own family's legacy from those years in Berlin. I myself am not brave enough to go down that rabbit hole of my own family, but I digress.
Any other work that handles this book's original stated purpose better, I'd love to read it. This was not it.
The premise of this book is a good one. However, the book itself, in my mind, failed to deliver on its promise and did not offer any new insight into the human condition. It gave no distinctive discourse on why people behaved the way they did, why some acted heroically or some feigned ignorance, so on and so forth. We have a lot of beautifully written prose with vignettes of life in Berlin between 1939 and 1945. We stay with a few characters and follow them through the years and beyond. Some passages are poignant and very moving, for example, the confession of an SS soldier on a train, and another who recalled a boy, a camp prisoner, asking if he was standing tall, straight enough. Yet, other passages stood out strangely. For example, there were repeated mentions of homosexual people seeking encounters in public bathrooms (this was mentioned more than once, as if that is just what all gay people do - it was off-putting and weirdly unsettling). The people of Berlin continued to lead a hedonistic lifestyle of cocktail parties, going to the movies and shows, all the way almost until the end. Hitler was a failed artist himself (this was not even mentioned in the book) but indulged in the arts and had wanted his people to be entertained with glamorous movies - great - that reminds me that I need to read The Director by Daniel Kehlmann sooner rather than later.
I craved more insight into what all of those types of behavior meant and what it means for us today, because history is supposed to provide us a glimpse of a lesson, perhaps an understanding of what we did wrong or how we can do better, but instead we just had hundreds of pages of recounting of facts. Honestly, if the answer is that people are just the way they are, then what is the point of this book at all? Reading the title, Stay Alive, is probably just enough to explain the citizens in Berlin during that era. Maybe the same justifies how the othering of certain peoples/groups is increasingly normalized nowadays. The author never quite makes this connection. Ok, he was never even close, and thus renders the title kind of useless without a point.
The book almost ventured from simplistic to the complex in two instances. The first, there was a brief exchange between two resistance members debating whether it was necessary to just kill off Hitler, or whether it was necessary to reform the entire country of Germany. The author attributed the difference in opinion to the fact that one person was a German and the other was not. The discussion was left off just as that without further contemplation. The second, more interesting thread, occurred when the author questioned whether his father could have been antisemitic. His father was Dutch. It was frequently implied that it was not appropriate for him to associate with "inferior peoples" such as Russians or to date a Ukrainian woman. This could have been the start of some very dark and difficult dives into his own family's psyche, but alas, all we got was, "oh he never said anything later in life" and that was about it. This was ironic, considering that his father's letters home during these years seemed to be exactly the excuse that started this whole book in the first place. It almost feels like the author could not make those letters quite meaty enough and had to put everything into grandiose terms for a book like this to have been noticed...featured everywhere as a hotly anticipated new non-fiction? I admit I picked this up after reading a review in The New York Times. Big premise like this one, however, just led to a let-down for me. For his father's letters, I would have preferred this book to have been an intimate query and journey into his own family's legacy from those years in Berlin. I myself am not brave enough to go down that rabbit hole of my own family, but I digress.
Any other work that handles this book's original stated purpose better, I'd love to read it. This was not it.
April 8, 2026
A very moving account of wartime Berlin, probably inspired by Burumaâs fatherâs time in forced labour at Knorr-Bremse at the time. How did the majority, the people who had an opinion, but did not fight the regime, live in the war years? The ones who were just thrown into it.
Sourced from official accounts, published diaries, personal interviews and the first hand letters from his father it casts a bright light on the daily process of surviving, the quest for some joy and the challenge to stand by oneâs values even when survival is in question. Dramatically it also shows how each war year is worse than the previous but people, Nazi bigwigs as well as common Berliners continue on their fateful paths until the collapse. It answers the lingering question âhow could Germans not know about the Shoahâ clearly: everybody must have.
Obviously the book is governed by what is available and at times feels unbalanced, for example when describing the various outputs of the german movie industry UFA in length and detail. What about, say, pharmacists?
I accepted Burumaâs occasional flippancy as a means to create a distance to the murdering, torturing, raping but some may take offence.
