Berlin: Exhibit examines Hitler's effect on the German people
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Born in Germany in 1940, I was a small child during the last five years of Adolf Hitler’s Thousand Years Empire. But I still remember some visual images from the last stages of war like they happened yesterday. They are burned into my memory like key scenes from a stark movie: Walking with Grandpa in my hometown of Wiesbaden; noticing the overwhelming number of bright red flags in front of every window; wondering if it was Hitler’s birthday as banners with a black swastika in a white circle on a blood-red field waved in the April breeze.
A year later that aggressive red color filled the night sky over Wiesbaden. Sitting on my father’s arm, on our balcony, eyes wide open, I could see Mainz burning. A night raid by Allied bombers on Wiesbaden’s neighbor seven miles away was destroying the heart of the ancient town. Six months later, Wiesbaden was hit. Into the cellar, into the bunker we ran. Inside the cellar there was dripping water, outside there were burning houses, ruins, devastation.
Then unconditional surrender. Defeat or liberation? For most Germans, just survival.
The first photographs of the concentration camps shocked the public. What had happened in the 12 years of Hitler’s rule, to the National Socialist movement in Germany, and to Germany? From 1933 to 1945 the so-called “Land der Dichter und Denker” — “Nation of poets and philosophers” — had followed a clique of criminals led by the Führer, a sinister mastermind of evil. How did he happen, and how and why did a nation like Germany follow him into disaster and a war that left more than 50 million dead worldwide.
Countless books have been written about the rise and fall of the Third Reich and its leader. Now an exhibition at Deutsches Historisches Museum — the German Historical Museum — in Berlin tries a more visual approach. And although it is titled “Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime,” this very successful show is not about Adolf Hitler. It is about the impact he and Nazism had on the Germans in the years between 1933 and 1945. How was he possible? How was he able to succeed? How did the German society nurture and empower him and his followers?
The exhibit has an impressive collection of documents, photographs and memorabilia of Nazi Germany. It displays paintings, posters and sculptures as well as party emblems, Nazi uniforms and maps of World War II. It shows how different aspects of National Socialism penetrated every German’s life from childhood to death, concentrating on the criminal energy of the Nazis.
Documents and photographs trace Hitler’s party from the early years of seizing power and eliminating opposition, to the infamous system of concentration camps and to the “final solution” that resulted in the murder of 6 million European Jews in the death camps of Auschwitz, Sobibor and Majdanek.
Many objects for this exhibit were loaned from American and Russian archives. There is so much detailed and interesting information (in both German and English) and visual highlights that there is too much for one visit.
The exhibition is in the Zeughaus, the main building of the historical museum, at Unter den Linden 2 in the heart of Berlin. It is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily — and until 9 p.m. Fridays — and continues until Feb. 6. Admission is 6 euros for adults, free for ages 18 and younger.
Visitors are advised to arrive around the 10 a.m. opening time to avoid the long lines waiting to get in.
Find more details about the museum and the exhibit at www.dhm.de; there is an English version.
