Recommended books, films, documentaries, podcasts, videos, and museums to help you make the most out of your time in Berlin, Germany and Europe, as well as to refresh your memory and learn more after you return home. 

Please excuse the fact that some parts of the section are not complete yet!

Questions, comments, and opinions welcome!

Please let me know what you think about the books, films, videos and podcasts listed here, or if you have any questions about them.

 

WHY THIS HISTORY IS IMPORTANT:

We live in a time when democracy is under threat by right-wing populism, authoritarianism, and new forms of fascism. The history of Berlin, more than that of any other city, provides a stark reminder of how fragile liberal democracy is, how quickly it can be replaced by dictatorship, and what horrific consequences may then follow. The Federal German president Richard von Weizäcker put it best in his 1985 speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War: Whoever refuses to remember the past remains blind to the present. Whoever refuses to remember the inhumanity remains prone to new outbreaks of the virus.

 

General Tips for Berlin: https://www.timeout.com/berlin/things-to-do/best-things-to-do-in-berlin

 Why you should visit Potsdam: https://www.thetimes.com/travel/destinations/europe-travel/germany/the-cheaper-more-beautiful-alternative-to-berlin-flbl5k50l

 

MyTop 5 Book Recommendations

     1. Kampfner, John. In Search of Berlin. The Story of a Reinvented City.

      2. Jonathan Littel, The Kindly Ones .

      3. Synder, Timothy, On Freedom.

      4. Garton Ash, Timothy, Homelands. A Personal History of Europe.

      5. Stanley, Jason,  Erasing History. How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. 

 

My  Top 3 Tips for free time in Berlin:

       1. Berlin Story Bunker including the new Ukraine Museum. (Berlin Story – The whole story of Berlin in a Bunker – Berlin Story) 

       2. Reichstag Cupola: German Bundestag - Registering to visit the dome of the Reichstag Building

       3. Restored Crypt of the Berlin Cathedral (Burial place of the Hohenzollern Dynasty): Berlin Cathedral | visitBerlin.de

 

Ampelmann (“Traffic-Light Man”).

 The history of pedestrian crossing lights / AMPELMANN Berlin. The official website of the Ampelmann Store, with the background story to the world’s most famous traffic light figure and much more.

 

Berlin

Beevor, Anthony, Berlin. The Downfall 1945. The best book on the Battle of Berlin-. Beevor uses first-hand German and Soviet accounts to tell the story of the men, women, and children who experienced the battle, whether as combantants or civilians.

Hillers, Marta, A Woman in Berlin. A harrowing account of how women experienced the end of the war in Berlin.

Kampfner, John. In Search of Berlin. The Story of a Reinvented City. The most up to date, best-written, and thought-provoking English-language book about the city right now. Despite its many small historical errors (Kampfner is a journalist, not a historian), no other book addresses the contemporary significance of Berlin to non-Germans better than this one.

Kempe, Frederick, Berlin 1961. Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth. An account of the Berlin crisis of 1961, which could have touched off a nuclear war between the superpowers.

Ladd, Brian, Berlin. The best English-language guidebook for exploring the city on foot.

 Ladd, Brian, The Ghosts of Berlin.  Ladd shows how  history has not only left its mark on the architecture of the city but also how it presents challenges to present-day city planning.

Lutes, Jason, Berlin. This is an informative graphic novel set in Berlin just before the Nazis come to power.

Ritchie, Alexandra, Faust’s Metropolis. A History of Berlin. A "master-class" account (over 1,000 pages!) covering several hundred years.

 Schneider, Peter, Berlin. The City after the Wall.  A sharp-witted look at contemporary politics, society, and culture in the city by a best-selling German author.

 Walker, Julia, Berlin. Contemporary Architecture and Politics After 1990. A great resource for those interested in the political aspects of city planning.

 White-Spunner, Barney, Berlin. The Story of a City. White-Spunner served for many years as a British officer in West-Berlin. His book contains many minor errors and a few bigger ones, but it’s still a nice overview of the city’s history for those who may find a tome like Alexandra Richie’s too intimidating.

Wise, Michael Z., Capital Dilemma. Germany’s Search for a New Architecture of Democracy.  How Berlin’s dark history impacted the planning of a new capital for the Federal Republic of Germany after the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

“Update” of the Mosaic on the GDR “House of the Teacher” by Tyrz Kongo:  https://berlinmosaik.wordpress.com/westfries

 

East Germany (G.D.R.) and the Cold War

Hope, Ralph, The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi into the Present. Hope shows how  most Stasi agents not only escaped justice but also continue, to this day,  to hinder public discussion of their crimes and commemoration of their victims.

