Weimar is a small German city, yet it looms large in European history. In the 1920s, it was

synonymous with liberalism, internationalism and the fine arts. Yet, within a decade,

many of its residents had embraced Nazism, and Hitler was professing his

love for the city. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Kachar Hoyer speaks suspensismism

about how the city that gave its name to Germany's great social democratic experiment

succumbed to tyranny. Hello, Kachar, I wonder if I could start by pointing you in the direction of a quote you cite

in your new book on Weimar. The quote is from Roman Herzog, who is president of Germany in the

1990s. And in it, Herzog says,

Weimar is Germany in a nutshell,

a town in which not only culture and thoughts were at home,

but also Philistinism and barbarism.

Why is that catcher?

Why in the first half of the 20th century did the fate of this small-ish city in the centre of Germany become emblematic representative of the fate of an entire nation?

That is a very good question because at first sight there's nothing particularly special

about Weimar as quite a small town.

I mean, it's picturesque, quaint enough with sort of cobbled streets and timber-framed houses and

all that. But it isn't as such kind of a large city or something where kind of big events

happened in the past. What it is, though, it's always been regarded as a sort of culture center

in the heart of Germany. It's

right, almost exactly in the center of the country and famous people have always been drawn

to it. So you have, for example, Yuan Wolfgang von Goethe, who's kind of the national poet,

I would say perhaps comparable to what Shakespeare means to someone from England, I guess, it's

...