This book can really drag if you don’t look at it in the symbolic way it is meant to be read. There are several well anticipated climaxes, the last of which was one I had not anticipated. Between the loss of time in what is like a seeming Hotel California, The Berghof reeks of excess and silliness. Interestingly intermixed with that excess is death that happens there on a daily basis. Settembrini (a democratic humanist) and Naphta (a communistic totalitarian) debate and argue, trying to convince the young and innocent Hans of his respective philosophy over the other. In the midst of this, Hans is hopelessly in love with a woman who isn’t overly interested in him. At the end of it all, all things devolve into a nihilistic nightmare. It’s the pretty basic human condition. No system or political thought is without its faults and as long as humans are human, humanity will blunder and make a mess of things in the guise of following their completely right and unchallengeable beliefs.

The book culminates with WWI, and the reader wonders what all of that lost time was for?  It’s a pretty good picture of the blundering world now as we speak. Hans probably dies without his love and with no purpose in life that can be seen.