Richard Overy
Fragile Mutinies
Disobeying Hitler: German Resistance in the Last Year of WWII
By Randall Hansen
Faber & Faber 470pp £25 order from our bookshop
So much has been written about the final months of the Second World War in recent years that it is hard to imagine there is anything much left to say. Randall Hansen has chosen to focus on Germans who ‘disobeyed’ Hitler, on the grounds that they somehow provided an essential psychological and material step towards the construction of a democratic Germany once the war was over. He insists that disobedience is distinct from other forms of dissent and resistance (where it was possible to obey the rules while contesting the system), though to those familiar with the final death throes of the Third Reich, the distinction might appear unnecessarily academic.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore
'As we read, we know that in a short time the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and colour television will sweep that age over the balustrade and into the sea, but for now everyone is happy.'
Simon Baker is charmed by Graham Swift's new novel, 'Here We Are'.
http://ow.ly/uDL050ylh80