Brecht wrote several dramatic texts in response to the rise of Nazism and the establishment of a dictatorship in Germany in the 1930s, such as The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui) and Round Heads and Pointed Heads (Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe), but Fear and Misery of the Third Reich (Furcht und Elend des Dritten Reiches) is the only one that is not a parable. The series of episodes in Fear and Misery can be seen as a unique theater newsreel, “showing life under the Nazi dictatorship, the life of the workers, petty bourgeoisie, and intellectuals, in family, school, barracks, hospital, courtroom, etc.,” which Brecht used to sketch an entirely different image of those shown in the propagandistic Nazi newsreels. He showed the devastating consequences of the Nazi regime not only on the working class but also on the petty bourgeoisie, which was otherwise supposed to make a significant contribution to Adolf Hitler's coming to power. A close reading of Fear and Misery, which was mainly written in 1937/38 (with several scenes added in 1943), raises the question of how it would be interpreted today, in light of the strengthening of neofascist and autocratic tendencies around the world. Possible answers are embedded in the play itself and scattered through Brecht's essays, fragments of theoretical writings, and diaries. An analysis of these texts, which makes up the core of this article, will lead us to conclusions about the potential “Brechtian response” to the political, economic, and other crises in contemporary capitalist societies.

At first glance, Fear and Misery looks like a realistic play. However, closer scrutiny shows that Brecht has crafted it with dramaturgical features such as dialectical theater, estrangement, Fixieren des Nicht-Sondern (fixing the not, but), Gestus, etc., thus bringing elements of epic theater to this realistic framework. The play consists of twenty-seven scenes, which do not have a common narrative line; each one contains a story within itself. Although we can analyze each story on its own, we must simultaneously maintain a holistic view of the entire play to understand Brecht's intentions. Thus, an isolated reading of an individual scene, taken from the context of all or at least a part of the other scenes, is a risky analytical endeavor. That is what happened when the Moscow literary magazine Das Wort (The Word) published only one scene, “Der Spitzel” (“The Spy”).