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10,000 flock to first weekend of Berlin's Hitler exhibition

Oct 18, 2010, 11:41 GMT

Berlin - An estimated 10,000 people attended the opening weekend of a new exhibition in Berlin on Hitler's messianic grip on the German people in the 1930s, a musuem spokesman said Monday.

Queues of up to an hour formed to see the controversial 'Hitler and the Germans' exhibition at the German History Museum.

The show breaks new ground by showing by attempting to explain the popularity of the personality cult around Adolf Hitler during the 1933-45 period of Nazi rule.

Among 600 items on display are bronze busts of the Fuehrer and a Nazi-themed cigar case, along with propaganda posters.

Displaying the Nazi swastika and other symbols of the regime are highly-regulated in Germany, where the sale of Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf (My Struggle) and denial of the Holocaust are also criminal offences.

Museum spokesman Rudolf Trabold said it was difficult to say exactly how many people had seen the show, since it occupies only one space inside a museum that covers all of German history. Entrance tickets apply for the whole building.

Over 20,000 people visited the museum on Saturday and Sunday, he said, with some waiting up to an hour to be let into the building. The show runs till February 6 next year.

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