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Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945
An astonishing account of the human capacity for survival amid a great city’s descent into utter annihilation
In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s 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 extremes—depravity 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 “Auf wiedersehen” or “Heil Hitler” but “Bleiben Sie übrig”—“Stay alive.” And by war’s end Berlin’s population had fallen by almost half.
Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma’s 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. It’s a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.
In 1939, when Ian Buruma’s 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 extremes—depravity 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 “Auf wiedersehen” or “Heil Hitler” but “Bleiben Sie übrig”—“Stay alive.” And by war’s end Berlin’s population had fallen by almost half.
Among the people trying to stay alive in the city was Ian Buruma’s 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. It’s a lesson that has not lost its timeliness.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published March 17, 2026
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About the author
Ian Buruma
74 books281 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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May 2, 2026
“Widow, 33, dark hair, childless, good-looking, with home and money, seeks dependable man for swift marriage. War disability is acceptable. — Personal ad in Völkischer Beobachter” (Nazi newspaper)
As authoritarian movements spread in the Western world these days, Ian Buruma found himself closely watching to see how people were responding. Would there be resistance? Compliance? Enthusiastic support? Is there some insight we can glean from similar situations in the past?
Germany in World War Two quickly (and naturally) came to mind. And a recent historical antecedent it made sense. What's more, there was a personal component as well: Buruma’s father, Leo, was in Berlin at the time. In 1943 Leo was a law student in the German occupied Netherlands when he was sent to a labor camp near Berlin. And so Berlin became the focus of Buruma's study. He began researching what daily life was like during the war. What did Germans think about the regime they were living under? What moral compromises did they have to make in order to get by?
He scoured German magazines and newspapers from the period, 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.
Each chapter in "Staying Alive" focuses on one year, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1945. The book on the very first day of the war. Official German reports described the crowd response as an "explosion," "a terrific storm of cheers.” Willam Shirer of CBS Radio, who was himself in Berlin 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.” But they came to understand it soon enough.
Life went on as normal that first year. True, taxes went up, food and clothing could only be gotten with ration coupons, some radio stations were banned, gas stations were prohibited from selling to ordinary civilians, and windows had to be blackened so light wouldn't show at night. Jews began to disappear. But soccer games were still played, people shopped, went to work and school and church. Bars, restaurants, and movie theaters all did brisk business. Magazines still published articles about, for example, antique silverware, turning Bavarian farms into country homes, and travel through Poland, including "the General Gouvernment, the area that encompassed Auschwitz-Birkenau and other extermination camps (the camps weren't acknowledged, of course). Advertisements for toothpaste, perfume, clothing, cigarettes and chewing tobacco still ran, only now they were couched not in terms of simple consumption but as supportive of the war effort: maintaining good dental health was patriotic, one said, an"advance in public health, which will boost our capacity for work and strength in war.” Things still felt so normal that one gentleman -- a Jewish convert to the Lutheran church -- wrote to Hermann Goering saying he wanted to join the Wehrmacht and fight for his country. (He got no reply.)
In short, as Buruma observes, “As long as one wasn’t Jewish or involved in active resistance, it was almost possible to imagine that life in Berlin was normal.”
Each year the war went on, something was taken away. More young men were called into service never to return; more people being taken by the authorities, also never to return. Food shortages led the government to tell Berliners to take their pet dogs out to the country and leave them "to fend for themselves." Magazines even ran stories about how to save money by making one's own funeral clothing. Whatever enthusiasm might have existed in the first year or two of war began to wane. Morale, monitored by a Nazi intelligence office, fell as the war progressed. The government -- particularly Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels -- responded with lies, threats, enticements, and distractions. A peevish Goebbels even outlawed dancing for a time (but he kept the beauty parlors open). The war and its deprivations brought out the worst in some people: "Ordinary German citizens, the people who were supposedly indifferent or even hostile to the war that Hitler began, behaved... badly, and this in the center of Berlin.” Others faced difficult decisions. As Buruma puts it, "You could not be inside a criminal state without being corrupted, and open resistance meant death."
Attitudes continued to shift as casualty lists grew longer, bombs fell, and people lost their homes. In her diary one teenaged girl, an eager and early member of the BDM (the girls’ version of the Hitlerjugend), praised Hitler and parroted propaganda in the early years. Later, though, her patriotism grew more complicated: “I’m 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.” Interestingly, though, Buruma notes that most diarists demonstrated little anger toward the Allied bombers overhead. “After all,”one of them wrote, “they are Germanic people too.”
There were some, however, for whom the war was a kind of surreal play in which old habits still existed, albeit transformed in some manner. A woman described a dinner party hosted by a Nazi aristocrat: “We pretended that well-dressed women and luxury still existed.In an icy dining room, we sat at elegantly laid tables, discussing literature, while eating lobster, and drinking cognac and sparkling wine.”
