May 4, 2026 | 2025 Analysis, Current Events, expert analysis, National, Race
When we think about how political beliefs are formed, conventional wisdom points to parents as the primary teachers—passing down party loyalties, civic values, and political knowledge to their children from an early age. But what happens when parents themselves are navigating an unfamiliar political landscape?
In his forthcoming book Information Brokers: Political Socialization in Latino Immigrant Families (University of Chicago Press, July 2026), political scientist Roberto F. Carlos upends traditional assumptions by investigating a reversal of roles that unfolds in many Latino immigrant households: It is the children who teach the parents about American politics.
When children influence political engagement
“Young children, particularly in immigrant households, often help their parents navigate life in the United States by acting as key sources of information,” writes Carlos, who rigorously provides evidence that this responsibility grants children influence over their parents’ political engagement, “with children shaping their immigrant parents’ political perspectives and decisions.”
These dynamics may be key to understanding political engagement and disengagement among Latinos, the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Two-thirds of this population are either immigrants or the children of immigrants.
Carlos’s previous research examined the “prolonged partisan socialization process” experienced by second-generation Americans; in his 2018 article “Late to the Party,” he demonstrated that children of immigrants often grow up without the parental partisan transmission that mainstream theories take for granted. Because many immigrant parents arrive in the United States without deep familiarity with the American party system—hindered by language barriers, economic pressures, fear of deportation, and lingering ties to the politics of their home countries—they are frequently unable to map their values onto U.S. political parties early enough to pass a partisan identity along to their children. Information Brokers asks what happens to children who lack parental political guidance, but also what happens when those children become the guides themselves.
‘Information brokers’
The book’s central argument is that children of Latino immigrants function as “information brokers”—active agents who translate, interpret, and mediate the American political world for their parents. As immigrant parents navigate unfamiliar institutions, they often turn to their U.S.-educated children for help with everything from understanding government paperwork to making sense of elections and civic engagement. This brokering role places unique responsibilities on young people, granting them an unusual degree of influence over major household decisions, including political ones. When children advocate, explain, or intervene on behalf of their parents, Carlos argues, they are engaging in politically consequential behavior that shapes the attitudes and actions of both generations.
Carlos’s research draws on six original surveys and multiple survey experiments; he also gives a descriptive account of two young Latina women brokering information in response to the imminent passage of the Texas Senate Bill 4, which targeted undocumented immigrants for deportation in 2017. Their experiences illustrate how “information, obligation, and agency, often working in tandem, can serve as catalysts for immigrant households’ participation in the political sphere.” Often, the children of immigrants step up to fill an important informational void, out of necessity.
Political Implications
Countering a narrative that portrays lower rates of partisan identification and voter turnout as signs of apathy or disengagement, Carlos’s research suggests these patterns reflect a socialization process that unfolds differently—and often more slowly—in immigrant communities. Children who broker political information for their families are not disengaged; they are learning politics through direct, high-stakes experience. This could be a valuable insight for activities, politicians, and party strategists who can direct their attention to mobilizing the second generation, says Carlos. “I believe this book provides a significant cause for optimism when it comes to engaging the Latino community.”
This book also says something about today’s political climate as it relates to immigration and the way it is enforced. As Carlos recently noted in the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) town hall roundtable on rising authoritarianism in the U.S., children– especially those with mixed-status families– are forced to learn politics because they are helping their parents manage risk. They learn how state power works because they are the ones explaining it, translating it, and sometimes trying to protect their families from it. “That is political socialization under conditions of enforcement,” said Carlos. “It is not civics as we usually imagine it. It is not learning about voting or Congress or the three branches of government in a classroom. It is learning that the state can enter your family’s life through a traffic stop, a workplace raid, a court notice, a school absence, or a rumor that ICE is nearby. It is learning that politics is not distant. It is not abstract. It is protection or vulnerability.”
Carlos provides two striking statistics citing Vox journalist Christian Paz: One out of five people living in the United States is Latino, and every 30 seconds, a member of the Latino community becomes eligible to vote. As the 2026 midterm elections loom, Carlos’s new book provides a fresh perspective on a powerful voting bloc whose engagement could play a decisive role in election outcomes.
Roberto Carlos is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, and an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. His research lies at the intersection of race, ethnicity, and politics, focusing on Latinx political behavior, immigration, and political socialization.
