THE DETERMINATION and care with which Germany’s controversial first Hitler-centred exhibition has sought to paint him in a way that subverts any inclination to veneration seems to have been vindicated by a shocking poll published as it opened its doors. The exhibition, it seems, was never more necessary. Some 13 per cent of Germans, in a survey of 2,411, agreed with the proposition that “Germany needs to be ruled with a firm hand by a strong leader or ‘Führer’ ”. Just as worrying is the reality that, while nine in ten say they consider democracy good in theory, less than half support it in its current form. Over one-third agree, largely or whole-heartedly, that Germany is “endangered” by its non-German population. Some 58 per cent support limiting the religious rights of Muslims and 15 per cent agree that Jews “work with tricks to achieve their ends” and “aren’t a good fit with us”.
The biannual survey reflects a clear upward trend, after almost a decade of decline, in support for dictatorship, xenophobia and anti-Semitism which pollsters attribute to the economic crisis. Ironically, the figures emerge as the German economy powers ahead at 3 per cent growth, the hope of Europe. And, in truth, although neo-Nazis can pick up a few regional seats they have as yet been unable to break into national politics. Germans, despite their current angst, remain firmly wedded to their democratic parties.
“Hitler and the Germans – Nation and Crime” at Berlin’s German Historical Museum, by most accounts, successfully fulfils its brief, without sexing up Hitler, to take the country beyond its own version of Basil Fawlty’s “Don’t mention the War”.
“Maybe it’s time we shook him off, but first we need to understand how we fell for him so utterly,” one visitor, Karl Schnorr told a journalist. Curators constructed the exhibiton around an understanding that rejects a traditional focus of history as the product of giant individuals, so much part of many of our school lives. Hitler emerged from the crisis in Weimar Germany as an inchoate expression of the despair of a ruined and despairing middle class. Exploring his relationship with the German people and his long shadow in all its brutality – the knuckle-dusters, truncheons and jackboots – and banality – the Hitler card games and Nazi cigarette adverts – visitors are left not with an inspiring genius but a picture of what museum director Dr Hans Ottomeyer describes as simply a “Viennese dosser” propelled by history into its most infamous of roles.