Alex J. Kay (senior lecture of History at Potsdam University in Berlin) and David Stahel (senior lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales in Canberra) have edited a groundbreaking series of articles on German mass killing and violence during World War II. Four years in the making, this collection of articles spans the breadth of research on t ... Show More
Mar 5
Daniel Brook, "The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2025)
More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, dubbed the "Einstein of Sex," grew famous (and infamous) for his liberating theory of sexual relativity. Today, he's been largely forgotten. In The Einstein of Sex: Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, Visionary of Weimar Berlin (W. W. Norton & ... Show More
50m 19s
Mar 3
Ailbhe Kenny, "Music Refuge: Living Asylum through Music" (Oxford UP, Press 2025)
How can music change people’s lives? In Music Refuge: Living Asylum Through Music (Oxford UP, Press 2025) Ailbhe Kenny, an Associate Professor in Music Education at Mary Immaculate College Ireland, explores music programmes for, with and by people seeking asylum in Ireland and G ... Show More
38m 54s
Mar 1
Sophie Salvo, "Articulating Difference: Sex and Language in the German Nineteenth Century"(U Chicago Press, 2024)
Drawing on a wide range of texts, from understudied ethnographic and scientific works to canonical literature and philosophy, Sophie Salvo uncovers the prehistory of the inextricability of gender and language. Taking German discourses on language as her focus, she argues that we ... Show More
35m 32s
Jun 2024
Nazi Human Experiments
The Nazis upheld the belief in the superiority of the German race and perceived Jews as the foremost threat, which extended to Black people, homosexuals, Romani individuals, Polish civilians, Soviet soldiers, Jehovah's Witnesses, as well as persons with disabilities. This also en ... Show More
20m 20s
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
Aug 2022
Bedross Der Matossian, "The Horrors of Adana: Revolution and Violence in the Early Twentieth Century" (Stanford UP, 2022)
In April 1909, two waves of massacres shook the province of Adana, located in the southern Anatolia region of modern-day Turkey, killing more than 20,000 Armenians and 2,000 Muslims. The central Ottoman government failed to prosecute the main culprits, a miscarriage of justice th ... Show More
1h 9m
Jan 2024
405. The Nazis in Power: The Nuremberg Rallies (Part 2)
“We did not lose the war because our artillery gave out, but because the weapons of our mind didn’t fire”
In September 1934, the Nazis held their sixth annual party conference in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg. The location held a symbolic resonance for the party, being not only ... Show More
53m 5s
Nov 2019
Mila Dragojević, "Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War" (Cornell UP, 2019)
How does violence against civilians become permissible in wartime? Why do some communities experience violence while others do not? In her new book, Mila Dragojević develops the concept of amoral communities to find an answer to these questions. In Amoral Communities: Collective ... Show More
44m 30s
Feb 2024
Genocide of the Germans in Yugoslavia
Following up from last time, On today's episode, we set the dive deeper into ethnic cleansing and subsequent genocide of the "Danube Swabian" Germans living in Yugoslavia after world war 2. Importantly, we paint a picture of the brutality of the third reich towards the Yugoslavia ... Show More
1h 35m