This post was developed by Tevah Platt, who manages communications for the Center for Political Studies.
Apr 13, 2026 | 2025 Analysis, Current Events, Elections, expert analysis, International
Victor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary for sixteen years (2010-26), has conceded the election to Peter Magyar and his opposition Tisza party. This is an enormous defeat for the right-wing populist leader and his right-wing populist Fidesz party and a landslide victory for the democratic opposition.
Parliamentary Supermajority for the Opposition Provides Lever to Rebuild Democracy
By winning more than 135 seats in the 199-seat legislative body, Magyar’s Tisza party has not just secured a majority but a supermajority in the Hungarian parliament. Orbán’s Fidesz party has held a parliamentary supermajority for four consecutive terms, which he has used to rewrite the constitution to consolidate his own power and to undermine democracy and the rule of law in Hungary.
Many of the tactics he used are part of the authoritarian playbook that is by now all too familiar—eliminating checks and balances on executive authority, taking control over media outlets, and reengineering the electoral system to disadvantage the opposition. Regaining control will enable the opposition to amend the constitution, reverse many of these changes, and rebuild institutions that promote democracy and the rule of law.
Yet, the landslide victory is not only a triumph for Hungary’s democratic opposition and the country’s future trajectory; it is also a major win for Europe, the European Union (EU), Ukraine, and the US.
Hope for a Strong and United Europe
The defeat of Orbán and his nationalist agenda signals to Europe, and to Europeans, that the rise of right-wing populism is not irreversible. Although not yet the dominant trend across the continent, far-right parties such as Orbán’s Fidesz have been gaining ground in Europe since the 2000s and appeared to be building momentum. Moreover, Orbán himself has become an iconic figure among them, exemplifying the success of illiberal democracy. The sweeping electoral victory of the liberal opposition in Hungary has countered this trend and diminished Orbán’s appeal as a model for Europe’s future. Instead, he is a cautionary tale.
Second, Orban’s defeat signals that Hungarians have not rejected either Europe or European values, including liberal democracy. As many European leaders stated following the election results, there is renewed hope for a strong and united Europe.
The primary beneficiary of this reunion—at least in the short run—is Ukraine. Among the many ways in which Orbán has undermined the EU is his refusal to support either further assistance to Ukraine or stricter sanctions against Russia following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. As part of his electoral campaign, Magyar pledged to rebuild Hungary’s relationship with the EU. He made good on this promise following his victory by agreeing to unblock critical aid in the form of a 90-billion-euro ($103-billion) loan to Ukraine.
Takeaways for the US
The cautionary tale of Orbán’s defeat also suggests a prescriptive one for the United States. Both the large turnout and the substantial margins made the Tisza party’s electoral win too decisive for even Orbán to contest. But neither the size of the turnout nor the landslide victory happened overnight. Albeit weakened by Orban’s policies, Hungarian civil society continued to mobilize undaunted, and Hungarian citizens increasingly took to the streets to show Orban, his loyalists, and most importantly, their fellow citizens that they would not tolerate an autocratic takeover.
The road ahead will be difficult. Orbán not only succeeded in dismantling democratic institutions and the rule of law. He also used his unchecked authority to institute a system of crony capitalism, rewarding loyalists with control over key economic sectors and lucrative development contracts, and destroying Hungary’s economy in the process. In fact, the protests that amalgamated in the opposition’s massive victory focused on anti-corruption and pocket-book issues. So too did Magyar’s electoral campaign, signifying that this is a winning electoral strategy. The new government will have to both rebuild and restore confidence in democratic institutions and the rule of law while actively combating the corrupt practices that have fueled inflation and slowed economic recovery.
This post was written by Pauline Jones, Research Professor and Director of the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies. Pauline Jones is a Professor of Political Science and the Edie N. Goldenberg Endowed Director for the Michigan in Washington Program. She is an expert on politics in the former Soviet Union (including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia) and on assessing the impact of mass protest in authoritarian regimes. She regularly teaches PoliSci140: Introduction to Comparative Politics and recently shared her insights on US democratic decline in global perspective. Dr. Jones is currently a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University.
Nov 11, 2025 | 2025 Analysis, Current Events, Elections, expert analysis, National
Democrats had a big night last week, sweeping key elections and winning by unexpected margins up and down the ballot. Voters showed up in high numbers for an “off” election year and sided with Democrats in the elections’ four major contests: The mayor’s race in New York City, the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, and the redistricting measure Prop 50 in California.
