‘Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.’ Albert Einstein’s deft avoidance of the question put to him in 1929 – whether he considered himself a German or a Jew – was prophetic of what would happen to his country in the following decade. He was just one of the many stars of Berlin, Europe’s dazzling, decadent centre of the arts and culture, whose spark would be dimmed or extinguished by Adolf Hitler.
Capturing the history, people and spirit of Berlin, arguably the beating heart of Europe, can be a tricky proposition, as I know. Sinclair McKay has wisely kept to analysing the city through the prism of the last century – or at least from the end of the Great War to the end of the Cold War.
Tens of thousands of women were raped by their conquerors in a systematic act of terror
Berliners were always a feisty, argumentative, liberal-minded bunch, never ones to bend to imperial whims or to follow Hitler blindly into the apocalypse. They did not embrace fascism in the way other parts of the country did: the Nazis gained fewer votes in Berlin than anywhere else in Germany in the last democratic elections of March 1933. Perhaps this influenced Hitler’s plans to level the existing city and raise a new Germania for his Thousand Year Reich, with the large Jewish population first on the list for relocation.
After his death, the former allies squabbled over its occupancy. Stalin’s blockade failed to starve shattered Berlin into submission and drive the West’s garrison out. The city’s later schism brought it unwillingly to the sharp end of the Cold War – East vs West – though, after almost 30 years’ forced separation, Berliners embraced one another warmly.
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