30. A Fad With Long Lasting Legs
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.