In the 1920s, the Weimar Republic was a free, democratic state in which an extraordinary artistic and cultural life flourished. However, in the final days of January 1933, certain events took place which determined the further fate of Germany. The democratically elected National Socialist party, led by Adolf Hitler, took the helm of the government. Thus, within a very short time they managed to gain control over the entire administrative and police apparatus of Germany, gradually eliminating more and more civil liberties and removing opposition MPs from the parliament. Looking back, one would like to say that Hitler’s party was an extreme group that managed, using brutal terror, to turn a democratic state into a prison. However, it is difficult to deny the National Socialists political agility and an excellent sense of the public sentiment. Instead of encountering numerous protests, they managed to win almost full public support for their actions, which not long afterwards – only six years later, in 1939 – led to the bloodiest conflict in the history of humankind, World War II.
*The text was published in the volume "(Nie)obecne dziedzictwo. Rozważania o Kręgu z Krzyżowej", edited by T. Skonieczny, Wrocław 2017.