All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski review – ordinary Germans in the last days of the Reich

In his final novel, the German author bears witness to the collective experience of war with compassion and grace

This novel by the German writer Walter Kempowski, who died in 2007, is influenced by his mighty collection of diaries, letters and memoirs, Das Echolot (Echo Soundings), a 10-volume collage of the collective German experience throughout the second world war. He began work on the project after finding some old photographs and letters lying in the street, and deciding to “bend down and pick up” the testimonies of all, from concentration camp prisoners to the Reich’s high command – leaving nothing out, simply presenting.

All for Nothing, his last novel, translated by Anthea Bell, resounds with that same love for the pathos of detail, the same determination to bear witness to the entire human experience. The book’s characters may see each other as Jew, Nazi, peasant, aristocrat, Pole, foreigner, but the writer steadfastly refuses to see any of them as less than fully human.

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