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Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945
An astonishing account of life under a murderous regime 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 Dutch student 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 Dutch student 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, Kindle Edition
First published March 17, 2026
About the author
Ian Buruma
71 books294 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 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.
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.
August 2, 2026
But in a world where democracy is on retreat and the poison of violence is sickening the politics in some of the oldest liberal states...people faced...the moral dilemmas of authoritarianism. If there is a warning contained in the following chapters, it is not just about the human capacity for cruelty as well as bravery...but about the temptation to look away.
from the introduction pxviii
When the Nazis overran the Netherlands, Ian Buruma's father Leo was nabbed from his life as a university student and sent to a forced labour camp near Berlin. Some of his impressions are included in this book, one of the many voices that mostly get left out of history.
People who are treated as cripples, or criminals, can end up feeling that way themselves. p138
True character is revealed in dance. p61
Scrupulously fair, IB seeks out the impressions of everyone involved in order to assess the prevailing mood of Berliners after 6 years of Nazification. What was it like for the inhabitants of a city once acclaimed for its sophistication, a vibrant arts community and a rich traditional culture, to be ravished of its identity? IB writes of people "who tried to be decent in a criminal state " and "the delicate balance between opposition, compromise, and corruption." p147
People in a panic often exaggerate, but reality was bad enough. 247
systematic gassing of physically handicapped and mentally ill people who were deemed to be unworthy of life. p138
Those not fit to be worked to death were immediately gassed. p182
Of course, this did not apply to the "pure" German elite, who continued to party and look away. Jewish homes were up for grabs as Jewish people were pushed out of the city and into outrageous circumstances.
Some Germans managed to remain decent, when decency could be very dangerous. from intro p xv
Much of what is confirmed here is almost understandable, but it was most disquieting to read how
Segregation laws (in America) against Black people were also an inspiration to Nazi lawyers....That Americans, as well as the British, refused to fight alongside their Aryan brothers against the Judeo-Bolshevik vision was seen by Hitler and his fellow Nazis as perverse. p149
Obviously, perspective is crucial, and it is customary to revile perceived enemies and sling ones own insecurities and fears at at any vulnerable target. In the last years of the war, even some of the most complicit found their perspectives shifting.
Hugo B, a tailor worked to exhaustion, spoke for many of those in similar situations:
"How long can this go on?
Stop this shit! We are pining for peace and quiet. p294
A soldier put it this way.
We continued to shoot because the habit of collective reaction seemed to have absolved us from any responsibility to ourselves. p319
A pity for the whole world. p333
4.5 rounded down for GR
6/7
from the introduction pxviii
When the Nazis overran the Netherlands, Ian Buruma's father Leo was nabbed from his life as a university student and sent to a forced labour camp near Berlin. Some of his impressions are included in this book, one of the many voices that mostly get left out of history.
People who are treated as cripples, or criminals, can end up feeling that way themselves. p138
True character is revealed in dance. p61
Scrupulously fair, IB seeks out the impressions of everyone involved in order to assess the prevailing mood of Berliners after 6 years of Nazification. What was it like for the inhabitants of a city once acclaimed for its sophistication, a vibrant arts community and a rich traditional culture, to be ravished of its identity? IB writes of people "who tried to be decent in a criminal state " and "the delicate balance between opposition, compromise, and corruption." p147
People in a panic often exaggerate, but reality was bad enough. 247
systematic gassing of physically handicapped and mentally ill people who were deemed to be unworthy of life. p138
Those not fit to be worked to death were immediately gassed. p182
Of course, this did not apply to the "pure" German elite, who continued to party and look away. Jewish homes were up for grabs as Jewish people were pushed out of the city and into outrageous circumstances.
Some Germans managed to remain decent, when decency could be very dangerous. from intro p xv
Much of what is confirmed here is almost understandable, but it was most disquieting to read how
Segregation laws (in America) against Black people were also an inspiration to Nazi lawyers....That Americans, as well as the British, refused to fight alongside their Aryan brothers against the Judeo-Bolshevik vision was seen by Hitler and his fellow Nazis as perverse. p149
Obviously, perspective is crucial, and it is customary to revile perceived enemies and sling ones own insecurities and fears at at any vulnerable target. In the last years of the war, even some of the most complicit found their perspectives shifting.
Hugo B, a tailor worked to exhaustion, spoke for many of those in similar situations:
"How long can this go on?
Stop this shit! We are pining for peace and quiet. p294
A soldier put it this way.
We continued to shoot because the habit of collective reaction seemed to have absolved us from any responsibility to ourselves. p319
A pity for the whole world. p333
4.5 rounded down for GR
6/7
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.
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 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.
June 3, 2026
Fascism, decency, propaganda, horrors
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.
