The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-1959

The Diaries of Victor Klemperer

by Victor Klemperer

The superb, bestselling diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Jew in Dresden who survived the war - hailed as one of the 20th century's most important chronicles.

' Compulsive reading' LITERARY REVIEW 'Deeply engrossing' SPECTATOR

'Klemperer's diary deserves to rank alongside that of Anne Frank' SUNDAY TIMES

'A vivid and powerful account of a remarkable life' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

June 1945. The immediate postwar period produces many shocks and revelations - some people have behaved better than Klemperer had believed, others much worse. His sharp observations are now turned on the East German Communist Party, which he himself joins, and he notes many similarities between Nazi and Communist behaviour. Politics, he comes to believe, is above all the choice of the "lesser evil". He serves in the GDR's People's Chamber and represents East German scholarship abroad. But it is the details of everyday life, and the honesty and directness, that make these bestselling diaries so fascinating.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, World War II, Holocaust, Memoir, Diary

672 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Victor Klemperer (9 October 1881 – 11 February 1960) worked as a commercial apprentice, a journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specialising in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden. His diaries detailing his life under successive German states -the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic- were published in 1995. His recollections on the Third Reich have since become standard sources; extensively quoted by Saul Friedlander, Michael Burleigh and Richard J. Evans.

Reviews

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This massive book took me far too long to read. Yet, it still was brilliant. Victor Klemperer is one of the great heroes, in my view. He truly is a survivor if ever there was one, with personal resilience that was was absolutely astounding. He is rightfully best known for his classic diaries, I Shall Bear Witness, two volumes which rank (in my mind) as the greatest firsthand accounts of 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany — by a man who was also a persecuted non-practicing Jew married to an Aryan wife. This diary, The Lesser Evil, recounts his final years in post-war East Germany (German Democratic Republic). In Nazi Germany he was stripped of everything except the clothes on his back by war’s end, but post-war in the GDR, he slowly gained fame and honor. This includes his involvement in politics. While he wasn’t a communist in heart, he saw communism as “the lesser evil” when compared to fascism. He joined the communist party because he knew he needed to if he wanted to work as a college professor (which he needed to in order restore his finances and academic reputation). He was always the pragmatist. He also was involved in parliamentary politics as well. Yet despite his clear success in post-war Germany, he was plagued by self-doubts and depression. He also grew inwardly more critical and bitter about the failure of the German communist state. In 1951, his wife, Eva, died. Yet the survivor in him finds love again in Hadwig, a much younger student of his, whom he marries. Yet even there, complete happiness eludes him as he felt guilty toward both Eva and Hadwig, as if loving one made him unfaithful to the other.

Klemperer’s true fame was as a diarist. Yet he was an intellectual — pondering his academic writing and lectures up to the very end of his long life. I am certain his academic pursuits is what he would want to be most remembered for. Interestingly, Klemperer the great diarist, read another great wartime diarist as well, the teenage Anne Frank. He was ambivalent by her book. Later he saw the play based on her diary and was much more moved. One couldn’t help but wonder what Anne Frank’s diaries would have been like if she had survived into full adulthood. Of course when he read her book, he was unknown as a diarist, something that only came posthumously to him — and her — a late recognition they both shared. He however fully realized toward the end of the war that his diaries would be a great testament to the times so he (and friends) guarded them with great care.

This last diary, The Lesser Evil, wasn’t easily read. Unfortunately, there was no e-book version available (hello publishers ... get busy with an ebook of The Lesser Evil). The print volume had small print which was difficult to read. There are numerous footnotes, as with all Klemperer’s diaries, and to not read them will severely limit one’s understanding of what he’s writing about. With his seminal work, I Shall Bear Witness, in e-books, one could easily traverse between text and notes, yet with the print volume it was cumbersome. This diary’s editing was rather severe too. While Klemperer was a prolific diarist, sometimes the editor cut out too many of Klemperer’s words to be replaced by a bland summary. It was almost like he (translator Martin Chalmers) wanted to hurriedly get to the end of the translation to complete the book.