Generally I am a fan of such insightful books, âWie war das eigentlichâ from Max von der GrĂŒn being another 3rd Reich example, and â1913â by Florian Illies being a similar account with a very different focus.
A strong reminder to everyone, be it macho-fuelled president or macha-sipping leftie how hard it is to stand up to a dictatorship and be heroically uncompromising on oneâs values. And an ode to how adaptable people (specifically, Berliners) are when to combine it with survival (hence the title).
Sourced from official accounts, published diaries, personal interviews and the first hand letters from his father it casts a bright light on the daily process of surviving, the quest for some joy and the challenge to stand by oneâs values even when survival is in question. Dramatically it also shows how each war year is worse than the previous but people, Nazi bigwigs as well as common Berliners continue on their fateful paths until the collapse. It answers the lingering question âhow could Germans not know about the Shoahâ clearly: everybody must have.
Obviously the book is governed by what is available and at times feels unbalanced, for example when describing the various outputs of the german movie industry UFA in length and detail. What about, say, pharmacists?
I accepted Burumaâs occasional flippancy as a means to create a distance to the murdering, torturing, raping but some may take offence.
Generally I am a fan of such insightful books, âWie war das eigentlichâ from Max von der GrĂŒn being another 3rd Reich example, and â1913â by Florian Illies being a similar account with a very different focus.
A strong reminder to everyone, be it macho-fuelled president or macha-sipping leftie how hard it is to stand up to a dictatorship and be heroically uncompromising on oneâs values. And an ode to how adaptable people (specifically, Berliners) are when to combine it with survival (hence the title).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 25, 2026
A Prequel to Our Times
Ian Buruma puts faces and dialogue/text to a time many never learn about or gleefully forget in this age of paid/sponsored internet âinfluencersâ who peddle attractive lies.
One gets the feeling that the architects of our current tilt towards autocracy read the history of these timesâminus the accounts of its victims, as some sort of pornography where power and wealth replace orgasms.
Ian Buruma puts faces and dialogue/text to a time many never learn about or gleefully forget in this age of paid/sponsored internet âinfluencersâ who peddle attractive lies.
One gets the feeling that the architects of our current tilt towards autocracy read the history of these timesâminus the accounts of its victims, as some sort of pornography where power and wealth replace orgasms.
March 27, 2026
Let the People Speak - True Tales from Berlin - from WWII Times
Amazing book from the master - Ian Buruma out of many years and books in Japan - returns to his fatherâs stories of living and working in Berlin during the war years - along with interviews and diaries of many others who lived through those terrible years. It is a classic!
Amazing book from the master - Ian Buruma out of many years and books in Japan - returns to his fatherâs stories of living and working in Berlin during the war years - along with interviews and diaries of many others who lived through those terrible years. It is a classic!
April 8, 2026
History from below, meaning the focus is on ordinary, non-famous souls and how they coped during this turbulent time. Some were shy and some were very brave. All suffered but not all suffering is physically or emotionally equivalent, as these stories make clear.
March 23, 2026
I enjoyed this book. I am a big time World War II history buff. This speaks to how people in berlin survived through the war years and directly after the end of the war.
A very interesting read from the German civilian point of view. Speaks to the harshness of war on all sides.
A very interesting read from the German civilian point of view. Speaks to the harshness of war on all sides.
March 29, 2026
Buruma is one of my favorite living historians, and this is an excellent book focusing on the lives of ordinary people in Berlin during World War II. The stories are taken mostly from memoirs and interviews. The types of people run the gamut, from young to old, Jews and Gentiles, believers in the Third Reich and opponents, privileged and working class. Burumaâs own father was pressed into labor in Berlin from his home in the Netherlands, and his letters home and stories told to his family provide the perspective of a forced laborer.
While there are stories of resistance, most people keep their heads down and try to survive. A few help out their Jewish neighbors, but a very few. I have been fascinated with the Nazi era all my life, and always wondered how Germans allowed the Nazi takeover and its appalling actions. Long ago, I used to think I might read a book someday that would explain it, but instead contemporary life has explained it to me. Still, itâs interesting to see how another people in another time and place behaved under fascism. Buruma expertly weaves all the stories together to present a compelling picture of wartime Berlin.
