Historian & writer.
Author of El Mundo Top 10 Best Seller 'Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi' (Basic/OUP/Taurus) & Prof. of History & International Affairs
"Once Putin’s song of seduction to create an empire irresistible to the peoples of the Russian orbit had failed, a brutal & bloody game of thrones,Russian-style, was the only option left to him."
Here is my essay for Haaretz on two competing visions for the future, leading to war
1/2 Hermann Beck's 'Before the Holocaust' deserves the widest readership possible. It demonstrates that antisemitic violence in 1933 started much earlier than previously believed,that it was more widespread, & that many Conservatives & leading Protestants willingly colluded in it
1/ Normally I resist Hitler comparisons w. modern leaders, as they tend to be facile, & I think that Putin is best understood through the lens of 18th&19th c. Russia. Yet his annexation speech follows the same structure & uses the same justifications as Hitler’s 1920s speeches…
Amazing to see how Berlin transformed itself politically betw. 1990 & today from a city divided by the Cold War to a 'normal' city in which people vote for the Greens in the inner city & centre-right parties in the suburbs.
For maps showing over time, see:
1/ The fall of German historical literacy, attitudes towards Russian/Soviet aggression & the war in Ukraine: Here is a short 🧵on diminishing German engagement w. past Russian/Soviet aggression, which seems a specifically German phenomenon, if ngram data is to be trusted
„Es ist ein gr.Vorteil, wenn Kinder mehrere Sprachen sprechen können &man soll sie..dafür loben…Wer…eine Schülerin bestraft, weil sie in der Pause türkisch spricht, hat im Schuldienst nichts verloren. Es ist nichts anderes als bürokratische Xenophobie“
What unresolved mystery is lurking behind this public announcement?
Why would a German district court try to investigate the death of a soldier during WWI? I am intrigued. 👇
No, this is wrong. It would be correct to state that the Holocaust could only emerge and be implemented in the context of an imperialist war for Lebensraum, BUT Lebensraum was not the justification for the Shoah.
"The fact that the Holocaust can’t be explained by theories of imperialism" is an absolutely insane thing for anyone, especially a German, to suggest. Lebensraum was the justification for basically everything the Nazis did, including the Holocaust
Liebe
@Tagesschau
, wenn die Fehlertoleranz bei Ihrer Sonntagsfrage 1,4-3,1 % liegt und die SPD um 2 % abgesackt ist, wieso ist dann diese 2%-Veränderung eine Ihrer Hauptnachrichten und woraus leiten Sie ab, dass der Zuspruch für die SPD abgenommen habe?
@BorisJohnson
Dear
@BorisJohnson
, I applaud your concern for the road safety of female cyclists! I hope you will thus join me in campaigning for Britain to stay in the UK, so that one day the streets of London will become as safe for female cyclists as those in the rest of the EU.
V. excited to see that ZDF's new 10-pt documentary series about the rise & fall of National Socialism is finally being aired.
Put together by a group of brilliant filmmaker's incl.
@mpeterdavidson
, it is available in both English & German on ZDF's website:
“Der Judenstern ist als solcher kein Symbol der Vernichtung.” - Liebe
@cicero_online
Redaktion, diese Aussage ist im NS-Zusammenhang falsch, unverantwortlich und ethisch nicht vertretbar. Möchte der Cicero wirklich für solche Sätze stehen?
1/ I strongly disagree with Stephan Malinowski’s attempted hit job of
@dirkmoses
' „Nach dem Genozid“ both for its discourteous tone and for its false claims.
Great to see ‚Fascism in America: Past and Present‘, our new book on fascism & other non-fascist homegrown American extremist beliefs, being discussed in The Guardian
Ganz schlimm findet Andreas Wirsching
@RichterHedwig
s Feststellung , dass "das NS-Regime auf die partizipativen und sogar auf die revolutionär-demokratischen Bestände zurück[griff]"
Aber da
@RichterHedwig
doch vollkommen recht.