It’s impossible, of course, to capture the breadth of Buruma’s portrait. I won’t try. Rather, let me share some things that stood out. Throughout “Stay Alive” he shows us people using humor as a way of coping. Jokes were a form of quiet resistance, of taking the government down a few pegs: Hitler asks a laborer how many hours he works in a day. “Eight hours.” “I see, and how many hours, if you were to work in an armaments factory?” “Sixteen hours.” “And if you were to work for our Party?” “Twenty-four hours, of course.” “Good man. What work do you actually do?” “I’m a grave-digger.”
Sometimes, however, humor was a literal lifesaver. Buruma writes about a young musician named Heinz “Coco” Schumann. Coco stayed in Berlin, playing in clubs. He was one of the young musicians who played American jazz in clubs even though it was banned. Lookouts kept watch outside for Gestapo agents. When one entered the club the music would instantly change from jazz to a popular German song. One evening an S.S. officer approached him, a skeptical expression on his face. Thinking quickly, Schumann called out, “You should arrest me. I’m a minor, and a Jew to boot.” The officer, believing Schumann was surely just making an outrageous joke, laughed and walked away. In fact, Coco was Jewish and a minor.
Another subject that stood out for me was the way the film industry received very special treatment. In 1944, for example, Goebbels ordered “all theaters, revues, cabarets, circuses, and drama schools” shut down. But cinemas were allowed to stay open. Goebbels loved movies, it seems, and considered himself an aficionado, so he gave filmmakers free rein. Film people still had to work on making weapons when not on the set, but at least they weren't being sent to the front. One of the stories Buruma shares took pace very late in the war. A film — ostensibly “an entertaining account of the last-minute efforts to construct military defenses around Berlin” to boost pblic morale -- was really 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 “defeatist.” Young children and the elderly were armed — often inadequately — and told upon pain of death to fight against the advancing Russians. And sometimes, dangerously, 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 — a total stranger — about his time in a death squad in Poland: “Do you know what it means—to 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 ‘Do I stand straight enough, Uncle?’ ”
Nazi Germany is long gone now, of course, and it’s reasonable to view it as a special case. But that doesn’t mean it was entirely alien to our own time. Buruma sums up his purpose in writing the book this way: “If there is a warning contained in the following chapters,” he says, “it is not just about the human capacity for cruelty, as well as bravery, which is hardly news, but about the temptation to look away.”
My thanks to Penguin Press and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
As authoritarian movements spread in the Western world these days, Ian Buruma found himself closely watching to see how people were responding. Would there be resistance? Compliance? Enthusiastic support? Is there some insight we can glean from similar situations in the past?
Germany in World War Two quickly (and naturally) came to mind. And a recent historical antecedent it made sense. What's more, there was a personal component as well: Buruma’s father, Leo, was in Berlin at the time. In 1943 Leo was a law student in the German occupied Netherlands when he was sent to a labor camp near Berlin. And so Berlin became the focus of Buruma's study. He began researching what daily life was like during the war. What did Germans think about the regime they were living under? What moral compromises did they have to make in order to get by?
He scoured German magazines and newspapers from the period, 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.
Each chapter in "Staying Alive" focuses on one year, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1945. The book on the very first day of the war. Official German reports described the crowd response as an "explosion," "a terrific storm of cheers.” Willam Shirer of CBS Radio, who was himself in Berlin 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.” But they came to understand it soon enough.
Life went on as normal that first year. True, taxes went up, food and clothing could only be gotten with ration coupons, some radio stations were banned, gas stations were prohibited from selling to ordinary civilians, and windows had to be blackened so light wouldn't show at night. Jews began to disappear. But soccer games were still played, people shopped, went to work and school and church. Bars, restaurants, and movie theaters all did brisk business. Magazines still published articles about, for example, antique silverware, turning Bavarian farms into country homes, and travel through Poland, including "the General Gouvernment, the area that encompassed Auschwitz-Birkenau and other extermination camps (the camps weren't acknowledged, of course). Advertisements for toothpaste, perfume, clothing, cigarettes and chewing tobacco still ran, only now they were couched not in terms of simple consumption but as supportive of the war effort: maintaining good dental health was patriotic, one said, an"advance in public health, which will boost our capacity for work and strength in war.” Things still felt so normal that one gentleman -- a Jewish convert to the Lutheran church -- wrote to Hermann Goering saying he wanted to join the Wehrmacht and fight for his country. (He got no reply.)
In short, as Buruma observes, “As long as one wasn’t Jewish or involved in active resistance, it was almost possible to imagine that life in Berlin was normal.”
