Watch with Rick Steves — Germany's Fascist Story

[Music] good evening everyone and welcome to this segment of monday night travel with rick steves europe tonight we are going to explore germany's fascist story my name is ben green and i'll be with you as a moderator tonight and now i'd like to welcome our tour guide for the evening rick steves hi rick hey ben thank you and it's great to be your tour guide tonight thank you so much for joining us this is our fourth week of monday night travels and today we're all together i'm in my living room you're in your living room with your best travel partner i hope and we're just getting together and celebrate our love of travel and uh i gotta say i one of the things i really miss about uh during this pandemic and so on is of course traveling but also getting out and giving talks around the country that's what i do when i'm not in europe and i'm just so thankful that we can get together every monday night and share some travels so next week we're going to be in cairo the next we're going to cruise the nile after that we're going to have a special celebration of european christmases in seven different countries and after that we're going to go to ethiopia we've got lots of travels coming your way right now we're going to go to germany we're going to go back about 80 or 90 years ago and we're going to learn some hard lessons and the germans have certainly learned these lessons and we're going to learn them also you know we like to think of this as a party and i've got my good german beer and it is a little bit odd to be thinking of a party while we're learning about fascism but i'd like to celebrate the importance of democracy and how we can learn from history and how great it is to travel thoughtfully in a way that we come home with that better understanding you know we're going to be talking about fascism in germany in germany certainly knows and respects the specter of fascism germany has a strong democracy now but germany knows that you need to invest in your electorate in order to have a smart enough electorate not to be dumbed down and bamboozled by some charismatic wannabe autocrat because germany knows the tragic consequences of that germany knows the importance of investing in its electorate getting a first class education and also recognizing honestly the frustrations of the people in a society that might become the base of an angry fear-mongering hate-mongering autocrat that can derail that great society so we've got a couple thousand people gathered here today i'm so thankful you're here and i want to remind you that every week when we get together we try to mix it up with the appropriate food and drink i'm i'm i've got my my beer here and when you're in germany of course it's beer i don't go for the the wheat beer the the heffa bison when i'm at home but it sure tastes good when i'm in germany because i'm a cultural chameleon and when i'm there if the people in munich are drinking their hephabytes in i'm going to be drinking it too now this is heffa-visin is a wheat beer it's a vice beer it's nicknamed a white beer but half a bison is literally wheat yeast and this is paul honor and paul honor is one of six big breweries that are famous at oktoberfest they got one of those big tents along with five other breweries and it says right here since 1634 400 years monks have been made well they don't monks don't make it now but originally this is monk-made beer and 400 years ago in munich there was a law it's a famous law that they just love and it said there's only four ingredients water hops yeast and malt and i was reading the label of this thing and to this day that's all that's in here now this is called wheat beer because more than 50 percent of it is literally wheat yeast all right and the taste is uh it's less hoppy it's sweet and malty and a little carbonated and again have it in munich i just think it's great when you're in munich if you look around everybody's drinking that wheat beer have it also we've got our little spread and when i'm in a beer hall and we're going to be in a lot of beer holes tonight because that's where the action was as the nazis were getting their springboard going we've got radishes when you go to a beer hall you get a big radish cut in a long spiral sprinkled with salt and brought to you by a waitress in a dirndl in a very traditional way you've got your sauerkraut and this sauerkraut i just want to eat it mmm when they sell it to me in a german market they call it a vitamin bomb and it's just so healthy i've got some nice cheese i've got some horseradish sauce and if you get a chance in germany to have horseradish sauce it's just a great way to put a little accent on everything and then you got your brat first and it brought first is a link sausage usually veal or pork this happens to be pork also i made a special effort today i couldn't find a big pretzel i could get in germany but i wanted to give you my nice dugout canoe full of first class bread because when you're in germany germans really appreciate and enjoy their bread so that's my snacks for the day um let's see i'd like to um start off by saying the word fascism comes from this this is my show and tell this is a fascia and this was the symbol for mussolini in italy and hitler and so on fascism the idea is that if you take one of these pieces of wood you can break it individually on your knee but if you lash them all together it becomes very strong and if a society marches in lockstep together it cannot be broken it is invincible that's the whole idea of a fascia and it comes with a ax now my my guide when i was putting this together this is from we did we opened in italy in our fascism show uh she said you've got to have the ax because the ax embedded in this pile of sticks is a reminder that it is discipline that helps a fascist society stay in lockstep and be strong without the acts you don't have the strength that comes with the fascist form of government well we're going to be learning about fascism here in the next hour in the next half an hour now we originally produced this show in a one hour version i had to distill it down to make it one of our episodes in 30 minutes and we took out italy and we took out a lot of the world war ii stuff and and distilled it down and then we pumped up the sightseeing dimension of it so that's what this half hour episode you're going to see today is all about fascism and the story of germany distilled from our one hour fascism special now with all the politics and difficulties in our country right now a lot of people look at this show and they think are you just saying that hitler and trump are like in the same category and of course not that's way over the top there's nothing i mean trump is nowhere near like hitler but there's nothing over the top about recognizing the fragility of our democracy and how an autocrat an autocrat like trump can derail that democracy whether you're on the far left or the far right it's not over the top to recognize that our democracy is not impervious to uh autocrat that reads from the same playbook as mussolini and hitler so we're going to learn about that playbook because that's the playbook that autocrats in poland hungary turkey and perhaps even in our country are following in order to have their way with democracy so as you watch this count the ways that hitler could teach a wannabe autocrat how to take power even if they're not elected by a majority okay let's go now to germany and we're going to learn from the german story 80 years ago and i would like to remind you we started the show right here under the arcade in what's called the house der kunst and the house der kunst in munich is the best piece of uh hitler architecture surviving in munich and i had to run around and look for the best piece of architecture to do the two on cameras we start the show with because that's the on cameras that kicked off the german version of the one hour fascism special here we are in munich let's learn about fascism from germany no actually this time