Bosnien-Herzegowina braucht endlich ein neues demokratisches Wahlrecht, das aus dem Land ethnischer Spaltung einen Staat gleicher Bürgerinnen+Bürger macht. Die Pläne des HR Christian Schmidt entsprechen weder diesem Leitprinzip noch dem jüngsten Beschluss des Bundestages. 🇧🇦🇪🇺
Very excited to receive a copy of Wieland Giebel's 'Warum ich Nazi wurde' in the mail. It is really odd that Abel's essays were not published before. I just wished their publication was politically less timely than it is ...
1/2: I am thrilled to announce that I will be the joining the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as a Visiting Fellow for the academic year 2022/23
@HooverInst
...
1/ I am delighted to report that the Playmobil History Miniature World in Hanover does not feature a display relating to my field of primary expertise ...
Just saw this on Facebook. Very exciting to see that 'Als die Demokratie starb' has already hit the book stores in Germany. The book will officially be out this coming Monday.
1/2 Why did the Ottoman ruling elites lose the plot during the Greek revolution?
@ozanozavci1
's fascinating answer to this q. points to “a new power – public opinion” in fuelling feelings of insecurity in int'l affairs & thus in transforming int'l politics
Here is my interview with FAZ on Christmas during wartime - in WWI, WWII & in 2022 - & on how religion has the power to fuel both an orthopraxy of destruction and extermination, & an orthopraxy of repair from conflict. Focusing on the latter will help create a better world.
2/ As Hitler did in the 1920s, Putin’s speech is quasi-millennial & quasi-post-colonial in character, laying out the reasons for the current mysery - Anglo-Saxon deception - & laying out a way of how the world can be restored & how sovereignty & a life in liberty can be restored
@misik
@PBahners
Sollte man Kurz nicht vielleicht richtig zitieren, egal was man von ihm hält? - "We Don't Need to Destroy the Global Economy to Save the Planet. Instead, We Can Strengthen Both"
🎶 '“Arglwydd, trugarha. Crist, trugarha.'
Y Kyrie Eleison gan
@Bryn_Terfel
oedd y tro cyntaf i’r Gymraeg chwarae rhan yng ngherddoriaeth seremoni'r coroni.
Laut Andreas Wirsching ist diese Feststellung von
@RichterHedwig
unsäglich:"Nationalsozialismus entstand aus einer Demokratie und aus weit über hundert Jahre alten demokratischen Traditionen"
Wieso sie unsäglich sein soll,teilt uns Herr Wirsching nicht mit
Like Hitler, Putin runs through European history of the last several hundred years to reveal purport patterns of Anglosaxon and Western deception, aimed at revealing the ‘real’ pattern of Western behaviour
Ein Hexentanz mit der AfD würde die Union in den Abgrund stürzen:
1/ "Mein Rat ist, dass eine Zusammenarbeit selbst auf kommunaler Ebene ein faustischer Pakt wäre. Er hätte einen Hexentanz zur Folge, bei dem die CDU zugrunde gehen würde."
#KeinHexentanz
It’s always exciting to hold a new book for the first time in one’s hands! “Als die Demokratie starb” was published today, with contributions by
@nfergus
@beatricedegraaf
@RichterHedwig
Robert Gellately
@dziblatt
, Hermann Beck,Ulrich Schlie…
1/2 The most timely paper of today at
#theGSA2023
- as we are trying to figure out the best policy response to the dreadful events unfolding now - is
@Lorena_De_Vita
’s paper on Israelpolitik in the ‘Germany Diplomacy’ panel.
1/ To understand Russia’s staged referenda, it is worth looking back at Nazi elections. In a forthcoming book,
@RichterHedwig
looks at Nazi plebiscites & I look at the orthopraxy of National Socialist illiberal democracy of National Socialism as a political religion ...
End/ Here is the end of the section from my book on Hitler's radicalisation & quasi-millennial vision about the future about the use of purported Anglo-Saxon deception.
Putin's speech is well worth reading in full.
5/ The finale of Putin’s speech is classic 1920s Hitlerite again, laying out again in quasi-millennial, quasi-postcolonial terms how life in liberty - Hitler would have said ‘life under the sun of liberty’ - will be possible again
On the 80th anniversary of
#operationbarbarossa
, it is worth looking on how Germany's war of annihilation in the East became possible. My own interpretation has points of convergence & divergence with those offered by
@juergenzimmerer
&
@dirkmoses
:
4/ And Putin’s speech chillingly refers to the use of nuclear weapons seemingly to reveal the barbarity of their use but in reality laying the groundwork for justifying future use of nuclear weapons by Russia - it was after all the West who set a ‘precedent’ in deploying them
Die NL-Wahlergebnisse sollten eine Warnung an alle sein, die meinen, es bedürfe keine Brandmauer gegenüber der AfD.