Each year the war went on, something was taken away. More young men were called into service never to return; more people being taken by the authorities, also never to return. Food shortages led the government to tell Berliners to take their pet dogs out to the country and leave them "to fend for themselves." Magazines even ran stories about how to save money by making one's own funeral clothing. Whatever enthusiasm might have existed in the first year or two of war began to wane. Morale, monitored by a Nazi intelligence office, fell as the war progressed. The government -- particularly Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels -- responded with lies, threats, enticements, and distractions. A peevish Goebbels even outlawed dancing for a time (but he kept the beauty parlors open). The war and its deprivations brought out the worst in some people: "Ordinary German citizens, the people who were supposedly indifferent or even hostile to the war that Hitler began, behaved... badly, and this in the center of Berlin.” Others faced difficult decisions. As Buruma puts it, "You could not be inside a criminal state without being corrupted, and open resistance meant death."
Attitudes continued to shift as casualty lists grew longer, bombs fell, and people lost their homes. In her diary one teenaged girl, an eager and early member of the BDM (the girls’ version of the Hitlerjugend), praised Hitler and parroted propaganda in the early years. Later, though, her patriotism grew more complicated: “I’m 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.” Interestingly, though, Buruma notes that most diarists demonstrated little anger toward the Allied bombers overhead. “After all,”one of them wrote, “they are Germanic people too.”
There were some, however, for whom the war was a kind of surreal play in which old habits still existed, albeit transformed in some manner. A woman described a dinner party hosted by a Nazi aristocrat: “We pretended that well-dressed women and luxury still existed.In an icy dining room, we sat at elegantly laid tables, discussing literature, while eating lobster, and drinking cognac and sparkling wine.”
It’s impossible, of course, to capture the breadth of Buruma’s portrait. I won’t try. Rather, let me share some things that stood out. Throughout “Stay Alive” he shows us people using humor as a way of coping. Jokes were a form of quiet resistance, of taking the government down a few pegs: Hitler asks a laborer how many hours he works in a day. “Eight hours.” “I see, and how many hours, if you were to work in an armaments factory?” “Sixteen hours.” “And if you were to work for our Party?” “Twenty-four hours, of course.” “Good man. What work do you actually do?” “I’m a grave-digger.”
Sometimes, however, humor was a literal lifesaver. Buruma writes about a young musician named Heinz “Coco” Schumann. Coco stayed in Berlin, playing in clubs. He was one of the young musicians who played American jazz in clubs even though it was banned. Lookouts kept watch outside for Gestapo agents. When one entered the club the music would instantly change from jazz to a popular German song. One evening an S.S. officer approached him, a skeptical expression on his face. Thinking quickly, Schumann called out, “You should arrest me. I’m a minor, and a Jew to boot.” The officer, believing Schumann was surely just making an outrageous joke, laughed and walked away. In fact, Coco was Jewish and a minor.
Another subject that stood out for me was the way the film industry received very special treatment. In 1944, for example, Goebbels ordered “all theaters, revues, cabarets, circuses, and drama schools” shut down. But cinemas were allowed to stay open. Goebbels loved movies, it seems, and considered himself an aficionado, so he gave filmmakers free rein. Film people still had to work on making weapons when not on the set, but at least they weren't being sent to the front. One of the stories Buruma shares took pace very late in the war. A film — ostensibly “an entertaining account of the last-minute efforts to construct military defenses around Berlin” to boost pblic morale -- was really 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 “defeatist.” Young children and the elderly were armed — often inadequately — and told upon pain of death to fight against the advancing Russians. And sometimes, dangerously, 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 — a total stranger — about his time in a death squad in Poland: “Do you know what it means—to 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 ‘Do I stand straight enough, Uncle?’ ”
Nazi Germany is long gone now, of course, and it’s reasonable to view it as a special case. But that doesn’t mean it was entirely alien to our own time. Buruma sums up his purpose in writing the book this way: “If there is a warning contained in the following chapters,” he says, “it is not just about the human capacity for cruelty, as well as bravery, which is hardly news, but about the temptation to look away.”
My thanks to Penguin Press and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in return for an honest review.
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 author’s 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 one’s interactions. …and 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 “good” 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 Buruma’s 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 Buruma’s 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 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 one’s 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 Václav 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.
I’d recommend checking 'Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955' by Harald Jähner after this one.
The UFA movies mentioned in the present book are available on YouTube, where you’ll also find a fine analysis of the antisemitic 'Jud Süß' under the title “Propaganda in Film | Suss The Jew (1940)”.
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 one’s 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 Václav 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.
I’d recommend checking 'Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955' by Harald Jähner after this one.