it's the worst of europe in this special episode we'll travel together through germany and learn i'm going to start hi i'm rick steves back with more of the best of europe no actually this time it's the worst of europe in this special episode we'll travel together through germany and learn from the hard lessons of fascism that this country learned from nearly a century ago and why it matters thanks for joining us [Music] so once again this building the house der coons it means literally the house of art and it was the house of art and then hitler didn't like modern art so he turned it into the house of degenerate art and this is where he had a show that showed all the art that just really ticked him off before he got rid of it today hitler would hate this building because it's filled with the modern art that he so despised i want to remind you this show has had three iterations really because i want to get this message out there it was the one hour fascism special then it came back again as a pledge event all over public television and it really had a remarkable run as a pledge show around the country and now as we bring out our season 11 it's one of eight shows in season 11 distilled out of that hour we've got the um the germany fascism special here overseas are being threatened throughout the west by the rise of angry populist masses and wannabe autocrats thoughtful travels reveal that history is speaking to us traveling through germany today you see many reminders of the rise and fall of nazism and the devastation wrought by its fascist leader adolf hitler in this episode we'll travel to places that evoke those terrible times in germany and see a few of the sites and memorials that recall that country's fascist nightmare we'll learn how in germany fascism rose and then fell taking millions of people with it along the way we'll learn from germans whose families lived through those times you do not trust in anybody any longer after the burning of books and see how germany guards against the rise of fascism again throughout germany we'll see sites related to fascism we'll start where hitler got his political start munich then we'll visit nurnberg the site of his notorious political rallies berchtesgaden home of his getaway the eagles nest and berlin the capital in sight of german fascism's downfall in 1918 world war one ended leaving 10 million dead and europe in ruins the chaotic aftermath of the war created fertile ground for the seeds of fascism nowhere was that more true than in defeated and devastated germany after world war one germany was in a shambles after a humiliating defeat and the loss of over two million men they were forced by the allies to pay costly war reparations [Music] their emperor had abdicated and was replaced by a weak democracy the economy was terrible unemployment was high and inflation was out of control germans had no faith in their government to get society back on track so i want to remind you this is a big deal 1918 the stab in the back there is a conspiracy theory that jews and communists and bad people gave up in world war one and germany could have won the war and that delegitimized their government and then 12 14 years later hitler rose uh and took over power but uh he tried to rise right here he didn't make it but he came back because to a great extent about that stab in the back conspiracy i just if you can delegitimize an election you can come back later and rally your base around the fact that that election was delegitimized therefore the government you're trying to overthrow is delegitimized it happens today and it happened back then in this vacuum of power a fringe movement claiming to be the champion of the oppressed emerged they dressed in intimidating brown shirt uniforms roamed the streets and gangs and wanted to restore germany's national pride they called themselves the national socialists or nazis their leader adolf hitler those early nazis found a natural base here in munich so munich is a great town for sightseeing obviously and there's plenty of third reich sightseeing to do here there's wonderful third reich walking tours and you'll walk by things you wouldn't understand without a guide that are beautifully or not they're intimately tied in with the rise of national socialism from in munich you've got a documentation center and this is something that has only come out in the last generation actual documentation centers designed to teach the german citizenry what happened when we had the advent of fascism of their grandfather's time and then from munich you can make side trips very easily to dhaka and to bergta's garden both of which we'll see in this show when you look at this square we're looking at the medieval town center of munich of course munich was just a pile of rubble in 1945 as were most of the great cities in germany each city in the late 40s had to decide how are we going to rebuild is it going to be on the manhattan plan which is like frankfurt meaning throw away all that middle medieval cute stuff and the higgly piggly back lanes and just make it a grid plan and a no-nonsense you know banking capital the future or are you going to build on your medieval floor plan your medieval street plan munich chose the medieval street plan and that's why today you still have the circular wall or you can see it you've got the old gates and you've got the characteristic old town great for um tourism that's for sure while a pleasant and idyllic city today this capital of bavaria was known for its conservative and nationalistic passions nazi street gangs violently attacked unwanted outsiders jews and communists [Music] look at that shot there was so much powerful footage that our staff basically steve cameron and simon griffith found to make this show work amazing stock footage as you'll see in a moment we're going into a beer hall and when you go into a beer hall in munich you do feel the ghosts of those early these guys here the very first nazis because that's where they had their meetings in fact the most touristy beer hall of all the hofbro house has history connected to that guy in 1920 the very first national socialist meetings before hitler was even a big shot in the movement were taking place in the hofbra house when i was a kid visiting the hofbrau house and the different beer halls in munich i remember vividly the the place was overrun with two crowds tourists and deranged veterans of world war ii suffering from ptsd before ptsd had a word a name for it i mean one-legged people that would would sing old war songs and and thrust their fists up in the sky and it was a fascinating mix to see that die-hard spirit of nazism hobbling around on one leg with their mental disturbances as germany was trying still to rebuild even in the 1970s from the tragedy of world war ii and hitler [Music] in 1923 in a beer hall like this the original nazi leadership gathered their followers they were impatient and eager to take power hitler waved his pistol in the air and called for the revolution to begin hitler led the ragtag revolutionaries in the beer hall into the streets of munich planning to overthrow the government but that attempted revolt called the beer hall put failed i'm going to be breaking in a lot just because it's fun and i've got your you're a you're a trapped audience uh i want to remind you you can watch this show uninterrupted anytime you want at ricksteevs.com go to the tv section and you can watch the one hour version which is obviously double the content but i just wanted to point out right here in the show there's a lot of heavy uh long on cameras i pride myself in memorizing my own cameras and not using a teleprompter normally but we shot this show in a scramble and we used a teleprompter because the on-cameras were very long and we just didn't have the time to mess around with them but you can see in my left hand i'm holding the remote you can see my thumb on it there and uh don't look at that because you're not supposed to know i've got a remote to read to operate the teleprompter from a