What History Teaches: Lessons From the Earliest Resistance to Nazism
About the Event
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. Who were these early resisters to Nazism, and what compelled them to sound the alarm on a fringe political group that for years was seen as little more than a novelty act? And how and why did they fail to stop them? This talk will explore a neglected but intriguing corner of history – and ask what lessons we can draw from it for our own time.
Noon Central Time (1:00 pm Eastern Time, 11:00 am Mountain Time, 10:00 am Pacific Time)
About the Speakers
Luke Berryman
Luke Berryman is the Founder of The Ninth Candle, a nonprofit organization that works with schools across the United States to improve Holocaust education. He holds undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford, Boston University, and King’s College London, respectively. His Ph.D. thesis was on the use of classical music in Nazi propaganda. Luke has worked in various roles in universities and K-12 schools in Britain and the United States. His first book, Resisting Nazism, will be published by Bloomsbury in January 2026.