The UFA movies mentioned in the present book are available on YouTube, where you’ll also find a fine analysis of the antisemitic 'Jud Süß' under the title “Propaganda in Film | Suss The Jew (1940)”.
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 27, 2026
Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939–1945 by Ian Buruma is a deeply immersive and morally probing work of history that reconstructs everyday life in Nazi Berlin through an extraordinary tapestry of firsthand accounts. Drawing on diaries, letters, memoirs, and interviews, Buruma sidesteps grand military narratives and instead focuses on how ordinary people navigated a regime defined by terror, conformity, and ambiguity. The result is a book that feels both intimate and expansive—a mosaic of human behavior under extreme pressure.
One of the book’s central achievements is its refusal to simplify. Rather than dividing Berliners into heroes and villains, Buruma shows a population largely composed of people trying, above all else, to endure. As he demonstrates, most were “neither cynics, nor bullies, nor ideological fanatics,” but individuals who adapted, compromised, or looked away in order to survive
. This moral grayness is the book’s defining theme, and it resonates powerfully in a modern context. Buruma doesn’t excuse complicity, but he does insist on understanding it.
The book is structured less as a linear narrative and more as a thematic exploration of wartime Berlin. Among its major topics:
1. Daily Life Under Dictatorship
Buruma shows how, especially in the early years of the war, life could appear deceptively normal for many Berliners. Cafés, concerts, and sporting events continued even as the machinery of persecution intensified. This uneasy coexistence between normalcy and horror is one of the book’s most unsettling insights.
2. The Jewish Experience
A crucial thread running through the book is the increasingly dire situation of Berlin’s Jewish population. Buruma carefully distinguishes between different categories—those in mixed marriages, those with connections, and those without—illustrating how persecution operated unevenly but relentlessly. By war’s end, deportation, forced labor, and death had become inescapable realities.
3. Moral Compromise and Conformity
Perhaps the book’s most important theme is how easily people adjusted to authoritarian rule. Buruma repeatedly returns to the idea that many Berliners chose not to see what was happening around them. This “temptation to look away” becomes a quiet but devastating indictment of human nature.
4. Resistance and Small Acts of Defiance
While large-scale resistance was rare, Buruma highlights quieter, more ambiguous forms of dissent—hiding Jews, maintaining forbidden relationships, or even expressing private skepticism. These acts rarely amounted to organized opposition, but they reveal the persistence of individual conscience.
5. The Collapse of Berlin
As the war turns against Germany, the book shifts into a darker register. Bombing raids, food shortages, and the approach of Soviet forces transform the city into a landscape of fear and desperation. By 1945, survival—simply staying alive—becomes the overriding concern.
Key Figures Profiled
Buruma populates his narrative with a wide array of individuals, each representing a different facet of Berlin society:
Leo Buruma: The author’s father, a Dutch forced laborer, serves as a central thread. His letters reveal the compromises required to endure life inside the Nazi system.
Ruth Andreas-Friedrich: A journalist and resistance figure whose diaries capture both courage and moral clarity.
Erich Kästner: The famed author offers a perspective of internal exile, remaining in Germany while quietly opposing the regime.
Coco Schumann: A jazz guitarist whose experiences reflect both cultural life and persecution.
And then there is Joachim Gottschalk, whose story is among the most haunting in the book. Gottschalk, a popular film star, refused to divorce his Jewish wife despite pressure from Nazi authorities. Ultimately, he chose to die alongside his family rather than abandon them—a decision that feels both tragic and profoundly human. It’s entirely understandable to be struck by his story; Buruma presents it with such clarity and emotional weight that it lingers long after the page is turned. The fact that he remains relatively unknown outside Germany only deepens the shock.
Final Assessment
What makes Stay Alive so compelling is not just its subject matter, but the care with which Buruma assembles it. This is clearly a work of immense dedication—years of archival digging, interviewing, and synthesizing disparate voices into a coherent whole. He deserves genuine praise for bringing this book to fruition; it is no small feat to reconstruct a city’s moral atmosphere with such nuance and restraint.
Buruma’s prose is measured and unshowy, allowing the voices of his subjects to take center stage. He avoids melodrama, which makes the moments of horror—and humanity—all the more powerful. The book ultimately leaves you with an unsettling realization: that under certain conditions, most people are less likely to resist than to adapt.
In that sense, Stay Alive is not just a history of Berlin between 1939 and 1945. It is a meditation on survival, complicity, and the fragile boundaries of moral choice. And thanks to Buruma’s meticulous work, it feels urgently relevant.