May 22, 2026
Didn’t finish the book. Because of the short chapters you never get a deeper sense of how it really was in Berlin in the last year of the war. Disappointing, especially after all the raving critics
May 10, 2026
De vader van Ian Buruma heeft werd als deelnemer aan de arbeidsinzet in Berlijn tewerkgesteld - in het oostelijk deel van de stad. Dit was voor zijn zoon aanleiding een boek te schrijven over de belevenissen, niet van zijn vader, maar van de stad in de jaren van 1939 tot 1945. Een geslaagd project. Af en toe komt vader tevoorschijn, veelal gaat het over ook vanaf 1939 alsmaar toenemende misdadigheid van het Duitse bewind dat in 1933 de macht verwierf. Jammer is het dat Buruma veel thema’s en onderwerpen behandeld die al uit vele andere boeken bekend zijn en daar ook uitgebreider beschreven worden, zoals het lot van de Berlijnse Joden. Dat geeft dit boek een wat redundant en op onderdelen een wat overbodig karakter, te meer daar vader Buruma in het boek meer figurant is dan hoofdpersoon.
Aan het einde van het boek komt het goed als de familie Buruma in 1972 en in 1989, in de tijd van die Wende naar Berlijn gaat en Buruma vertelt waarom hij zo van Berlijn is gaan houden. Daar krijgt het boek de persoonlijke overtuigingskracht die het elders wat mist.
Ian Buruma looft de vertaler (het is lastig te vertalen in een taal die de schrijver beheerst), maar mij stoorden de vele fouten in dit boek. Het kan zijn dat vertaler Alexander van Kesteren een Vlaming is: iets met een snufje zout nemen is eigenlijk geen Nederlandse uitdrukking en een kurkendraaier is geen gangbaar keukengerief. Ook staan er nogal wat taalfouten in het boek. Hitler en Göring ‘geven’ dikwijls een toespraak, soldaten dragen uniforms. Jammer.
Aan het einde van het boek komt het goed als de familie Buruma in 1972 en in 1989, in de tijd van die Wende naar Berlijn gaat en Buruma vertelt waarom hij zo van Berlijn is gaan houden. Daar krijgt het boek de persoonlijke overtuigingskracht die het elders wat mist.
Ian Buruma looft de vertaler (het is lastig te vertalen in een taal die de schrijver beheerst), maar mij stoorden de vele fouten in dit boek. Het kan zijn dat vertaler Alexander van Kesteren een Vlaming is: iets met een snufje zout nemen is eigenlijk geen Nederlandse uitdrukking en een kurkendraaier is geen gangbaar keukengerief. Ook staan er nogal wat taalfouten in het boek. Hitler en Göring ‘geven’ dikwijls een toespraak, soldaten dragen uniforms. Jammer.
July 14, 2026
In my endless fascination with things related to WWII, I noticed immediately when this book came out and started appearing across different feeds. Ian Buruma lays out the War Years in Berlin, the city at the central heart of the Third Reich, from 1939-1945.
Through each chapter he follows a handful of individuals he has researched or gathered the firsthand stories from. His own father, Leo, was a Dutch man obligated to go and work in Berlin, so the accounts from Buruma's father add a personal touch and depth to the stories in each chapter.
From the first year onward, you do get a sense of how the metropolitan class in the Third Reich's capital reacted to each new phase of the war, ending, of course, in utter desolation by May of 1945. What surprised me, perhaps, is the somewhat ambivalent reaction of Berliners to the moves of the German Reich. Each country that fell brought with it a subdued concern. Sure, there were hardliners and plenty of fanatics; but it calls to mind an eerie feeling I am (not exactly, but somewhat) reminded of when the leaders at the top are pathologically, insecurely obsessed with trumpeting propagandic messages and espousing delusions of grandeur while the living of the masses gets, inch by inch, harder to handle. The apathy that a mass under the control of an authoritarian dictator finds itself in is cause for concern on many fronts. This is not to excuse the reality that most in Germany knew what was happening to the Jews and other victims of the Nazis.
It was an interesting read! Very informative with a unique angle.
Through each chapter he follows a handful of individuals he has researched or gathered the firsthand stories from. His own father, Leo, was a Dutch man obligated to go and work in Berlin, so the accounts from Buruma's father add a personal touch and depth to the stories in each chapter.
From the first year onward, you do get a sense of how the metropolitan class in the Third Reich's capital reacted to each new phase of the war, ending, of course, in utter desolation by May of 1945. What surprised me, perhaps, is the somewhat ambivalent reaction of Berliners to the moves of the German Reich. Each country that fell brought with it a subdued concern. Sure, there were hardliners and plenty of fanatics; but it calls to mind an eerie feeling I am (not exactly, but somewhat) reminded of when the leaders at the top are pathologically, insecurely obsessed with trumpeting propagandic messages and espousing delusions of grandeur while the living of the masses gets, inch by inch, harder to handle. The apathy that a mass under the control of an authoritarian dictator finds itself in is cause for concern on many fronts. This is not to excuse the reality that most in Germany knew what was happening to the Jews and other victims of the Nazis.
