Kitty Schmidt's Berlin brothel has been the subject of lurid speculation that its owner was forced by the Nazis to spy on her clients for evidence of subversion and disloyalty. A new book tries to untangle the more complicated history of commercial sex in the Weimar and Nazi eras, but struggles against the pervasiveness of myth.
Burkhard Bilger's memoir "Fatherland" examines how his family dealt with the reality that his grandfather had been a Nazi party chief in his Alsace hometown—but not, apparently, a very effective one.
Requests made by Texas's Attorney General for information about gender change requests on drivers' licenses and other documents alarmed transgender advocates because the data could support an official list of trans Texans at a moment when the group faces public vilification. History shows that innocent bureaucratic records can be used oppressively.
A new history of the personal experiences of the residents of a small Bavarian village show that, while Nazism was driven by ideologues, it was able to maintain power because the personal risks of nonsupport convinced many to put their moral objections aside.
While much of Nazism was associated with destruction, it's racist ideological core was also preoccupied with creating or restoring racial purity, including through the Lebensborn program which viewed officers of the SS as the fathers of a new Aryan vanguard.
Lion Feuchtwanger's "The Oppermans" captures the complexity of a dilemma faced by German Jews in 1933: whether a society has become sufficiently hostile to a minority group to force its members to leave.
Major American institutions are loath to acknowledge that they enabled the rehabilitation of Nazi scientists and industrialists to benefit from their knowledge or wealth.
The concept of a new German Reich emerged almost immediately after the fall of Hitler, and reflected the incomplete effort to remove the far-right from German politics as well as the growth of an international authoritarian movement.
2022 is the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ legislation in America, making the historical persecution of sexual minorities even more important to remember.
Far from being guardrails for democracy, Weimar courts were implacably hostile to it, and paved the way for its overthrow by leniency toward right-wing political violence.
The Roosevelt administration's refusal to accept large numbers of Jewish refugees was of a piece with a pattern of diplomatic and economic solicitousness toward Nazi Germany.
The Long Island town of Yaphank was eager to erase the memory of Camp Siegfried, which closed after the American entry into World War II. Playwright Bess Wohl wants to use it as a warning about the seductive potential of ideology.
Hitler's lesson after a token prison sentence for organizing a coup attempt was to work to seize power through legal means with the support of ideologically sympathetic courts. Non-MAGA conservatives appear to be missing important lessons.
In some respects, the January 6 attack resembles the failed 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. What should concern us is what could happen if the Justice Department decides to give similarly lenient treatment to the Capitol conspirators and their leader.
The posthumous release of Nancy Dougherty's biography of the Nazi secret police chief emphasizes his bureaucratic cunning. Does it minimize his ideological commitment to Nazism, or the crimes he carried out?
The Polish government referenced a recently completed report documenting the costs to Poland of war, and argued that reconciliation between the nations could best be served by a payment.
"If Freud himself, so attuned to the dark undercurrents of human behavior and so critical of our wishful illusions, proved unable to think clearly even as his country became unrecognizable around him and as nightmare after nightmare became real, what are our chances now?"
Invoking Chamberlain and appeasement is never a particularly useful response to an international crisis. Do the efforts, albeit unsuccessful, of a small group of British diplomatic outsiders to "civilize" leading Nazis, point in a better direction?