distance after a bloody confrontation the police crushed it here at odion's plots hitler was arrested and sent to jail and it seemed that germany's fascist movement was finished before it got off the ground unable to overthrow the government by force hitler resolved to take it by political means while in prison he wrote mein kampf or my struggle which preaches his message of uniting all ethnic germans and giving them more space to live once out of prison hitler managed to take power within the existing political system shaping his national socialist party into a political entity he put forward a populist strategy rousing a disillusioned workforce reviving a struggling economy and fixing what was considered a weak government at first the boom times of the roaring 20s blunted his populist message but then the great depression hit in 1929 the working masses were angry again and hitler's promises gained traction fascism was now taking root in germany look at that beautiful spot for an on camera i'm just really into finding good spots for on cameras it's just such a fun challenge when you're making a tv show we got to do it on camera whenever we have information we can't cover by things you can physically look at and uh that's a beautiful setup that's right there that's the uh national the old national gallery in berlin it's on the museum island and it's right next to the pergamon museum where everybody goes and also the museum with the nefertiti the great egyptian bust but um you gotta check out the old national gallery because it's filled with romantic art from the 1870s when germany was a new country and everybody was celebrating the legitimacy of germany it's a complicated history but to study you know world war ii and hitler and all that you really got to start back in 1870 when germany was united and all of a sudden that up sort of upended all of the stability in europe so coming up now we're going to hear from local guides it was critical for us to get local guides to explain the story because they had so much more credibility than me on these complicated and important issues there were long interviews we had to find quiet places to sit down with our guides uh one of them was on the steps of the parade grounds in nuremberg another one was in the backyard of my favorite hotel in berlin hotel yurine and another was in the garden of my favorite italian restaurant just near the train station in munich where i always end up staying but these are german voices that can speak fluently ad living powerfully powerfully about their country's story so i want to thank andreas holger george and thomas four great guides you're gonna meet now and each of them we're really good at showing the parallels i've been talking about with the tricks of today's populist leaders being acted out a century ago bombastic wannabe autocrats promising jobs jobs jobs blaming the communists making simple solutions telling big lies repeatedly and confidently until people start to think well maybe they're too stoking their base with rallies goosing the economy so people would support them even if they had to hold their nose because it was good for their retirement accounts using the radio the mass media of the day so expertly in a moment we're going to meet george who we literally took out of the oktoberfest beer tents he was a little bit drunk we had to take off all of his you know he had his fancy felt hat with the feather and all the pins and everything and we had to have him change gears from oktoberfest to german tour guide talking about fascism but i just got to say we couldn't have done the show without our wonderful local guides [Music] so hitler promised jobs jobs jobs to everybody and of course people needed jobs hitler promised the people everything everything they wanted he promised them a bright future he promised him work he promised them libensram livingspace hitler was a powerful mesmerizing speaker people were taken by hitler's speech not so much by the beauty of his arguments but by his sheer fanaticism by his anger by his rage and his repetitive rhetoric and people eyewitness accounts describe it as a barbaric primitive effect he repeated a lie endlessly and he didn't make it a small lie he made it a big lie and he kept hammering it into their hands he also dumped it down as much as possible his simplistic promises were made to order for his political base more prosperity and expanded borders for more room in which to live or laban's realm fascism is perceived as a strong movement with simple answers for complicated problems he blamed germany's problems on scapegoats like jews and communists and fears that the communist revolution in russia would spread to germany in 1932 the nazi party won only about a third of the seats in parliament but hitler managed to put together a ruling coalition and was appointed chancellor in january 1933 suddenly adolf hitler was heading a new german government then just a few weeks into hitler's rule under mysterious circumstances there was a fire in germany's parliament building or reichstag [Music] a disaster like this which many historians believe was actually the work of hitler's people is an answer to an aspiring dictator's prayer with this national security emergency hitler now had his excuse to crush the communists silence moderates and create laws giving him sweeping new powers suddenly in germany there was no middle ground you were either with hitler or against him hitler followed a playbook that has inspired autocrats left and right ever since think about that you have the burning of the reichstag and the next day hitler is able to really consolidate his authoritarian rule you lose your democracy incrementally little by little you hardly notice it's being taken away from you in the same time the wannabe autocrat the wannabe dictator is creating a society that wants law in order when you hear law and order and you're losing your freedom all you need to do is wait for some disaster a burnt rice dog building a burnt you know congress um 9 11. after 9 11 right away we had the patriots act i mean it may have been justified but the government certainly has more power when it has the patriots act uh in turkey just recently erdogan was struggling and all of a sudden there's a failed coup and the next month erdogan is much more powerful because he capitalized on that i was standing here in front of this parliament building which to me is such a it's a historic pilgrimage for anybody who likes to learn from history and you can see the glass dome that they built out of that bombed out shell later on in the show we'll see the last fighting of world war ii on the rooftop there as communists from from the soviet union fought nazis on their last stand on the top of their parliament building so much to share right there i was excited to do the on camera here and it happened to be a day when there was a huge gay rights parade everybody around was just it was a great festival of gay rights and it was starting to rain and i was thinking how can we ever ever do this on camera talking about fascism in a fire but the cameraman framed it right and we managed to pull it off and it worked just great in berlin so much sightseeing related to this within a 10-minute walk of the reichstag building you've got well of course you can tour the reichstag building and go to the very top of that i was up there on opening day surrounded by teary-eyed germans celebrating the fact that their country was no longer divided no more communism no more fascism it was a united country looking into a promising future with a new beautiful beautiful new capitol building you can tour that about a four block walk down the unturden linden you've got the german history museum the best museum in germany for 20th century history for sure uh you've got hitler's bunker the site where he committed suicide now just a parking lot we'll go there in a minute and just between me and this building there's a monument we'll we'll see in a moment which is a memorial to the german politicians who were murdered by hitler 96 politicians 96 congressmen and senators of germany in 1933 refused to buckle under hitler and they voted against him in the parliament and immediately after that they were arrested taken to a concentration camp and never again saw their freedom 96 of them died it's amazing to think what happened in germany 90 years ago hitler proceeded to consolidate his power in the most ruthless ways he locked up the few courageous politicians who voted against him and established his total control of the german government this poignant memorial remembers those who tried to resist hitler's power grab the german equivalent of congressmen and senators they were quickly silenced you can see the dates they were arrested sent to concentration camps and executed hitler had hijacked germany's democracy he was given extraordinary powers to temporarily suspend democratic procedures in order to get things done a dictator now in charge of a mighty industrial nation hitler and his team began to lay out his plan for germany and the world inheriting a german economy suffering from the great depression including an unemployment rate of nearly 30 percent hitler quickly turned to improving the economy he accelerated the previous government's policy of large public works in infrastructure projects financed with deficit spending as a result employment increased dramatically from 1933 to 1936. despite this new focus on jobs in the german worker the nazis had no use for labor unions well fascism basically hates everything communist or bolshevik they call it so they would not like trade unions they were not within the frame of the fascist movement one year into their government they declared may day a holiday for the first time the union celebrated and the next day when they were hung over more or less they smashed the unions despite having the term socialist in the party name hitler was a friend of industry he privatized many industries and the corporations that had supported his candidacy continued to back him corporations would support the nazi government of germany because it was good for their profits with all this economic activity and employment hitler re-energized germany [Music] much of germany was swept up in hitler's charismatic vision and the country had a common purpose [Applause] everywhere he went crowds adored him women swooned when his car drove by in clubs called the hitler youth boys and girls pledged their allegiance to him a little boy in 1935 when he looked at hitler he would see a god-like person he would somebody who would elevate the german people who would elevate the people of this boy to become the perfect master race running the planet hitler became known by a new title which meant he was their leader their fuhrer the idea about fascism is to have a big community that all operates exactly the same way and to have a common opinion that covers all there was one phrase that was called einfolk ein fura one people one empire one leader full stop there was a dark side to all this nazi conformity individuality was lost individualism doesn't even exist in fascism it doesn't exist in any aspect it doesn't exist in art it doesn't exist in lectures at university it doesn't exist in newspapers and press for the nazis the city that most embodied their sense of national unity was nurnberg nirnberg so steeped in german history was nicknamed the most german of german cities that's one reason it was a favorite of hitler's to showcase his nationalistic pomp and pageantry to inspire all of germany to get on board [Applause] there were three german reichs or empires the first was medieval it was called the holy roman empire in fact the emperor's castle still towers above nurenberg the second reich was 19th century the creation of the modern german state by prussia under the leadership of bismarck and it was here in nuremberg that hitler declared the third reich a powerful german empire to last a thousand years i'll never forget walking up that stairway behind me and smelling urine a very strong smell of urine and then noticing the bottom of that door was just rested to oblivion because it is a ritual it is tradition for german men to come there and pee on the door that door is the door that leads to the golden room and it's the most sumptuous green room you know where the uh vips would sit before going on stage it's the size of that building basically and it's just beautifully mosaic i'd never seen it before this film it's not open to the public we didn't show it on our tv show we never show things that you can't see on you because we are committed to showing you what you can do on your trip that's part of our ethic but boy that green room was powerful and so was the smell of that urine you know if you're trying to do a documentary on the story of fascism in germany nuremberg munich and berlin it's all you need right there there is so much to see and of those nurnberg is the city that is the least touristic and has the surprising lot to offer it's got this amazing documentation center right here at the fairgrounds and you've also got uh the congress hall which we're gonna visit in just a minute you know in my tours we have an ethic of never going to germany without visiting a concentration camp and essentially making a pilgrimage to the place of all of this um horror and slaughter of the holocaust and uh either every every tour itinerary can choose a concentration camp on our 13-day best of germany itinerary on our bus tours we go to berlin we go to munich we go to hamburg we do not go to nuremberg it didn't quite make it in the top 13 days but i do want to remind you that if you want the specifics on anything about the hitler sight seeing or anything that we're seeing in this show everything i've got in germany is covered in this rick steve's guidebook to germany which is 30 off during our christmas sale right now i do want to remind you that when you go to germany you're going to be connecting with the culture in the beer halls and you've got all of that great sort of energy and you're going to have on our tv shows we always do a meal we didn't do a meal on this one so i just want to make a extra little mmm temptation of your sauerkraut your radishes your cheese your bread burst and your horseradish sauce and remind you one of the most important words when you go to a beer hall anywhere in germany to your health okay when hitler took power he made nurnberg's zeppelin field the site of his enormous nazi party rallies today the stark remains of this massive gathering place are thought-provoking german tour guide thomas schmecktig is joining me for some insight for several years increasingly elaborate celebrations of nazi culture ideology and power took place right here fascist dictators understood the propaganda power of big rallies where they can manufacture the adoration of their people bask in it and then broadcast it to the rest of the population as hitler said turning the little man into part of a great dragon [Applause] imagine hitler stepping out of that door overlooking the masters 200 000 people being lined up he used propaganda to create a new community in fact we even have a word for it it's called folks mineshaft inspirational image look at those banners you don't see those banners in museums anywhere there are tons of banners like these that survive but germany has decided it's just too dangerous to have them out because it can be something that neo-nazis can rally around there's this latent sort of smoldering anti-semitism neo-nazism going on and it's just germany really cares about that so all of these things while they exist they're locked up and out of sight of the public you won't even see a lot of medallions i mean everybody was decorated with all sorts of buttons and ribbons and military decorations if you were a german nazi hero in 1945 and suddenly you've lost the war the first thing you're going to do is look around your house and think what can i get rid of so people don't know i was a enthusiastic nazi the lakes of germany are the lake