It was an interesting read! Very informative with a unique angle.
July 2, 2026
Tachtig jaar na het einde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog blijft geschiedenis verbazend actueel. Dat bewijst Blijf in leven: Berlijn 1939-1945 van Ian Buruma op indrukwekkende wijze.
Dit is geen klassiek boek over veldslagen of grote politieke leiders. Buruma laat zien hoe gewone mensen leefden, twijfelden, zwegen, meewerkten, verzetten en vooral probeerden te overleven in een stad die langzaam haar vrijheid verloor.
Juist daarin schuilt de kracht van dit meesterwerk. Dictaturen ontstaan zelden van de ene dag op de andere. Ze groeien wanneer angst, propaganda, polarisering en onverschilligheid de plaats innemen van vertrouwen, kritisch denken en menselijke waardigheid.
Het boek dwingt je om ongemakkelijke vragen te stellen. Hoe zouden wij zelf reageren als onze vrijheid beetje bij beetje werd ingeperkt? Wanneer wordt zwijgen medeplichtigheid? En hoeveel moed vraagt het om mens te blijven wanneer alles rondom je ontmenselijkt?
Buruma schrijft zonder grote morele oordelen, maar precies daardoor komt het verhaal des te harder binnen.
Blijf in leven is veel meer dan een boek over Berlijn tussen 1939 en 1945. Het is een waarschuwing voor vandaag én morgen. Een meesterwerk dat je niet alleen leest, maar nog lang met je meedraagt.
Dit is geen klassiek boek over veldslagen of grote politieke leiders. Buruma laat zien hoe gewone mensen leefden, twijfelden, zwegen, meewerkten, verzetten en vooral probeerden te overleven in een stad die langzaam haar vrijheid verloor.
Juist daarin schuilt de kracht van dit meesterwerk. Dictaturen ontstaan zelden van de ene dag op de andere. Ze groeien wanneer angst, propaganda, polarisering en onverschilligheid de plaats innemen van vertrouwen, kritisch denken en menselijke waardigheid.
Het boek dwingt je om ongemakkelijke vragen te stellen. Hoe zouden wij zelf reageren als onze vrijheid beetje bij beetje werd ingeperkt? Wanneer wordt zwijgen medeplichtigheid? En hoeveel moed vraagt het om mens te blijven wanneer alles rondom je ontmenselijkt?
Buruma schrijft zonder grote morele oordelen, maar precies daardoor komt het verhaal des te harder binnen.
Blijf in leven is veel meer dan een boek over Berlijn tussen 1939 en 1945. Het is een waarschuwing voor vandaag én morgen. Een meesterwerk dat je niet alleen leest, maar nog lang met je meedraagt.
July 6, 2026
I’ve read, listened and watched a lot of content about World War II (maybe too much) and Nazi Germany, but hadn’t read anything that did such a deep dive into what life was like inside Germany during that time. Spoiler alert, if you weren’t part of the Nazi regime, life sucked, especially if you were Jewish.
This book shows how the government used propaganda, arts and culture, intimidation and other-ism to get many (but not all) to support the Nazi regime and what life was like for Jews and others who didn’t toe the line. And also how they tried to hide the atrocities that the Nazi regime committed at home but mostly abroad. There were many who tried to help, but not enough, many were just too fearful to speak out against the regime.
There are many lessons here that I hope history never repeats. But I fear they continue to do so.
I listened to this as an audiobook and it was a bit dry and academic but overall it was well done. 3 1/2 stars but not rounding up to 4.
This book shows how the government used propaganda, arts and culture, intimidation and other-ism to get many (but not all) to support the Nazi regime and what life was like for Jews and others who didn’t toe the line. And also how they tried to hide the atrocities that the Nazi regime committed at home but mostly abroad. There were many who tried to help, but not enough, many were just too fearful to speak out against the regime.
There are many lessons here that I hope history never repeats. But I fear they continue to do so.
I listened to this as an audiobook and it was a bit dry and academic but overall it was well done. 3 1/2 stars but not rounding up to 4.
July 2, 2026
I think this was a mixed bag. The information was good, and the reviews were raving, but I’ve read so many books about the 3rd Reich I was hoping that this would be a really granular look at life in the Nazi capital and how it changed the people of Berlin and I felt that it was a bit too generalized for my taste, which is probably expecting too much from a book targeted towards a more general audience. There were definitely great parts and it delivered in more than a few areas. I’m probably being too harsh.
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!
