Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries and the Liberal Theory of Fascism: Testimony Without Politics

The publication of Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries 1936–1937, a 1,352-page record of the writer’s six-month journey through Nazi Germany, has been met with widespread acclaim. Editors Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich present the diaries as Beckett’s “final major work,” revealing both his artistic development and his capacity as a historical observer. Yet reception has tended to elevate Beckett into a “prescient antifascist witness,” a figure whose moral clarity supposedly anticipates later understandings of fascism. This celebratory framing obscures the essential truth: Beckett’s diaries are testimony, not analysis. They record a sensibility recoiling from barbarism, but they do not grasp fascism as a class phenomenon. Beckett “draws no systematic connections between the museum purges he catalogued and the broader class dynamics of the Nazi seizure of power.”¹

This limitation is not Beckett’s personal failure. It is symptomatic of the broader liberal intelligentsia of the 1930s, which responded to fascism with moral outrage, aesthetic recoil, and political paralysis. Writers such as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig described fascism’s cultural destruction but refused to confront the class struggle that made it possible. Testimony became a substitute for strategy; witness became a surrogate for analysis. To understand fascism's rise in the 1930s and its re-emergence today, one must go beyond testimony. One must turn to Marxist analysis, above all Leon Trotsky’s writings from 1930–33, which remain the most penetrating examination of the German catastrophe. Beckett’s diaries are valuable precisely because they reveal the limits of liberal witness and the necessity of a materialist understanding of fascism.

Beckett travelled through Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, and Munich between September 1936 and April 1937. His diaries catalogue paintings, museum inventories, street names, and conversations. Yet beneath this catalogue lies what one reviewer called “a mounting, wordless dread.” He observed the removal of modernist and Expressionist works labelled “degenerate,” the disappearance of artworks into storage, and the disturbing conversations of ordinary Germans. He saw the cultural purge accompanying the consolidation of Nazi rule. He saw barbarism becoming normal. One passage from the diaries captures this aesthetic recoil: Beckett notes the “barbarism around him” and refuses to “turn away from these events,” even though he was not a political figure.² This honesty is admirable. But it is not political clarity.

Beckett’s observations align with the cultural destruction documented by historians of Nazi Germany. Richard J. Evans describes the Nazi cultural policy as “a systematic assault on modernism, intellectual freedom, and artistic experimentation,” designed to “reshape German consciousness in the image of the Volksgemeinschaft.”³ Ian Kershaw similarly emphasises that the cultural purge was integral to the regime’s consolidation of power, serving to “eliminate dissent, enforce conformity, and create a unified national community.”⁴ Beckett witnessed this process firsthand, but he did not analyse its social roots. His diaries record symptoms, not causes.

Beckett did not attempt to theorise fascism. He did not link the museum purges to the destruction of the German labour movement, the role of German heavy industry, or the betrayals of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Stalinised Communist Party (KPD). He did not connect cultural repression to class repression. Beckett “did not fully grasp fascism as a class-based phenomenon.”⁵ This is precisely the limitation of liberal testimony: it describes symptoms without analysing causes. Liberalism recoils from barbarism but cannot explain it. It sees fascism as a moral aberration rather than a bourgeois class strategy.

Thomas Mann, writing in exile, described fascism as “the triumph of barbarism over culture,” a “demonic eruption” of irrational forces.⁶ Stefan Zweig similarly portrayed fascism as a “collective madness,” a “plunge into darkness.”⁷ These formulations capture the emotional experience of fascism but obscure its material foundations. They elevate witness into politics and mistake personal sensibility for historical understanding. Beckett’s diaries belong to this tradition. They record the destruction of modernism, the atmosphere of dread, and the cultural purge accompanying Nazi consolidation. They reveal a sensibility recoiling from barbarism. But they do not explain why barbarism triumphed.

To understand fascism, one must turn to Marxist analysis. Leon Trotsky’s writings from 1930–33- The Only Road, What Next?, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany remain the most incisive examination of the German catastrophe. Trotsky argued that fascism was not a cultural phenomenon but a class strategy of the bourgeoisie, designed to crush the working class and preserve capitalist rule. Trotsky wrote in 1932: “Fascism is not a psychological phenomenon but a political one. Its roots lie not in the ‘madness’ of the petty bourgeoisie but in the crisis of capitalism.”⁸ He emphasised that the united front was the only means of stopping Hitler: “The proletariat can defeat fascism only through the united front. The refusal of the SPD and KPD leaderships to unite is the decisive factor in Hitler’s rise.”⁹

Trotsky demonstrated that the collapse of the united front was not inevitable but the result of political errors. The SPD defended bourgeois legality and sabotaged every independent struggle. The KPD, under Stalin’s direction, adopted the disastrous theory that the SPD was “social fascist,” the main enemy of the working class. Hermann Weber documents how this policy “paralysed the working class” and “prevented any united front against Hitler.”¹⁰ The most notorious example was the 1931 Prussian referendum, where the KPD collaborated with the Nazis to overthrow the SPD government, an act Trotsky described as “political insanity.”¹¹ Beckett could not see this. Liberal testimony rarely does.

