Criticism under National Socialism. Cologne cases 1934 to 1944

How did the Nazi rulers react to open dissent and collective discontent from society and what place did they assign to both? The exhibition "Criticism under National Socialism", which the City of Cologne's Documentation Centre for National Socialism is showing until 16 February 2025, explores these questions.

The topic has long been of interest to academics and the public in Cologne. In 1974, an exhibition at the Historical Archive first focussed on the resistance in National Socialist Cologne, which until then had been considered virtually unexplored, and highlighted particularly prominent resistance groups in the city. 50 years later, the NS-DOK takes up this topic once again, but changes the perspective: instead of focusing on the opponents and critics of National Socialism in Cologne, the exhibition team asks about the general significance of criticism in the Nazi dictatorship: what place did those in power assign it in Nazi society, how did they react to private grumbling or public criticism - and what were the consequences of being critical in the first place?

With a collection of case histories from Cologne, which are representative of developments throughout the entire German Reich, the exhibition invites visitors to independently explore the state and social handling of criticism and paints a new picture of repression and resistance under National Socialism.