Tyler Simko is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, and an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. Simko specializes in U.S. state and local politics, political geography, and computational social science. He is applying this expertise as an elections analyst for CBS, and he shared with us about the experience of doing this work and the major takeaways from the 2025 elections.
Expert Q&A with CBS Elections Analyst Tyler Simko
The content has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
1. What were your top takeaways from the 2025 elections?
Two specific trends stick out to me.
First, this was a stronger performance for Democrats than many people expected.
The election outcomes were not especially surprising. For all four major races, the expected result going into election day happened—for example, most polls before election day saw Mamdani, Sherrill, Spanberger, and “yes” on Proposition 50 as the clear frontrunners.
However, the final margins in favor of Democrats were larger than many people expected. For example, most polls placed Mikie Sherrill as the favorite, but polling averages showed a lead of around 3-5 percentage points. The ultimate election was a blowout, with Sherrill ahead with a final margin around thirteen points. Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s race in Virginia by even more.
The second major takeaway for me was that early analysis suggests that some of the “red shift” we saw in 2024 among groups like Latinos may have reverted back toward Democrats.
For example, high-Latino communities in New Jersey saw huge reversals toward Sherrill from the way residents in those same places voted in 2024 for Harris.
Results like these suggest that some of the shifts we saw in 2024 may not be set in stone. Charles Stewart III, another election analyst on the team and a Professor at MIT, has suggested this might be evidence that 2024 was a “deviating election,” rather than a new normal, citing research originally developed at the University of Michigan in the 1960s.
2. Was there anything notable about turnout for this election?
Turnout was unusually high in nearly every race on Tuesday night. In some ways, this is surprising because 2025 is an “off” election year without presidential or congressional midterm elections.
However, this high turnout reflects just how salient politics is for many Americans right now.
For example, early voting and election day turnout in the NYC mayoral election eclipsed the last election in 2021. This continued the trend we saw in the primary, where early voting more than doubled turnout in the last primary that elected Eric Adams. Turnout in other races was high as well, like California’s Proposition 50 measure on redistricting.
Further, it’s especially interesting to see where turnout was higher compared to past elections.
Patterns in turnout changes can offer insight into where voters are particularly energized right now.
For example, I wrote for CBS that many Democratic-leaning areas in New Jersey saw huge surges in turnout (some nearly 40% higher than the last gubernatorial election in 2021). This suggests that Democrats are particularly politically motivated right now, a trend that party leaders will hope continues into next year’s midterm elections.
3. What do you do as an Election Analyst on the CBS News Data Desk?
For this past election night on November 4th, I worked in the CBS Office in New York City alongside a team of other analysts to predict and analyze the elections for NYC Mayor, NJ/VA Governor, and California’s Prop. 50 redistricting referendum.
On election night the Data Desk is focused on forecasting voter turnout and predicting election results. We analyze data like exit polls and election returns as they come in, and look for interesting patterns. As with any network, one of our primary roles is to “call” the election winners.
But beyond calling the races, we’re also actively monitoring other data beyond vote shares. For example, the NYC Board of Elections frequently updates their “check-in” turnout numbers throughout the day. We use these records to help improve our turnout forecasts, which help us identify patterns early in the night. For example, even before election night, strong early voting in New Jersey’s Democratic-leaning areas suggested it would be a good night for Mikie Sherrill.
Finally, a good deal of work happens both before and after the elections too. For example, some members of the team prepare products like the CBS Exit Polls in preparation for election day.
Similarly, after election day there is a ton of new data to analyze. For example, the morning after election day, Kabir Khanna (Director, Election Analytics & Technical Systems at CBS) and I wrote an article for CBS News demonstrating how high turnout in Democratic-leaning counties strongly favored Sherrill. We’ll continue conducting this kind of analysis in the coming weeks.
4. What are the goals of this work, and how do your expertise and skills meet the needs of delivering election results and analysis?
Predicting election results (before they happen) and analyzing returns (after they happen) require knowledge of both electoral systems and statistics. At the University of Michigan, I teach courses on American Politics and Political Methodology in the Political Science department and research topics in political institutions and computational social science, so this kind of work is right up my alley. You know, I used real data from election night for an interactive prediction activity in my graduate-level Machine Learning course this past week.