Still these technical issues do not detract from the value of Victor Klemperer’s final work, or from the stunning impact of his total output as a diarist. His brilliance is that his lifetime of diaries gives testament to German history straddling the first half of the 20th century. His bravery (though he never saw it), his resilience (though he never recognized it), and his zest for his intellectual life, make him one of the greatest figures of his time. While he may never have the fame of Anne Frank, who was more understandable and endearing, yet getting to know Victor Klemperer over the years has deeply enriched my understanding this time period immeasurably. I do believe my slowness in completing this book was because I knew it ended with the death of someone who I view as a dear inspiration.

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third Klemperer diary is much less exciting than the previous two (unsurprising, as the Nazi years and the war are now over) and also much less comprehensive. The first diary covered nine years; the second three and a half; this one covers a little over thirteen years in about the same number of pages as the first two books. The editor marked omissions with ellipses, and I don't know if there was a single entry that didn't have at least one. Sometimes entire entries were eliminated and the editor summarized them in brackets. But, looking at what was left, I don't think I missed much.

After the armistice Victor Klemperer and his wife Eva experienced a remarkable, 180-degree turn of fortune. They got their house back; he was feted by everybody (they were all anxious to demonstrate that THEY had not been Jew-hating Nazis, thank you very much); his academic career rose from the grave and he became a minor celebrity within the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Wealth, fame and international travel (even as far away as China) followed.

Yet from my reading of the diary I can't say Klemperer's postwar years were happy ones. He considered Communism the "lesser evil" to capitalism, but he was uneasy about the similarities he noticed between the Communist government and the Nazis. He witnessed the revival of anti-Semitism and the rise of Holocaust denial. He got embroiled in petty academic infighting while becoming convinced that his star was only on the ascendancy for lack of competitors within the GDR. Eva Klemperer died in 1951 and Victor remarried within a year to Hadwig, a former student who was twenty-five years to his seventy. They deeply loved one another, but he felt guilty for his seeming "betrayal" of Eva and for denying Hadwig her youth and the possibility of children. And, in the final years, his health went into a marked decline, forcing Hadwig to be a nursemaid to him more often than not.

Were it not for the deep impression Klemperer's earlier diaries made on me, and my determination to see his life through, I probably would not have read this book. But it is a good demonstration of life in the early years of the GDR (before the Berlin Wall was erected) and of much historical interest. Unlike the first two diaries I think this one can stand on its own.

[Richard R]

I was rather surprised by the third volume of Klemperer's diaries: the first two had distinctly left me with the impression that Klemperer saw nazism and communism as affiliated totalitarianisms. I had actually assumed that this volume would present communism as a lesser evil in comparison to Nazism rather than to capitalism. But by the time we come to this volume, he'd clearly concluded that change was needed to ensure there was no repetition of Nazism and saw communism as the best way to achieve that: "(I)n my opinions and as a voter have stood by the Liberals; that can also be gathered from my publications. If, without any alteration to this inclination, as far as my fundamental view of philosophy and especially the philosophy of history is concerned, I nevertheless request to be admitted to the Communist Party, then for the following reasons: I believe, that to remain unattached to a party today is a luxury, which with some justice could be interpreted as cowardice or at least as excessive indolence. And I believe that only a very resolute left-wing movement can get us out of the present calamity and prevent its return. As a university teacher I was forced to watch at close quarters, as reactionary ideas made ever greater inroads . We must seek to remove them effectively and from the bottom up. And only in the KPD do I see the unambiguous will to do so."