Hoyer, Katja, Beyond the Wall. East Germany 1949-1990.  Hoyer provides a nice overview of the vanished German Democratic Republic, combining political and personal history (although Hoyer was only a child when the Wall fell, she comes from an East German family). The book was a  bestseller in Great Britain , where she teaches, but remains controversial in Germany. German critics accuse Hoyer of painting a too positive picture of daily life in the GDR. I  personally think the criticism is overblown. As far as I am concerned, her book is the best English-language introduction to the history of East Germany.

Richardson-Little, Ned, The German Democratic Republic. The Rise and Fall of a Cold War State. Richardson-Little argues  that those who depict East Germany as a communist hellscape are wrong. However, he finds those who present it as a socialist paradise to be equally mistaken. Instead, he believes that state and society in East Germany were multi-faceted and must be considered  within the larger context of the Cold War.

 

Europe

Applebaum Anne, Iron Curtain. The Crushing of Eastern Europe.  Applebaum recounts how the Soviet Union liberated eastern Europe from Nazi Germany, only to then subjected it to a new form of tyranny.

Davies, Norman. Europe. A History. A panoramic history of the continent from the very beginning; contains some minor errors and outdated views, but still highly informative and one of the best overviews of the subject.

Davies, Norman. Vanished Kingdoms. The History of Half-Forgotten Europe. A look at once mighty but now largely forgotten powers like Prussia and Poland-Lithuania. A good resource for understanding the conflicts of these regions today.

Garton Ash, Timothy, Homelands. A Personal History of Europe. A great personal look at Europe, written by a historian who was not also an eyewitness to many key events but who also personally knew many important players.

Jankowski, Tomek, Eastern Europe! Everything you need to know about the history (and more) of a region that shaped our world and still does. A lexicon-like overview of the subject, full of entertaining asides and a few errors but still a great introduction.

Judt, Tony, Postwar. A History of Europe since 1945. A work highly regarded by many experts in the field.

 Mikanowski, Jacob, Goodbye Eastern Europe. An Intimate History of a Divided Land. A more academic look at the subject than Jankowski’s work.

Simms, Brendan, Europe. The Struggle for Supremacy. 1453 to the Present.  Simms argues that every major European war for the past several centuries has been fought for control of Germany. Even those who disagree with his thesis can still learn a lot from this book.

Sheehan, James, Where Have all the Soldiers Gone? How Europe went from the most militarized place on the planet to its most pacificist continent. Although written over two decades ago, this book explains why western Europe was caught wholly unprepared for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Wilson, Peter, The Holy Roman Empire. A Thousand Years of Europe’s History. The current standard-work on the Empire, a must-read for anyone who wants to gain a deep understanding of the history of central Europe.)

Winder, Simon, Danubia: A Personal History of Hapsburg Europe. A highly informative and entertaining look at the central Europe through the lens of Habsburg rule. I recommend an enjoyable and educational for anyone traveling to Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.

 

Fascism and Current Threats to Democracy.

 

Herzog, Dagmar, The New Fascist Body. 

Snyder, Timothy, On Freedom. Most of us think of political freedom as the absence of governmental control in our lives, but this is mistaken, according to Snyder, former Yale historian, and prominent expert on eastern Europe and the Holocaust. Snyder  views freedom as the ability of people to come together to create better lives for everyone.  Such freedom requires a healthy, well-educated populace and an inclusive, tolerant society that allows for unpredictability.  Freedom also presupposes "factuality." If we cannot agree on the basic facts about state and society, we cannot expand freedom, and we cannot defend it from those sworn to destroy it. The West did not provoke Russia into invading Ukraine. Donald Trump did not win the 2020 presidential election. These are the kind of lies threatening freedom today. A big lie can bring down a whole country. The twentieth century should have been Germany's century, but Germans got caught in a story. The twenty-first century could be America's but Americans  . . .(page 179). 

 

Stanley, Jason, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.  In this book, Stanley shows how fascists abuse history to first gain power, and then to legitimatize and perpetuate their power. They propagate a single narrative of their nation's past, arguing that the dominant ethnic group, which once made the nation "great," is now being taken advantage of by undeserving  minorities (immigrants, Moslems, LGBTQ persons. etc.). The illiegimate interests of such minorities, in turn, are used by "leftists," be they Marxists, communists, socialists, or liberals, to gain power for themselves, so they can "destroy" the country. for their own advantage.  While some readers may object to how Stanley labels disparate politicians such as Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Viktor Orban, and Donald Trump as "fascists," there is no doubt that they all present grave threats to freedom and democracy.  And Stanley's book shows how dangerous it can be to glorify national history instead of remembering, learningmfrom and teaching it from a multi-perspectival, tolerant, and liberal-democratic perspective. The purpose of history education is not to instill national pride -- that is an abuse of young minds -- but rather to teach students the causes and consequences of historic events in their nation's history, no matter if those events are something to be proud of or not. 

