Jonathan Petropoulos— At the start of my sabbatical in the summer of 2000, I was living in Munich, making it easier to contact Lohse. I had his telephone number and could ring him up somewhat freely. Not long after I had settled in, Lohse invited me to his home. He
Harry Rée— What was it that made an Englishman want to parachute into occupied France, in civilian clothes? It was understandable for Frenchmen: they naturally wanted to get back home and more still to get away from the sickbed smell of the Français de Londres. But why should there have been
Tracy Campbell— As 1943 dawned, the relentless fear that had gripped the nation since Pearl Harbor had somewhat lessened, and although most understood that the most difficult days of the war still lay ahead, many worst-case scenarios had been avoided. There were no additional Pearl Harbors, economic chaos was averted,
Bill Hayton– The fate of Taiwan, an island at the mouth of the South China Sea equidistant between China, Japan, and the Philippines, has returned to the top of the list of geopolitical worries. The Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, has reserved “the option of taking all necessary means” to incorporate
Christian Goeschel— The meetings between Mussolini and Hitler were robust projections of an aggressive challenge to the Wilsonian post-war order. The Fascist and Nazi regimes defied lurking tensions to promote a powerful image of unity, a unity symbolised by the dictatorial friends meeting amidst their peoples – in marked contrast
Evan Mawdsley— The SS Athenia was a substantial vessel, but not one of the great liners; a passenger ship of some 13,500 tons, with accommodation for 1,000 passengers, her speed was 15 knots: the white stripe on her single thin black funnel marked her as one of the ships of
Tracy Campbell— In his first fireside chat after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt urged Americans “to reject all rumors,” noting that “these ugly little hints of complete disaster fly thick and fast in wartime.” By summer 1942, FDR knew that executive admonishments had failed to curb the avalanche of false information
Jonathan Rée— Back in May 2016 I was sitting in the garden of my little cottage outside Oxford when I got an email from someone whose name I didn’t know and a place I hadn’t heard of. He explained that he was a French soldier called Jean-Luc Fleutot, and he
Michael H. Kater— One morning late in October 1938 the Viennese poet Josef Weinheber rose from among 250 of his compatriots assembled in the landmark Elephant hotel in Weimar. Fortified by two bottles of wine he stepped up to the lectern at the front of the hall and gave what
Stephen G. Fritz— Life is normally characterized by irony, paradox, ambiguity, and ambivalence, but Adolf Hitler saw it with a startling (and frightening) clarity. Beginning early in his career as an orator and political rabble-rouser, he habitually used history as an explanation and justification for his actions. He had, indeed,