It's not a position that history has been particularly kind to, not least given the current tendency of the parts of the former East Germany to vote for the far right AfD party. In practice, Klemperer's views start to be challenged relatively quickly: "I heard that Plievier really has gone to Munich. In an interview there he said that he had been forced to remain silent for 11 years and now wanted to live in a country in which he was allowed to say everything... It is very upsetting for me that the whole of the intelligentsia is going over to the other side like this. But we must, we must hold on to our position and I still believe – not in the pure idealism and the blamelessness of the Russians, but that their cause, regarded ideally, is the better one, and regarded practically, is, in the long term the winning one." They also receive challenges from anonymous letters that explicitly suggested that his support for communism was incompatible with his previous critique of nazism: "I was betraying my convictions, because the present regime matched the Hitler one... linguistically the man is right, also I have long been making notes on it anyway – but practically he is simply altogether not right – even if with respect to literature I feel myself confined and tyrannised."

Klemperer repeatedly documents behaviour that counted as prototypical examples of totalitarianism: "the reciprocal mistrust inside the Party, the fanaticism of the younger generation: to these people no - one is ‘a proper Marxist’. Virtually an atmosphere of inquisition... I know how everything is fixed and how spontaneity and unanimity are prepared. I know that under the Nazis it sounded just the same and proceeded in just the same way . I know how little reality there is behind it... The ghastly similarity to Nazi methods in the propaganda for the Soviet Friendship Society, in the hullabaloo around Stalin’s birthday cannot be denied... Our never-ending professional conversation is regularly about the Party censorship, which is becoming ever more tyrannical. One trembles at every single word, in case it could be seen as anti-Marxist. In both of us there is a constant resistance to the senseless narrow - mindedness of this uncontrolled censorship."

As Klemperer becomes growingly disenchanted with the GDR, he increasingly defends it as a lesser evil to capitalist West Germany, partly driven by the rehabilitation of former Nazi officials into Adenauer's government and partly by the increasingly imperialistic nature of American foreign policy. He does still travel to Western states and does not particularly critique them from his impressions, give or take complaints about excessive traffic in West Berlin. By contrast, events like the Doctor's Plot, Beria's downfall and the invasion of Hungary trouble him but only gradually undermine his faith in communism rather than leading to a complete break: "Both sides lie, hush up, slander, I can no longer feel any enthusiasm for ‘us’, I merely find the Federal Republic ‘even worse’, I feel ever more strongly the confinement, the isolation, the futility of the situation here, especially my own. I am particularly irritated every day by the emptiness of our news reporting, above all on the wireless. I usually switch off the ‘Commentary’ of the day – after 10 words I know the rest... Profound political disappointment.... to seek ‘freedom and security in the Bonn state, to publicly support the Bonn regime! I find that odious... Of my enthusiasm there remains only: we are the lesser evil. And: Marxism is a) better than our SED government, b) a religion like other religions – and I cannot believe... Perhaps, probably even, it is egotism, more than anything else, that binds me to the GDR. Here I am someone, here I am wealthy, here I am a great scholar. What, of all that, would I be in the West? My belief in the pure intentions, the pure humanitas of the Soviets is long gone. But over there they are not any better, only more polished. And we here are the lesser evil nevertheless... Marxism is a faith like Catholicism – I am without faith."

In his final years, Klemperer finds himself in the position of having his work censored in the GDR: although he could easily publish in Austria or Switzerland, he is reluctant to do so for fear of harming the GDR. Eventually, he refuses to make the demanded cuts and does not publish at all. Unsurprisingly, he is increasingly critical of the GDR: "We are unable to get rid of Fascism: here in a somewhat more Asian, in the West in a somewhat more European form. In Bonn one is allowed to be in opposition and gets two or three years in prison; here one absolutely has to keep one’s mouth shut.... Thanks to my China trip and fully acknowledging the prodigious achievements here I have finally become an anti-Communist . This cannot have been Marx’s ideal condition."

Klemperer died in 1960, a few years before the construction of the Berlin wall.

[Louise Silk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This third Klemperer diary covers a little over thirteen years beginning in 1945. The first diary covered nine years; the second three and a half. After the armistice Victor Klemperer and his wife Eva experienced a remarkable return. They got their house back; he was feted by everybody anxious to demonstrate that they had not been Jew-hating Nazis; his academic career rose from the grave and he became a minor celebrity within the East German Democratic Republic. His wife,Eva, died in 1951 and Victor married Hadwig, a former student who was twenty-five years to his seventy. Until the end of his life he felt guilty for his betrayal of Eva and for denying Hadwig the possibility of children making his postwar years not happy ones.