While there are stories of resistance, most people keep their heads down and try to survive. A few help out their Jewish neighbors, but a very few. I have been fascinated with the Nazi era all my life, and always wondered how Germans allowed the Nazi takeover and its appalling actions. Long ago, I used to think I might read a book someday that would explain it, but instead contemporary life has explained it to me. Still, itâs interesting to see how another people in another time and place behaved under fascism. Buruma expertly weaves all the stories together to present a compelling picture of wartime Berlin.
April 17, 2026
This was a fascinating history of life in Berlin during World War II. I found it pretty gripping and hard to put down. The author uses mostly first-person accounts and interviews, as well as his personal family history, to assemble his narrative, so it often draws you in, in the same way a novel would if it had a large cast of characters who were all involved in different ways in the same conflict. The cast of real life characters ranges from Geobbels, whose diary makes frequent appearances, to a teenage "Hitler maiden" who passionately supports the Fuehrer, to prominent Jews of mixed heritage living in constant fear of deportation, to anti-Nazi citizens, to Jews and other persecuted groups in concentration camps, to regular people simply trying to keep their lives as intact as possible in the midst of a horrific, insane war led by idealogues firmly ensconced in fantasies of omnipotence and ultimate victory. The resonances with present-day events (see "insane war led by ideologues firmly ensconced in fantasies ...") are of course sobering too. Highly recommended.
April 7, 2026
A beautifully written book recording the lives of ordinary (and not so ordinary) Berliners from the outbreak of the Second World War until Soviet tanks rolled in to the city in 1945 (and the immediate aftermath).
The author focusses on many lives, not least his own father who was shipped in as a Dutch foreign worker during the war. The personal element is a beautiful touch.
The book is a poignant account of the gradual deterioration of the city from the initial days of inhabitants expecting an easy war to a picture of broken (and lied to) residents six years later living in a site of utter destruction.
For me, the only reason not to give a 5 star review is the very slight over reliance of focussing on chronicling entertainers, but I suppose that any history of this kind has to rely on the limited sources that are available.
Overall an excellent book that is easy to read albeit that its contents are extremely challenging.
The author focusses on many lives, not least his own father who was shipped in as a Dutch foreign worker during the war. The personal element is a beautiful touch.
The book is a poignant account of the gradual deterioration of the city from the initial days of inhabitants expecting an easy war to a picture of broken (and lied to) residents six years later living in a site of utter destruction.
For me, the only reason not to give a 5 star review is the very slight over reliance of focussing on chronicling entertainers, but I suppose that any history of this kind has to rely on the limited sources that are available.
Overall an excellent book that is easy to read albeit that its contents are extremely challenging.
April 14, 2026
This is a compelling and sometimes harrowing look at life in war time Berlin under the Nazi regime. To create the narrative, Buruma pulls from personal accounts in interviews, diaries, letters, stories, and newspapers from everyday people in all walks of life, including his own Dutch father, who was conscripted into the labor force with other foreign workers. The compilation is a study of how ordinary people navigate life and behave under constant peril and extreme pressure.
Each section of the book is devoted to a year of the war and incorporates a wide variety of viewpoints including students, resistance fighters, propaganda ministers, Jewish musicians, and Nazi true believers. While there are stories of courage and resistance, they exist alongside the much more common responses of adaption, denial and compromise. I found this an absolutely fascinating glimpse of a moment in the past as well as a cautionary tale for today.
Each section of the book is devoted to a year of the war and incorporates a wide variety of viewpoints including students, resistance fighters, propaganda ministers, Jewish musicians, and Nazi true believers. While there are stories of courage and resistance, they exist alongside the much more common responses of adaption, denial and compromise. I found this an absolutely fascinating glimpse of a moment in the past as well as a cautionary tale for today.
April 10, 2026
I picked this up because of this line in the description: "Again and again we see that most people do not do the hard thing most of the time." I intimately, painfully understand this- I left DC in 2025 because of it. This central premise- that most people, when faced with a criminal state, simply go along- is one of the most urgent questions a book about Nazi-era Berlin could tackle right now. And the raw material is all here. It is obvious that this is a meticulously researched book...but for me, the book never quite becomes more than the sum of its parts. It reads as a collection of vivid anecdotes.