June 20, 2026
Boek vol verbijsterende verhalen. Over hoe snel de Berlijners al voelden dat het in de oorlog mis zou gaan, de bombardementen, het trouwen op afstand door vrouwen van frontsoldaten, de geheime jazzclubs.
Ik moest alleen even wennen aan de verteltrant: de zoon van de weduwe van …, soms duizelde mij de namen, maar ok, klein punt.
Ik moest alleen even wennen aan de verteltrant: de zoon van de weduwe van …, soms duizelde mij de namen, maar ok, klein punt.
June 17, 2026
This book is, depending on how you squint at it, either fantastic (the organization! the oral history! the archival research!) or abysmal (because humanity at its absolute worst. and now here we go again?). It is such an impressive book and I am kind of kicking myself for reading it.
July 12, 2026
Really a 3.5. I listened. Not sure if that would change my rating. I got confused with who was who as individuals experiences were updated in time. More history book vs story feel. Fascinating view of the war and its impact on various lives. Some very close parallels to today unfortunately as well.
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.
Read
June 29, 2026“Looking history in the face without flinching is an essential condition for redemption.” So says award-winning author and journalist Ian Buruma in Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945, the newest of Buruma’s seven well-regarded books.
Stay Alive is a gripping, forcefully written look at the lives of ordinary Berliners during those years, at the ways Berliners, as well as outsiders marooned in wartime Berlin, devised to endure in the vortex of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, and at the many deals with Satan that staying alive required. The title comes from a farewell greeting that Berliners took up as they experienced ever-intensifying bombings by the Allies and at the same time, faced ever-harsher reprisals from their own government if they failed to toe the Nazi party line. Amid these horrors, instead of “Auf Wiedersehen,” Berliners ended conversations and gatherings with “Bleiben Sie übrig”--“Survive,” or “Stay alive.”
Stay Alive cannot be read without flinching. Starting with the photograph on its front cover--grim-faced mothers, fathers and children racing toward the camera and away from who-knows-exactly-what--the story crescendos to descriptions of the corpses of draft dodgers and army deserters--thousands, by one account--hanging from lampposts across Berlin. In between, Buruma puts on display reason after reason why average Germans found themselves incapable of opposing Nazi atrocities, and why the few who did take a stand were magnificent beyond comprehension for their courage and humanity.
Stay Alive is partly, but only partly, a memorial to Buruma’s father, Leo. Leo was a law student in occupied Netherlands until May 1943, when he refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime, and was arrested and pressed--along with 6.5 million other non-Jewish citizens of occupied countries--into near-slave labor in Germany. His life in Berlin from 1943 to 1945 is one of over three hundred lives, or moments out of lives, that Buruma memorializes in his nightmarish panorama of wartime Berlin life. The stories and descriptions in Stay Alive come from Leo’s letters home; stories Leo told the author (his son) years later; private letters, diaries, and published memoirs of other survivors; journalists’ accounts; and interviews that Buruma held with survivors nearly a century after the events.
The letter-writers, diarists, memoirists and interviewees quoted in Stay Alive include fervent Nazis like Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, whose published diary furnishes a timeline for the broader story, and like the obscure but equally fervent Nazi, fifteen-year-old Lilo G. Lilo wrote in her diary that she knew Jews were being deported from Germany and was glad of that, but she harbored doubts about killing them en masse. Also among Buruma’s sources are men-on-the-street who did as they were told and tried to ignore what their leaders were doing in their name; decent Germans who despaired of changing their country’s course, and left; and irresolute patriots who stayed and struggled with the dilemmas that staying entailed. Vivid accounts come from Jewish Berliners who survived the war in hiding inside the city as so-called “U-boats,” and from resisters who aided the U-boats and risked the consequences.
Among those who despaired and left were the playwright Bertold Brecht and the novelist Thomas Mann. Other creative artists, like actor Heinz Rühman and conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had established careers and much to lose by walking away, did their best to be “apolitical.” Others, like journalist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich and members of her “Uncle Emil” resistance group, stayed, aided U-boats and did their best to thwart the regime in other ways. Yet others, like intelligence officer Helmut von Moltke, worked from deep inside the establishment, undermining as many of its worst policies as they could. For this, Hitler had Von Moltke hanged from a meat hook. Ten thousand others like him suffered like punishments.
And there were people like Else Müller, a “tiny old lady” who lived in the same apartment building as U-boats Lothar Orbach and his mother. On Christmas Eve 1942, Lothar and his mother were desperately seeking shelter from a Gestapo round-up. Neighbor after neighbor turned them away, but Else took them in and hid them. Then Else pinned on a swastika badge, ran to her window and shouted an anti-semitic utterance into the street. Shortly after, the Gestapo came to her door. Seeing her badge, they gave a brisk Nazi salute and left, persuaded that the apartment needn’t be searched.
