The Death of Escherich

After a drunken SS celebration where he must read Quangel's confession to applause, Escherich follows Prall and the rest to Quangel's cell, where they wake him, empty schnapps over his head, and take turns smashing glasses against his skull. Ordered to join in under threat of the basement, Escherich needs four attempts before his glass breaks, feeling Quangel's unbroken stare throughout. Quangel finally collapses, bleeding, and is left on the cell floor. Back at his desk near midnight, Escherich cannot shake the scene, or Enno Kluge, whom he sacrificed to reach Quangel. He recognises the cowardice and complicity Quangel accused him of, admits he'd trade the whole building for Quangel's freedom, and concludes he is 'probably the only man Otto Quangel converted' — too much a coward to fight on himself. He tears the map of red flags from the wall, then shoots himself. Prall, informed of the 'desertion', rages and orders Quangel dragged upstairs to clean up the mess.

The novel's moral centre briefly shifts to its least sympathetic recurring figure, and Fallada earns it: Escherich's suicide is framed as conversion rather than despair, the confession he could never make aloud. Prall's closing order, forcing Quangel to clean the blood, restores the book's cruelty and refuses any grace.