It was one of those incredible moments in history when everything seemed to be happening at once. Twenty-five years ago this week, as the war in Europe rolled toward its end, the rulers of two of the Axis powers died violently, scarcely 48 hours apart. Benito Mussolini perished on April 28, 1945, executed by a Communist partisan as he tried to flee Italy. Adolf Hitler died in Berlin on April 30, apparently by swallowing a cyanide capsule. On the double anniversary, TIME's Benjamin Cate in Bonn and James Bell in Rome examine the ways in which the two are remembered:
He Built the Autobahnen, But . . .
In both East and West Germany, the egomaniacal Führer has become something of a nonperson. The East Germans rather self-righteously disclaim any role or responsibility for the Nazi years: after all, they are Communists, and Hitler was the rotten fruit of a decaying capitalist system. For the West Germans, coming to terms with that era is more difficult.
Hitler's birthplace, a two-story stucco house at Vorstadt 219 in the Austrian border town of Braunau am Inn, is no longer marked as a shrine; only informed visitors can pick it out. His Alpine retreat at Obersalzberg, which survived the war, was dynamited by the Bavarian government. The remains of the dynamited Führerbunker, a concrete redoubt and command post beneath the Reich Chancellery, are now a grassy mound, situated fittingly enough in the narrow, 110-yd. corridor of no man's land between East and West Berlin. Countless Adolf Hitler squares or streets in German cities and towns have been renamed, often in honor of such heroes of the plots to overthrow him as Klaus von Stauffenberg, Julius Leber and Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adolf, once a popular name, is seldom bestowed on German children today. About the only lasting memento is the 1,800 miles of modern autobahnen Hitler built, but even these highways have been broadened, resurfaced and extended beyond recognition.
According to a recent poll, only 6% of West Germans said they would vote for another leader like him. On the all-time list of effective German statesmen, he is steadily slipping. In 1950, Bismarck topped the list with 35% of the votes, and Hitler received 10%. Three years ago, in the last such sampling, Konrad Adenauer received 60% and Hitler, with 2%, barely edged out Frederick the Great.
Demonic Evils. Only one-third of today's West Germans were even teen-agers before World War II. Those born after the war show little interest in the Nazi era and, naturally, accept no responsibility for it. Those between 30 and 50, says Historian Joachim Fest, are "the generation of self-reproach." Many of them insist that Hitler accomplished some good—reviving the economy, building national self-esteem and cracking class barriers—but they concede that his achievements were more than canceled out by the demonic evils of Nazism. But many of those over 50, who remember the humiliation after World War I and the chaos of the Weimar Republic, maintain that Hitler's positive accomplishments outweigh the negative. The memoirs of Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and wartime production czar, are still a bestseller in West Germany eight months after publication (TIME, Sept. 12, 1969).