Communist Party

The Communist Party is mentioned as part of the tank veteran’s postwar life after he and Archimboldi encounter their former cellar companions again. The detail marks a change in his political affiliation, while the former reporter remains unable to find work because of his Nazi past; the novel offers no further account of the Party’s organization or activities.

The Tank Veteran’s Postwar Life

When Archimboldi runs into the two men again while looking for someone to rent him a typewriter, little seems to have changed in their circumstances. The former reporter has been refused a job at a new Cologne newspaper because of his Nazi past. The tank veteran, by contrast, now works at a motorcycle repair shop and has joined the Communist Party.

Political Conflict Between the Former Companions

The two men had fought frequently when they shared a cellar. The tank veteran reproached the reporter for his wartime Nazi militancy and cowardice, rejecting the reporter’s defense that he had merely written what he was told. His new party membership is reported as a fact of his later life, not explained as a direct consequence of these arguments. The contrast is nonetheless pointed: the reporter’s past continues to determine his prospects, while the veteran has entered a new political affiliation.

Narrative Significance and Limits

The Party receives no independent description, and the passage does not identify its local structure, role, or the veteran’s work within it. Its significance lies in the compressed juxtaposition of postwar outcomes: employment in a repair shop and Communist Party membership for one man, exclusion from journalism for the other. The novel places these details within a continuing dispute over responsibility for wartime conduct, without presenting political affiliation as a complete account of either man’s history.