Nazis

The ambassador’s daughter bent on betrayal

16 November 2024 9:00 am

When the young Martha Dodd arrived at the American embassy in Berlin in 1933 she cared nothing about politics. By the time she left four years later, she was a committed Soviet spy

An outcast among outcasts: Katerina, by Aharon Appelfeld, reviewed

14 September 2024 9:00 am

A peasant girl flees her abusive home, to find happiness working for Jewish families in the lush Carpathian countryside – until anti-Semitic pogroms change everything irrevocably

How could Hitler have had so many willing henchmen?

17 August 2024 9:00 am

Richard J. Evans tackles one of the Third Reich’s great mysteries. Why did so many apparently ‘normal’ Germans end up as perpetrators of mass atrocities?

What did Britain really gain from the daring 1942 Bruneval raid?

10 August 2024 9:00 am

The night-time dismantling of a German radar site in Normandy was a feat of skill, courage and imagination. But there was little improvement to Bomber Command casualties as a result

Hero and villain: The Two Loves of Sophie Strom, by Sam Taylor, reviewed

27 April 2024 9:00 am

A Jewish teenager is the victim of a Nazi arson attack in 1933. Alternative scenarios see him joining the French Resistance, and being recruited by the SS

The problem with westerners seeking oriental enlightenment

27 January 2024 9:00 am

Those chasing after blissful satori never seem interested in the people who actually live in Asia. They want to float in higher spheres

Dangerous secrets: Verdigris, by Michele Mari, reviewed

20 January 2024 9:00 am

A lonely teenager on holiday in Italy befriends his grandparents’ elderly gardener and slowly coaxes out his painful memories of betrayals and reprisals during the war

The Duke of Windsor had much to be thankful for

25 November 2023 9:00 am

Defending the ‘maligned’ Duke, Jane Marguerite Tippett fails to mention how hard officials worked to suppress evidence of his treachery and prevent a court martial in 1940

Satirical pulp: The Possessed, by Witold Gombrowicz, reviewed

21 October 2023 9:00 am

The 1939 Gothic pastiche which the author was at pains to distance himself from is now considered a delightfully devious work of Polish modernism

Passports out of hell

5 August 2023 9:00 am

Roger Moorhouse describes how various diplomats stationed in Europe risked their positions to issue as many forged ‘tickets to safety’ to Jews as possible

Rewriting history

22 July 2023 9:00 am

If you don’t subscribe to every last detail of the LGBTQ+ agenda, then basically you are a Nazi. This was…

Lies about the Katyn massacre added insult to the horror

17 June 2023 9:00 am

Alan Philps reveals how many western journalists, duped by Stalinist propaganda, rushed to blame the Nazis for the Soviet atrocity

Chance encounters

3 June 2023 9:00 am

The fates of members of a Jewish family depend on accidental meetings, the boarding of a ship or the ring of a phone in this complex fable woven from 20th-century history

Love in the shadow of the Nazi threat

3 June 2023 9:00 am

Florian Illies describes the charged atmosphere of Europe in the early 1930s, as people grew increasingly desperate to celebrate their last chance of freedom

Was it murder?

20 May 2023 9:00 am

In a beautifully told novel, O’Callaghan focuses on the mysterious death of the footballer Matthias Sindelar in 1939 – possibly as a result of defying Hitler

This production needs more dosh: Good, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, reviewed

22 October 2022 9:00 am

Good, starring David Tennant, needs more dosh spent on it. The former Doctor Who plays John, a literary academic living…

The Osnabrück witch trials echo down the centuries

8 October 2022 9:00 am

Absent mothers resonate in the latest offerings from two heavyweights of French literature. Getting Lost is the diary kept by…

The unpleasant truth about Joseph Roth

1 October 2022 9:00 am

The Radetzky March must be one of the dozen greatest European novels – but its author was frighteningly unpleasant, says Philip Hensher

Nazi on the run: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, by Olivier Guez, reviewed

27 August 2022 9:00 am

Who would have thought that someone would write a novel about Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor and infamous experimenter on…

The invisible man: The Glass Pearls, by Emeric Pressburger, reviewed

13 August 2022 9:00 am

Not all Germans were swayed by Hitler, but the majority were. Karl Braun, the fugitive Nazi doctor at the heart…

Has the role of resistance in the second world war been exaggerated?

26 February 2022 9:00 am

When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…

Eugenics will never work — thankfully

5 February 2022 9:00 am

The creation of a master race is an ancient idea which, thankfully, can never work, says Sam Leith

The dark story behind Bambi, the book Hitler banned

22 January 2022 9:00 am

The extent of Walt Disney’s grasp of the natural world remains unclear. After the Austrian author Felix Salten sold the…

Robert Harris on Boris Johnson, cancel culture and rehabilitating Chamberlain

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain