Metropolis Of Vice (Babylon Before Hitler)

Originally aired in 2005 as part of the Canadian series Legendary Sin Cities, this documentary examines Berlin during the Weimar Republic years of 1920–1933, a time of extreme economic instability and explosive cultural freedom that earned the city its nickname "Babylon." It chronicles the explosion of cabarets, jazz bars, and decadent nightclubs where open homosexuality, transvestism, prostitution, and drug use flourished alongside groundbreaking art, theater, and cinema. Using rare archival footage, photographs, and historian interviews, it profiles figures like Marlene Dietrich and Anita Berber while tracing how this era of radical sexual and artistic liberation abruptly ended with the Nazi seizure of power and subsequent moral purges in 1933.