The Goebbels Diaries
The quote in the last post from Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels on the Louis/Schmeling fight was one I remembered from The Goebbels Experiment, a documentary made by First Run Features (who also…
Louis vs. Schmeling I: June 19th, 1936
Louis vs. Schmeling was hardly the first time race and racism mattered in boxing (see Jack Johnson, among others), and it wouldn't be the last. But the stakes both in…
The Leadership Style of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler makes a brief appearance in my novel, Summer of Long Knives, but his presence is felt everywhere in it. The state he built, which obliterated all the norms of…
The Obersalzberg
Of all Hitler's residences during his time as a political figure, his favorite by far was his home on the Obersalzberg, near the picturesque town of Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian…
Julius Streicher and Der Stürmer
When you're a member of a political party that includes Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Heinrich Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich, and they call you "Jew-Baiter Number One", you know…
Doctors In the Third Reich
Given the Nazi emphasis on the maintenance both of pure blood and the body of the German volk, it should surprise no one that the Nazis had a special interest…
The Nazi Concentration Camp System
There was a common saying in Germany in the 1930s, "Lieber Gott, mach mich dumm, damit ich nicht nach Dachau kumm" (Dear God, make me dumb, that I might not…
A Tale of Two Artists
As with many other things during the 1930s, the Nazi effort to bring the arts under their control was hamstrung by the turf wars that various state and party organs…
Recreating Hitler
I've been doing a lot of straight history on the blog over the last month or so, but when it came to Hitler, I saw little advantage in rehashing his…
The School For Nazi Wives
According to the International Business Tribune, the Nazis ran a school for SS brides: Documents found in Germany’s Federal Archive uncovered a program designed to turn young women into perfect…