Review: FEAR AND MISERY OF THE THIRD REICH, Union Theatre, January 12 2016

It is, at best, counter-intuitive and, at worst, offensive and immoral, to consider the greatest victims of Nazism to be the German people themselves - the men thrown into the horrors of the Eastern Front, the women starving at home, awaiting their fates at the hands of vengeful invaders. The Germans (at least that part of the population not earmarked for exile or extermination) were, after all, not victims, but perpetrators - they voted for Hitler and they stuck by him. Of course, when we think of Nazis, it's the clever sidekick Goebbels, who perverted his genius in service of Fascism, the puffed-up narcissist Goering with his ever more elaborate uniforms and the sadistic devil Himmler that come to mind and not the average man or woman going about their business, probably waiting for the whole thing to blow over. So who were they? What part did they play in the war machine? Why didn't they shout "Enough" and stop the little monster in his stride?

Bertolt Brecht's Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (continuing until 30 January at the Union Theatre) sheds a little light on those questions. Written just before World War II broke out, its scenes portray the power of the totalitarian state and the weakness of those caught in its tendrils. With characters weaving in and out of disconnected scenes (this production is still Brechtian, even if we're spared the sight of stagehands playing poker in the wings), we slowly gain an understanding of the ordinary men and women living under the jackboot.

There are the young thugs, full of testosterone but with nowhere to put it (as it were), who beat the Jews and Marxists with the blessing of the state. There's the judge who must leave the law behind in order to deliver a verdict that balances the need to placate the Hitler Youth, punish a Jew, protect a corrupt Gestapo man and keep the blackmailing Ministry of Justice apparatchik in Reichmarks. There's his wife too, the Jewish woman who leaves him and Germany in order to protect her husband's career as much as herself.

It is in these everyday events under Hitler's rule (there are half a dozen or so more) that we see the insidious, pervasive power of the Nazi state and how it works on its citizens through secrecy, violence and arbitrary justice. How did an educated and (relatively) wealthy state (and one as creatively vital) as the Weimar Republic fall so far, so fast? Perhaps it was through these little corruptions that grew and grew and grew, with only Wilhelm Reich's Little Man to resist it.

This is bold and brave theatre-making by The Phil Willmott Company and Sasha Regan's Union Theatre. With an ensemble cast and barely a set at all, everything is done on a shoestring, but it's no less powerful for that - hear Chiara Francis's cri-de-coeur as she heads towards an unknowable future in Amsterdam and weep. And, with the kind of hate speech that one would find in the Völkischer Beobachter commonplace "below the line" on newspaper websites (and sometimes "above the line" too) and American Presidential candidates treated seriously and supported, despite plainly fascist views, it's never been more important to learn the lessons of history - for those who do not are condemned to repeat it.

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