I saw this post days ago, but knew I wouldn't have time then to read it and to think about it as closely as I wanted to - hence some delay. This theme is one that's important to me - it's actually the theme of my Atrementus Collection stories, though that hasn't become apparent yet - the slow build-up to invasion and the crumbling of a good society, and how the 'ordinary' person maintains their values (and existence) when those come under pressure, and maybe even fumbles a way towards resistance. I find the resistance of the 'ordinary' people, who don't "look good doing it" enormously moving; thanks for this glimpse of Mayor Ordern's life and death.

The novel and book - and their insistence on the humanity of the enemy is what I'd expect of Steinbeck, or of any fairly thoughtful writer at the time - or maybe especially of those who'd seen WW1 and had some connection with German culture. (Is there any written-at-the-time novel showing the humannness of the Japanese? It seems less likely, purely because there was less awareness of Japanese culture in literary circles.) Neville Shute, who's a lesser writer, I guess, but a great story-teller, also wrote Nazis as human, as trying to win hearts and minds in occupied France, in his 1941 book, Pied Piper (a book written in the awareness/fear that Britain could fall, and that his readership would be needing to learn from the book some of the pressures that life under occupation would bring for 'ordinary' civilians).
Thanks for this post.