 

Germany

Craig, Gordon, The Germans.  Craig, a Scottish-American historian, was considered one of the foremost authorities on modern German history. This book, although somewhat dated,  provides a clear, compact, concise introduction to German history, culture, and society.  The chapter on Berlin still offers readers a quick but soldi overview of the city’s past.

 

“Feli from Germany,“ YouTube series:  Feli is young German woman who lived in Cincinnati for nine years. She recently moved back to her native Munich with her American husband, where she continues to make her videos comparing life in the USA with life in Germany.  I especially recommend the episode: Do Germans Talk About World War II? What Do They Teach About the Holocaust? | Feli from Germany - YouTube

If you would like to know what Germans in general think about US-politics right now, check out this episode: Penny Drop City 10 Youtube

And in this episode, Feli asks locals on the streets of Munich  their opinion about America during the second Trump administration: Asking Germans “What do you currently think of the US?” | Feli from Germany

 

Holtfrerich, Carl-Ludwig, Edward A. Tenenbaum and the Deutschmark. How an American Jew Became the Father of Germany’s Postwar Economic Revival. Contrary to longg-standing beliefs in Germany, it was not West German politicians -- such as the finance minister and later chancellor Ludwig Erhardt -- who were the driving forces behind West Germany's stunning economic recovery after World War II, but  Tennenbaum, an American intelligence officer, combat veteran, and financial expert, and the son of Austrian Jews. 

 

Kampfner, John, Why the Germans do it Better. Notes from a Grown-Up Country.  Kampfner is a British journalist with decades of experience reporting from Germany.  In this book, he presents the traditions, traits, and practices that have made Germany 's  prosperous economy and robust liberal democracy the envy all of the world.  he describes how Germany's  educational system,  with its encouragment of continual vocatioal training, has brought about stunning economic success. he also argues that the nation's troubled history has left its people determined to avoid the mistakes of the past. Germans cherish democracy, reject militarism, and support mulitlateralism and diplomatic solutions to  international problems. For Kampfner, no one better represents these German virtues more than the former chancellor Angela Merkel.  Her pragmatic, stoic approach to governance successfully guided Germany through the successive financial, refugee, and Covid-crises that ravaged other countries over the past twenty years. If only more countries were managed like Germany, Kampfer suggests, then the world would be a much better place, While there is much to Kampfner's argument, I can't help think that his love of Germany blinds him to the country's serious problems and challenges. The obscene cost-overruns, delays, and other scandals  that plagued the construction of Berlin's new international airport,  the now-proverbial inability of German Rail to make its trains run on time,  and Germany's failure to keep up with the digital revolution show that the Germans do not always do it better. And if Kampfner had written this book after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I suspect his praise of Angela Merkel would have been less effusive. Her refusal to take a hard line against Putin --even after his annexation of Crimea in 2014 --, as well as her continued support of the new gas pipeline North Stream II, not only demonstrated that the Russians had little to fear if they expanded the war, but also helped finance their attempt to conquer all of Ukraine. Still, "Why the Germans do it Better" is an excellent introduction to how Germans think and live. For the full picture, however, I would recommend reading it concurrently with Broken Republik. The Inside Story of Germany’s Descent into Crisis," by Chris Reiter and Will Wilkes (see below). 

 

MacGregor, Neil, Germany. Memories of a Nation. A unique look at Germany's past and how it informs the present  based on a highly acclaimed exhibit MacGregor curated while he was the head of the British Museum.

 

Reiter, Chris and Will Wilkes, Broken Republik. The Inside Story of Germany’s Descent into Crisis. Two long-time Germany correspondents, both of whom living in Germany for decades, examine how the country went from a model of prosperity, stability and liberal democracy to a land plagued by inefficiency, corruption scandals, and a rising tide of ugly right-wing populism.

 

Sparding, Peter, No Better Friend? The United States and Germany Since 1945. A  look at the origin, significance, challenges and future of the cultural, economic, and geostrategic relationships between these two key Western nations. Well-worth reading now, as the current American administration no longer treats Germany (along with all other European nations), as a friend and ally, but as a trade rival and obstacle to American-Russian cooperation. 

 

Steinberg, Jonathan, Bismarck. A Life. The best English-language biography of the man who united the German people by founding the Second German Empire.

 

Walser Smith, Helmut, Germany. A Nation in its Time. The best up-to-date,  comprehensive, English-language  presentation of German history I know.

 

Watson, Peter, The Germans. Europe’s Third Renaissance, the Second Scientific Revolution, and the Twentieth Century. Watson reminds us of Germany’s  great contributions to western civilization, many of which have been undeservedly obscured by the legacy of Nazi Germany.