Was Else a resister, who kept Nazi paraphernalia at hand for just such occasions? Or had she until then simply done her best to stay alive, following Hitler’s agenda if that was what it took, until faced with neighbors whose chance to stay alive lay in her hands? Did Else just then recognize, and do, the right thing? Either way, Else Müller showed humanity and courage--rare qualities in Berlin in 1942.
The need for courage and humanity was deepening by 1943, as the war’s fourth year gave way to its fifth. The RAF first bombed Berlin in August 1940 (prompting the retaliatory 8-month London Blitz). Berlin’s first bomb fatalities occurred on August 29, 1940; on Christmas Eve 1940 there were approximately forty bomb fatalities. By Christmas 1943, Berlin was being bombed day and night by hundreds of American Flying Fortresses and more hundreds of British Lancasters dropping bombs by the thousands. Between January and April 1945 more than 4,000 British bombers plus as many American planes hit Berlin, killing tens of thousands.
Meanwhile, Berliners did their best to not only stay alive, but have a measure of fun. Turning to this side of wartime life, Buruma punctuates his account of Berlin’s journey into night with amusing, sometimes titillating, and often very funny descriptions of ways Berliners found, between air raids, to snatch moments of enjoyment.
Many of Berlin’s wartime diversions, of course, came from Germany’s film industry and other Nazi propaganda organs, who made it their business to keep the Volk entertained, and while at it, entertain them with content calculated to stiffen their resolve to win the war.
Or at least not resign themselves to losing. Between 1939 and 1941, Hitler’s speeches and Goebbels’ government-sanctioned entertainments had trumpeted Germany’s victories and promised grander victories to come. But after Germany’s 1943 defeat at Stalingrad, and more so after the 1944 Normandy invasion, a different tone drifted into official pronouncements and unofficial propagandizing. Fortitude, resilience and the glory of sacrifice were now the themes. Berliners’ actual mood, however, was described by one of Buruma’s informants as a mix of apathy and hedonism, the effects of weeks of living, and dying, in crowded, filthy bunkers.
There were also sporadic incidents of out-and-out grumbling. But grumbling was risky. As popular entertainments grew less effective in boosting morale, the regime relied more on severe and grisly punishments for “cowardice” and “defeatism,” which now became capital offenses. Allied bombs were the leading cause of death in Berlin in 1944 and 1945, but reprisals for inadequate enthusiasm for the Fatherland’s cause were a close second, and were overwhelmingly the most gruesome. Anyone caught vocally acknowledging the hopelessness of Germany’s situation was shot, tortured, hanged or beheaded. Draft dodgers and deserters by the thousands were hanged from streetlights across Berlin.
On May 2, 1945, the city’s defenses fell, and there followed weeks of looting, rape and random killing by the victorious Red Army. Then, abruptly and finally, Berlin fell silent, the worst of its ordeal over. Buruma ends his account of Berliners’ five-year struggle to stay alive with a description of long lines of women picking up debris in what was left of the city--the first stage of rebuilding.
Stay Alive, Buruma tells us, is partly a love letter to Berlin---a tribute to the way post-war Berliners looked their wartime years in the face, however tempting it might have been to flinch. He pays them homage for erecting the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in the city center, preserving the exposed foundations of one-time torture cellars, and placing countless bronze “stumbling stones” on Berlin streets, marking the places where deported and murdered Jews once lived.
Stay Alive is also partly a warning, although Buruma avoids directly saying so. Noting danger signs in today’s global political climate, Buruma observes that if there is a warning in Berlin’s wartime story, it is largely a warning against the all-too-human temptation to look away from evil until it is too late. Berliners looked away for too long in the 1930’s, the years W.H. Auden called Berlin’s “low, dishonest decade.” Buruma’s unflinching account of the consequences gives reason after reason to do better.
Stay Alive is also an all-out good read. The narration is crisp, often spellbinding, and impossible to look away from, even when the content is hard to face. From every point of view, it is a must-read, especially for anyone seeking to understand the trajectory of twentieth-century world history and gain a sense of where that trajectory may lead in century twenty-one.
Stay Alive is a gripping, forcefully written look at the lives of ordinary Berliners during those years, at the ways Berliners, as well as outsiders marooned in wartime Berlin, devised to endure in the vortex of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, and at the many deals with Satan that staying alive required. The title comes from a farewell greeting that Berliners took up as they experienced ever-intensifying bombings by the Allies and at the same time, faced ever-harsher reprisals from their own government if they failed to toe the Nazi party line. Amid these horrors, instead of “Auf Wiedersehen,” Berliners ended conversations and gatherings with “Bleiben Sie übrig”--“Survive,” or “Stay alive.”
