‘Stay Alive,’ about daily life in Nazi Berlin, shows how easy it is to just go along

It’s been 80 years since Adolf Hitler shot himself in his bunker, yet our fascination with the Nazi era seems eternal. By now I’ve read and seen so many different things that I’m always surprised when somebody offers a new angle on what the Nazis wrought.

Ian Buruma does this in Stay Alive: Berlin, 1939-1945, a new book about living in a country where you have no control over what happens. Inspired by the experience of