 

Weitz, Eric D. Weimar Germany. Promise and Tragedy. A close look at the politics, culture, and society of Germany’s first democratic state. Like many historians, Weitz creates the false impression that Berlin represented German society as a whole in the 1920's and early 1930's, but his book is still worth reading, especially the chapters on the pioneering social reforms of this period in Germany.

 

Wilson, Peter, A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500. In this expansive work, Popular belief to the contrary,  the Germans were never an  especially warlike or militaristic people. Wilson presents a fresh look at German history which -- unlike many other traditional narrative accounts -- does not reduce the subject to Prussian history.

 

Greek Myth (We do a deep dive into ancient mythology when visiting Sanssouci gardens, especially inside the New Palace).

 If you’d like to brush up on the mythical gods, heroes and monsters  you will encounter in Sanssouci, you should check out the book series by the British actor, comedian and writer Stephen Fry: "Mythos,"  "Heroes," "Troy," and "Odyssey".

 

Historiography

Evans, Richard, In Defense of History. Evans makes a persuasive argument why history matters and why academic historical research, properly conducted, is reliable.

Macmillan, Margaret, The Uses and Abuses of History.  Macmillan shows how some politicians have used history to inform their decision-making, while others have abused history to justify questionable ends.

 

Holocaust

 Amis, Martin, The Zone of Interest. A novel about a Nazi concentration camp commander and his wife, as they try to lead a “normal” family life with their children just outside the walls of the camp. Based on the real life of the commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höß.

 Beorn, Waitman Wade, The Holocaust History Podcast, Beorn and his guests, leading scholars in the field, keep you up to date with the current state of Holocaust studies research.

Browning. Christopher R.  Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. Browning’s acclaimed study shattering the myth that the German troops who participated were forced to murder Jews against their will.

Brownstein. Rich, Holocaust Cinema Complete: A History and Analysis of 400 Films, with a Teaching Guide. This is an excellent resource for instructors who use films as source material for Holocaust education. 

Evans, Richard, Lying about Hitler. Evan depicts the libel trail of the Holocaust denier David Irving.  Evans himself  appeared as a witness for the defendant, Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt. The book does an excellent job of showing how we know that the Holocaust happened, and how Holocaust-deniers like Irving manipulate or consciously twist the historical record for their own political purposes. The film dramatization of the trial with Rachel Weisz: Denial is also very good. 

Hayes, Peter, Why? Explaining the Holocaust. A good look at the current state of Holocaust research and an excellent source for secondary school teachers.

 Hilton, Laura and Avinoam Patt, Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust. This is another valuable resource for instructors.

Karlsson, Klas-Göran, Lessons of the History: The Holocaust and Soviet Terror as Borderline Events. We are always told we should learn the lessons of history, but we are rarely told exactly what those lessons are. Karlsson does an excellent job of explaining what we can learn from Nazi and Soviet atrocities.

 Littell, Jonathan, The Kindly Ones (novel). A brilliant but deeply disturbing novel about the Holocaust, with a narrator who was a perpetrator.  Looking back on his part in the mass murder of European Jews, he expresses no remorse, but continues to justify his actions. This book is hard to read, but essential for understanding how the men who planned and carried out the Holocaust thought. 

"Shoah Stories."  Video Holocaust education project of the Berlin Anne-Frank Center. The video clips, including eyewitness testimony, are aimed at young people who tend to inform themselves more with Tiktok and Instagrarm than literary sources. The project was mentored by Hebrew University professor Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann. While professor Ebbrecht-Hartmann admits that the video clips don't meet pedagogical standards, he still hopes that they can inspire young people to avail themselves of more traditional sources: Video Library: Holocaust History Clips | SHOAH STORIES

Simon, Marie Jalowicz, Underground in Berlin: A Young Woman's Extraordinary Tale of Survival in the Heart of Nazi Germany. The incredible true story of a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust hiding In her home city of Berlin.

Snyder, Timothy, Black Earth. The Holocaust as History and Warning. Snyder analyzes the material causes behind the murder of Europe’s Jews and argues that such conditions could return today with similar catastrophic results.

 

Snyder, Timothy, Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin. A controversial work arguing that the destruction of the states of eastern Europe, that is, the elimination of their administrative structures, by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union paved the way for the murder of several million people.            

                                                                                                          

Stahl, Jerry, Nein, Nein, Nein!  One Man’s Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust. A satirical account of the author’s bus tour of Holocaust sites in Germany and eastern Europe.

 

Stone, Dan, The Holocaust. An Unfinished History. A comprehensive examination of not only the Holocaust itself, but also of how it was memorialized after the war, and how it still impacts our world today. Stone also deconstructs common myths of the Holocaust in his book. For example,  the murder of the European Jews was not primarily a highly efficient, industrially organized process, but a chaotic, bloody mess. Over a third of  Holocuaust victims never saw the inside of a cattle-car, a ghetto, a concentration camp or a gas chamber.  Instead they were marched out to forests where they were gunned down in enormous pits. 