Stay Alive cannot be read without flinching. Starting with the photograph on its front cover--grim-faced mothers, fathers and children racing toward the camera and away from who-knows-exactly-what--the story crescendos to descriptions of the corpses of draft dodgers and army deserters--thousands, by one account--hanging from lampposts across Berlin. In between, Buruma puts on display reason after reason why average Germans found themselves incapable of opposing Nazi atrocities, and why the few who did take a stand were magnificent beyond comprehension for their courage and humanity.
Stay Alive is partly, but only partly, a memorial to Buruma’s father, Leo. Leo was a law student in occupied Netherlands until May 1943, when he refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Nazi regime, and was arrested and pressed--along with 6.5 million other non-Jewish citizens of occupied countries--into near-slave labor in Germany. His life in Berlin from 1943 to 1945 is one of over three hundred lives, or moments out of lives, that Buruma memorializes in his nightmarish panorama of wartime Berlin life. The stories and descriptions in Stay Alive come from Leo’s letters home; stories Leo told the author (his son) years later; private letters, diaries, and published memoirs of other survivors; journalists’ accounts; and interviews that Buruma held with survivors nearly a century after the events.
The letter-writers, diarists, memoirists and interviewees quoted in Stay Alive include fervent Nazis like Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, whose published diary furnishes a timeline for the broader story, and like the obscure but equally fervent Nazi, fifteen-year-old Lilo G. Lilo wrote in her diary that she knew Jews were being deported from Germany and was glad of that, but she harbored doubts about killing them en masse. Also among Buruma’s sources are men-on-the-street who did as they were told and tried to ignore what their leaders were doing in their name; decent Germans who despaired of changing their country’s course, and left; and irresolute patriots who stayed and struggled with the dilemmas that staying entailed. Vivid accounts come from Jewish Berliners who survived the war in hiding inside the city as so-called “U-boats,” and from resisters who aided the U-boats and risked the consequences.
Among those who despaired and left were the playwright Bertold Brecht and the novelist Thomas Mann. Other creative artists, like actor Heinz Rühman and conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who had established careers and much to lose by walking away, did their best to be “apolitical.” Others, like journalist Ruth Andreas-Friedrich and members of her “Uncle Emil” resistance group, stayed, aided U-boats and did their best to thwart the regime in other ways. Yet others, like intelligence officer Helmut von Moltke, worked from deep inside the establishment, undermining as many of its worst policies as they could. For this, Hitler had Von Moltke hanged from a meat hook. Ten thousand others like him suffered like punishments.
And there were people like Else Müller, a “tiny old lady” who lived in the same apartment building as U-boats Lothar Orbach and his mother. On Christmas Eve 1942, Lothar and his mother were desperately seeking shelter from a Gestapo round-up. Neighbor after neighbor turned them away, but Else took them in and hid them. Then Else pinned on a swastika badge, ran to her window and shouted an anti-semitic utterance into the street. Shortly after, the Gestapo came to her door. Seeing her badge, they gave a brisk Nazi salute and left, persuaded that the apartment needn’t be searched.
Was Else a resister, who kept Nazi paraphernalia at hand for just such occasions? Or had she until then simply done her best to stay alive, following Hitler’s agenda if that was what it took, until faced with neighbors whose chance to stay alive lay in her hands? Did Else just then recognize, and do, the right thing? Either way, Else Müller showed humanity and courage--rare qualities in Berlin in 1942.
The need for courage and humanity was deepening by 1943, as the war’s fourth year gave way to its fifth. The RAF first bombed Berlin in August 1940 (prompting the retaliatory 8-month London Blitz). Berlin’s first bomb fatalities occurred on August 29, 1940; on Christmas Eve 1940 there were approximately forty bomb fatalities. By Christmas 1943, Berlin was being bombed day and night by hundreds of American Flying Fortresses and more hundreds of British Lancasters dropping bombs by the thousands. Between January and April 1945 more than 4,000 British bombers plus as many American planes hit Berlin, killing tens of thousands.
Meanwhile, Berliners did their best to not only stay alive, but have a measure of fun. Turning to this side of wartime life, Buruma punctuates his account of Berlin’s journey into night with amusing, sometimes titillating, and often very funny descriptions of ways Berliners found, between air raids, to snatch moments of enjoyment.
Many of Berlin’s wartime diversions, of course, came from Germany’s film industry and other Nazi propaganda organs, who made it their business to keep the Volk entertained, and while at it, entertain them with content calculated to stiffen their resolve to win the war.
Or at least not resign themselves to losing. Between 1939 and 1941, Hitler’s speeches and Goebbels’ government-sanctioned entertainments had trumpeted Germany’s victories and promised grander victories to come. But after Germany’s 1943 defeat at Stalingrad, and more so after the 1944 Normandy invasion, a different tone drifted into official pronouncements and unofficial propagandizing. Fortitude, resilience and the glory of sacrifice were now the themes. Berliners’ actual mood, however, was described by one of Buruma’s informants as a mix of apathy and hedonism, the effects of weeks of living, and dying, in crowded, filthy bunkers.
