1935 and 1936: The Shine of Nazism Wears Thin

The story of the residents of Weimar during the rise and reign of Hitler.

Weimar – On the Edge of Catastrophe is written by Katja Hoyer.
The reader is Sian Thomas.
The abridger is Julian Wilkinson.
The producer is Lu Kemp.

The first military barracks are being built on the Ettersburg, as Hitler prepares for the reintroduction of conscription. The Death’s Head Unit the SS arrive in Weimar. And their commander has ideas about how to use the concentration camp – previously used only to hold political dissidents – for racial hygiene. The status of being ‘Jew’ is defined legally for the first time. The Schmidt’s have to work extremely hard to keep their heritage a secret.

For Carl Weirich the shine of Nazism is starting to wear off. The Nazi government is only awarding contracts to Nazi party memberships, so his work for the Bookbinders association is threatened. But at school his son is taught that the greatest form of fraternal love is ‘death for the fatherland’.

A young Weimarian woman is held against her will and sterilised because she is deemed to be schizophrenic – despite no prior record of mental disturbance.

The first hall of the People’s Community is built in Weimar, and the park at the centre of Weimar is ripped up to build Adolf Hitler’s square.

Weimar explores ‘the question of how and why a nation that prided itself on its culture and civility enabled the catastrophe of Nazism haunts us to this day because we fear a repeat.’ The book is about the tension between individual and collective responsibility and sounds a warning for our own times.

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian, journalist and the author of the international bestseller Beyond the Wall as well as Blood and Iron. A visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she writes for Bloomberg and Berliner Zeitung and is a commentator on German current affairs for many British newspapers. She was born in Germany and is now based in the UK.