 

Potsdam Conference

After the War: Churchill’s Defeat. BBC documentary on how the man now considered “the greatest Briton” was rejected by British voters after his great triumph in World War II, The 1945 UK General Election - YouTube.

Kanon, Joseph, The Good German. A murder mystery novel whose story takes place during the Potsdam Conference. 

McCullough, David, Truman. The best biography of America’s 33^rd president, includes three chapters focusing on Truman’s time in Potsdam. Exhaustively researched and beautifully written. 

Neiberg, Micheal, Potsdam. The End of World War II and the Remaking of Europe. Neiberg reappraises the conference and rejects the Cold-War narrative that the meeting ended in failure. His description of the city of Potsdam itself in the summer of 1945 is full of errors (Potsdam did not emerge from the war largely unscatherd), but that's not his focus. 

 

Prussia

Blanning, Tim, Frederick the Great. King of Prussia. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best biography of Frederick in any language. Blanning puts Frederick's homosexuality, a subject long ignored or denied by historians, at the center of his narrative. But the book also contains some solid social, cultural, economic and religious history too.  This is a must-read for anyone coming to Potsdam. 

Clark, Christopher, The Iron Kingdom, The Rise and Fall of Prussia. 1600-1947. A dense, nuanced, but well-written academic history of this remarkable state that achieved great-power status within a short, became the driving force behind  German unification, and then vanished after the Second World War.

 

Queer History

Beachy, Robert, Gay Berlin. Birthplace of a Modern Identity. The story of how Berlin became the site of the first gay liberation movment.

Eldorado. Netflix documentary showing how queer life flourished in Berlin in the 1920’s before being destroyed by the Nazis in the 1930’s.

Hájková, Anna, People without History are Dust.  Queer Desire in the Holocaust.

 Marhoefer, Laurie, Sex and the Weimar Republic. German Homosexual Emancipation and the Rise of the Nazis.  How Weimar Germany went from being a remarkably tolerant society  for queer people to a nightmare for them within just a few years.

Schillace, Brandy, The Intermediaries. A Weimar Story. A highly readable, but well-researched popular history of Magnus Hirschfeld, pioneer of queer rights, and his quest to replace homophobic  ignorance, prejudice, and repression with tolerance and civil.legal equality based on  science and reason.

Tremblay, Sebastien, A Badge of Injury: The Pink Triangle as Global Symbol of Memory. Tremblay relates how  the pink triangle went from a mark of persecution to an insignia of pride, while also describing the complex structures of memory  within the queer community regarding their suffering under the Nazis.  

 

Remembrance Culture in Germany

Port, Andrew I., Never Again. Germans and Genocide after the Holocaust.  Port is an expert for postwar German history and the former editor of the prestigious academic journal "Central European History.  In this book, he examines how the memory of the Holocaust has informed German responses to genocide since 1945, from the "Killing Fields" of Cambodia to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Interestingly, Germans on both sides of such issues, such as providing military aid to Ukraine, often use the memory of the Nazi Era to justify their arguments. The book also provides a nice overview of postwar German history in general, especially regarding West Germany. 

Zimmerer, Jürgen, Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness. Zimmerer is an esteemed scholar of international history and genocide studies. Here he pleads for an update of German remembrance culture. German acceptance of responsibility for remembering the Holocaust, Zimmerer argues, formed in the first decades following the Nazi era, a time when Germany had an ethnically homogenous society of people largely comprised of eye witnesses. Today, however, Germany is a multicultural society. Over a third of Germans today have a so-called "migrant background." Their famlies have no personal connection to the Third Reich and the Holocaust. Moreover, the centrality of the murder of the European Jews in German historical memory leaves little space for the stories of the large immigrant communities, such as the Turks, the Vietnamese, Africans and Syrians. Zimmerer calls for expanding German historical consciousness to incorporate these other narratives. He also urges Germany to address troubling related questions. As many point out the traditional remembrance culture to avoid confronting the legacy of atrocities committed in Germany's African colonies. Moroever, the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification is often seen as a kind of "happy end" to the country's tumultuous 20th century, but this ignores the ugly wave of racist attacks in both  former East and West Germany in the early 1990'. 

 

Second World War & Military History

Beevor, Anthony, The Second World War. An up-to-date overview of the conflict in Europe and the Pacific by one of the English-speaking world’s best known military historians. Unlike many other English-language popular historians, Beevor makes extensive use of  Soviet archival material. 

