Germans are flocking to see a new exhibition that dares to engage with images of Hitler, but what the curators are trying to say about the rise of the Third Reich may cause some to shuffle their feet in discomfort, writes DEREK SCALLY
THE HITLER QUEUE is 32-strong when, at 10am, the doors swing open and any semblance of order disintegrates in the dash for the cash desk.Tickets bought, clusters of visitors glide down the escalator to the cellar where the German Historical Museum (DHM) has opened its latest exhibition, Hitler and the Germans: Nation and Crime.
Curators have tackled one of the 20th century’s great riddles: how did Hitler happen? Their answer, in 1,000 exhibits and photos spread over a square kilometre of exhibition space, seems simple enough: because the Germans allowed him to happen.
Staging such an exhibition in a German public museum is remarkable considering that Hitler, for decades, has been a private-industry cash cow. Whether through documentaries, books or walking tours, countless entrepreneurial Germans have earned a healthy living satisfying demand, from Germans and foreign visitors, to learn about the Third Reich.
This new exhibition is a laudable state- sponsored attempt to quell the insatiable Hitler hunger in a quality-controlled environment. It’s interesting, too, to present the show in Germany’s leading historical museum, a former military arsenal that, in 1943, was the backdrop for a failed Hitler assassination attempt during one of his last public appearances.
Visitors arriving at the exhibition are confronted with three portraits of Hitler: as soldier, statesman and skull with comb-over, the last a striking 1930s photomontage by the Danish artist Jacob Kjeldgaard. After a few moments the linen-print portraits disappear, juxtaposed with backlit images behind them of Hitler highs and lows, from frenzied public appearances to the Warsaw Ghetto.
This juxtaposition runs right through the exhibition; curators present Hitler as, on the one hand, a product of public will and, on the other hand, a source of misery and destruction.
“On his own Hitler was a Viennese dosser,” says Dr Hans Ottomeyer, DHM director. “But he was carried not by the National Socialist Regime or the party but by a broad public consensus. That is what this exhibition throws back at visitors.”
The first half of the exhibition concentrates on the rise of the “person Hitler” from “social and political nobody” in 1920s Vienna to statesman in 1930s Berlin. A glass case is packed with various editions of Mein Kampf – still banned in Germany – including a vast Braille edition complete with, on the first page, a raised swastika. Were even the blind so blind to the political programme Hitler outlined in his prison tract?
More interesting than the familiar images of Adolf the orator, arms flailing and eyes flashing, are personal items. On cream notepaper the dictator-in-training has scrawled barely legible notes for one of the many speeches that would eventually lift him to power. “Reasons for the collapse” after the first World War are listed in point form from A to F, while he plans to end his speech with an appeal to “use our energy for our struggle” for “dominance and power”.
By 1932 Hitler is portrayed in publicity materials in a succession line next to Kaiser Friedrich, Bismarck and Hindenburg as a “soldier to rescue” the country. In 1930s election posters, amid Weimar Germany’s economic collapse, Hitler is portrayed among images of unemployed Germans as “our last hope”.
Again and again, curators point out that propaganda alone cannot lift anyone to power. Hitler's so-called Machtergreifung, or seizure of power, was in fact a Machtübertragung, or transfer of power, after a democratic election. Germans voted him in, while German conservatives thought, in power, they could tame him.
After 1933 the exhibition picks up the pace, reflecting the dizzying speed with which the ruling Nazis began their programme of Gleichschaltung– enforced conformity or neutralisation of opposition. That programme only worked, curators indicate, thanks to millions of Germans happy to play their part through Selbstgleichschaltung, or self-imposed conformity. "It is a miracle of our time that you have found me among so many millions and that I should have found you," shouted Hitler in 1936 at a political rally. "This is Germany's good fortune." Nazi Germany became a nation of uniformity – of Nazi uniforms and Nazi salutes, Nazi medals and Nazi collection tins – all to create a feeling of Volksgemeinschaft, or community, and serve the messiah the community itself had helped create.
One display case after another shows the penetration of Nazi ideology into all aspects of daily life, from the schoolroom to the kitchen, with Hitler card games and Nazi cigarette adverts. A huge tapestry juxtaposes the words of the Our Father, images of traditional German houses and swastikas.
Once their takeover of public life was completed – a canny with-us-or-against-us campaign of propaganda, public rallies and proclamations – the Nazi programme was rolled out. Its chilling case for euthanasia is made in a poster placing a strapping Aryan athlete beside a mentally disabled man. In the graphic the Aryan man shrinks in the graphic proportionally with the passing decades, as the disabled man grows and grows. “This is how it will be if the inferior ones have four children and superior ones have only two children,” states the poster.
There are worrying overtones to Germany's current immigration debate, sparked by a best-selling book claiming that the country's Muslim immigrants are uninterested in education, thus predisposed to ignorance and poised to flood Germany with idiot offspring. Its title, Germany Is Abolishing Itself,could easily be drawn from a Nazi euthanasia poster.
As the exhibition continues, Hitler retreats into the background as the horrors of war and the final defeat become apparent. On the ground, in three pieces, lies the two-metre-high bronze eagle from Hitler’s chancellery, like an Icarus that flew too close to the sun.
The dictator returns in postwar media: a wall of Der Spiegelmagazine covers – 45 in 60 years – indicates how the German media ploughs and reploughs the same furrows in search of answers, and profit. One of the final exhibits is a logical consequence of this growth industry: a volume of the forged Hitler diaries, complete with fake wax seal and swastika stamp.
The first visitors emerge, dazed, from the enormous exhibition after 90 minutes, unsure of what they have just seen.
“I’m still no closer to knowing why this nobody took on a country, conquered it and tried to take on Europe,” said Ivan Kruzla, a 63-year-old visiting from Sweden. “Was Hitler so unique? I still don’t know.”
Jan Höll from Berlin is impressed with the exhibition even if he says it contains little new information. “We were thoroughly bombarded with Hitler in school,” said the 32-year-old. “That said, it’s our history, and it’s important to keep returning to it.”
Werner Kob, a 69-year-old retired schoolteacher from Rheinland Pfalz, agrees. “Once Germany did too little in schools on the era, then the accusation was too much. The danger here is that, without any new findings, over-familiarity will breed apathy,” he said. “That said, seeing these exhibits is better for anyone than any book.”
Hitler was allowed to happen, the exhibition insists, but not even access to the museum’s huge depots of material has helped the curators present a satisfying case for their claim. Instead, the exhibition is a classic case of tell, don’t show.
The debate goes on, and the Hitler queue is growing.
Hitler and the Germans is at the Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM), Berlin, until February 6th; www.dhm.de
Thanks, but no thanks: Nazi memorabilia
Some of the everyday items on display in Hitler and the Germans:
A 1940 Swastika lampshade, designed to casting a unique red, white and black light around your room.
An advertisement display for “Drummer” cigarettes, featuring an SA man in full uniform and, yes, drum.
A red propaganda sign from 1933: “When you meet a comrade true, make your salute Heil Hitler too!”
A Führer Quartett card game from 1934, a kind of Top Trumps with politicians. If you’re going to cheat at cards, the Führer’s watching.
No Nazi home was complete without a Hitler bust.
