Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada

he would haul the schoolmaster and his wife out of their house, how he would interrogate them, harass them, and finally punish them, this pair who had not scrupled to make children of seven or eight spy on their own parents! ‘Where has your father hung his picture of the Führer? What does your mother say to your father when the man comes round collecting for the Winter Relief Organisation? What does your father say in the morning — does he say “Good morning” or does he say “Heil Hitler!”? Do you sometimes hear people speaking on the radio in a language that you don’t understand?’
    Oh yes, the hatred he felt for this educator of our youth, who had shown photos of horribly mutilated corpses to seven-year-old children, that hatred seemed to have taken permanent root.
    And now this same Doll had become mayor, and a portion of that retribution of which he had so often spoken, feeding his hatred by imagining how it would be, had now become a duty laid upon him. It was his job — among his many other responsibilities — to classify these Nazis as harmless fellow travellers or guilty activists, to root them out from the bolt holes where they had been quick to hide themselves, to kick them out of the cushy jobs they had cleverly and shamelessly landed for themselves once again, to strip them of the possessions they had acquired by fraud, theft, or blackmail, to confiscate the stocks of food they had been hoarding, to quarter the homeless in their big houses — all of this had now become his bounden duty. The local Party bigwigs and principal culprits had, of course, fled west a long time ago, but the National Socialist small fry were just as disgusting in their way. All of them claimed — either with righteous indignation or with tears in their eyes — that they had only joined the Party under duress, or at most for economic reasons. All of them were willing to sign a statement under oath to that effect, and if they’d had their way they would have sworn it right there and then, before God and the whole world, with the most sacred of oaths. Among these two or three hundred National Socialists there was not a single one who claimed to have joined the Party out of ‘personal conviction’. ‘Just sign the statement’, Doll would frequently snap impatiently. ‘It doesn’t alter anything, but if it makes you happy …! Here in the office we’ve known for a long time that there were only ever three National Socialists in the world: Hitler, Göring, and Goebbels! Off you go — next, please!’
    Mayor Doll would subsequently visit the houses and apartments of these National Socialists with a few policemen (some of whom, in those early days, were pretty dubious characters themselves) and a clerk to take notes. He found cupboards piled high with linen, some of it hardly used, while up in the attic a mother evacuated from her bombed-out home in Berlin didn’t know how she was going to put clothes on her children’s backs. Their sheds were stacked to the ceiling with dry logs and coal, but the door was securely padlocked, and none of it was shared with those who lacked the wherewithal to warm a pot of soup. In the cellars of these brown hoarders they found sacks of grain (‘It’s just feed for the chickens!’), meal (‘For my pig! Got it on a ration coupon from the Food Office!’), and flour (‘It’s not proper flour, just the sweepings from the mill floor!’). In their pantries the shelves were packed with supplies, but for every item they had a lie ready to hand. They feared for their precious lives — it was clearly written in their faces — but even now that fear could not stop them fighting to the bitter end for these supplies, claiming that everything had been acquired by legal means. They would still be standing there, next to the cart, when their hoarded treasures were taken away. They