beds of germany is where you look for nazi regalia everybody went out onto the lake and dumped all their all of their prized medallions celebrating their heroic nazis in the lake and suddenly nobody was a nazi anymore it's a fascinating story what germany went through what a difficult time for a great nation and what a fascinating thing to follow in your travels from lenny riefenstahl's propaganda movie triumph of the will were filmed at the 1934 nurnberg rallies and then shown in theaters and school rooms throughout the country the goal to bring a visual celebration of the power of the nazi state to all 70 million germans nurnberg shows the enormous power of fascism's secret weapon propaganda looming over a now peaceful lake in nurnberg is another remnant of the dictator's megalomania his huge yet unfinished nazi congress hall hitler who believed he would create a new civilization based upon fascist values modeled this building after the ancient roman coliseum but even more colossal imagine 50 000 leading nazis in here one third higher covered by a roof a window inside the ceiling sunshine would have fallen down to the podium once a year one speech of adolf hitler another stage set for this propaganda show was hitler's mountain capping eagles nest this alpine getaway just south of munich in berchtesgaden was used to soften hitler's image against a majestic almost theatrical backdrop [Music] his visits were lovingly filmed to show him as the embodiment of all that was good about germany healthy vigorous respectable everyone's favorite uncle set in the scenic foothills of the alps it was built in 1938 as a mountain retreat for hitler and his guests a stone tunnel crafted with fascist precision leads to hitler's plush elevator which still whisks visitors to the top because it was in this corner of bavaria that hitler claimed to be inspired and laid out his dark vision some called berchtesgaden the cradle of the third reich hold that thought rick so here we have the luftwaffe headquarters this is the hitler building that survives the best in berlin it's the former headquarters of the air force the luftwaffe today it's still a government building uh they're very sensitive about where you can stick your tripod and where you can film if you're making a tv show we did not have permission to film the building we begged and pleaded and finally the guard there said you can set your tripod outside on the sidewalk and i can stand inside so here i am i wanted to get that frame that powerful national socialist architecture but the tripod is out on the on the sidewalk this is uh maybe a familiar image because in 2008 tom cruise started a movie called valkyrie and it was the story of colonel klaus von stauffenberg who tried to assassinate hitler it's amazing when you look at tom cruise and stealthenberg they look like the same person i mean it's amazing how they they are spitting image of each other and you've noticed a lot of the stirring national socialist architecture in that film including the luftwaffe here in berlin hitler may have stoked germany's economy and put people back to work but it was becoming clear that whatever benefits fascism might bring to its political base it had a darker side and it came at a huge cost despite its veneer of respectability and its popularity among ordinary people the thriving fascist state relied on increasingly brutal repression hitler continued his ruthless creation of a totalitarian fascist state the free press was silenced as were intellectuals and universities art was expected to be naturalistic and germans to be depicted as blonde blue-eyed and wholesome books that caused people to question the nazi agenda were forbidden and publicly burned with delight by hitler's supporters if you have some books titles of those books that were burned the night before and you invite some people they can argue against you because you have those books in your private library and even your roommate has an argument against you you do not trust in anybody any longer after the burning of books one famous german writer and author said once you're burning books very soon you're going to burn people wow i never fully appreciated the power of the burning of the books ritual until george explained it when we were right there i mean today when you go to a friend's house you you psychoanalyze them you know you want to see what's on their bookshelf what do they believe in who are they excited about what do they embrace imagine the day after the burning the book suddenly you have to look around and you wonder what in my world here betrays my politics and who can you trust because you couldn't trust anybody so many people were working with the government by the way we've got some time for questions and answers so please if you have a question fill it out during the show and in the q a widget there also to see this program i i hesitate to break into because it's it's pretty heavy stuff and it's better to watch it straight through if you get a chance you can see the one hour version of this program or the half hour german only version if you go to ricksteevs.com and look in the tv section also remember this recording of this event right here will be posted at rick steves on facebook tomorrow as we do every monday with monday night travels artifacts and posters in berlin's german history museum illustrate the nazi notion of a master race anyone who didn't fit their model could be viewed as an enemy of the state and sent to concentration camps the nazis required those they imprisoned to wear badges that identified their status political traitor lawbreaker foreigner homosexual and a catch-all asocial anyone who would not conform a special badge the yellow star of david went to hitler's lowest of the low the jews the nazis believed that the german people were the master race the toughest the strongest the bravest the smartest they said we should be running the planet we just can do it because this conspiracy the jewish world conspiracy is in the way and without them if we deal with that conspiracy then we will achieve our rightful status again [Applause] the nazis started putting their anti-semitic ideas into action as early as april of 1933 when they organized a boycott of jewish businesses he specifically blamed one group the jewish people for ruining things for everybody else for him it was clear his scapegoat was the jews they were the source of all evil in germany and in the world and he wanted to kind of get rid of that evil and that's what he worked for then in november of 1938 the nazis led a pogrom against jews throughout germany during kristallnacht or the night of the broken glass as it was called jewish homes hospitals and schools were ransacked seven thousand jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed and over a thousand synagogues were burned and thirty thousand jews were arrested and put in concentration camps this was a turning point from earlier economic political and social persecution to physical beatings incarceration and even murder it was the beginning of hitler's final solution today berlin's topography of terror exhibit stands on the rubble of what was once the most feared address in berlin the headquarters of the gestapo secret police and the elite ss force it was from here that government employees managed the nazi state and dispassionately coordinated its most ruthless activities the efficient and heartless bureaucracy behind hitler's crimes gave rise to the expression the banality of evil the banality of evil look at these people look at these proud boys their parents are so proud of them this could really happen every time i i share this tv show and these lessons part of me goes oh come on you know and but my german guides are so passionate about sharing this story they understand that this fascist nightmare could happen with seemingly good people when they're gripped by the fear and and by by a charismatic leader even in our time i've got to say even in our country you could lose your democracy of course we're not there