Hitler Junior: Path to Democracy (4/20)

After Hitler: The Path to [Phony] Democracy

(DW History and Culture) April 20, 2025: [Ah, the myths we spin and repeat. Idi Amin killed many more than Hitler, but no one mentions him because he was not promoting white supremacy or an Aryan "race" in doing it.] Today (4/20) is Adolf Hitler's birthday, so let's look back a little.

Did Al Gore just compare Don Trunf to Hitler?

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:50 (Title) After Hitler: The Path to Democracy
• 01:04 Germany at the beginning of 1945
• 04:48 Prescribed Democracy - a recipe for success?
• 10:46 DeNazification - a new beginning?
• 13:54 Learnings from the past

With the invasion of neighboring Poland by the German armed forces in the fall of 1939, Germany ignited the Second World War. Six years of murder, destruction, expulsion and hunger shaped the fate of people in many parts of the world. In May 1945, the guns fell silent in Europe. Germany was allegedly defeated [except for those who traveled to New Swabia in the Antarctic and Argentina to live on, possibly still pulling strings and the levers of power].

It was an end and a beginning at the same time. But how did the political, social, and economic reconstruction take shape in post-war Germany? How did a dictatorship become a democracy? DW looks at the first years after the end of the war -- and the long road towards a new political order. #dwhistoryandculture.

For more visit: dw.com/en/culture/s-1441. Follow DW's netiquette: p.dw.com/p/MF1G

• DW History and Culture, April 20, 2025; Pfc. Sandoval, Sheldon S., Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly