On the End of the World

Thank you to Netgalley and Steerforth Press for the arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. Roth wrote about the nazi’s from the early 1920’s, Roth was able to see Hitler’s menace from the start. In his essays, Roth pleaded with Europe to stand up to the new Germany. This is the translated version of Roth’s essays and these are definitely worth a read. The book shows Roth’s bitterness, frustration and despair at the coming events.

Joseph Roth left Berlin for Paris on the same day that Hitler became German chancellor. On the End of the World is a short collection of articles he wrote between 1933 and 1939 criticising the Nazi regime and lamenting the loss of European consciousness in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power.

The first article, The Dream of a Carnival Night, dating from March 1924 sets the tone in likening Hitler’s trial (following the unsuccessful beer hall putsch) to a dream of a carnival night. “I dreamt Germany altogether, her illiterate upholsterer, my colleague who, barely has he learned to read and write in a racist alphabet book, immediately becomes a writer and political personality”.

Angry and frustrated but always clear, sharp and penetrating, Roth is particularly good on highlighting the lies of Goebbels and his ministry of propaganda and I couldn’t help (hindsight is a wonderful thing) thinking of today’s post-truth world. He writes about Nazis’ appropriation of Nordic mythology (in The Myth of the German Soul) and criticises the Western diplomats and journalists who “go to Germany like theatregoers” instead of observing and explaining current events. Having just read Julia Boyd’s Travellers in the Third Reich with numerous examples of exactly this – international visitors to Bayreuth during the 1930s and their often blinkered love for German culture - Roth’s article felt particularly acute. The most poignant, however is ‘Rest While Viewing the Demolition’, written in June 1938 (after the Anschluss) on demolition of the Paris hotel where Roth lived while he watches from a nearby café. “Misery crouches beside me, ever gentler and ever greater, pain drops by, becoming great and beneficent, horror blasts its way in, but doesn’t scare me anymore. And that’s the most inconsolable thing of all.”

I’ve been meaning to read more of Joseph Roth’s writing since I finally read The Radetzky March last year and am very grateful for to Netgalley, Steerforth Press and Pushkin Press for the opportunity to read On the End of the World.

"What use are my words against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the clueless diplomats, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg? In sad resignation, Your Joseph Roth"

These despairing words were published in Parisian journal Das Neue Tage-Buch on the 17th October, 1934. By that time, novelist Joseph Roth had been living in Paris for nearly twenty months, having left Berlin for good on the 30th January, 1933, the same day that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. In the years leading up to his death in May 1939, Roth battled depression, alcoholism and poverty whilst working some of his best-known novels. He also wrote several incendiary articles denouncing the rise of Nazism and the demise of European culture, which were published mainly in the Pariser Tageszeitung and Das NeueTagebuch, German language newspapers meant for the exiled community.

The present collection, edited and translated by Will Stone for Pushkin Press brings together a selection of such essays but, very aptly, starts with an earlier article from March 1924 in which Roth compares Hitler’s trial following the unsuccessful beer hall putsch to a “carnival night”. As Roth perspicaciously notes, these so-called judicial proceedings actually worked in Hitler’s favour by giving him a platform for his racist ideas.

In his later essays, Roth becomes more extreme in his attacks not only on Hitler and his entourage, but also on the other European powers, particularly Britain and France, who seemed blind to what was actually happening in Germany. Roth draws a link between the regime’s disregard for “culture” and the heinous crimes of the regime: “it is not by some fortuitous coincidence that you see them burning books at the exact same moment as they mistreat the Jews: these are merely to separate manifestations of the nation’s spiritual state. It is no less symbolic that the control of the Fine Arts has been placed in the hands of the Minister of Propaganda!”

Initially, it seems that Roth had hopes that Austria could act as a bulwark to Hitler, preserving Mitteleuropean culture and values without descending into Nazi hell. Following the Anschluss however, even this hope is shattered.

In most of the articles, Roth sounds like a crazed Old Testament prophet, pulling no punches and sparing no one whom he deems guilty of colluding with the Nazis or not standing up to them. At times, his rants seem hyperbolic. Except that we have the benefit of hindsight, and we know that his dire warnings were, alas, spot-on. This is, of course, a very sobering thought. Because if Roth, a down-and-out author eking out an existence in a Paris hotel, could perceive that the “end of the world” was nigh, surely those who could have opposed Hitler and did not, could not claim that they could not predict where the Nazi train would lead.

Some of the articles provide a respite from Roth’s more aggressive essays. “Rest while viewing the demolition” is a particularly moving piece. Roth watches the destruction of the Foyot, the hotel where he lived since his exile, from a bistro opposite the site. He engages in banter with the demolition men but his heart is heavy: “Now I sit opposite the empty space, listening to the hours pass. You lose one homeland, then another, I say to myself. Here I sit, with my vagabond’s staff. My feet are sore, my heart is weary, my eyes are dry. Misery crouches beside me, ever gentler and ever greater; pain drops by, becoming great and beneficent, horror blasts its way in, but doesn’t scare me anymore. And that’s the most inconsolable thing of all”.

This collection is a stern warning that the Nazi tragedy did not happen overnight, and that the writing on the wall was there for all to see. In this regard, the endnotes and the timeline aligning Roth’s final years with the rise of Hitler and the events leading to World War II is particularly helpful in providing a context to this eye-opening read.

This book was fast paced. Hard to put down. It flowed well and it was very well written. It caught hold of me and had me hooked from the start . I was literally on the edge of my seat reading this book. Very powerful read on history