The Dead Toreador, by Édouard Manet, c. 1864. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
VIEW:
Miscellany
In the weeks surrounding Germany’s surrender on May 8, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, the minister of culture, eight of forty-one party regional leaders, fourteen of ninety-eight Luftwaffe generals, and eleven of fifty-three admirals committed suicide. In Berlin, 3,881 Germans killed themselves in April alone; 7,057 suicides were reported by the end of the year.
When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, “He is better off.”
—Edgar Watson Howe, 1911