yet we're not there we're not even close to it but when you see the passions and you see the power of the fear and and the ruthlessness of politicians who are addicted to power and the spinelessness of the other politicians that want to be close to power you can extend that trajectory and you can imagine it happening 80 or 90 years after this photograph was taken in a country whose democracy you thought was strong fascism in germany turned ever more hateful and militaristic and fascism in italy under benito mussolini had been firmly rooted since the 1920s italian fascism practiced similar militaristic and expansionist policies peace in europe was under threat and war seemed inevitable [Music] in 1939 germany invaded poland and world war ii began the military might of germany seemed unstoppable employing their fast lightning war technique called blitzkrieg hitler's mighty tanks and high-tech air force the luftwaffe swept across europe [Music] france fell quickly and suddenly hitler was playing tourist at the eiffel tower soon nearly all of the continent was under direct or indirect fascist rule with their final victory seemingly inevitable the nazis tightened the screws within their own society the evils of fascism were incremental as its small evils became big evils german society managed to be oblivious to its own atrocities at first concentration camps contained people who didn't conform then they became forced labor camps eventually the nazis built death camps which were located outside of germany and therefore farther from public view with what the nazis called the final solution the entire jewish population was targeted for extermination in total approximately 6 million jews died from nazi persecution 2.7 million of those died in death camps auschwitz birkenau in poland was the biggest and most notorious concentration camp in the nazi system seeing the camp can be difficult but auschwitz survivors want tourists to come here to try to appreciate the scale and the monstrosity of the place in human terms in hopes that this horror known as the holocaust will never be forgotten will never be forgotten the only way that will never be forgotten and it's important right now because the last living memory of the holocaust the last jews with with with the concentration camp number tattooed on their wrists are passing away and how are we going to remember this we're going to remember it by heeding the wish of the victims of the holocaust that we never forget and we do that by making a pilgrimage to one of these concentration camps it's a moral obligation for me as a tour guide and a tour organizer we will not do a tour to germany without visiting a concentration camp and a lot of people go oh no i don't really need to see that or i saw the thing the museum in washington dc and so on no you need to see a concentration camp there's a big recognition of that now in germany there was a time when it was very difficult for germany and they weren't handling very well now they are there was a time there was decades when teachers ran out of time just before they got to hitler and they didn't need to cover it in school and kids didn't know much about their own history from the 20th century now the year starts with nazism and they are sure to finish nazism in that term and every student in germany goes to a concentration camp with a teacher to learn their own dark history we need to do that too as students of history and as thoughtful travelers there's several concentration camps that are worth knowing about dachau is the most accessible and in a lot of ways the most sanitized concentration camp still plenty powerful madhausen is a stronger experience that's on the danube river coming into vienna in a horrible quarry where there was just untold suffering and if you want to see the most powerful concentration camp you need to go to auschwitz in poland germany does an admirable job of dealing with its hard history but it can never be presented like the poles who were the great victims of nazism one way or another you need to visit a concentration camp to finally defeat fascism the alliance of hitler and mussolini it took a massive and heroic allied effort led by britain america and the soviet union germany was overwhelmed as the combined military might of the allies closed in on the third reich finally the nazi capital of berlin was liberated by soviet troops and hitler finished his life here in berlin deep underground in a bunker below my feet with his capital smoldering in ruins the dictator committed suicide finally in the spring of 1945 the war in europe ended the death toll was staggering in addition to six million jews the nazis killed hundreds of thousands of so-called undesirables over a million political and religious prisoners and nearly nine million soviet and polish citizens europe's experiment with fascism left the continent devastated with entire societies needing to be rebuilt germany had to be reconstructed inside and out the sweeping impact of fascism can be felt to this day in the many memorials across europe that remind us of those horrific years in berlin the memorial to the murdered jews of europe is a touching and evocative field of gravestone-like pillars it's designed to cause people to think and to ponder this horrible chapter in human history a common refrain at many of these memorials is never again but even today in well-established democracies throughout the west societies are facing many of the same emotions frustrations and inequities that a century ago opened the door to fascism in europe if i ask myself could it happen again i would say no but it has happened in germany and it might happen again fascism happened here in germany in the center of civilization in the land of beethoven gertie and chile and if it could have happened here it can happen anywhere in the world today germany deals responsibly with the legacy of pain it brought europe germany knows the importance of a well-informed electorate every school child learns of the holocaust with a visit to a concentration camp and nazi documentation centers in major cities tell the story but perhaps most important is the preservation of government by the constitution and the rule of law and not by the dictates of a charismatic all-powerful leader one of the things that you can do to make sure that something like this will not happen here or in other countries is not trust people that promise you very easy answers for very complicated problems it never works as we've seen through the story of fascism in germany a charismatic leader rose to power through the democratic process and then seized extra constitutional power by unlawful means when citizens allowed this individual freedoms and rights soon fell by the wayside and democracy was lost while democracy was restored to western europe it easily could have been lost forever and the cost was millions of lives as history continues to unfold around us today it's important to remember that freedom and democracy are not guaranteed we are all participants and we are all responsible the story of fascism in europe has taught us that strong and charismatic leaders can capitalize on fear to lead a society astray democracy is fragile it requires a vigilant and engaged populace and if you take freedom for granted you can lose it thanks for joining us i'm rick steves until next time not keep on traveling for this show i wanted to say travel thoughtfully travel thoughtfully travel thoughtfully well thank you so much for letting me share that with you you know um it's just so exciting when we do travel that we can get close to that difficult story and bring it home bring home the lessons you know democracy is fragile and uh every one of my guides was just trying to make it clear if you take your freedom for granted you can lose it this makes me so thankful for our democracy and defensive of it also active citizens can keep our democracy strong it's so great to have public broadcasting public television that lets us bring this kind of programming home no