After Hitler: The Path to Democracy

Apr 20, 2025 | With the invasion of neighboring Poland by the German armed forces in the fall of 1939, Germany ignited the Second World War. Six years of murder, destruction, expulsion and hunger shaped the fate of people in many parts of the world.

In May 1945, the guns fell silent in Europe. Germany was defeated. An end and a beginning at the same time. But how did the political, social and economic reconstruction take shape in post-war Germany? How did a dictatorship become a democracy?

We look at the first years after the end of the war – and the long road towards a new political order.