Calling election results is a classic prediction problem. You don’t have complete information before election night is over, but you would like to use statistical “signals” to make data-driven predictions about what is going to happen. Often, we use statistical models because we want to detect patterns over the course of election night that may not be clear from simply counting returns as they come in.
For example, imagine a hypothetical situation where votes for NYC Mayor from Staten Island all come in first, early on election night. A simple “counting” approach would predict Andrew Cuomo had a large lead in the mayoral election because he had strong support in Staten Island, while in reality Mamdani clearly won overall. Statistical models help account for these patterns like geographic segregation in candidate support. Training in both political science and statistics/data science helps.
5. What are the future implications of the 2025 election results?
I think this set of results has two important implications:
First, this strong Democratic win will change the political dynamics over the next year as we head into the midterms. In the meantime, these results also give national Democrats more leverage in ongoing debates like the government shutdown.
We also might see these results change political rhetoric over the next few months. For example, Mamdani’s campaign focused on affordability and we have already seen Trump adopting this language in recent interviews.
The second major signal comes from the strong passage of California’s Proposition 50. This result greenlights Democratic efforts to push back against the new Texas redistricting plan that made their existing gerrymander even more extreme.
Republicans currently have the lead in this redistricting “war” because they have aggressively gerrymandered maps in several states. But, Prop. 50 will likely embolden Democrats in states like Virginia to try gerrymandering their own favorable plans.
Some of my own research helps clarify the consequences of gerrymanders. My co-authors and I at the ALARM Project—a research group focused on political geography and public policy—have shown that gerrymandering makes congressional elections less competitive and less responsive to the will of voters. Our research also shows that these other states could learn from Michigan, as our independent redistricting commission helps ensure redistricting plans are more fair and less biased.
Tyler Simko is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, and an affiliate of the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. This post was developed by Tyler Simko and Tevah Platt, communications manager for the Center for Political Studies.
Oct 13, 2025 | 2025 Analysis, Current Events, International, Race
A new survey on the nature and distribution of American stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim, and Black Americans measures the nature, extent and distribution of stereotypes about each of the three groups.
The broad goals of the survey and analyses of the data are:
- to map the dimensional structure of prevailing stereotypes about each group
- to map the distribution of these stereotypes across important population categories
- to explore the relationships between stereotypes of different religious or ethnic groups,
- to test hypotheses about probable determinants of various stereotypes
The survey was designed and carried out by Mark Tessler and Francy Luna Diaz of the University of Michigan and Amnon Cavari, associate professor of Political Science at Reichman University in Israel.
A research brief including preliminary results from the survey reports findings on some of the negative stereotypes about each group that the survey examined. Results on additional questions, including positive stereotypes and questions about US foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, will be forthcoming.
The brief focuses on the degree of agreement with two negative stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim, and Black Americans, respectively, which is not the same for the three groups; how responses pertaining to stereotypes are associated with differing levels of education, and how agreement with stereotypes across groups are correlated.
Read the Research Brief: Some Preliminary and Partial Findings on American Stereotypes about Jewish, Muslim, and Black Americans: Evidence from a 2024 US Survey
The Research Brief was published by the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.
Jun 24, 2025 | Current Events, expert analysis, National
In recent years, global crises have increasingly come to define the times we live in. These big challenges, ranging from climate change and political instability to frequent mass shootings, can contribute to a pervasive sense that the future is doomed.
Emergent evidence suggests that many Americans have adopted future outlooks that are not just pessimistic, but apocalyptic. In a 2022 PEW Research study, 39% of respondents believed that humanity is “living in the end times.”
Understanding the Apocalyptic Mindset
The idea of an “apocalyptic mindset” refers to the belief that America’s future is bleak and uncontrollable.
The concepts of the “end times” and the apocalypse have roots in Christianity but also figure in secular narratives about the future. Political scientist Erik Bleich and classics scholar Christopher Star show that over the past four decades, the news media frequently framed secular threats like nuclear war, climate change, disease, and artificial intelligence in apocalyptic terms.
In tumultuous times, people have historically turned to apocalyptic narratives to make sense of and give meaning to negative events. Reflecting the media’s bleak coverage of contemporary crises, the public may interpret today’s hazards as signs of greater catastrophe on the horizon.
What happens when people think so negatively about the future?
Research indicates that people who are pessimistic about their personal futures are less politically engaged. However, research on the political impacts of pessimism about society’s future is scarce.
Measuring future pessimism
To investigate how broad societal pessimism affects political behavior, I fielded a study of 2,053 Americans in April 2024 on Cloud Research, an online survey platform. First, I developed the apocalyptic mindset scale. The scale includes five items that broadly assess projections about the future state of the world and society’s ability to handle future problems. For instance, the scale asks respondents how bright or dark they think the American future will be and how possible or impossible it will be to overcome America’s future problems.
Overall levels of apocalyptic mindset are nearly normally distributed in the sample. The scale ranges from 0 to 1, with 1 being the most pessimistic. The average in this sample is roughly 0.6 and 56% of the sample score higher than this average on the apocalyptic mindset scale. This result is striking because it shows that extremely pessimistic beliefs about the future are not merely fringe beliefs.
Still, some groups are higher on this scale than others. Those highest in apocalyptic mindset tend to be women and less educated individuals. Non-Christian and irreligious people also tend to be higher on the scale than their Christian counterparts, suggesting that extremely negative visions of the future are not exclusive to Christianity.
There are, however, no differences on the apocalyptic mindset scale by partisan identification. This result helps rule out that the scale is simply capturing political grievances about the current party in power.
Impact on political participation
How does apocalyptic mindset relate to political behavior?
On this survey, I asked about voting and other non-voting forms of political participation. Most respondents reported that they were “very” or “extremely” motivated to vote in the 2024 presidential election. For those highest in apocalyptic mindset, average motivation to vote drops by about 10 percent. While I do not know if participants actually voted in the 2024 election, these results suggest that those high in apocalyptic mindset were less likely to turn out.
Note: Motivation to vote is measured on a five-point scale ranging from 0 “not at all motivated” to 1 “extremely motivated.” Apocalyptic mindset is split into 3 quantiles, where the highest group is the most pessimistic.
This study also included questions about other, non-voting forms of political engagement. I asked participants if within the year, they had or planned to attend rallies, talk to others about voting, donate to a campaign, volunteer for a campaign, or display campaign merchandise like yard signs. I compiled all these activities into a single scale of non-voting participation and tested whether apocalyptic mindset can predict these behaviors.
Like motivation to vote, higher levels of apocalyptic mindset in this study were associated with lower levels of non-voting participation. Though they estimate opposite patterns of engagement, apocalyptic mindset and income have similar levels of predictive strength. Apocalyptic mindset is also a stronger predictor of non-voting participation than some other conventional predictors, like education and age.
The bigger picture
In response to an ever-threatening world, it may be rational to expect the worst for the future. My findings show that extremely negative beliefs about society’s future are prevalent among the American people.
A concerning pattern also emerged in my results: Individuals with an apocalyptic mindset are significantly less motivated to vote and less likely to participate in non-voting political activities.
Yet these kinds of participatory activities could be an important outlet for average citizens to advocate for a better future.
When individuals harbor a bleak outlook and disengage from the very political processes that may alter the future, they risk fostering a self-fulfilling prophecy. The acceptance of bad outcomes as fate diminishes the chances of political solutions to the very crises fueling their pessimism.
Avery Goods is a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, studying American Politics and a Converse Miller Fellow in American Political Behavior affiliated with the Center for Political Studies at the Institute for Social Research. She is broadly interested in political psychology, political communication, media, and survey design. Her current work focuses on how perceptions of the future shape political behavior. Tevah Platt and Julia Lippman of the Center for Political Studies contributed to the development of this post.
Jun 16, 2025 | Current Events, International, Profile
A Special Exhibit opens June 19 in Berlin
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and at a moment when global authoritarianism is on the rise, a tiny fraction of the people with memories of the war and Hitler’s Europe are alive today to relay their stories. It is increasingly the work of archivists and descendants to transmit the record of that time– to honor and reckon with the past, and to invoke what Elie Wiesel called “a prayer, a promise and a vow”: Never again.
A special exhibition opening June 19 at the House of the Wannsee (VAN-see) Conference Memorial and Educational Site on the outskirts of Berlin centers on the story of Fritz Traugott, a German Jewish refugee expelled from his native Hamburg, who returned to Europe as an American soldier.
Traugott was among some 10,000 “Ritchie Boys” in the U.S. Army– soldiers trained in intelligence gathering who graduated from Camp Ritchie, Maryland– and one of the 20 percent of that force who were Jewish refugees with language skills that were leveraged in the effort.