Richard J. Evans emphasises that the SPD leadership “remained committed to parliamentary legality even as the Nazis prepared for civil war.”¹² Evans notes that the SPD “undermined every independent struggle” and “confused the working class” by insisting that the Weimar constitution could restrain Hitler. Ian Kershaw similarly argues that the SPD’s strategy amounted to “passive fatalism,” a refusal to mobilise the working class against fascism.¹³ Under Stalin’s direction, the KPD adopted the disastrous “social fascism” line, treating the SPD as the main enemy of the working class. Weber documents how this policy “paralysed the working class” and “prevented any united front against Hitler.”¹⁴ Trotsky wrote: “The working class has been disarmed by its own organisations. The question is not one of ‘self-deception’ but of betrayal.”¹⁵ Beckett’s diaries do not address these political dynamics. They record the cultural symptoms of fascism but not its class roots.

The reception of Beckett’s diaries today mirrors the liberal response to fascism in the 1930s. Contemporary reviewers describe rearmament and the far right as spontaneous trends, and they treat “historical amnesia” as a cultural mood rather than a political strategy. “The far right is not gaining power despite mainstream parties and media; rather, they actively support it.”¹⁶ The media and political establishment have systematically normalised the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The WSWS has documented how major German outlets have advocated rearmament for a decade, urging increased military spending and the restoration of Germany’s global influence.¹⁷ This is not amnesia. It is policy. Just as in the 1930s, liberal testimony recoils from barbarism but cannot name its social roots.

Beckett’s diaries teach us how dictatorship permeates everyday life, how cultural destruction accompanies political consolidation, and how individuals respond to barbarism aesthetically and emotionally. But they do not teach us how fascism arises, how fascism consolidates power, or how fascism can be stopped. A lack of witnesses did not cause the deaths of workers in concentration camps. Their own organisations betrayed them. Diaries cannot protect today’s working class. Its fate depends on politically rearming itself as an independent force against the SPD, the trade union bureaucracy, the pseudo-left, and the capitalist state preparing for war and authoritarianism. Testimony is valuable. But testimony without politics is evasion.

Samuel Beckett’s German Diaries is an honest and perceptive work. It records the destruction of German modernism, the atmosphere of dread, and the cultural purge accompanying Nazi consolidation. It reveals a sensibility recoiling from barbarism. That is its achievement and its limit. Understanding fascism is not a task of memory. It is a task of Marxist analysis and political organisation. And it begins where Beckett’s testimony ends: with the class forces that produced fascism in the 1930s and are preparing new dangers today.

 

Endnotes

1. Samuel Beckett, German Diaries 1936–1937, ed. Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich (New York: Grove Press, 2026), quoted in the attached document.
2. Ibid.
3. Richard J. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich (London: Penguin, 2003), 142–165.
4. Ian Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris (London: Penguin, 1998), 256–290.
5. Beckett, German Diaries, quoted in the previous document.
6. Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades (New York: Knopf, 1947), 142–150.
7. Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday (London: Pushkin Press, 2009), 280–310.
8. Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), 75.
9. Leon Trotsky, What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat (1932), in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, 112–130.
10. Hermann Weber, The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism (London: Palgrave, 2010), 88–120.
11. Trotsky, The Only Road (1932), in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, 45–60.
12. Evans, The Coming of the Third Reich, 210–230.
13. Kershaw, Hitler: Hubris, 300–315.
14. Weber, The German Communists and the Rise of Nazism, 121–150.
15. Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany, 90.
16. Previous Draft.
17. Johannes Stern, “The Victory of Fascism and the Founding of the Fourth International,” WSWS Lecture Series (2023); International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), “The Promotion of the AfD by the German State,” WSWS (2017–2026).

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Beckett, Samuel. German Diaries 1936–1937. Edited by Mark Nixon and Oliver Lubrich. New York: Grove Press, 2026. Trotsky, Leon. The Only Road. 1932. In The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971. Trotsky, Leon. What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat. 1932. In The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971. Trotsky, Leon. The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971.

Secondary Sources

Adorno, Theodor W. Prisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Evans, Richard J. The Coming of the Third Reich. London: Penguin, 2003. Fulbrook, Mary. A Small Town Near Auschwitz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: Hubris. London: Penguin, 1998. Mann, Thomas. Essays of Three Decades. New York: Knopf, 1947. North, David. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left