There were also sporadic incidents of out-and-out grumbling. But grumbling was risky. As popular entertainments grew less effective in boosting morale, the regime relied more on severe and grisly punishments for “cowardice” and “defeatism,” which now became capital offenses. Allied bombs were the leading cause of death in Berlin in 1944 and 1945, but reprisals for inadequate enthusiasm for the Fatherland’s cause were a close second, and were overwhelmingly the most gruesome. Anyone caught vocally acknowledging the hopelessness of Germany’s situation was shot, tortured, hanged or beheaded. Draft dodgers and deserters by the thousands were hanged from streetlights across Berlin.
On May 2, 1945, the city’s defenses fell, and there followed weeks of looting, rape and random killing by the victorious Red Army. Then, abruptly and finally, Berlin fell silent, the worst of its ordeal over. Buruma ends his account of Berliners’ five-year struggle to stay alive with a description of long lines of women picking up debris in what was left of the city--the first stage of rebuilding.
Stay Alive, Buruma tells us, is partly a love letter to Berlin---a tribute to the way post-war Berliners looked their wartime years in the face, however tempting it might have been to flinch. He pays them homage for erecting the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in the city center, preserving the exposed foundations of one-time torture cellars, and placing countless bronze “stumbling stones” on Berlin streets, marking the places where deported and murdered Jews once lived.
Stay Alive is also partly a warning, although Buruma avoids directly saying so. Noting danger signs in today’s global political climate, Buruma observes that if there is a warning in Berlin’s wartime story, it is largely a warning against the all-too-human temptation to look away from evil until it is too late. Berliners looked away for too long in the 1930’s, the years W.H. Auden called Berlin’s “low, dishonest decade.” Buruma’s unflinching account of the consequences gives reason after reason to do better.
Stay Alive is also an all-out good read. The narration is crisp, often spellbinding, and impossible to look away from, even when the content is hard to face. From every point of view, it is a must-read, especially for anyone seeking to understand the trajectory of twentieth-century world history and gain a sense of where that trajectory may lead in century twenty-one.
June 23, 2026
I read this book because it is being widely discussed so far this year and because its subject is especially applicable to today under Trump and Trumpism. It is the first hand story of Berlin from 1939 to 1945, via the author’s father’s diary entries of the time as he lived there under forced servitude in the munitions factories. It is the story of German indifference in so many instances as long as the actual German citizen’s life was normal. it is the story of what taking place her in the US in the lives of too many because the chaos of Trump and his administration just doesn’t affect the lives of the many. So indifference then and indifference now. Same result under equally despicable circumstances.
July 18, 2026
Thorough! I’ve never read a book that dove so deeply into a historical timeline. I know a lot about WWII history, but this book made it look elementary. I’ve graduated to college level knowledge.
June 21, 2026
I've read a lot of books about Germany during World War II, so there were no surprises here, but the author did a very nice job of getting personal interviews from many people who had lived in Berlin during the war or had left a diary. Not surprisingly, in many cases these were people who, by a lucky incident, had survived. It's also a good book from the standpoint of covering a lot of different classes of people, from people who survived on the streets to wealthy people who came through pretty well. The book did spend a lot of time on culture, movies, and such. Like with many of these books, it's just such an interesting story to see how people deal with a situation where gradually it becomes worse and it's clear that your leaders are evil, terrible people. Buruma is always a keen observer.
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.
July 28, 2026
Actual rating: 3.5 stars.
As with many of the histories I pick up, I'm attracted to those about events and places I have some connection with. I lived on an American Air Force base in Kaiserslautern as a child and military brat during the final year of the post-WWII allied occupation and the first two years of West Germany's independence, from 1954 to 1957. I moved to Germany again in 1965, just 20 years after the war's end, where I drove trucks for the Army and Air Force Exchange system, traveling autobahns and back roads, seeing a good portion of West Germany over the course of two years. I visited Berlin twice: both times traveling there across what was then East Germany via the U.S. Army's troop train; once in 1966 and once again in 1983, when I was stationed in the Netherlands.
My memories of Germany 10 years after Hitler's defeat remain vivid. I noticed the things a kid would notice: that there were very few German men of my father's age; that every American military family on base could afford to have a young German live-in maid, even enlisted families who were paid very little; that many German boys my age suffered from twisted legs, victims of rickets; that bomb damage and pock marks from artillery were everywhere you looked in Kaiserslautern; that there were plenty of Nazi pillboxes in the woods behind base housing where my friends and I could play soldier. In the mid-60s, West Germany was mostly rebuilt, but I was now working alongside German BX employees a little older than myself, men and women who had lived through the war as teenagers and who would occasionally share stories. One of them was my boss at the truck depot, a Jew who passed as a Christian child while living with a Christian family who gave him cover, but who lost every member of his own family, all of whom died in the camps. My young wife and I took skiing lessons at Berchtesgaden, Hitler's alpine retreat, staying in a hotel once used by members of his staff.