Victor considered Communism the lesser evil to capitalism, but he was uneasy about the similarities between the Communist government and the Nazis. He witnessed the revival of anti-Semitism and the rise of Holocaust denial. He continued to consider himself a first and foremost a German and to deny his Jewish heritage which in and of itself continued to be his main personal nemesis. Rather than resolving themselves, these contradictions became more acute after 1945. This diary shows how he tried to come to terms with his life, his religion and his politics while trying to catch up from past deprivation and to achieve under continually challenging circumstances.

[Bengt Öquist · Rating 5 out of 5]

Efter ett långt sällskap med Victor Klemperer skiljs vi åt, med sorg. Att läsa Victors dagböcker från 1933 till 1959 har varit mycket upplysande Hans beskrivning av tillvaron gör att läsaren kommer nära händelser och vardagen på ett sätt jag inte upplevt tidigare. Trots mina universitetsstudier i historia och statsvetenskap, det här blir något helt annat. Victors närvaro i den ofattbart onda nazi tiden som han som genom ett under överlever. Sedan hans tillvaro i det han menar är det mindre onda av två Tyskland, han brottas med insikten att DDR har stora brister men vidhåller att öst är det mindre onda. Läs själva och ta del av viktig historia, det hjälper dig att förstå vår nutid och därmed kunna göra viktiga val i vardagen. En fundering får avsluta de här raderna. I en av bokens absolut sista dagar kommer så en tanke från Victor, han reflekterar igen om vilket samhälle som är det minst onda. Är det verkligen han som skriver eller är det ett sätt att, med facit i hand, bättra på hans insikter?

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite as exciting as the war years, of course, but very interesting. A lot is cut out, and some of the academic shenanigans were quite difficult to follow. The early part is imbued with a sense of euphoria as the Klemperers return to their house and actually move back into it within a day of reaching the village. Gradually life returns to some sort of normality, but of course they are now in the Eastern bloc and have to adjust to a new regime. Slowly news emerges of what actually happened to nearly all their Jewish friends who were deported (Klemperer is still trying to find out about some of them years later) - the extent of the use of the gas chambers simply wasn't known about even in Jewish circles until after the war. Eva's death in 1951 is followed fairly swiftly by Victor's marriage to a much younger woman, some academic honours and positions come his way, late in the day of course in an interrupted career. By the end of his life he is disillusioned about the USSR, but he dies before the Berlin Wall is erected (it would have been good to hear his views on that!) and during the 1950s it was still possible to visit West Germany fairly easily. I particularly liked being able to follow up what had happened to some of the people in the earlier volumes of the diary (such as the Gestapo officers from Dresden). I learned a lot from all three volumes.

[Ann Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hallelujah!!! I finally finished this tome!! It took me forever to get through this book, but it was worth it. I read the first two, equally lengthy volumes without nearly as much trouble. This was a very insightful book in that Klemperer was writing from the perspective of an East German. Reading of his interpretation of events from behind the "iron curtain" was difinitely a different view.

[Victoria Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the final diary, Klemperer transitions through miraculous physical salvation and recovery... only to become small and solitary near the end of his life. In this outcome, he is but human.

Read this volume bearing in mind the question of what Anne Frank might have made of her life had she survived? In survival, would she have been relegated to an historical footnote rather than remaining a symbol of hope and love?

[Grace Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as compelling as the first volume ("I Shall Bear Witness") but a faithful picture of the early days of the GDR.

[Scott Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Proof that living through a totalitarian regime doesn't give one any insight into the causes of totalitarianism.

