Johannes Becher was a poet and novelist who returned from exile and worked to go through the Nazi files of executed resistance fighters, with the purpose of finding authors to write about the real life stories and guarantee their legacy lived on. Becher urged writer Hans Fallada to write the story about the Hampel’s.
Hans Fallada wrote Alone in Berlin (also called Every Man Dies Alone) in 1946 in about 24 days after familiarizing with the data and files given to him, he died in 1947 and didn’t see the book published. Even though the book was published in 1947 it began to gain recognition in 2009 after it was translated to english.
Otto and Anna Quangel are the main characters, the story develops from a different point of view from the usual WWII settlement that is usually portrayed in movies or books, as described by some people it’s a story about the ordinary German people, who were surrounded by war and a regimen far over the power an individual but even that way many were not discouraged of their mission to fight for what is right.
The Quangels commit acts of “civil disobedience” through the movie, wanting to break free from the totalitarian regime, they wanted to change the opinion the people had and make them see the actual reality surrounding them and how it was under covered on a created sense of pride.
The couple starts writing messages on postcards against the regimen they’re living in, containing provocative messages like “German people, wake up. We must liberate ourselves from the Nazis” and “No peace with Hitler’s devilish government”, “Hitler’s war is the worker’s death!” and even one saying “The truth is my resistance”. The messages could have been seen as nothing next to the power the government had, but the people were so scared of it that many of them were turned into the local police and the Gestapo.
“German people, wake up. We must liberate ourselves from the Nazis” source: The Guardian, photo by: Dalya Alberge
It’s a movie that even when set more than 70 years ago, leaves something hanging in the back of one’s mind when thinking and relating the issues to what could be today, the necessity of the people to resist against the government’s laws that go through the rights of the population, in a world were war is still happening every day were there’s people still being held down because of their race or beliefs the truth of what is right is the only resistance.
