Christmas in Europe

Let me apologise in advance for this potentially depressing post…

We visited the NS-Dokumentationszentrum today, which is the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism. It records the events that led to the birth, rise and fall of the Nazi Party here in Munich.

It is a unique museum in that it doesn't focus on the major events of WWII, but rather, undertakes a detailed analysis of the political and social environment that allowed Hitler and the Nazi Party to rise to power.

The focus is not on the major heroes and villains of the war, but the impact on everyday people. Not just the persecuted Jewish and Romani peoples, but the German people themselves who eventually came to realise how they were misled and suffered dearly in the end.

It was very moving and sobering, moreso because the exact same sequence of events is happening again today.

The Nazi Party campaigned as the Far Right with the promise to bring prosperity back to Germany by solving the problems brought on by Socialists and Communists, which was eventually blamed on non-Aryan people in general. Today we have promises to bring back prosperity and protect us from immigrants and muslims. Sound familiar?

In the end, the Centre puts the blame for the rise of Nazi Germany on the unwillingness of the general population to reject and fight against facism.

I think there’s a message here…Les mer