One of the book’s central achievements is its refusal to simplify. Rather than dividing Berliners into heroes and villains, Buruma shows a population largely composed of people trying, above all else, to endure. As he demonstrates, most were “neither cynics, nor bullies, nor ideological fanatics,” but individuals who adapted, compromised, or looked away in order to survive
. This moral grayness is the book’s defining theme, and it resonates powerfully in a modern context. Buruma doesn’t excuse complicity, but he does insist on understanding it.
The book is structured less as a linear narrative and more as a thematic exploration of wartime Berlin. Among its major topics:
1. Daily Life Under Dictatorship
Buruma shows how, especially in the early years of the war, life could appear deceptively normal for many Berliners. Cafés, concerts, and sporting events continued even as the machinery of persecution intensified. This uneasy coexistence between normalcy and horror is one of the book’s most unsettling insights.
2. The Jewish Experience
A crucial thread running through the book is the increasingly dire situation of Berlin’s Jewish population. Buruma carefully distinguishes between different categories—those in mixed marriages, those with connections, and those without—illustrating how persecution operated unevenly but relentlessly. By war’s end, deportation, forced labor, and death had become inescapable realities.
3. Moral Compromise and Conformity
Perhaps the book’s most important theme is how easily people adjusted to authoritarian rule. Buruma repeatedly returns to the idea that many Berliners chose not to see what was happening around them. This “temptation to look away” becomes a quiet but devastating indictment of human nature.
4. Resistance and Small Acts of Defiance
While large-scale resistance was rare, Buruma highlights quieter, more ambiguous forms of dissent—hiding Jews, maintaining forbidden relationships, or even expressing private skepticism. These acts rarely amounted to organized opposition, but they reveal the persistence of individual conscience.
5. The Collapse of Berlin
As the war turns against Germany, the book shifts into a darker register. Bombing raids, food shortages, and the approach of Soviet forces transform the city into a landscape of fear and desperation. By 1945, survival—simply staying alive—becomes the overriding concern.
Key Figures Profiled
Buruma populates his narrative with a wide array of individuals, each representing a different facet of Berlin society:
Leo Buruma: The author’s father, a Dutch forced laborer, serves as a central thread. His letters reveal the compromises required to endure life inside the Nazi system.
Ruth Andreas-Friedrich: A journalist and resistance figure whose diaries capture both courage and moral clarity.
Erich Kästner: The famed author offers a perspective of internal exile, remaining in Germany while quietly opposing the regime.
Coco Schumann: A jazz guitarist whose experiences reflect both cultural life and persecution.
And then there is Joachim Gottschalk, whose story is among the most haunting in the book. Gottschalk, a popular film star, refused to divorce his Jewish wife despite pressure from Nazi authorities. Ultimately, he chose to die alongside his family rather than abandon them—a decision that feels both tragic and profoundly human. It’s entirely understandable to be struck by his story; Buruma presents it with such clarity and emotional weight that it lingers long after the page is turned. The fact that he remains relatively unknown outside Germany only deepens the shock.
Final Assessment
What makes Stay Alive so compelling is not just its subject matter, but the care with which Buruma assembles it. This is clearly a work of immense dedication—years of archival digging, interviewing, and synthesizing disparate voices into a coherent whole. He deserves genuine praise for bringing this book to fruition; it is no small feat to reconstruct a city’s moral atmosphere with such nuance and restraint.
Buruma’s prose is measured and unshowy, allowing the voices of his subjects to take center stage. He avoids melodrama, which makes the moments of horror—and humanity—all the more powerful. The book ultimately leaves you with an unsettling realization: that under certain conditions, most people are less likely to resist than to adapt.
In that sense, Stay Alive is not just a history of Berlin between 1939 and 1945. It is a meditation on survival, complicity, and the fragile boundaries of moral choice. And thanks to Buruma’s meticulous work, it feels urgently relevant.
April 8, 2026
A very moving account of wartime Berlin, probably inspired by Buruma’s father’s 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 one’s 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 “how could Germans not know about the Shoah” 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 Buruma’s 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, “Wie war das eigentlich” from Max von der Grün being another 3rd Reich example, and “1913” 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 one’s 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 one’s 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 “how could Germans not know about the Shoah” 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 Buruma’s 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, “Wie war das eigentlich” from Max von der Grün being another 3rd Reich example, and “1913” 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 one’s 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 “influencers” who peddle attractive lies.
One gets the feeling that the architects of our current tilt towards autocracy read the history of these times—minus 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 “influencers” who peddle attractive lies.
One gets the feeling that the architects of our current tilt towards autocracy read the history of these times—minus 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 father’s 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 father’s 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.