The audiobook narratorâs voice was easy to listen to, which kept me going. But if I'm honest, this was more like a 2-2.5 book for me; I bumped it up because the subject is so important.
The audiobook narratorâs voice was easy to listen to, which kept me going. But if I'm honest, this was more like a 2-2.5 book for me; I bumped it up because the subject is so important.
April 2, 2026
This book really takes you into life in Berlin during 1939-1945. I fell asleep thinking about it and even had dreams about it. It was fascinating to read about the jokes that people made, and the newspaper articles that were written. The Berliners seem a tough, gritty bunch, not easily fooled by Hitler.
I was also curious about some of the sources that were listed. I would like to read their stories in their entirety now. When I read these kind of accounts, I am always astonished at the will of people to survive - slave labor, bombings, torture, starvation. Wish there was a Part II that deals with the post-war years now.
I was also curious about some of the sources that were listed. I would like to read their stories in their entirety now. When I read these kind of accounts, I am always astonished at the will of people to survive - slave labor, bombings, torture, starvation. Wish there was a Part II that deals with the post-war years now.
April 6, 2026
Iâm a fan of this author and I believe he âdid it againâ with encompassing many perspectives and narratives around a central theme. For the general reader, I think it could be very easy to get lost in the multiple narratives and anecdotes. That said, he utilizes so many resources to cover such a specific area of World War II history in one German city. His focus on Berlin Jews is especially admirable, given the lack of attention of many World War II works of non-fiction especially concerning this city. Well written, but keep a notepad handy to jot down names and relationships.
April 17, 2026
Berlin 1939-1945.
Why I started this book: Author's father was foreign worker in Berlin when the lines between conscripts and volunteers were pretty blurry.
Why I finished it: Interesting history, but a lot about famous actors and their propaganda films... which then became about what was available for mass consumption. Interesting reporting that the closer the end came, the more people partied... an unfortunate preview of what we could see in the next couple months/years.
Why I started this book: Author's father was foreign worker in Berlin when the lines between conscripts and volunteers were pretty blurry.
Why I finished it: Interesting history, but a lot about famous actors and their propaganda films... which then became about what was available for mass consumption. Interesting reporting that the closer the end came, the more people partied... an unfortunate preview of what we could see in the next couple months/years.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Buruma zoomt in op de morele dilemmaâs van Berlijners die tijdens het Hitlerregime in de stad bleven. Hij heeft dagboeken gelezen en met overlevenden gepraat. Sommigen zaten in het verzet, hielpen Joden, anderen speelden Joden in Nazifilms. Zij die tegen de nazis waren, stonden elke dag weer voor de vraag: wat doe ik? Hoever wil ik gaan in mijn weerstand?
March 26, 2026
Fascinating and chilling at the same time. Also a lesson in resilience of Berliners. This is how a vibrant city crumbled under a murderous dictator and how it came back to life. There is also a warning from the author, we are not finished with dictators.
Tremendous effort by the author to research and locate those who still have memories (and diaries) of the Hitler times.
Tremendous effort by the author to research and locate those who still have memories (and diaries) of the Hitler times.
March 30, 2026
When I explained to a friend that I was reading this book, they told me, deadpan: "Oh good-- it's a book that has zero relevance to today."
Is it enough to be decent in the face of an increasingly malevolent government and society? I think we can only hope our age has a sensitive (and generous) a chronicler in 80 years.
Is it enough to be decent in the face of an increasingly malevolent government and society? I think we can only hope our age has a sensitive (and generous) a chronicler in 80 years.
April 9, 2026
An absolutely stunning important book, a must read as a cautionary tale that history repeats itself. Be afraid, very afraid, of the current state of our world. I urge everyone to read this book from cover to cover.
April 1, 2026
Really interesting exploration of German civilians in Berlin through World War II. Worth a read.
April 8, 2026
One of the best non-fiction I've read in a long time. Reads like a novel, but I learned so much too.
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