Published on FRANCE 24 (http://www.france24.com/en)
Hitler's rise to power 'constant' warning: Merkel
Hitler's rise to power 'constant' warning: Merkel
By blade
Created 30/01/2013 - 14:57
Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday that Adolf Hitler's rise to power 80
years ago should go on reminding Germans that democracy and freedom cannot be
taken for granted.
Merkel was speaking at the inauguration of an exhibition in Berlin to
commemorate eight decades since Hitler became chancellor on January 30, 1933 --
an anniversary which has aroused much interest in Germany.
"Human rights don't assert themselves. Freedom doesn't preserve itself all
alone and democracy doesn't succeed by itself," Merkel said.
"That must be a constant warning for us, Germans," she added referring to
Hitler's arrival at the chancellery.
The exhibition, "Berlin 1933. On the Path to Dictatorship", is on a site
charged with history as the former headquarters of the Gestapo, the secret
police of the Nazi regime.
It now houses The Topography of Terror, an open-air documentation centre whose
exhibition traces Hitler's first months in power through photos, newspapers and
posters.
Merkel noted that it only took six months for the dictator to "wipe out all the
diversity" of German society.
But she also underscored that a large part of society had supported "or at
least acquiesced" to Hitler's regime.
In a black-and-white photo, visitors to the exhibition can make out the Fuehrer
saluting the crowd from the chancellery window on the evening of January 30,
1933, after earlier having been made chancellor and been charged by president
Paul von Hindenburg with forming a new government.
"The hour has come! We are at Wilhelmstrasse (the site of the chancellery at
the time). Hitler is chancellor of the Reich. Like in a fairytale," wrote
Joseph Goebbels, who was to become Nazi propaganda chief, in his diary on
January 31, 1933.
Posters go on to show images of the Reichstag going up in flames the following
month and then the first measures taken against the Jews on April 1, with the
start of a boycott of Jewish shops, doctors and lawyers.
"Germans, defend yourselves! Don't buy from Jews," a poster states.
Andreas Nachama, director of The Topography of Terror, said the arrival of the
failed painter from Austria at the helm of power in Germany was an "incision"
in history, although nobody at the time thought he would last.
However the parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic failed to find a stable
majority and Hitler, on the back of over-simplified themes, rallied millions of
unemployed and people who had lost everything in the economic crisis.
According to Nachama, the exhibition shows the "daily erosion of democratic
institutions" as the Nazi regime began to build up steam, eventually leading to
World War II and the deaths of 40 to 60 million people, including six million
Jews.
The 80th anniversary has sparked much interest in Germany, with a novel that
imagines Hitler's return to modern-day Berlin entitled "He's Back" (Er Ist
Wieder Da) becoming a bestseller here.
Another two exhibitions are also due to open -- one on Berlin and the Nazis at
the German Historical Museum and the other offering a thematic tour of Berlin's
symbolic sites from the Third Reich.
Just ahead of the anniversary, Merkel said in her weekly podcast that Germany
had "an everlasting responsibility for the crimes of National Socialism, for
the victims of World War II, and above all, for the Holocaust".
"We're facing our history, we're not hiding anything, we're not repressing
anything. We must confront this to make sure we are a good and trustworthy
partner in the future, as we already are today, thankfully," Merkel said.
AFP
International
Source URL:
http://www.france24.com/en/20130130-hitlers-rise-power-constant-warning-merkel
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