April 25, 2026
The difficult aspect of reading this book is the omission of any kind of overt judgement of, or insight into, the people who lived in Berlin during the terrifying reign of Hitler and his Nazi regime. What Ian Buruma does is provide an organized collection of "facts" from personal interviews, diaries, newspapers, letters, and other kinds of historical documentation. There is slightly more personal opinion in the "Afterword," but otherwise it seems the reader is free to draw his or her own conclusion about the behavior of the Berliners. Did they understand or know what was happening to their former Jewish neighbors? Did they understand what was involved in the protection of the Heimat? Did they honestly believe that their führer was their savior against the barbarism of the Poles, the Asiatic hordes, the Jews, and all the other impure peoples? And, if they did believe so, how did they come to remain so committed through profound atrocities and ongoing loss (especially economic)? When the Reich turned on its own people, arresting and executing so many for the crime of defeatism, I thought instantly of Mr. Hegseth, the US Secretary of "War" and his rantings against the naysayers who criticize his violent rhetoric about American military supremacy. In the book, Buruma writes of Helmuth von Moltke's sham trial, in which he was hanged for "having remained decent in a criminal state." So, in WWII Germany, no doubt I'd be arrested and hanged from a meat hook for my free speech here.
The star of this show seems, at least to me, to belong to Goebbels, the minister of propaganda. What a freak. And, yes, he was a true believer. However, what was shocking to me is how the public absorbed the absolute shite he was producing. I couldn't help but think of Fox News. And worse is the incredible financial cost of his films during a war where people cannot find food and the men on the front lines are dying in epic numbers.
I'm not a trained historian; I'm but a mere civilian reading about the collapse of a movement centered on the cult following of a charismatic leader. As an American, I felt the chills. I also did not come away from feeling too positive about the Berliners, with the notable exception of some incredibly heroic beautiful souls. The end, the Battle of Berlin, is stunningly harrowing.
I do agree with the author that Germany, and the Berlin of the book, should be lauded for the way "it has dealt with its past, the way the scars of its worst crimes are openly on display."
The star of this show seems, at least to me, to belong to Goebbels, the minister of propaganda. What a freak. And, yes, he was a true believer. However, what was shocking to me is how the public absorbed the absolute shite he was producing. I couldn't help but think of Fox News. And worse is the incredible financial cost of his films during a war where people cannot find food and the men on the front lines are dying in epic numbers.
I'm not a trained historian; I'm but a mere civilian reading about the collapse of a movement centered on the cult following of a charismatic leader. As an American, I felt the chills. I also did not come away from feeling too positive about the Berliners, with the notable exception of some incredibly heroic beautiful souls. The end, the Battle of Berlin, is stunningly harrowing.
I do agree with the author that Germany, and the Berlin of the book, should be lauded for the way "it has dealt with its past, the way the scars of its worst crimes are openly on display."
April 22, 2026
I finished *Stay Alive* by Ian Buruma a few days ago, and I keep catching myself thinking about it at random moments. It’s a solid 4 stars for me. Not because it falls short in a major way, but because it’s such a controlled and quiet book that it never fully lets you sink into comfort. In a strange way, that is exactly what makes it memorable.
Reading this felt less like being told a story and more like sitting with someone who is carefully choosing what to reveal and what to hold back. That emotional distance actually made everything feel more real to me. It reminded me of how people deal with difficult experiences in real life. We don’t always process things out loud or in dramatic ways. Sometimes we just carry them.
One moment that really stayed with me is when a character has the chance to speak up but chooses not to in order to protect themselves. Nothing explosive happens right then, but the silence that follows feels incredibly heavy. I could almost feel the weight of that decision lingering in the background. It made me think about times in my own life when staying quiet felt like the safest option, even if it came with a cost later. That part hit closer than I expected.
I also appreciated how Buruma doesn’t try to force emotional reactions out of the reader. There are no big dramatic scenes designed to make you cry. Instead, the impact builds slowly, almost subtly, and then it sneaks up on you afterward. I didn’t feel deeply attached to the characters in a traditional sense, but I felt like I understood them, and sometimes that feels even more honest.
This is not a comforting book, but it is a thoughtful one. It leaves you with questions rather than answers, and I found myself replaying certain moments in my head after I finished. If you are in the mood for something introspective and a little unsettling in a quiet way, this one is definitely worth your time.
Reading this felt less like being told a story and more like sitting with someone who is carefully choosing what to reveal and what to hold back. That emotional distance actually made everything feel more real to me. It reminded me of how people deal with difficult experiences in real life. We don’t always process things out loud or in dramatic ways. Sometimes we just carry them.
One moment that really stayed with me is when a character has the chance to speak up but chooses not to in order to protect themselves. Nothing explosive happens right then, but the silence that follows feels incredibly heavy. I could almost feel the weight of that decision lingering in the background. It made me think about times in my own life when staying quiet felt like the safest option, even if it came with a cost later. That part hit closer than I expected.
