The Kindly Ones (2006) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

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Characters/People edit see section history

• Thomas: Best friend of main character Max Aue. Good at intrigue. Schmoozer.
• Voss: Add a description of this character.
• Piontek
• Speer
• Blobel: Max Aue's Standartenführer. In 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, the rank of Standartenführer had been established as the greatest field-officer rank, lesser than that of Oberführer of the SS and SA. . By the start of the World War II, Standartenführer was widely spread as both an SS rank and a rank of the SA. In the Waffen-SS, the rank was considered the equivalent of an Oberst, a full colonel. (Wikipedia). First mentioned on p. 27.
• Weser
• Moreau
• Obersturmbannführer
• Clemens
• Brandt
• Ohlendorf
• Muller
• Helene
• Hauptsturmführer
• Dr. Mandelbrod
• Ivan
• Müller
• Eichmann
• Himmler
• Kaltenbrunner
• Weinrowski
• Turek
• Heydrich
• Volk
• Häfner
• Doktor
• Üxküll
• Becher
• Hitler
• Schellenberg
• Frank
• Nagel
• Pohl
• Kessel
• Bormann
• Oxkiill
• Bierkamp
• Goebbels
• Hohenegg
• Reichsführer
• Herr Reichsminister
• Berndt
• Stalin
• Standartenführer
• Bohr
• Janssen
• Rihrer
• Obersturmführer
• Meine Herren
• Max Aue: Main character. Rank: Obersturmführer: Obersturmführer was a Nazi party paramilitary rank that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the SA, SS, NSKK and the NSFK. Translated as “senior assault (or storm) leader. An SA-Obersturmführer was typically a junior company commander in charge of between fifty to 100 soldiers (Wikipedia).
• Herr Leland
• Koch
• Frau Zempke
• Herr Offizier
• Vogt
• Walter Von Reichenau: Is the commander in chief of the army in which Max serves. The rank of Generalfeldmarschall was the highest military rank until July 1940, when it was made subordinate to the even higher rank of Reichsmarschall (held solely by Hermann Göring) (Wikipedia). First mentioned in page 27.
• Dr. Keherig: Max's superior. Rank: Sturmbannführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank equivalent to major that was used in several Nazi organizations, such as the SA, SS, and the NSFK. Translated as “assault (or storm) unit leader (Wikipedia)

Quotes edit see section history

• “I have remained someone who believes that the only things indispensable to human life are air, food, drink, and excretion, and the search for truth. The rest is optional.”

  Max Aue

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• If you were born in a country or at a time not only when nobody comes to kill your wife and your children, but also nobody comes to ask you to kill the wives and children of others, then render thanks to God and go in peace. But always keep this thought in mind: you might be luckier than I, but you’re not a better person. Because if you have the arrogance to think you are, that’s just where the danger begins.

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• This was what I couldn’t manage to grasp: the yawning gap, the absolute contradiction between the ease with which one can kill and the huge difficulty there must be in dying. For us, it was another dirty day’s work; for them, the end of everything.

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• Schopenhauer has written roughly the same thing: It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on Earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.

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• genocide in its modern form is a process inflicted on the masses, by the masses, for the masses. It is also, in the case in question, a process segmented according to the demands of industrial method. Just as, according to Marx, the worker is alienated from the product of his labor, in genocide or total war in its modern form the perpetrator is alienated from the product of his actions.

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• I have remained someone who believes that the only things indispensable to human life are air, food, drink, and excretion, and the search for truth. The rest is optional.

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• In a State like ours, everyone had his assigned role: You, the victim, and You, the executioner, and no one had a choice, no one asked anyone’s consent, since everyone was interchangeable, victims as well as executioners.

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• National Socialism wanted every German, in the future, to be able to have his modest share of the good things of life; but within the limitations of the Reich, that had turned out to be impossible; so now we were taking these things from others. Was that fair? So long as we had the strength and the power, yes, since as far as justice is concerned, there is no absolute authority, and each people defines its own truth and justice. But if ever our strength weakened, if our power gave out, then we would have to endure the justice of others, terrible as it might be. And that too would be fair.

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• Their reactions, their violence, their alcoholism, the nervous depressions, the suicides, my own sadness, all that demonstrated that the other exists, exists as an other, as a human, and that no will, no ideology, no amount of stupidity or alcohol can break this bond, tenuous but indestructible. This is a fact, not an opinion.

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• For the Russians, as for us, man counted for nothing; the nation, the State were everything; and in this sense we saw our reflection in each other. The Jews too had this strong feeling of community, of Volk: they mourned their dead, buried them if they could and said Kaddish; but as long as one single Jew remained alive, Israel lived. That, no doubt, was the reason they were our privileged enemies, they resembled us too much.

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• Political philosophers have often pointed out that in wartime, the citizen, the male citizen at least, loses one of his most basic rights, his right to life; and this has been true ever since the French Revolution and the invention of conscription, now an almost universally accepted principle. But these same philosophers have rarely noted that the citizen in question simultaneously loses another right, one just as basic and perhaps even more vital for his conception of himself as a civilized human being: the right not to kill.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Berlin
• Germany
• France
• Stalingrad
• Kiev
• Russia
• Ukraine
• Auschwitz
• Kharkov
• Lublin
• Poland
• Europe
• Caucasus
• Bergjuden
• Hungary
• Paris
• Staatspolizei
• Crimea
• Voroshilovsk
• Una
• Sonderkommando
• Moscow
• Hanika
• Pyatigorsk
• Wehrmacht
• Galicia
• Switzerland
• Oranienburg
• Antibes
• Budapest
• Gruppenstab
• Birkenau
• Poltava
• Nalchik
• Daghestan
• Kripo
• Cracow
• Häftlinge
• Italy
• Vienna
• Warsaw
• Tiergarten
• Pomerania
• Befehl
• Mozdok
• Fräulein Praxa
• Zhitomir
• Reichenau
• Munich
• Denmark
• Kommandantur
• Kasino
• Gumrak
• Zurich

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Jonathan Littell (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Charlotte Mandell (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award (2009)
• Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (Finalist, 2010, Longlist)
• Grand Prix de l'Academie Francaise (2006)
• Prix Goncourt (2006)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PQ3939.L58 B513 2009
• Dewey: 843.92

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › World Literature › French
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Historical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary

More Books Like This edit see section history