Episode 5 of ?Nice Try!? explores Germania, the capital city Nazis designed to embody their destructive world view By definition, utopias are imagined perfect places, impossible to realize because human nature is deeply imperfect, and we all want different things. But that, of course, doesn?t stop some people from trying to achieve their definition of a perfect society?no matter how destructive and violent they have to be to do so. The root of ?dystopia? is utopia, after all.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Adolf Hitler tried to remake Europe in his image, which led to the imprisonment and genocide of millions and millions of Jews, gay people, people with disabilities, and other ethnic and religious groups that did not align with his definition of a superior race. A lesser-known part of this atrocious moment in history" Reconstructing Berlin as the Third Reich?s monumental capital city. It was known as Welthauptstadt Germania, or ?World Capital Germania,? and it was about glorifying and legitimizing National Socialism. If the Nazis won WWII, this city was intended to symbolize their anointment as a world power. In Episode 5 of Nice Try!, host Avery Trufelman tells the story of Germania through interviews with Luisa Beck, a reporter based in Berlin; Lawson Deming, visual special effects supervisor for the Amazon series Man in the High Castle; Paul Jaskot, professor of art history at Duke and author of The Architecture of Oppression: The SS, Forced Labor, and the Nazi Mon...