I also appreciated how Buruma doesn’t try to force emotional reactions out of the reader. There are no big dramatic scenes designed to make you cry. Instead, the impact builds slowly, almost subtly, and then it sneaks up on you afterward. I didn’t feel deeply attached to the characters in a traditional sense, but I felt like I understood them, and sometimes that feels even more honest.
This is not a comforting book, but it is a thoughtful one. It leaves you with questions rather than answers, and I found myself replaying certain moments in my head after I finished. If you are in the mood for something introspective and a little unsettling in a quiet way, this one is definitely worth your time.
May 1, 2026
Life in the Reich capital.
Buruma, professor at Bard College and author of Year Zero: A History of 1945 (2013), has a personal interest in the subject of his latest book: His father spent two years in Berlin, compelled to join 400,000 foreign factory workers, poorly fed and housed but paid a small salary. Buruma draws on an abundant source of material, including letters and diaries, enriching these with interviews with wartime eyewitnesses, now in their 90s. Berlin was never a hotbed of Nazi enthusiasm, and Buruma describes many Berliners, especially artists, professionals, and the aristocracy who held a low opinion of them. Hitler’s invasions of Poland and France were mostly considered good news in Berlin. Rationing was tedious, but for the war’s first two years, provided one wasn’t Jewish, it was possible to imagine that life in Berlin was normal. By the fall of 1942, with no sign of victory in Russia and Allied bombings increasing, the quality of life declined relentlessly—although suffering in Berlin never matched that inflicted on conquered people in Eastern Europe. Jews, of course, suffered a worse fate. The avalanche of the Nazis’ antisemitic abuse, poured out since 1933, persuaded most Germans that Jews were at least “a problem.” Half of Berlin’s 160,000 Jews had left by 1939. The remainder had been ejected from jobs, schools, and homes, crammed into slum ghettoes, and forbidden to buy clothes, vehicles, and even pets. Mass deportation began in 1941. Buruma describes heroic Berliners who sheltered Jews, despite the terrible danger, but heroism is rare, and most Germans, even sympathizers, refused. Fewer than 2,000 remained in 1945.
This book is complex and painful
Buruma, professor at Bard College and author of Year Zero: A History of 1945 (2013), has a personal interest in the subject of his latest book: His father spent two years in Berlin, compelled to join 400,000 foreign factory workers, poorly fed and housed but paid a small salary. Buruma draws on an abundant source of material, including letters and diaries, enriching these with interviews with wartime eyewitnesses, now in their 90s. Berlin was never a hotbed of Nazi enthusiasm, and Buruma describes many Berliners, especially artists, professionals, and the aristocracy who held a low opinion of them. Hitler’s invasions of Poland and France were mostly considered good news in Berlin. Rationing was tedious, but for the war’s first two years, provided one wasn’t Jewish, it was possible to imagine that life in Berlin was normal. By the fall of 1942, with no sign of victory in Russia and Allied bombings increasing, the quality of life declined relentlessly—although suffering in Berlin never matched that inflicted on conquered people in Eastern Europe. Jews, of course, suffered a worse fate. The avalanche of the Nazis’ antisemitic abuse, poured out since 1933, persuaded most Germans that Jews were at least “a problem.” Half of Berlin’s 160,000 Jews had left by 1939. The remainder had been ejected from jobs, schools, and homes, crammed into slum ghettoes, and forbidden to buy clothes, vehicles, and even pets. Mass deportation began in 1941. Buruma describes heroic Berliners who sheltered Jews, despite the terrible danger, but heroism is rare, and most Germans, even sympathizers, refused. Fewer than 2,000 remained in 1945.
This book is complex and painful
April 19, 2026
This was a case of my expectations of what the book was going to be about versus what it actually turned out to be. I thought the book was going to be about how ordinary Germans lived during the war. What the actual book covered was 80% focused on Goebbels and is Propaganda Machine which included, the military (how great the German military was and how well the war was going, and how deplorable the Russians and British were) and cultural (movies, music, art, dances, fashion). There a bit of Bread and Circuses to the cultural propagnda and a bit of "Everyone needs to sacrifice" for the good of Germany. 10% of the book covered movies and celebrities, 5% included Jewish life, which has been covered extensively in hundreds of other books about this time period, and 5% about the average German, until the last couple of chapters where there was a little more focus on them at the end of the war.
The book is well written and there’s a lot information about how Goebbles manipulated the population, and an inordinate amount of information about German film and film stars during this period. If you are interested in either of these subjects I would recommend this book. If you are looking for a book that goes beyond the idea that Germans mostly adapted and went on living relatively normal lives, should look elsewhere.
