This episode of history in Nazi Germany is a great example of just of effective a protest coming from people with privilege actually is.
It also challenges the idea that of the evil leader or regime forcing its will on the people and the people are helpless to stop it or that they didn’t willingly participate in it. The people of Germany willingly participated in the rise of nazis and made it possible for them to commit such horrible crimes. {listen}
In February of 1943 the Nazi regime arrested between 1500-2000 Jewish men in Berlin, and imprisoned them in a former Jewish community center with the address of Rosenstrasse 2-4. These men had, up until this point, avoided deportation to death camps because they were married to non-Jewish women, and instead had been forced to work in German factories up until that point. Their wives, though, showed up in force outside the building where they were imprisoned, and soon a group of hundreds of women were able to mount an effective street protest against the Reich. It was the only effective popular protest in Germany mounted against Hitler’s regime.