HMLA | What History Teaches: Lessons from the Earliest Resistance to Nazism

Who were the early resisters to Hitler and Nazism? What compelled them to sound the alarm on a fringe political group? How and why did they fail to stop them? And what lessons can draw from it for our own time?

From the moment that he stepped onto Germany’s political stage in the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler faced resistance. Cartoonists depicted him as a clown, a butcher, and a knock-off version of Mussolini. One playwright portrayed him as a crazy barber building a cult following with elaborate, unfulfillable promises. One writer produced a history of Nazism in which he described Hitler as a “lazy schoolboy,” among other things. This was all prior to Hitler’s seizure of power in January 1933.

Featured speaker: Dr. Daniel Greene, Adjunct Professor of History at Northwestern University and an expert on American responses to the Holocaust

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This is part of powerful webinar series, hosted by Holocaust museums and education centers across North America, exploring how democracy eroded and extremism took root in 1930’s Germany—and the urgent lessons we can draw today. All sessions are free 60 minute Zoom webinars. Click on each individual lecture title for more information about additional upcoming webinars and to register for a Zoom link.