Fallada is not only the man who writes the forbidden postcards, he is also each person who finds them, who is too afraid to pass them on. He is not only the man who risks his life, but also the man who fails. Fallada clearly knows his way around the dreary apartments of the alcoholics he describes, and it is his own fear that expresses itself in his characters’ fears of denunciation and torture.

He never lacked the courage to reveal what he knew, even at his own expense.