The book is well written and there’s a lot information about how Goebbles manipulated the population, and an inordinate amount of information about German film and film stars during this period. If you are interested in either of these subjects I would recommend this book. If you are looking for a book that goes beyond the idea that Germans mostly adapted and went on living relatively normal lives, should look elsewhere.
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. Buruma’s 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, it’s 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, it’s 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 29, 2026
Ian Buruma’s Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939–1945 is a deeply humane and absorbing portrait of life under extreme pressure. What makes the book especially compelling is Buruma’s ability to illuminate the raw, often contradictory impulses that emerge in wartime: fear and courage, selfishness and generosity, despair and stubborn hope—sometimes coexisting within the same individual.
At its heart, the narrative feels intimate and personal, anchored by the story of Buruma’s father, Leo, whose quiet determination to endure gives the book both emotional weight and moral clarity. Rather than offering a distant historical account, Buruma draws the reader into the daily texture of survival in wartime Berlin, where choices were rarely simple and survival itself could feel like a moral balancing act.
The result is a nuanced, compassionate work that resists easy judgment. Buruma shows that even in humanity’s darkest moments, the instinct to “stay alive” can reveal not only the worst in people, but also unexpected reserves of resilience, dignity, and even kindness.
At its heart, the narrative feels intimate and personal, anchored by the story of Buruma’s father, Leo, whose quiet determination to endure gives the book both emotional weight and moral clarity. Rather than offering a distant historical account, Buruma draws the reader into the daily texture of survival in wartime Berlin, where choices were rarely simple and survival itself could feel like a moral balancing act.
The result is a nuanced, compassionate work that resists easy judgment. Buruma shows that even in humanity’s darkest moments, the instinct to “stay alive” can reveal not only the worst in people, but also unexpected reserves of resilience, dignity, and even kindness.
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 26, 2026
This was a very interesting narrative of life in Germany during the years when Hitler was in power, right before and during the 2nd World War. How ordinary Germans coped with the regime, the hardships of war, and the persecution of the Jews, how much they knew at any given time, and to what extend they wanted to cooperate or were coerced to do so. Not the usual survival story of any given person, or a story of war; just the experience of everyday life for ordinary people, artists, workers, restaurants and hotels, etc. Remarkable that life seemed to go on as usual for quite a while even after the war had started. The persecution of the Jews also escalated only gradually, and many people were not aware of what was going on or how far it would go. Retribution against all Germans after the war was pervasive, even against many who had been against Hitler from the beginning or had helped the Jews in one way or another.
April 22, 2026
This is a work that exposes the cracks and active resistance to the rule of the Third Reich in the city where the movement was housed and all the tentacles of the authoritarian state spread across its empire, Berlin.
There is a focus on the authors father and his role as a foreign worker in Berlin, his survival and ultimate return to the city in 1989 when the wall came down and Germany united once more, but it details the years from 1939-1945, many stories and experiences woven together of those who lived, survived, thrived and died fighting and resisting the Nazi regime.
To know that there were so many ways that Germans resisted the horrors of the fascist state and got around the racial laws due to made up legal workings and survived until the wars end was a very bright exposure of previously unknown information.
There is a focus on the authors father and his role as a foreign worker in Berlin, his survival and ultimate return to the city in 1989 when the wall came down and Germany united once more, but it details the years from 1939-1945, many stories and experiences woven together of those who lived, survived, thrived and died fighting and resisting the Nazi regime.
To know that there were so many ways that Germans resisted the horrors of the fascist state and got around the racial laws due to made up legal workings and survived until the wars end was a very bright exposure of previously unknown information.
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 narrator’s 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 narrator’s 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 24, 2026
I continue to seek a book that helps me understand how everyday people can stay silent amid atrocities, and this book came close to capturing that in spots. But lots of time was wasted on film analyses (I understand films were important projections—but what of their receptions?)
The book also has a lot of “take this with a grain of salt… wink wink… we can never be sure exactly what he/she really thought” — and I think that we can actually go deeper than words alone (diaries, oral histories delivered decades later) to probe for an understanding of how people behaved (and why).
My lasting core takeaway from this book, though, is a powerful one: “anti-Nazi” so rarely was equal to “resistance fighter.”
The book also has a lot of “take this with a grain of salt… wink wink… we can never be sure exactly what he/she really thought” — and I think that we can actually go deeper than words alone (diaries, oral histories delivered decades later) to probe for an understanding of how people behaved (and why).
My lasting core takeaway from this book, though, is a powerful one: “anti-Nazi” so rarely was equal to “resistance fighter.”
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 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 dilemma’s 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.
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