I just finished watching The Mortal Storm, a 1940 movie from MGM starring Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan and Robert Young. Based on a 1937 novel by Phyllis Bottome, it tells the harrowing and true to life tale of what happens to a sleepy little German town when the Hitler first becomes Chancellor.
I was astonish by how the events of the film parallel events today in our own country. How quickly science is declared to be dangerous, how divergence from the ruling party’s political stance is met with swift retribution, how your friends and neighbors can suddenly be declared to be enemies of the people who need to be disappeared by force.
This movie represented a snapshot of Germany in 1933. We all know what happened there over the following seven years. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen here.