Die Koalition zerbrach, als die regierende VVD AfD-light-Positionen wahltaktisch übernahm.
Profitiert hat nur das Original: die PVV mit ihren AfD-Positionen.
Why did Anne Frank have to leave Frankfurt & why did Amsterdam provide a safe haven to Anne for several years? How does answering these q's help create more resilient democracies?
It was such a delight to try answer these q's at my old school, the Anne-Frank-Gymnasium in Halver.
Ich saß mal mit Antje Vollmer auf einem Podium.Als sie sagte,daß es wg der Geschichte nie gg Russland gehen dürfte,gab es tosenden Beifall.Als ich entgegnete,daß wir wg der Geschichte vielleicht einmal Polen militärisch gg Russland beistehen müßten,herrschte eisige Stille im Saal
Visiting Koblenz is always a delight - the buildings are stunning, the footpath from the Federal Archive back to downtown Koblenz always well maintained, and Koblenz caters well to day visitors with heavy luggage …
The inability to think strategically of German intellectuals signing letters of this kind is astounding. The letter fails to define the conditions under which negotiations,consistent with the letter's goal of checkingRussian aggression,can be successful...
1/ The
@UniFreiburg
has recently published a book that puts forward ideas that - even if intentionally not antisemitic and anti-Protestant in character - that in my perception build on anti-Semitic, anti-Judaic, & anti-Protestant motifs
Just finished reading Sylke Wunderlich's 'Propaganda des Terrors' which dissects how abhorrently masterful the Nazis were in advertising their regime:
Many of the posters included in the book, I had never seen. tbc.
Excited to see that The Smithsonian Magazine has picked up my essay on how "Hitler created a fictional persona to recast himself as Germany's savior" via
@SmithsonianMag
@ThePublicSquare
@BasicBooks
@ennolenze
„Es ist die Energie &gleichzeitige Ernsthaftigkeit,die Enno auszeichnet, der Wille,vor Ort zu sein & daraus etwas entstehen zu lassen…Enno tut sehr viel dafür,dass nicht vergessen wird,was in der Ukraine,aber auch in ganz Europa auf dem Spiel steht.“
@ronzheimer
über
@ennolenze
1/ Ever since writing
#HitlersFirstWar
, I have really wished to visit the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. Today, I have finally done so.
It was here that one of Hitler's closest aides, Fritz Wiedemann secretly met British intelligence on Nov 27, 1940 to offer his services.
1/ What happened 79yrs ago today in the Dutch village of Putten, AND crucially what happened in the 15yrs that followed,deserves to be remembered more in the Engl-speaking world,both to honor the victims of the Putten Raid & to inspire thought on how repair after conflict is psbl
1/ The thwarted alleged plot to overthrow the German gov't has echoes of the Hitler Putsch & of 'Aufbau'
It centres around
a) the fmr head of the dynasty once ruling 1 of the German Reich's states,
b) a paratrooper, 2278th in line to succeed King Charles III,&
c) a AfD politician
Very exciting to receive the first copies of the special paperback edition of 'Als die Demokratie starb', brought out by some of the Landeszentralen für politische Bildung &
@herder_verlag
One of the frustrations of trying to finish my new book on Nazi disinformation warfare in GB is the inaccessibility of crucial files from the Royal Archive.
Let's hope that Charles III will feel inspired by Willem-Alexander's decision to open WWII files:
Here is
@nielsdrost
&
@beatricedegraaf
‘s eye-opening article on how Putin’s eschatological engagement w. Russian Orthodoxy &the Tsarist past fuelled a personal &collective radicalization process that paved the way to the war in UKR
If you want to know how Hitler used a photo op in front of a church for electoral gain, there is no need to use photoshopped fake images. Use this one: This is from 'Hitler as No One Knows Him', a propaganda book issued in 1932, as Hitler ran to become German president.
