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Satanic Tomatoes and Other Weird Details Not Taught in History Class

Khalid Elhassan July 4, 2020 33 min

South Lawn - Goat — Wilson's sheep. Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

30. A Fad With Long Lasting Legs

A vacationing German couple. The Guardian

For a fad, the weird German polar bear craze was more than just a simple flash in the pan: it went on for decades. Year after year, cheerful Germans of all walks of life and ages, routinely snapped photos of themselves posing with polar bears – or folk in polar bear costumes – as the country underwent radical changes.

The Weimar Republic weakened and collapsed, the Nazis seized power, the Third Reich kicked off its horrors, World War II was fought and lost, and Germany was occupied and partitioned. Throughout it all, Germans kept up the polar bear fad. It was only in the late 1940s, that the fad finally faded.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.