Part 4 · Chapter 67
The Pleas For Clemency
You know perfectly well that the man behind bars is the decent one, and you on the outside are a scoundrel, that the criminal is free, and the decent man is sentenced to death.
Summary
Dr Stark, Otto Quangel's contemptuous attorney, brings the death verdict. Quangel refuses to petition Hitler for clemency, and the two spar over decency: Quangel tells him 'at least I stayed decent, I didn't participate,' and needles Stark over what he paid to become 'such a fine gentleman'. Stark submits a clemency plea anyway, grounded in an insanity claim he knows is false. Meanwhile, in a poor Brandenburg village, Anna's elderly parents learn their children face execution and Ulrich is in the Wittenau asylum. Devastated and ashamed, they travel to Berlin, find no one willing to help, fail to locate Otto and Anna, and are turned away because the Führer is at his 'Hitler Quarters'. Back home, they labour over a pleading letter to Hitler, still believing in his mercy. Both petitions are shuffled through the chancellery and the Ministry of Justice, stamped and rejected by rote — Quangel's nonexistent appeal is declined, and the Heffkes' rejection becomes village gossip.
Analysis
Two clemency pleas in parallel expose the same machine from different angles: Stark's cynical formality and the Heffkes' desperate sincerity are processed identically, stamped and discarded. Fallada uses bureaucratic repetition — numbered, registered, rejected — as its own kind of horror, indifferent to motive or need.