Chamberlain, Paul Thomas, Scorched Earth. A Global History of WWII. Revisionist interpretation of the conflict, which Chamberlain argues was not so much a struggle of democracies versus dictatorships as it was a great power conflict between declining empires and nascent ones. Thought-provoking and well worth reading, even if you don’t agree with the argument.

Davies, Norman, Europe at War. 1939-1945. No Simple Victory. Somewhat outdated, but still a good introduction to post-Cold War revisionist scholarship.

Dimbleby, Jonathan, How Stalin Won the War.  The towering significance of D-Day in the western historical memory has too long overshadowed the fact it was the Soviet Red Army that played the decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany. At the center of  Dimbleby's book is an account of  “Operation Bagration,” the Soviet summer offensive of 1944. This single operation effectively destroyed the Wehrmacht as an effective  fighting force and set the stage for Soviet dominance of central and eastern Europe until 1989/90.  Europe still feels the afterschocks of the conflict today.

Harrisville, David, The Virtuous Wehrmacht. Crafting the Myth of the German Soldier on the Front, 1941-1944. Harris deconstructs the long-held myth that, while the SS committed horrific war crimes, the German army fought honorably, adhering to the rules of war. While the German army's involvement in Nazi war crimes has been known in Germany for quite some time now, it is still not well-known in the Anglo-American world. With this book, Harrisville does much to close this knowledge gap. 

Hellbeck, Jochen, World Enemy No. 1. Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and the Fate of the Jews. In western historical memory, the Second World War remains primarily an Allied "crusade for democracy" with D-Day marking the "turning of the tide" agains the Nazis.  Recently, revisionist historians such as Brendan Simms have reinforced this view by arguing that Adolf Hitler viewed the Anglo-American world as his greatest enemy. In his book, historian Jochen Hellbeck reminds us that while Nazi Germany may have been defeated on the western front, it was annihilated on the eastern front. The Red Army suffered the highest casuaities but also inflicted the greatest losses on the Wehrmacht.  The destruction of  Soviet "Judeo-Bolshevism" remained Hitler's greatest ambition and was ready to pay any price to achieve his goal. This explains the savage nature of the war in the east, especially toward the native civilian and Jewish population. No Barbarossa, no Holocaust. Most academic historians have recognized this for a long time, but Hellbeck does an excellent job of presenting these insights to the wider public. A must-read for all those with a serious interest in the Second World War and the Holocaust!  

Holland, James, The War in the West (3 volumes).  This is  a highly  readable narrative history of the western theater of the Second World War. Those with special interest in  weaponry, training, tactics, and logistics of the conflict will find it rewarding. 

Lowe, Keith, The Fear and the Freedom. Why the Second World War Still Matters. Lowe shows how this conflict that ended generations ago still shapes the world we live in today. He also reveals the dangerous legacy of the many myths contaminating the historical memory of the war and of those who fought it, showing we should beware of unreflectively labeling its participants “heroes” or “monsters.”

McMeekin, Sean, Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II (2021). McMeekin argues persuasively that Stalin wanted a war between Nazi Germany and the western democracies to allow him to seize control of central and eastern Europe. What he didn’t want was his own murderous conflict with Hitler.  Despite the staggering losses of the Soviet Union, however,  the war ultimately gave Stalin more or less what he wanted.  McMeekin also shows how the United States unwittingly contributed to this expansive of Soviet power with it’s overly generous Lend-Lease program.

Military History Visualized (YouTube series: great resource for those interested in the technical aspects of military history – tactics, strategy, weaponry logistics– especially regarding WWII).

 Nolan, Cathal J., The Allure of Battle. A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost. Cathal makes a persuasive argument that almost all wars in history ultimately won by attrition..

Rees, Laurence, World War II Behind Closed Doors. Stalin, The Nazis and The West.  Rees recounts how the personal relationships among Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill impacted the course of the war and its outcome.  While the Anglo-Americans liberated western Europe,  Stalin's duplicity, aided by Roosevelt's naiviety and Churchill's comparative weakness, enabled the triumph of Soviet tyranny in eastern Europe.

Schmider, Klaus, Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation. Why Germany Declared War on the United States. Besides answering the question posed in the title, Schmider presents some surprising insights into Hitler’s views about America.

Stahel, David, Hitler’s Panzer Generals: Guderian, Höpner, Reinhardt and Schmidt Unguarded. How the self-promoting skills of top German officers played a bigger role in their career advancement and their fame than their talents did.

Stahel, David, Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East. Stahel makes a persuasive argument that Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was doomed from the outset. Having gone through so many men and so much material in rapid summer advance, the German military found itself by the fall in a war of attrition it could never win.

We Have Ways of Making You Talk.  (Podcast): Two Brits, historian James Holland and comedian Al Murray, engage in informative and entertaining discussion of World War Two, often along with celebrated writers and historians as guests.

