The Reader

Content Warning: This guide summarizes and discusses statutory rape, the Holocaust, and Nazi brutality, which feature in the source text.

Hanna joined the Nazi party. Despite their name, a shortened version of National Socialist German Workers’ Party, the Nazis weren’t socialists; their political program centered on fascism, violence, and hate. Their totalitarian leader was Adolf Hitler, whom the journalist Konrad Heiden calls “one of the most tremendous phenomena of all world history” (Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power, Houghton Mifflin, 1944, p. 35). Hitler exploited Germany’s economic woes and despair over losing World War I and gradually gained total power. He started World War II to expand Germany’s power over the entire European continent. He and the Nazi party were also responsible for multiple genocides, systematically killing Jewish people, Romani people, people with intellectual and physical disabilities, political opponents, and anyone who allegedly deviated from the Nazi agenda. The mass genocide of Jewish people is often referred to as the Holocaust.

Initially, the Nazis used special commandos to execute large groups of people. In the novel, Michael gets a ride from a man who tells him about a picture he saw of a death-squad member. The driver describes the man’s expression as “satisfied, even cheerful” (118).