My father had a keen sense of history, and when my parents were in Germany in the early 1930s (he had a graduate travel fellowship at the University of Berlin), he was aware of (and peripherally involved in…another story) history in the making. He also was something of a perfectionist, and carried not only his 16-mm Kodak but also a tripod and light meter all over Europe and the Middle East. I am the repository for his 1930s films, all on highly flammable nitro-based celluloid. When my parents returned to the states, he used these films and other historical material (some interesting items) for public lectures. By the time I came along, I would occasionally set up the projector so that I could show my friends our home movies of Stalin in Red Square on May Day and Hitler in his open Mercedes. I burned up much of the Hitler sequence by stopping the projector to see things better, and then Hitler would curl up before our eyes in wisps of acrid smoke. My father intended to get the “Big Three” on film, but Mussolini was out of the country when my parents were in Italy, and so we have a very nice sequence of the Italian square and balcony from which Mussolini used to deliver his harangues to the people (apparently the best possible shot available under the circumstances).
It is interesting to note that my friend John Cary was in Berlin at the same time as my parents and recounts that as a young student his school youth group was required to stand on the sidewalk for Hitler’s Mercedes procession. Additionally, his Quaker family had some connections with the University of Berlin and some of the places that my father attended. He has kindly translated some of the historical material that I received from my father.
Additionally, I have learned much about this period through Fran’s connection (at Saul Ewing, LLP) with Arthur Solmssen, and particularly through his excellent historical novel A Princess in Berlin (1980). In this well-received book set in Germany in the early 1920s, Solmssen (writing from extensive experience) sets the scene for what led to Germany’s later Nazification.
I recently read The Revolution of Nihilism (1939) by Hermann Rauschning. We must remember that the Prussian aristocracy (Junkers) such as Rauschning, as well as the capitalists, had made a pact of convenience with Hitler, while always considering him to be a temporary tool useful for their own conservative causes and sure of their own superiority. Rauschning served as an anti-Nazi and anti-Soviet speaker for years, but no one mentions that his goal was a return to a monarchy in the service of the traditional ruling (upper) class.
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