History’s lessons - Two very different leaders die

ANYONE with an interest in European history will be appalled and fascinated by 1930s Germany when Hitler consolidated his power and prepared to launch World War II.

Today most of us are usually baffled by the idea that someone so palpably insane, so obviously evil, could assume power in a civilised and cultured society. It is almost beyond comprehension that the society that gave the world Bach and Beethoven wept tears of joy when Hitler and his satanic Nazis took absolute power.

It is difficult to watch, even six decades later, the Nazi propaganda films with weeping, hysterical crowds cheering Hitler’s ravings without seeing, in the mind’s eye, the atrocities committed by Germany and its allies.