the Third Reich

Female Nazi supporters greet Hitler after his election as chancellor in 1933. Credit: Getty Images

Swept away by Hitler’s charisma: German women gush over the Führer

23 June 2018 9:00 am

The distinguished historian Konrad Jarausch’s new book is a German narrative, told through the stories of ordinary people who lived…

The maestro could hear if a single player was doing something wrong, even in the most noisy tutti

The morality of conducting

5 August 2017 9:00 am

Now he is the greatest figure for me, in the world. [Toscanini is] the last proud, noble, unbending representative (with…

Ferdinand Porsche, the inventor of the Doodlebug and the Panzer tank, was treated with rare deference by Hitler, bordering on idolatry

Designing the swimming car, the Doodlebug and the Panzer tank was all in a day’s work for Ferdinand Porsche

7 November 2015 9:00 am

The aggressive character of the famous German sports car, in a sort of sympathetic magic, often transfers itself to owner-drivers.…

Hans Asperger at the Children’s Clinic of the University of Vienna Hospital c.1940

Hero or collaborator?

12 September 2015 9:00 am

Simon Baron-Cohen wonders whether the humane Hans Asperger may finally have betrayed the vulnerable children in his care in Nazi-occupied Vienna

Hitler with the Goebbels family in the late 1930s

The devil’s devoted disciple

9 May 2015 9:00 am

It is ironic that this weighty biography of Hitler’s evil genius of a propaganda minister is published on the day…

The undiscovered country: ‘Germany? Where is it?’, asked Goethe and Schiller in a collaborative poem. ‘I don’t know where to find such a place.’ Above: ‘Goethe in the Roman Campagna’, 1787, by Johann Tischbein, currently on show at the British Museum

In search of the Fatherland

13 December 2014 9:00 am

As I grew up half German in England in the 1970s, my German heritage was confined to the few curios…