History Off the Page

Auschwitz. The term has become synonymous with the Holocaust as a whole and more broadly, is perhaps the ultimate symbol of evil. Here, over the course of four years, this sleepy Polish town was transformed from an unremarkable place to one of the greatest killing sites in history. As Ellie Wiesel once noted, it became “the largest cemetery in recorded history.” How could such a thing come to pass...

The World Cup. The showcase moment for the world's most popular sport. You know many of the names: Ronaldo, Messi, Mbappe, Pele. But do you know the history behind the world's greatest sporting event? This special episode does a deep dive into the origins of the World Cup, uncovering how this incredible event came to be. As we'll see, the journey was neither straightforward nor easy...

By the summer of 1933, Hitler had established a totalitarian dictatorship in Germany. He was, in Machiavelli's famous phrasing, "feared." But he also wanted to be "loved." This is the first of three episodes exploring how the Nazis popularized dictatorship in the mid-1930s, focusing on the issue of economic recovery. After more than three years of economic hardship (1929-1...

By the summer of 1934, the Nazi Dictatorship was well established. Yet Hitler's control over Germany was not completely secure, due in part to rivalries between the boisterous SA and the German army. To cement his absolute control over German society, he needed to bring both to heel. This episode explores the "Night of the Long Knives," Hitler's bloody purge of the Nazi Party t...

So far our podcast had provided a broad overview of the Nazi seizure of power. In today's episode, we look more closely at what this experience was like at the local level, focusing on the small German town of Northeim, an idyllic city of 10,000 people located in central Germany. Here, the Nazis grew from an otherwise unremarkable splinter party in 1928 to producing clear electoral majorities...

In our second episode on the topic of Gleichschaltung or the "coordination" of German civil society, we explore the responsibility individuals had in the process of conforming to Nazi ideology. Simply put, I argue that while the Nazis did use violence and terror to intimidate Germans into obedience, social forces including economic opportunism and the desire to be "left alone"...

Many revolutions have resulted in the creation of a dictatorship, of the concentration of all political power in the hands of a single individual or party. But part of what makes the Nazi Revolution so terrifying is the way the Nazis simultaneously conquered civil society, nazifying all social and civic institutions in the span of just five months.  This episode begins to walk readers through the...

One of the hallmarks of a modern democracy is a belief in the importance of the rule of law. The state may be capable of using tremendous violence against its citizenry, but this power is curtailed by a series of rules and regulations that are both rational (i.e., the ability to arrest criminals) and written down so that people know what is allowed and what isn't. As part of their quest for t...

There is perhaps no better symbol of Nazi barbarism than the concentration camp.  It was here that victims not only lost their political rights (freedom of movement, right to due process, etc.), but where they were often stripped of their very humanity through torture, murder and other sadistic acts.  The camps, one could say, became a sort of hell on earth. How did this happen?  As the episode re...

On Jan. 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany. While this was certainly an important historical moment, it's worth noting that Hitler was not yet a dictator. He faced a number of legal and practical limitations on his power, and many contemporaries expected him to quickly fail. And yet, just five months later all other political parties - even those closely allied with the Na...

On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler as the country's new Chancellor, the third attempt in less than a year to create a stable German government.  The result of course was dictatorship, war and eventually genocide.   But was Hitler's appointment inevitable?   For as historians such as Henry Ashby Turner have argued, on the imm...

In October 1929, the New York stock market crash ushered in the Great Depression.  With their economy closely tied to the supply of cheap American capital, Germans felt the impact of the crash more acutely than most other nations.  Soon the country's economy was in ruins, with millions unemployed.    This episode charts the relationship between German politics and economic between 1929 and 19...

In the spring of 1925, a newly free Adolf Hitler ordered his bodyguard/chauffeur Julius Schreck to create a new protection detail. Eventually known as the SS, its membership would fluctuate between 250 and 1000 men over the next four years. And yet, perhaps no institution in Nazi Germany strikes more fear into the hearts of modern listeners. This episode documents how the SS grew from an otherwise...