His letters to his wife at home in Providence, R.I., and photos he took at the Wannsee villa in the summer of 1945 are at the heart of the special exhibit that tells Traugott’s story but is as much about memory itself.
“In my mind, it’s not really a story about my father,” said Michael Traugott, who shared his father’s documents with Wannsee after discovering them in 2018. “I think he is kind of a vessel in this story for thinking about the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, and about what happened then, and how it relates to what’s going on now, and other events in between.”
A Portrait of Fritz Traugott
The youngest of three children, Fritz Julius Traugott was born in Hamburg in 1919. After the passage of Nuremberg Laws that sought to marginalize and separate Jews in German society in 1935, he was forced to leave the Lichtwark School, a prominent high school that emphasized cultural education and the fine arts. He remained in close contact with his classmates and his teacher, Erna Stahl, an influential educator who once characterized her own work as creating an “inner counterbalance” in her students to the “destructive, demonic denial of all human spiritual worth, especially in Germany, which could not be undone.”
A 1933/34 class photo of the Lichtwark School from the Traugott archive. Both in the back row, Fritz Traugott is third from the left, and Erna Stahl, fourth from the right. Six of the students in the photo are wearing Hitler Youth uniforms.
With professional opportunities likewise cut off, Traugott followed his brother in immigrating to the United States in 1938, and his parents followed. Traugott’s sister, Hedwig, remained in Hamburg with her non-Jewish husband and two daughters, surviving through Nazi persecution, forced labor, and the bombing of their home.
Traugott married Lucia Scola, an Italian-American Catholic, in Providence.
At 22, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he was transferred to Camp Ritchie to learn counter-intelligence and interrogation techniques. He was first deployed to England to participate in the “secret listeners” program, an operation that helped record details using bugging devices to pick up conversations among German military leaders. They collected important intelligence information to help the war effort, including the location of the facility where V2 rockets were being built.
Traugott was sent to France where with his unit, Mobile Field Interrogation Unit #2, he later traveled behind American troops moving into Germany, interviewing prisoners of war. He was at the Battle of the Bulge, not as a combatant, but working feverishly to collect intelligence from German prisoners. And just after Germany’s surrender, he was billeted at the Wannsee villa from July to September 1945. His unit was housed at the former SS guesthouse that– although his unit may not have been initially aware of it– had been the site of a pivotal Nazi summit a few years prior to plan “the final solution.”
The Summer of 1945
Traugott spent more than two months at the Wannsee villa, a site referred to as “Himmler’s guesthouse,” during this early post-war period. He bought a camera in Berlin and sent pictures and daily letters to his wife in Providence, often on “souvenir” stationery from “the Führer’s adjutant’s office” he had found in the Reich Chancellery.
Based on the photos taken by Fritz Traugott, this artist rendering of the Ritchie Boys at the Wannsee villa was created for the museum by Mathis Eckelmann. Courtesy of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site.
The photos and letters, now on display as part of the special exhibit at Wannsee, include snapshots of soldiers and prisoners of war at Wannsee, the nearby interrogation center, and the ruins of his former home he took on a visit to Hamburg.
His letters communicate his affection for Lucia and infant son, Michael, born in his absence. One personal account to his wife, written on pilfered Nazi letterhead on Aug. 10, 1945, describes how the normalization of persecution made it difficult to communicate and for outsiders to understand it:
You see sweetheart, when you live in danger, or misery, or any other extreme state, you kinda get used to it, or at least it loses most of the effect it has on outsiders.
From the Traugott archive, a letter home on the pilfered stationary of the “Adjutantur Des Führers,” August 10, 1945.
Traugott took two short visits to Hamburg to see his sister and the city he fled in 1938. On his second visit, his sister Hedwig wrote a letter to her parents describing what had happened to them under the Nazi regime. That letter, which is lost today, included details so troubling that Traugott and his brother decided not to deliver it, Michael Traugott said.
Traugott returned home in the fall of 1945.
Unearthing the Past
Traugott went on to rear three children in Providence– Michael, Mark, and Kathryn. He established his own jewelry company and later worked as a sales manager for the Colonial Knife Co.
Traugott seldom spoke to his children about his life in Germany or his time in the war. He had likely signed nondisclosure agreements during his service, his son said, and there were memories unwanted. Traugott avoided speaking German for a long period after the war and didn’t return to visit Germany for more than 25 years.
