Futility Closet

In the 1930s, German civil servant Friedrich Kellner was outraged by the increasing brutality of the Nazi party and the complicity of his fellow citizens. He began to keep a secret diary to record the crimes of the Third Reich and his condemnations of his countrymen. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we'll tell the story of Friedrich's diary and his outspoken warnings to future generations. We'll also ponder the problem with tardigrades and puzzle over a seemingly foolish choice. Intro: In 1983, Kenneth Gardner patented a way to cremate corpses using solar energy. How can Anna Karenina's fate move us when we know she’s not a real person? Sources for our feature on Friedrich Kellner: Robert Scott Kellner, ed., My Opposition: The Diary of Friedrich Kellner -- A German Against the Third Reich, 2018. Hermann Beck, "My Opposition: The Diary of Friedrich Kellner -- A German Against the Third Reich," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 33:2 (Fall 2019), 271-273. Peter Fritzsche, "Vernebelt, verdunk