Mar 15
Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It" (Reaktion, 2025)
Examining everything from popular novels to politics, an investigation of persistent fascination with Nazis—and where it might take us. We live in an age where Hitler and the Nazis dominate our cultural imagination, shaping values once defined by religion. Historian Alec Ryrie ex ... Show More
53m 34s
Mar 10
Caroline Sharples, "The Long Death of Adolf Hitler: An Investigative History" (Yale UP, 2026)
Adolf Hitler has taken a long time to die, despite the lethal efficiency of the gun he put to his head in April 1945. Although eagerly anticipated around the world, there were no available witnesses to his suicide—and his corpse was not put on display. This created the perfect va ... Show More
45m 2s
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
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
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
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
Mar 2024
#100 The Evolution of the German Language
📖 Episode Transcripts in Link Below ⬇️
Today, we invite you on a fascinating journey through the evolution of the German language. Join us as we explore the origins, developments, and influences that have shaped the German language over the centuries.
https://patreon.com/History ... Show More
4m 20s
Jan 2018
Adam Mestyan, “Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt” (Princeton UP, 2017)
Studies of Arab nationalism populate the field of Middle Eastern studies, perhaps even overpopulate it. However, what Adam Mestyan does in Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2017) is very different: he looks speci ... Show More
49m 13s
Dec 2021
Sa'ed Atshan and Katharina Galor, "The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians" (Duke UP, 2020)
Berlin is home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora community and one of the world’s largest Israeli diaspora communities. Germany’s guilt about the Nazi Holocaust has led to a public disavowal of anti-Semitism and strong support for the Israeli state. Meanwhile, Palestinians ... Show More
54m 31s
In his new book, East German Intellectuals and the Unification of Germany: An Ethnographic View (Palgrave 2017), Dan Bednarz, Assistant Professor at Bristol Community College, examines the impact of German unification on East German intellectuals. Through a series of interviews conducted first during unification and then followed up a quarter-century later B ... Show More
