Every Man Dies Alone

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Book: Every Man Dies Alone by Hans Fallada Read Free Book Online
Authors: Hans Fallada
Tags: Fiction, Literary
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make you personally responsible for the healthy condition of your works! Healthy condition means National Socialist thinking, and nothing else! Anyone who is weak-willed and mealy mouthed and doesn’t immediately denounce anything and everything wrong will wind up in a concentration camp himself. I swear, whether you’re directors or foremen, I’ll get you knocked into shape, if I have to kick the feebleness out of you with my own boots!”
    The speaker stands on the rostrum a moment longer, his hands clenched with fury, his face is purple. At the end of this outburst the auditorium is silent. Everyone looks sheepish, all those who have effectively been asked to spy on their fellow workers. Then the speaker stomps off, the decorations on his chest tinkling slightly, and Director Schröder gets up and inquires palely whether anyone in the audience has anything to say.
    The assembly draws a deep collective breath, shifts about in the seats—it’s as though a nightmare has come to an end and the day can begin. No one seems to have anything to contribute, everyone wants to leave the hall as soon as possible, and the general director is about to close the meeting with a Heil Hitler! when a man in a blue work tunic gets up near the back and says that as far as the productivity of his team goes, there is a perfectly simple remedy. They just need such and such machinery, and he lists the items and explains how they have to be set up. Yes, and then six or eight people will have to be laid off the team—unproductive wastrels and layabouts. If he were given those conditions, he would be able to reach the productivity targets in three months, not six.
    Quangel stands there, cool and calm: he has taken up the fight. He can feel them all staring at him, the simple worker, out of place among these natty gents. But he has never cared about them especially, and he doesn’t care that they are staring at him now. Now that he’s said his piece, they put their heads together on the rostrum to talk about him. The speakers are asking who the fellow in the blue shirt is. Then the major or colonel gets up and tells Quangel that thetechnical directors will discuss the machines with him, but what does he mean about the six or eight people who ought to be thrown out?
    Slowly and obstinately Quangel replies, “Well, there’s some who can’t work, and some others who don’t like to. There’s one of them sitting there!” And with his big stiff index finger he points directly at Carpenter Dollfuss, sitting a few rows in front of him.
    A few people in the hall burst out laughing, among them Dollfuss, who has turned his head round to look and is now laughing at him.
    But Quangel goes on, not batting an eyelid, “Yes, talking and smoking cigarettes in the john, and skipping work, that’s all you’re good for, Dollfuss!”
    On the rostrum, they have put their heads together about this peculiar eccentric. But nothing can hold back the speaker in the brown uniform, who leaps to his feet and shrills: “You’re not in the Party—why are you not in the Party?”
    And Quangel answers the question the way he has always answered it: “Because I need every penny for my family to live. I can’t afford to join any Party.”
    The man in brown roars, “Because you are a selfish dog! Because you won’t do anything to help your Führer and your nation! How many are in your family?”
    Coldly Quangel answers to his face, “Listen, mate, don’t talk to me about my family today. I’ve just had news that my son has fallen.”
    For an instant there’s a deathly hush in the room, the brown official and the old foreman stare at one another across rows of chairs. Then abruptly, as though everything was settled, Otto Quangel sits down, and a little later the Nazi sits down, too. Once more, Director Schröder rises and offers the Sieg Heil! to the Führer. It sounds a little thin. With that, the meeting is at an end.
    Five minutes later, Quangel is back in

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