The 1939 novel was republished together with Isherwood's 1935 novel, Mr Norris Changes Trains, in a 1945 collection titled The Berlin Stories. "Reading such tales as this," Orwell wrote, "the thing that surprises one is not that Hitler came to power, but that he did not do so several years earlier." She believed Isherwood skillfully evoked "the psychological and emotional hotbed which forced the growth of that incredible tree, ' national socialism'." George Orwell hailed the novel for its "brilliant sketches of a society in decay". Anne Margaret Angus praised Isherwood's mastery in conveying the despair of Berlin's denizens and "their hopeless clinging to the pleasures of the moment". The novel received positive reviews from critics and contemporary writers.
These factual events served as the genesis for Isherwood's stories. Afterwards, the Nazis shuttered Berlin's cabarets, and many of Isherwood's friends fled abroad or perished in concentration camps. Following the Enabling Act which cemented Hitler's power, Isherwood fled Germany and returned to England. As Berlin's daily scenes featured "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right," Isherwood realised that he must flee the country. While Ross recovered from the abortion procedure, Germany's political situation deteriorated.
The insouciant flapper Sally Bowles was based on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross who became Isherwood's intimate friend during his sojourn and, after an unplanned pregnancy, she had a near-fatal abortion which the shy gay author facilitated. The novel recounts Isherwood's 1929–1932 sojourn as a pleasure-seeking British expatriate on the eve of Adolf Hitler's ascension as Chancellor of Germany and consists of a "series of sketches of disintegrating Berlin, its slums and nightclubs and comfortable villas, its odd maladapted types and its complacent burghers." The novel's plot recounts factual events in Isherwood's life, and the novel's characters were based upon actual persons. Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood set during the waning days of the Weimar Republic.
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