Traugott died in Palm Beach in 1995.
Lucia preserved the letters, photographs, and documents displayed in the exhibition.
It was only after her death in 2018 that their children discovered these historical sources: Over 300 letters and a few dozen photographs.
Michael initially made contact with the Wannsee Conference House with an emailed photograph of the villa with the American flag hoisted above it.
After two years of research and contact, the museum is presenting a special exhibit that centers on Traugott’s materials and experience.
History, Memory, and Extrapolation
The upcoming exhibit, which includes an audio tour in the gardens of Wannsee, brings with it a convergence of past and present, and of personal and global history that invites exploration into the legacy of perpetrators, victims, and liberators.
“Fritz Traugott’s biography, letters, and photographs provide us and our visitors with a different and new perspective on the history of the House of the Wannsee Conference,” said exhibit curator Judith Alberth. “His parents, his brother and he himself were expelled due to antisemitic persecution, and his sister, his brother-in-law, and his nieces survived the Shoah in Hamburg in desperate circumstances. Their stories add a significant perspective to the sources and biographies of perpetrators that the House is mostly linked to.”
“L’dor vador,” which translates to “from generation to generation,” is a central concept in Jewish culture, which places weighted emphasis on the passing of stories and traditions across time.
“Part of this journey recently has been a deeper recognition of this Jewish history, which we never lived, but has been brought to the forefront through the development of the exhibition,” said Michael Traugott, who had little exposure to religion aside from Catholic sacramental ceremonies growing up. “…There’s also an element of realizing opportunities that we lost to have extended conversations with our father – which he might not have wanted to participate in.”
Michael, Mark, and Kathryn Traugott, retracing their father’s steps at the Wannsee House
Traugott’s descendants– who will all attend the opening of the exhibit– have used the photographs and documents to plumb their family history. In 1994, Michael Traugott also took a trip to Berlin to retrace steps his father had taken and to reproduce photos his father had taken on the same grounds, 50 years prior.
“Sifting through the valuable sources and sorting them together can reconstruct a piece of family history,” Alberth wrote of the exhibit. “Further research, which we carried out in American and German archives, can add to the puzzle – but it will always remain fragmented.”
“This project has involved memory, but also extrapolation,” said Michael Traugott. “It’s both trying to reconstruct events of the past with relative accuracy, but thinking about how behavior, events, and belief systems might be extended forward in time to other events, and other periods.”
Traugott’s story invites us to imagine what it might have been like for a refugee to return to Germany in what his son described as “a strange re-immersion.”
Museum director Deborah Hartmann writes, for example, of what it might have meant for Traugott to appropriate stationary and souvenirs from places like the Chancellery: “The men demonstrated their own personal victory over the Nazi dictatorship,” she writes.
For Hartmann, the exhibit is also an occasion to consider how we remember past events, and the impact of memory on our political actions and national and community identities.
Research on collective memory distinguishes history and memory. French scholars Jean-Francois Orianne and Francis Eustache write that “history separates the past from the present and future, whereas memory links them together. Memory always operates in the present: it is a continual rewriting of the past in the present for future use.”
The exhibit ends with a photograph of Vice President J.D. Vance, visiting the Dachau Concentration Camp on Feb. 13, 2025. The next day, at the Munich Security Conference, Vance demanded that Germany’s far-right parties, including the AfD, not be excluded in coalition governments. AfD leaders have specifically repudiated the idea that we should educate future generations about atrocities in Germany’s past, as a safeguard to our future.
“The open and critical discourse on history is a core element of free, democratic societies,” said Hartmann. “Authoritarian governments therefore see it as a threat and seek to impose only the narratives they have set as valid. This repeatedly leads to distortions in the history of the Holocaust, which we must counter. When the leader of the far-right AFD party, in a conversation with Elon Musk on X, refers to Adolf Hitler as a ‘communist,’ and Musk agrees with her, they are denying the ideological origins of the Holocaust in racist antisemitism.”
The exhibition, which will run until next summer, opens June 19, 2025, with free daily admission from 10 to 6. The museum’s registration for the opening– which can be attended live or online– is now open.
This post was written by Tevah Platt, a communicator for the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research. Michael Traugott is a research professor affiliated with the Center for Political Studies and an expert on campaigns and elections, voting behavior, and political communication.