underwriter would ever touch a show like this this a show like this would not be seen in on commercial stations but it's public broadcasting that brings it to us and i'm really thankful for that and thankful for all of you for joining me for this showing hey um next week we're going to uh cairo and that's that we're going to the nile and right now we're going to gabe gabe we've got some questions yes um thank you so much rick for that wonderful presentation and as always before we get to questions i was hoping hoping that we could get a quick word from our sponsor hey well thank you very much and you sure can our sponsor is rick steves europe we're a tour company last year we took thirty 000 americans to europe on 1200 different tours had a wonderful time this year we were all geared up for our best year ever we were almost sold out and then this covid thing hit us and now all hundred of us are hunkering down and we're getting through this and we are ready to ramp up when uh the coast is clear so we're just asking people who are in looking forward to traveling again in europe to remember that we've got our tour program primed and ready to go uh last year we printed up this 64-page beautiful full-color advertisement booklet for our tour program again we took 30 thousand people in in 19 2019 and uh we've got the same brochure available not printed but as a pdf on our website at ricksteevs.com so you're welcome to go there and download it and let your travel dreams percolate look at that we've got um 40 different itineraries including the best of germany in 13 days an amazing tour of germany austria and switzerland and then another tour called berlin prague in vienna in 12 days and 40 other itineraries one thing that we have new which we're very excited about is that tour of poland in fact we were slated to produce two tv shows this summer but we had to cancel them two shows in poland and two shows in iceland but we're feeling very confident that uh probably late in the summer or the fall of next year we'll be ramping up again and our our right now our tour program is taking names on a wish list so that we can let people who are curious about a particular tour know that the tour is going and we'd love to have you on board so check out ricksteevs.com for that i do want to remind you that we've got our christmas sale going on right now everything in the travel store is discounted between twenty and fifty percent off i believe all the guidebooks are thirty percent off and uh the two books that i'm quite excited about now are the books that i just wrote last year as if we were anticipating a time when we couldn't travel these are books for your travel dreams 100 greatest masterpieces in europe i've long wanted to collect my favorite hundred pieces of art and partner with my good friend gene openshot or write them up and this is a sweep through the story of europe's his art in just a delightful coffee table book it's called 100 masterpieces and that book has been very popular and something i've long wanted to do is collect my most my favorite travel writing basically into a collection of 100 essays and this is a 400 page book called for the love of europe and it's fun to just uh celebrate the love of europe and uh here we've got uh i swept through all of the chapters and took out all of the practical tips no practical tips in there that's in the guidebooks this is just for the love of europe so that's available and we've got lots more going on our publisher is very excited about our calendars we've got every year we produce a beautiful calendar with our best photographs there's the wall hanging one and the day by day calendar and lots of good stuff that way also tomorrow is giving tuesday and if you're in the mood to do something philanthropic let me challenge you to consider advocacy that's my favorite way to leverage my philanthropic giving as a matter of fact every christmas i donate it's my number one gift of the year i give a half a million dollars to bread for the world if my travelers will match that and we're well on the way to doing it again this year like we did last year the deal is and you can go to the on the landing page of our website ricksteeves.com and see the bread for the world uh challenge but if you can afford a hundred dollar gift to empower the work of bread for the world in the halls of congress to make sure we speak up for hungry people during this cold bid crisis both in our country and abroad like speaking up for food stamps or recognizing that development aid in the in the poor world is even if you don't love your neighbor it's a good investment for a stable and more peaceful world it's a good investment if you can give a hundred dollars to bread for the world i will give a hundred dollars to bread for the world and what do i have i've got my gifts here and on top of that we're gonna send you your choice you get our three christmas gifts which is the christmas book and the dvd and music cd of our favorite pieces of music that we recorded while we were shooting our christmas special or you can get the big box set with all the tv shows we've ever made as a thank you for supporting bread for the world so once again if you want to make a difference on giving tuesday there's a lot of good causes personally i think advocacy leverages you're giving the best it makes the biggest difference because our politicians our legislators want to do the right thing they've just got to be encouraged to do that and um bread for the world speaks up for hungry people and we empower them with that already i just got the numbers 2 284 people have given a total of 293 thousand dollars we're well on our way to our goal of 500 000 then together we'll empower bread for the world with a million dollars this christmas and that's something to feel really good about enough of a commercial gabe let's answer some questions all right rick um one question that i saw quite a few times and that i saw from jessica specifically is people are wondering why did you feel that it was important to make this episode on fascism now you know i wanted to i was concerned about it um over the last few years and i just decided i'm a historian and all over europe there are these populist nativist fear-mongering movements that are derailing their democracies and then i've been seeing what's going on in our country also and i just feel like we need to learn from history and as a tour guide that's what we do all of our tour guides love to teach history and you teach history by being exposed to it if i could learn these hard lessons and bring them home into a tv show i thought i would be doing a good job of tour guiding so it's quite timely i wish it wasn't so timely but we produced this fascism show i think three or four years ago and it's as timely now as it ever was um i also had a question from tina who said that you know a lot of people kind of rush to um compare maybe our current political situation um with the likes of fascist germany um are there any key differences that you see or reasons to be hopeful that we have tools that maybe 20th century germans didn't well we've got something called a deep state and we've also got journalism and when you have journalism and when you got a deep state it keeps politicians honest and if i was a politician and i wanted to have total power the two things that would really frustrate me would be journalists and the deep state and i would attack them all the time until i crippled them and then i could have my path to power and we've got institutions that are strong thank god we've got institutions that are strong so no bombastic politician no matter how much charisma he or she might have whether they're far left or far right can have an easy time derailing our democracy but as germans learned we are not um impervious to this so um yeah there are parallels of course there you know hitler and trump you can't even that you wouldn't even say in in the same breath that hitler is you know far more um evil and inconsequential but the dynamic that a democracy can