The Third Reich History Podcast

How was power exercised in the Third Reich? How do dictators use competing power centers to administer the state? How do they set policy while remaining aloof to preserve their popularity? Find out as Chris and Ryan discuss Ian Kershaw’s theory of working toward the Führer. News: Amerigo Caruso and Claire Morelon’s conference report on “The Dark Side of Belle Époque Europe. Political Violence and Armed Association in Europe before the First World War”

The final months of the Nazi regime are usually described in terms of apocalyptic chaos. A society in catastrophe. A spiral of violence. A state of confusion tinged with security paranoia that allowed individual actors to wield unchecked power over life and death. In this episode, Gerhard Paul’s chapter on executions in the Endphase outlines explanations for the escalation of violence and provides a great jumping off point for discussion. Chris and Ryan make the case that, rather than being swept away by crisis, the state’s use of violence shows a deliberate and structured response intended to master the situation. H-net News: A review of James W. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

How did the Nazi regime respond to protest? How did Hitler's desire for popular authority shape the relationship between state and society? Find out in the first of our long awaited interviews with Nathan Stoltzfus. Ryan chats with Nathan about his latest book "Hitler's Compromises: Coercion and Consensus in Nazi Germany" to find out what the Third Reich tells us about the nature of dictatorships.

In this episode, Chris and Ryan discuss Ralf Blank's chapter on the Endphase in the Rhein and Ruhr. His focus of Allied bombing campaigns and Hitler's "Nero Order" to destroy all industry in danger of falling into enemy hands highlights aspects of everyday life that have fallen by the wayside in our focus on the Gestapo. H-Net News: Review of Norman Ohler's Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany Karola Fings' review of Franz Albert Heinen's NS-Ordensburgen: Vogelsang, Sonthofen, Kröinsee

Who was excluded from the Nazi “community of the people” in the final months of the war? What can post-war trials tell us about atrocities committed in the Endphase? In this episode, Chris and Ryan review Sven Keller’s chapter Crimes in the End Phase of the Second World War: Considerations on Exclusion, Methodology, and Source Critique. Join us for a discussion about the nature of terror at the end of the war, the motives of perpetrators, and changing expectations that that exposed new groups to the heavy hand of the state. News: David Imhoof's review of Christian Peters' Nationalsozialistische Machtdurchsetzung in Kleinstädten: Eine vergleichende Studie zu Quackenbrück und Heide/Holstein (Bielefeld, 2015)

How did the Gestapo operate? What were the day-to-day routines of Hitler's political police? What have historians written and rewritten on the subject since 1945? Join us for a discussion about the latest research on Hitler's secret police! In this episode, Chris and Ryan discuss Gerhard Paul's Continuity and Radicalization: Gestapo Station Würzburg. Paul provides a great overview and plenty of excuses to get into the detail about how political police functioned in Nazi Germany. Discussion begins at 14:52 H-net News: Wolfgang G. Schwanitz' review of Stefan Ihrig, Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).

Why did Germans support Hitler? What did they see in the man? What was the source his charisma? How could someone who hated the Nazis remain loyal their leader? Join us for the latest installment of The Roots of Nazism to understand Germans' fierce, intensely personal, yet ultimately fragile devotion to the Hitler Myth. Discussion begins at 14:16 News: Call for Papers, Close Encounters in Irregular and Asymmetrical Warfare, http://closeencountersinwar.com/index.php/call-for-papers Review, Veronika Springmann’s review of Christopher Dillon, Dachau and the SS: A Schooling in Violence

How did a generation of Germany's best and brightest become mass murderers? How did Gestapo executioners process their atrocities and justify them to themselves? In this episode, Chris and Ryan discuss Hans-Joachim Heuer's chapter Brutalization and Decivilization: On State Police Killing. A diary entry written by a Gestapo officer about his first execution puts us in the shoes of the perpetrator as Heuer helps us understand how normal people become accustomed to extreme violence. Call for Articles: Close Encounters in Irregular and Asymmetrical Warfare http://closeencountersinwar.com/index.php/call-for-papers News from H-net: Emre Sencer's review of Attaturk in the Nazi Imagination, Michael Schneider's review of Work in National Socialism, and an obituary for Yisrael Kristal.

How did polarized politics contribute to the rise of Nazism? How did Hitler's vision of community capture Germans' hopes and fears? In the first installment of a new series examining the roots of popular support for Nazism, we explore the ideology of the people's community.

Did you know the Nazis had more than one type of concentration camp? What role did camps play during the final months of the Third Reich? In this episode, Chris and Ryan discuss Gabriele Lotfi's Concentration Camps of the Gestapo: Work Education Camps in the Third Reich. Ryan starts the episode off with a short overview of the development of the concentration camp system. The discussion then focuses on chapters about the final months of the war and Chris shares findings from his own research about the treatment of foreign workers. As usual, we get stuck into a meaty discussion about who faced the firing squads and who was spared in spring 1945 and toss around some ideas for consideration.

In this episode, Chris and Ryan review Michael McConnell's "The Situation is Once Again Quiet." We talk about the evacuation operation of fall 1944, decentralization of the Gestapo, and influence of the partisan wars in Eastern Europe on domestic policing. A much clearer picture of when violence started to affected different groups emerges. Correction: The controversy over controlling the movement of evacuees by withholding rations began in October 1943. Hitler intervened in January 1944 and forbade the use of "coercive measures." Himmler repeated this message in July 1944 and Bormann as late as October 1944.

In this episode, Chris and Ryan argue about whether delinquent foreign workers hiding out in the ruins of Cologne were resisting the Nazis or simply surviving. What does resistance entail? We also bounce around some ideas about what the security services learned from the example of Cologne.

In this episode, Chris and Ryan review Bernd-A. Rusinek's Gesellschaft in der Katastrophe: Terror, Illegalität, Widerstand - Köln 1944/1945. We discuss whether the Ehrenfeld Gang were resistance fighters, criminals, or even a gang at all as we talk about the underground networks that emerged in the ruins of Cologne over fall 1944. Grab your gun, we're going on a butter heist!

In this episode Chris and Ryan review Ian Kershaw's The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945. We discuss why Germans continued to serve Nazi leadership as defeat loomed, how the regime maintained control, the motivations of different social groups, and when they were swept up in state sanctioned terror.

In the pilot episode, Chris and Ryan introduce themselves, explain why they became historians of Nazi Germany, outline the first project they'll be tackling with the podcast, and reveal the significance behind the opening music.