So was I up for a history of civilian life in the city of Berlin during the war years, 1939 to 1945? Damn tootin'.
I've read about life in London during the Blitz. I've read Shirer's Rise & Fall of the Third Reich. I've read a lot about the Holocaust and the camps. I've read about the Nuremberg trials. I've read about Hitler's Wonder Weapons and Werner von Braun. All that. I rather expected more of the same in this history, but Ian Buruma sticks closely to his announced subject: what it was like to live, and survive, as a civilian Berliner during the war years. The war, save for the bombing raids, is mostly in the background; here you'll read about food and gasoline shortages, later expanded to include heating oil, clothing, and shoes; how the citizens of Berlin entertained themselves, mostly at the cinema; what they were allowed to read and listen to under wartime censorship; how careful they had to be in what they said; how a very few Jews managed to survive as "U-boats," homeless underground denizens of a city where everyone was an enemy.
On that, the Holocaust is a little more present in Buruma's history, because he includes details of former Jewish businesses and stores taken over by "Aryans," how Christian Germans quickly moved into the homes of evicted Jews, how the Jews themselves had to live and survive before they were eventually rounded up and sent to the death camps, the gradations and degrees of Jewishness defined under Nazi laws and how they determined who could work and who couldn't, who could stay and who had to go.
It's a lot, and it's depressing, and yes, unless you're a MAGA cultist, you'll see parallels aplenty.
Were they all Nazis, Berliners? They might as well have been.
As with many of the histories I pick up, I'm attracted to those about events and places I have some connection with. I lived on an American Air Force base in Kaiserslautern as a child and military brat during the final year of the post-WWII allied occupation and the first two years of West Germany's independence, from 1954 to 1957. I moved to Germany again in 1965, just 20 years after the war's end, where I drove trucks for the Army and Air Force Exchange system, traveling autobahns and back roads, seeing a good portion of West Germany over the course of two years. I visited Berlin twice: both times traveling there across what was then East Germany via the U.S. Army's troop train; once in 1966 and once again in 1983, when I was stationed in the Netherlands.
My memories of Germany 10 years after Hitler's defeat remain vivid. I noticed the things a kid would notice: that there were very few German men of my father's age; that every American military family on base could afford to have a young German live-in maid, even enlisted families who were paid very little; that many German boys my age suffered from twisted legs, victims of rickets; that bomb damage and pock marks from artillery were everywhere you looked in Kaiserslautern; that there were plenty of Nazi pillboxes in the woods behind base housing where my friends and I could play soldier. In the mid-60s, West Germany was mostly rebuilt, but I was now working alongside German BX employees a little older than myself, men and women who had lived through the war as teenagers and who would occasionally share stories. One of them was my boss at the truck depot, a Jew who passed as a Christian child while living with a Christian family who gave him cover, but who lost every member of his own family, all of whom died in the camps. My young wife and I took skiing lessons at Berchtesgaden, Hitler's alpine retreat, staying in a hotel once used by members of his staff.
So was I up for a history of civilian life in the city of Berlin during the war years, 1939 to 1945? Damn tootin'.
I've read about life in London during the Blitz. I've read Shirer's Rise & Fall of the Third Reich. I've read a lot about the Holocaust and the camps. I've read about the Nuremberg trials. I've read about Hitler's Wonder Weapons and Werner von Braun. All that. I rather expected more of the same in this history, but Ian Buruma sticks closely to his announced subject: what it was like to live, and survive, as a civilian Berliner during the war years. The war, save for the bombing raids, is mostly in the background; here you'll read about food and gasoline shortages, later expanded to include heating oil, clothing, and shoes; how the citizens of Berlin entertained themselves, mostly at the cinema; what they were allowed to read and listen to under wartime censorship; how careful they had to be in what they said; how a very few Jews managed to survive as "U-boats," homeless underground denizens of a city where everyone was an enemy.
On that, the Holocaust is a little more present in Buruma's history, because he includes details of former Jewish businesses and stores taken over by "Aryans," how Christian Germans quickly moved into the homes of evicted Jews, how the Jews themselves had to live and survive before they were eventually rounded up and sent to the death camps, the gradations and degrees of Jewishness defined under Nazi laws and how they determined who could work and who couldn't, who could stay and who had to go.
It's a lot, and it's depressing, and yes, unless you're a MAGA cultist, you'll see parallels aplenty.
Were they all Nazis, Berliners? They might as well have been.
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."
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