Which Movie Character Would Trump Be?
It's been a miserable 24 hours, so to cheer up a bit, but only a bit, I started thinking about which movie character best represents Trump. I mean, sure, there's…
Review: Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back. A New Warning From History
Professor Ian Kershaw, best known for his landmark two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler (titled Hubris and Nemesis) takes on a gargantuan project in To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949, a…
Steve Shives’s Five Stupid Things About the Nazis
Steve Shives presents another fine entry in his addictive "Five Stupid Things..." series. While I do have one quibble with its description of Nazi administrative efficiency--Hitler's government was many things, but,…
Richard J Evans On Conspiracy Theory And the Reichstag Fire
A fascinating article on the Reichstag Fire by historian Richard J Evans appears in the London Review of Books. An excerpt: The Third Reich was founded on a conspiracy theory.…
Happy Campers of the Third Reich
Shorpy dug up this Heinrich Hoffmann photo of Hitler Youth on a camping excursion from 1938. Smiles and swastikas are an uneasy mix at best. Hoffmann, incidentally, was Adolf Hitler's…
Dear Ben Carson,
Dear Ben Carson, When I get mad, I tell myself I shouldn't post on the blog. I should take a walk, hum a little tune, think of 2001: A Space…
The Day Hitler Became Chancellor
80 years ago yesterday, Adolf Hitler, the strange Austrian who headed a movement that combined violent thugs with some of Germany's leading industrialists, was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany.…
The Wannsee Conference
Yesterday wasn't just Martin Luther King Day. It was also 51st anniversary of the Wannsee Conference. A lot of people lazily describe this event as the meeting at which the…
Summer of Long Knives Holiday Buying Guide
Here you'll find a list of gifts perfect for someone who's already bought, read, stolen, or otherwise wrangled a copy of Summer of Long Knives. (Of course, if you haven't read Summer, I…
The Tegernsee, Heinrich Himmler, and the Night of the Long Knives
The Tegernsee proves once again that, whatever else one might think of the Nazi leadership, they had taste in real estate. A picturesque lake south of Munich, framed by mountains…