BERLIN: A major Berlin museum is launching an exhibition that seeks to explore how Adolf Hitler won and held mass support among Germans for his destructive regime. “Hitler and the Germans – Nation and Crime,” which opens Friday at the German Historical Museum, juxtaposes the Nazis' propaganda images and artifacts such as 1930s Hitler busts with footage and documentation on the regime's brutality and Germans' involvement in it. Germany has seen many exhibitions exploring the events of the Nazi era, but this one puts Hitler himself more squarely at the forefront. It comes more than 75 years after the Nazis took control, as Germans increasingly look at Hitler not just as a one-dimensional tyrant, but as a man who enjoyed vast popularity before plunging the country into war. The aim is to explore “how this power and influence, this domination of Adolf Hitler can be explained, and to make clear that one of the factors was the readiness to approve and the readiness to go along of large parts of society,” said curator Hans-Ulrich Thamer. It “tries to explain the functioning, mass support and destructive strength of the regime,” said Thamer, a historian and professor at the University of Muenster. The collection of some 600 exhibits, along with 400 photos and posters, takes visitors chronologically through the life of the regime.
