If you have spent a bit of time in Germany or with German friends, you may have noticed the deep interest and affinity many Germans have for American Indians. What are the origins of this striking and enduring fascination? In many ways, it might be said to go back to Tacitus’ Germania – or at least, to 19th-century Germans’ readings of Germania – but it was ... Show More
Today
Drew Flanagan, "From Occupation to Integration: Recivilizing the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1955" (LSU Press, 2026)
After the collapse of the National Socialist regime in May 1945, France became one of four principal occupying powers in a defeated Germany. Within their zone of occupation along the Upper and Middle Rhine, French occupiers participated in the Allied project to remake German soci ... Show More
55m 51s
Apr 18
Samuel Clowes Huneke, "I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany" (Aevo UTP, 2026)
I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany (Aevo UTP, 2026) brings to life the unrelenting defiance of queer women in fascist Germany. In his latest book, award-winning historian Samuel Clowes Huneke shows how love, queer resistance, and collective action survived in th ... Show More
42m 23s
Apr 17
Audrey Borowski, "Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men. Leibniz in His World: The Making of a ... Show More
1h 1m
May 2023
Native Americans: a new history
For too long, argues Professor Ned Blackhawk, Indigenous people have been marginalised or viewed merely as passive participants in the history of the United States. Speaking to Matt Elton, Ned discusses the central role that Indigenous people have played across centuries of the n ... Show More
49m 22s
Nov 2023
Jürgen Zimmerer, "Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness" (Reclam Verlag, 2023)
Erinnerungskämpfe: Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2023) is a new, provocative volume on German memory cultures and politics edited by Jürgen Zimmerer. What can be loosely translated as Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness is a collection of ... Show More
1h 1m
Apr 2021
Erik Grimmer-Solem, "Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s, well before Germany acquired a colonial empire or extensive overseas commercial interests. Structured around the figures of five influential economists who shaped the German pol ... Show More
1h 11m
Sep 2023
Beyond the Wall: What Life Was Really Like in East Germany
When the Iron Curtain fell in 1990, East Germany ceased to be. For over forty years, from the ruin of the Second World War to the cusp of a new millennium, the German Democratic Republic presented a radically different Germany than what had come before and what exists today. Soci ... Show More
43m 10s
Dec 2023
Nazi Germany: the myth of the innocent bystander
In 1945, after defeat in the Second World War, many Germans claimed to have known nothing about what had happened to their fellow Jewish citizens – and with that, the idea of the ‘innocent bystander’ was born. But just how true was this claim? Delving into a rich archive of perso ... Show More
37m 18s