A look back at history can help us make the right decision. The idea of daylight saving time was first implemented by the last German emperor, Wilhelm II. When millions of soldiers were slaughtered in the bloody trench warfare of the First World War and German armament factories faced fuel shortages, he had the clocks switched to summer time on April 30, 1916. The aim was to save energy, in order to be able to continue the war. Germany's opponents, Great Britain and France, followed suit during the same year. But summer time – already unpopular with contemporaries – was abolished again in 1919.
In 1940, summer time was reintroduced by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler – for the same reason as in 1916. His dictatorial brethren, Italy's Benito Mussolini and Spain's Francisco Franco, followed suit with their country's clocks, and the Nazis forced much of Europe to change as well. 1949 saw the end of that experiment. In 1980, at the time of the second oil crisis, the summertime changing of the clocks was revived in both parts of then-divided Germany. Since 1996, daylight saving time has applied in all EU member states.