German ambitions to transform Southwest Africa in the early part of the twentieth century were futile and resulted in the widespread death and suffering of indigenous populations. For years colonists wrestled ocean waters, desert landscapes, and widespread aridity as they tried to reach inland in their effort to turn outwardly barren lands into a profitable ... Show More
Jan 30
Tom Menger, "The Colonial Way of War: Violence and Colonial Warfare in the British, German and Dutch Empires, c. 1890-1914" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
The violence of colonial wars between 1890 and 1914 is often thought to have been uniquely shaped by the nature of each of the European empires. The Colonial Way of War: Violence and Colonial Warfare in the British, German and Dutch Empires, c. 1890-1914 (Cambridge UP, 2025) argu ... Show More
1h 2m
Jan 11
Andrew I. Port, "Never Again: Germans and Genocide After the Holocaust" (Harvard UP, 2023)
As reports of mass killings in Bosnia spread in the middle of 1995, Germans faced a dilemma. Should the Federal Republic deploy its military to the Balkans to prevent a genocide, or would departing from postwar Germany’s pacifist tradition open the door to renewed militarism? In ... Show More
1h 15m
Jan 6
Alexa Hagerty, "Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains" (Crown, 2023)
In Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains (Crown, 2023), anthropologist Alexa Hagerty learns to see the dead body with a forensic eye. She examines bones for marks of torture and fatal wounds—hands bound by rope, machete cuts—and also for signs of identity: ... Show More
1h 3m
Sep 2020
Jeff Schauer, "Wildlife between Empire and Nation in 20th-Century Africa" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
The protection of African wildlife enjoys the support of large numbers of individuals and institutions throughout the world. In Wildlife between Empire and Nation in Twentieth Century Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Jeff Schauer explains how this global attention to African wi ... Show More
50m 48s
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
Nov 2020
Paul Jankowski, "All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War" (Harper, 2020)
In his latest monograph, All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and The Origins of the Second World War (Harper, 2020), Professor Paul Jankowski (Brandeis University) provides a wide-angled account of a critical period of world history, the interwar years, in which the world tr ... Show More
50m 20s
May 2018
Laura Spinney, “Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World” (PublicAffairs, 2017)
The Spanish flu of 1918-1920 was one of the greatest human disasters of all time. It infected a third of the people on Earth–from the poorest immigrants of New York City to the king of Spain, Franz Kafka, Mahatma Gandhi and Woodrow Wilson. But despite a death toll of between 50 a ... Show More
43m 48s
Feb 2024
Daniel Immerwahr, "How to Hide an Empire: The History of the Greater United States" (FSG, 2019)
“Is America an Empire?” is a popular question for pundits and historians, likely because it sets off such a provocative debate. All too often, however, people use empire simply because the United States is a hegemon, ignoring the country’s imperial traits to focus simply on its p ... Show More
1h 19m