 

Third Reich

 Evans, Richard, The Hitler Conspiracies. The Third Reich and the Paranoid Imagination. Not only a great source for the history of Nazi Germany, but also a lucid analysis of how conspiracy theories work in general.

Evans, Richard, The Third Reich (3 Volumes). The best English-language overview of the subject by one of the world’s foremost experts.

Evans, Richard, The Third Reich in History and Memory.  This collection of Evan’s book reviews gives readers a good look at the current state of the research as well as the contemporary controversies within the field.

Fallada, Hans, Alone in Berlin. A novel based on the true story of a middle-aged Berlin couple that resisted the Nazis and paid for it with their lives. The author based his novel on the actual Gestapo records of the case. 

Görtemaker, Heike, Eva Braun: Life with Hitler. The biography of a woman often talked about but little known. Görtemaker deconstructs the myth that the people in Hitler’s private life didn’t know about the crimes he was committing. This also goes for Eva, who was anything but the naive "dumb blond" of popular memory.

Harris, Robert, Fatherland. This bestselling novel, based on the premise of a Nazi victory in the Second World War, provides not only detailed descriptions  Berlin lo during the Nazi-era, but of how of how the city would have looked like had Hitler triumphed.

Hitler’s Skull & Teeth, National Geographic with Mark Benecke (YouTube video). Ignore the Japanese subtitles and see how a celebrity German forensic pathologist examines the physical remains of Adolf Hitler to determine exactly how he died.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgdzRzVO ShQ&rco=1.)

Kershaw, Ian, Hitler. A Biography. This two-volume work, highly regarded by academic historians, analyzes the charismatic relationship between the Führer and the German people..

Longerich. Peter, Hitler. A Biography. This book is much more recent than Kershaw’s and is also more of a traditional narrative history.

Michalczyk, John J., Et. Al., Hitler’s Mein Kampf. A Prelude to Genocide. Essays by several scholars analyzing how Hitler constructed an identity for himself in his notorious autobiography-manifesto.

Nazi Television German documentary with English subtitles and voiceover: Nazi Television Footage (1935) w/English Subtitles.

Ohler, Norman, Blitzed. Drugs in Nazi Germany. A look at how drug use by Adolf Hitler, other top Nazis, and German troops impacted the course of the Second World War. Ohler’s style is somewhat sensationalistic and some of his arguments are questionable, but his book shines a light on an otherwise neglected aspect of the history of the Third Reich.

Ross, Steven, Hitler in Los Angeles. The true story of how Jewish Hollywood film producers thwarted the attempt of American Nazis to establish a stronghold in southern California.

Stargard, Nicholas, The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939-1945. An examination of how the German people experienced the Second World War.

 

Ukraine

Plokhy, Serhii, The Russo-Ukrainian War. The Return of History. A guide to the war by one of Ukraine’s foremost historians.

Snyder, Timothy, The History of Ukraine. (Yale lecture series on YouTube). I highly recommend these lectures to anyone  who wants to better understand Ukraine and Russia's murderous invasion of a country that posed no threat to Russian security.  Synder explains how, despite Vladimir Putin's claims, Ukraine is a nation with its own history. Ukrainians and Russians have common historical, linguistic, and cultural roots, but they are different peoples and have been for centuries. (For example, the Ukrainian language is closer to Polish than Russian.) Snyder also teaches his students how to think historically, and explains why history is so vital for functioning democracies. Check out the first lecture and see for yourself!

 

Urban Studies & Architecture

Filler, Martin, Makers of Modern Architecture. From Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry. These essays by the long-time New York Review of Books critic provide a nice overview of the most important architects of the 20^th and early 21^st centuries as well as their greatest works.

Goldberger, Paul, Why Architecture Matters. Architecture affects each one of us every single day, but hardly any of us are aware of it. This book will change that for you.

Kunstler, James Howard, The Geography of Nowhere. The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape. How modern architecture, city planning and automotive culture have ruined many American cities and what can be done to improve them.

Wilson, Ben, Metropolis. A History of the City. Humankind’s Greatest Invention.  A fascinating look at how cities have driven historical progress.

 

Bücher auf Deutsch

 Wenn du Deutsch lesen kannst, dann hier meine Top-3 Empfehlungen für 2025:

Bisky, Jens. Berlin. Biografie einer großen Stadt. Großartige, hochaktuelle Geschichte Berlins von hoher literarischer Qualität.

Tkalec, Marita, Geschichte Berlins in 60 Objekten. Was haben Elche und Kondome mit der Geschichte Berlins zu tun? Lese mal dieses Buch und finde es heraus!

Fallada, Hans, Jeder stirbt für sich allein. Für mich bleibt dieser Roman aus dem Jahr 1947 eine der besten fiktiven Darstellungen von Berlin in der NS-Zeit. Bas Buch basiert auf der wahren Geschichte eines Berliner Ehepaares, das Widerstand leistete, und dann von der Gestapo gejagt, verhaftet und hingerichtet wurde.