I feel flattered that the Weser Kurier considers me as being still young: „Thomas Weber (Aberdeen), Vertreter einer jüngeren Historiker-Generation, urteilt gar: …“
I feel all rejuvenated.
Really thrilled to be joining as a Member the Security History Network. Looking forward to continuing to contribute to the
@SecHistNetwork
and to be inspired by its members and its events.
‘For Hitler, antisemitism and genocide were the solution to a specific existential crisis’ concludes
@Thomas__Weber
at his lecture for the SHN lecture series.
'“Germany’s reputation for excessive militarism,” ..is a phenomenon that historians need to explain, sociologically&anthropologically,without falling into determinist interpretations [&without] lazy bashings of the Sonderweg thesis',writes
@DavidMotadel
Here is my favourite photo of the end of WWII, taken right after the liberation of the Lodz Ghetto, which I incl. in 'Lodz Ghetto Album'.
Helen Aronson - the woman admiringly at the accordeon player - recognised herself in the photo and introduced herself to me ...
@LazyPears
@PBahners
@RichterHedwig
Viel wichtiger finde ich über den unangemessenen Ton des Artikels zu sprechen. Wirsching stellt das 'Standing' von Hedwig Richter infrage. Wir können aber nur darüber streiten, wer Recht hat, wenn wir nicht einander ein 'Standing' absprechen. Nur so gibt es neue Erkenntnis.
2/ Since the mid-2000s, there seems to have been a steep fall in engagement w. the darker side of the Russian past. This is also supported by falling engagement with 'Stalin' and the June 17, 1953 uprising.
1/ “Weimar has many lessons to teach. Our own blindness—is the most disturbing and the most pertinent.” -
@M_Ignatieff
in 'Als die Demokratie starb'
Very exciting to see that this week's
@spiegelonline
features an excerpt from 'Als die Demokratie starb'
1/ Chris Clark on what 1848 has to do with us: “We have seen symptoms of instability …– that recall the volatility of 1848. If a revolution is coming, it may look something like 1848: poorly planned, dispersed, patchy and bristling with contradictions.”
Save the date: 'Die Krise der Demokratie: 1933 & 2023'
Please join
@beatricedegraaf
& me online on 23 Jan for our TAZ Talk (in German),moderated by
@JafJan
,on existential crises of democracy, &on 'Als die Demokratie starb' (
@herder_verlag
)
@tazgezwitscher
10/ This may help to explain why those of us who have invoked past Russian/Soviet aggression for years to warn against Putin were at best met with stony silence, as happened, e.g., to me when in 2013 when I made the case for deterrence in Berlin
2/2
@RichterHedwig
's chapter on Nazi elections & plebiscites, & my own chapter on 'National Socialist Illiberal Democracy' - detailing how 'illiberal democracy' & Nazism converge & one can easily slide into the other, elaborate further on this point.
Intriguing talk today at the
@HooverInst
History Working Group with
@beatricedegraaf
on 'Security as Experiment' - on the post-1815 blueprint for collective European security.
Based on BdG's 'Fighting Terror after Napoleon',which will be awarded the Arenberg Prize next month.
Quiz of the Day: Does this picture depict
a) Smolensk, USSR, c. 1983, or
b) Aberdeen, Scotland, c. March 3, 2018 after 2 inches of snowfall?
The winner of the contest will win my entire stock of deep fried Mars bars & cans of Irn-Bru
My
@NZZ
Interview about the role of crisis perception as a driver of radicalization and political breakdown & resilience in the past and present. Thank you,
@thomaszaugg
for the interview:
"Eine offene Gesellschaft muss sich zu verteidigen wissen, und in diesem Fall bedeutet es, den Leserinnen und Lesern mitzuteilen, dass sie hier keinen gewohnt hochwertigen Artikel, sondern krasse Propaganda vor sich haben." - Da hat
@nminkmar
sehr Recht!
Is the embracing of an apocalyptic vision of Orthodox Christianity the most recent or the final stage of Putin’s radicalization?This is one of the q‘s discussed in the event with
@beatricedegraaf
on
‚Understanding Putin’s Apocalyptical Radicalization‘ at the
@HooverInst
& CREEES