Defeated, humiliated, and in chaos, Germany after World War I was imperiled by leftist revolution and right-wing violence. Jack Mayer recounts the origins of the Third Reich through the story of Ernst Werner Techow, who was recruited into a clandestine assassination network trying to bring down the fledgling Weimar democracy. Techow participated in the 1922 murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, the highest-ranking Jew in the Weimar Republic. But an offer of forgiveness while on trial for his life set him on a complex journey of redemption.

Jack Mayer is a writer and pediatrician in Middlebury, VT.

This presentation is sponsored by the Vermont Humanities Council.