 

Recommended Films and Series

Alone in Berlin. Film adaption of the anonymous diary of a woman who described her experiences during the Battle of Berlin and the immediate aftermath of the war.

Barry Lyndon. Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation of the novel by William Makepeace Thackary. The scenes taking place on the Berlin boulevard "Unter den Linden" were shot outside the New Palace in Sanssouci Park.

The Bridge of Spies. Steven Spielberg’s dramatization of the most famous captured spy exchange of the Cold War. If you come to Potsdam, I can also show you the actual bridge, where the spy swap in the film also takes place. 

The Boys in the Boat. George Clooney’s film adaptation of the book by Daniel James Brown about the US rowing team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. I personally found this to be a dull film, but others like it.

Charité. Dramatic series focusing on the lives of several generations of pioneering doctors, surgeons, and medicinal researchers at Germany’s most famous hospital.

Christiane F. We Children of the Zoo Station. Cult classic about a teenage heroin addict living amidst the decadence and decay of West Berlin in the late 1970’s.

Downfall.  The most commercially successful film about the last days of Hitler. Controversial, not completely historically accurate, but well worth watching.

Eldorado. Netflix documentary showing how queer life flourished in Berlin before it was crushed by the Nazis.

Elser. Biopic about Georg Elser, the lone assassin who carried out the first of many attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler.

Goodbye Lenin! A comedy about the fall of the Berlin Wall and its impact on an East Berlin family.

How to Become a German (BBC documentary about a British journalist couple who move to Germany and “live like Germans” for several months.

Kleo. A comedy-action series about a former Stasi assassin out to revenge herself on the former colleagues who betrayed her. Over-the-top, Tarantino-like action and violence, absurd historical premises, but good for understanding how East and West Germany viewed unification from very different perspectives.

Look Who’s Back. A black satire based on the premise of Hitler entering a time-warp  when he commits suicide,  reappearing in Germany today, and becoming a talk-show host. The film is very funny. However, the unscripted scenes with non-actors are disturbing, because they reveal that racism and authoritarism are also "back" in Germany. 

The Lives of Others. Oscar-winning film about Stasi infiltration of everyday life in East Germany. While the film’s historical accuracy is debateable, it still does a good job of presenting the pervasiveness of state surveillance in East German society.

1983. Drama spy series set against the background of the “Able Archer” NATO maneuvers, which almost touched off World War III.

The Man with the Iron Heart. Biopic about Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy leader of the SS and a major architect of the Nazi system of terror and repression in Germany and occupied Europe.

Our Mothers, Our Fathers. Drama series about how a group of young Berliners experience the rise of the Nazis and the Second World War. Controversial for its sympathetic portrayal of ordinary Germans at the time but well worth watching.

Stalingrad. A German view of the legendary battle.  Probably the biggest production of any war movie, and often praised for its gritty realism and historical accuracy.  

Stauffenberg. A German take on Colonel Klaus von Stauffenberg, the officer at the center of the army bomb plot to kill Adolf Hitler ; a much more accurate film than Tom Cruise's “Valkyrie”.

The Tiger. A German World-War-Two drama obviously inspired partly by "Saving Private Ryan," and partly by "Jacob's Ladder." A German tank crew on the eastern front must use their Tiger to go behind enemy lines to rescue a German officer. The tank seen in the film is not a real Tiger, which is not surprising, since the only remaining original Tiger in the world is at the Tank Museum in Bovington, England.  That Tiger can be seen in the Brad Pitt film "Fury." What you see in "The Tiger" is a reconstructed hull mounted on a German Leopard-1 chassis. The premise of the film, sending a 57-ton collosus on a "secret mission" is at first absurd, but make sense in the end. Personally, I found the ending absurd as well, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone.  The film  is a psychological drama taking place amidst the brutality of the Soviet-German war. In that sense, it's not bad.  So grab the popcorn and enjoy "The Tiger."  Just don't expect a historically accurate war movie like "Stalingrad" (see above). 

Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War. Excellent history of the Cold War, and how that conflict still impacts our world today, as in the Ukraine War.

Unorthodox. The story of a young woman from New York City who fled to Berlin to escape her Ultra-Orthodox family.

Weißensee. Dramatic series about an East Berlin family.

When Britain Said No. BBC documentary about Churchill’s 1945 electoral defeat.

Wings of Desire. Classic film by the director Wim Wenders; shot in Berlin just before the Wall fell.

Zone of Interest. Oscar-winning film about the commandant of Auschwitz, his wife, and their attempt to live a “normal” family life with their children just outside the walls of the death camp.