be derailed is so clear and most of europe was fascist in every one of those fascist dictators that derailed democracies in europe 80 years ago they read out of a playbook it's just do this do this do this and do this and want to be autocrats today in our just right now in established democracies they're doing the same thing so if this show can shine a light on how we can learn from history you know history doesn't necessarily repeat itself but it rhymes and we are seeing a lot of that rhyme right now um another question rick that i that brent asked is um you talked a lot about how germans have learned from their past and created a strong democracy in your opinion do you think that we in the united states especially our educational system does enough to teach students about how the united states has been the bad guy in certain situations i know you've said dissent is a patriotic act do you think that we in the u.s teach children to be critical enough of our own country yeah dissent is patriotic a lot of people say i'm a american bash no i america love i have high expectations for my country i would live and work nowhere else but are we doing enough with our education education is critical i mean right now there's a big discussion going on and a lot of people want to whitewash the difficult corners of our history and make it sound like we are a nation that has nothing to be learning from in our past and i think that's dangerous frankly i know it's been a tough thing in germany i saw a german parent with his child at a concentration camp standing in front of a display that showed the canisters of the of the gas that killed thousands and thousands of jews and that father had to teach his child what his father did that's difficult and you see what that's a microcosm of what germany has gone through and in my early days of traveling nobody talked about hitler it was a gap the school year would finish just before the teachers were able to get to fascism and nazism and think you know they breathed the sigh of relief and didn't have to cover it now in germany a whole year in the curriculum from day one is dedicated to the story of hitler and fascists because germany wants to learn from it they've paid the price for not learning from it germany invests in its education if i was if i had a chance to help our budget be smarter and help our country be stronger i would consider education as national defense and i would take a little bit of the 800 billion dollars a year we spend every year on military hardware and i would put it into education because you need to educate in your citizenry in order to have a strong democracy in europe they invest in their citizenry they've got a eurasimus program it's called that pays people to work and study in other countries so they can talk to each other and learn from each other and i've noticed in germany anything dealing with the fascist story is government subsidized it's really cheap to buy i've got some great even in english history books i've purchased in berlin that were only the cost of the paper clearly german taxpayers were paying so this tourist could read that book take it home and learn from it all right um uh another question you had mentioned um you know the the visits to the concentration camps um and i had craig who was wondering when you visit a concentration camp are there is there kind of concentration camp etiquette is it do you stay silent are you allowed to take photos um do you have any tips for maybe traveling with children to a concentration camp you know that's a very very good question um i don't know if if it's appropriate for small children to go there it's a great act of parenting and teaching to take young people to a concentration camp but it when is it appropriate it's a tough call but i am concerned with adults and you know older students who say no i saw a documentary that or no i went to the museum in washington dc i don't need to depress myself on my vacation by going to a concentration camp no there's nothing like going to a concentration camp you need to go to a concentration camp i've done that for for three decades as a tour guide it's tough and then we go from the concentration camp everybody is on the bus and it's just glum city and uh then that evening we're we're getting over it and we go to a beer hall and we're together again you know but um it's an experience people treasures not quite the right word they really value the experience the etiquette at the concentration camp it's like going to a sacred site you i walk with my hands clasped i speak in a whisper you are taking it in it's swollen and there are people that are noisy and jocular when they're there and it just feels so grating so take some leadership with the people you're with expect the people around you to be respectful because it is a shrine to six million jews who were killed in the holocaust not to mention lots of other people so it's a powerful experience it's a good experience it's a it's an important experience and um you don't just go to europe to go to have fun on the beach you go to europe to learn or you're wasting an opportunity and i'm just so thankful as a tour guide and a teacher to be able to share these lessons thanks to public television and thanks to the technology we got right now with our traveling friends all right and we have time for one more question rick um darcia would like to know when did you start seeing travel as a political act do you have a moment or two that that light bulb kind of clicked on for you yeah i never really wanted to be political in my travels until i went to central america after the sandinistan contra and invasion of grenada and all that kind of stuff went on and up until that time my life motto was peace through strength my country right or wrong and then i i traveled south of the border and i realized what an impact a lot of our foreign policy and our trade policy in our military policy has on real people and ever since then i've had an appetite to learn i remember when i was a kid i was in tehran i was just 22 years old and i saw a horrible gap between people on the streets and and people in skyscrapers in tehran and iran and i saw real poverty in india but what politicized me really was trips to central america back in the 80s and 90s and then 911 after 9 11 i realized my mission is to inspire americans to get to know the other 96 of humanity so our country can be part of the part of the discussion part of the family of nations and it really enriches your travel experience you know you you travel thoughtfully and you bring home what which i think is the most important souvenir and that's a broader perspective hey i want to remind people i started off with the with the fascia gabe and in this fashion we think of it as ah mussolini or hitler but it can be a good thing uh it's in our government also and it's people together and it's the strength of us individually uh we can be broken but if we are together we can be strong that can be a positive thing and especially now as we struggle with covid and and and we struggle with the need to take care of the gap between the haves and the have-nots and the privileged and the struggling people in our society we can get over that with a good and caring citizenship we can be strong in making our nation a better place and if we're good and caring we don't need the acts because we know it's right to work together so we can all enjoy some travels some peace and some prosperity hey thank you all so much for joining us i want to remind you next week we're going to cairo and after that we're going to the nile and right now i'll just once again say zoomvo happy travels even if we're all just staying home for a little while

Channel: Rick Steves Travel Talks

Views: 9,603

Keywords: Rick Steves, Rick Steves travel skills, Rick Steves travel lectures, Rick Steves travel talks, Rick Steves Europe, travel advice, travel tips, europe travel tips

Id: nncWhDionHc

Length: 71min 40sec (4300 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021