[Des Pemberton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 5-stars is more as a way of applause to Professor Victor Klemperer for all three volumes. His monumental dedication to the task of writing his diaries in such difficult and dangerous conditions. The three volumes gives an interesting and detailed view of German society during its Hitler and communist years; especially through the eyes of a Jew. The third volume was of particular interest as the Professor had a very poor opinion of the West, however, his fondness of communism soon waned.
The common theme throughout all three volumes was the Professor's hypochondria and at the end I was reminded of Spike Milligan's epigraph: 'I told you I was ill'. I believe that there may well be a connection between his hypochondria and writing of the diaries: a massive ego. All three volumes, but in particular the first two, contain details about individuals of whom the regime would have taken a very dim view of if the notes had been discovered, easily leading to the death sentence under the Nazi regime and imprisonment under the communists.
The three volumes aren't too difficult to read, especially if read concurrently with other books; I tended to read a month in the diary and then a chapter of another book, and soon on.
Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Professor, und danke.

[Sheela Word · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a heavily edited volume that covers a lot of years and is less gripping than the earlier two volumes written while the Nazis were in power. Kind of a slog at times, and the happy ending I was hoping for isn't here. Still worth reading.

Viktor and Eva have survived the Third Reich and recovered their house, but continue to suffer hunger and deprivation for several years. Viktor slowly reinstates himself as an academic, and Eva gets work as a translator. He becomes more and more enmeshed with the Communist party and more and more obsessed with public recognition. Her health fails.

After Eva dies, he marries a much younger woman, who loves him deeply, but he remains aggrieved and unsettled. The occupying Soviets come to seem like Nazis, but the West, he thinks, is worse. The thread running through all three of these volumes is Klemperer's provincialism. He doesn't want to move. He's not really a Jew. He's East German to his very core.

[Antti Kauppinen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last volume of Klemperer's diaries is much less satisfactory than the Nazi era ones. Instead of a happy ending, it's a story of decline and disillusionment. Out of gratitude for the Soviets, he becomes a Communist and eventually rises to some political and cultural prominence, while simultaneously losing his faith in the ideology, eventually only clinging onto the idea that East Germany is the 'lesser evil' compared to West Germany with its silent embrace of former Nazis. Much prominence is given to kvetching about declining health and professional insecurity - frankly, Klemperer comes across as no happier after the war than he was during it. The big surprise twist is... well, a turn in his personal life, but I won't spoil it.

[Ian Major · Rating 5 out of 5]

The final volume of his three part autobiography. Another moving insight into the conditions of East Germany as it emerged from the war and settled into its 'democratic socialist' dictatorship.

'In the course of the afternoon it became clear to me, that Communism is equally suited to pulling primitive peoples out of the primeval mud and pushing civilised peoples back into the primeval mud.'

I found it very sad as I saw his realisation of his mortality deepen, and his secular hopes evaporate, that he yet found the concept of a Creator God too hard to accept.

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensable. Especially in Trump era. Human. Compelling. In daily entries, he experiences and describes the slow drip - drip of fascism seeping into every pore of his own life and of German society. He’s erudite, but also chronicles the minutiae of daily life as it morphs into nightmare. Read both volumes. And his analysis, Thr Language of the Third Reich.

[Tristan Colgate · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the intensity of the first two volumes, the third is some what less essential. It focuses on Klemperer's time in East Germany. Whilst still interesting, and still well written, it is less captivating.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Klemperer picks up where his two earlier diary volumes leave off. I only intended to read this volume until we reached the period where things stabilized after the war (perhaps late 1940s), but it was very interesting and I read to the end. Klemperer's home ended up being in East Germany, and while he could have gotten to the West, he decided to stay. Title comes from Klemperer's decision to support the Communist government because he was mortified by all the former Nazis who were used by the western Allies to form the West German government.

As in Volumes I & II, the notes were very good.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third and final part of Victor Klemperer's diary covers the years from 1945 - 1959. Documenting his failures and petty disappointments, his increasing disillusionment with the GDR, his second marriage and his failing health.

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable. Vol. 3

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

inside look of day to day life in East Germany after 1945--