In the Reichstag elections of May 1928, the Nazi Party took home just 2.6% of the vote. Two years later they would explode onto the German political scene, taking 18.3% of the vote and becoming the second largest party in Germany. This episode uncovers the secrets to the Nazis electoral success, showcasing how new techniques and strategies helped distinguish them from their political rivals on bot...

When Adolf Hitler left prison in Dec. 1924, his Nazi Party lay in ruins.  Officially banned by the Bavarian government, he was also prohibited from public speech in many German states.  And yet, eight years later he would become Chancellor of Germany, head of the country's largest political party.  How did this happen? This episode begins to answer that question by looking at the rebuilding o...

From Indiana Jones, to Captain America to Hellboy, the theme of Nazis and the Occult has long fascinated Hollywood.  But is there any truth behind these fictional representations? This partial Patreon preview explores the bizarre world of late 19th/early 20th century occultism, elucidating its tangential links to the birth and development of the Nazi Party.  As we'll see, Hitler was not &quot...

In Nov 1918, Germans set out on a radical experiment: the building of a new, fully democratic state known as the Weimar Republic.  Unfortunately, of course, it didn't last.  But the question remains why?  And what should this tell us about the strength of our own democracies? This episode explores the foundation of the Weimar Republic, discussing some of its early successes and failures.  It...

At the time of its foundation in early 1919, the Nazi Party was a group of several dozen dilettantes who at first glance appeared to stand little chance of changing history.  And yet, by 1923 it had grown to over 50K members - enough to convince Hitler that they could seize control of Bavaria.  This episode explores the secrets to the Nazi Party's success, showing how they built a politically...

Adolf Hitler is one of the most notorious villains of history. But how did he become HITLER? This partial preview episode documents his early history, from his boyhood in Linz to his Bohemian wandering in Vienna to his exploits during the First World War. It tracks the origins of his political philosophy, showing how much of his political and anti-Semitic wakening occurred only after the Great War...

There are many places one could start a history of Nazi Germany, but we begin our series with the experience of the First World War.  From the heady August days when Germans were flush with the joy of expectant victory to war and revolution in 1918, the war refashioned and brutalized German politics.  Old authorities like the monarchy were discarded, to be replaced by a more wholesome form of poli...

This episode - the first of 12 on the history of Nazi Germany - begins by asking the question if Nazis still matter in an age when so much of the post-World War II consensus (global institutions, free trade, collective defense) is being abandoned?  It highlights the role played in this process by figures such as Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson and the Alternativ fur Deutschland Party (AFD), who along wi...

 Continuing our discussion of the 1967 Six-Day War, this episode discusses the outbreak of hostilities with Israeli Operation Focus on 5 June 1967. In addition to covering some operational details, we also sketch out the rest of the history of the war, including discussions of Egyptian and Israeli war planning and the evolution of events on the battlefield(s). The episode concludes with an epilogu...

In June 1967, tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors once again led to the outbreak of war.  This episodes examines the causes of the renewed violence, ranging from long term factors such as Nasser's Arab nationalism and the lack of a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis to shorter term issues such as the evolution of regional politics, fights over water usage and Israeli repris...

On the afternoon of October 29, 1856, Israeli forces launched a surprise attack into the Sinai peninsula, part of a coordinated plan with Britain and France for the European powers to retake possession of the Suez canal.  This episode covers the course of the war, as well as its legacy.  Topics covered include: the Cold War context and the run-up to war, British, French, Israeli and Egyptian strat...

After eight years of a tense peace, war came suddenly again to the Middle East in October 1956.  This episode answers why, exploring the deeper history behind the building of the Suez Canal from 1859-69, the origins of British colonialism in the region and the rise of various anti-colonial Egyptian movements such as Wafd and the Muslim Brotherhood.  We also go into detail about the meteoric rise o...