Hochhuth is concerned that we should see in the events he brings to life [in A German Love Story] a paradigm of the helplessness of individuals in the face of society and its political developments. 'We live in sick times', his heroine tells herself uncomprehendingly, 'without reflecting that time exists solely on the face of the clock whereas "the times" are people or what they think or do.'

True, but that reflection really gets us nowhere nearer an understanding of the things that were thought and done in Nazi Germany. The story that Hochhuth investigated is at once particularly horrifying and typical enough to stand as representative of the sickness of the Third Reich…. The account of Pauline and Stasiek's fate is interspersed with extended reflections by Hochhuth himself on Nazi Germany. These, one cannot but feel, should not have been necessary to him. As it is...