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Christopher R. Browning

Christopher R. Browning is Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of Ordinary Men: Reserve Police ­Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. (July 2020)

IN THE REVIEW

Who Resisted the Nazis?

Members of the French resistance erecting barriers in Paris to obstruct the German military as Allied forces approached the city, August 1944

The Resistance in Western Europe, 1940–1945

by Olivier Wieviorka, translated from the French by Jane Marie Todd, with a foreword by Robert O. Paxton

Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940–1945

by Ronald C. Rosbottom
Waging resistance against the Third Reich during World War II and writing the history of that resistance afterward have both been inextricably tied to wider political issues. The shifting wartime relationships among the three major ideological camps of democracy, fascism, and communism certainly affected the various resistance movements, as did …

Giving In to Hitler

German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, German chancellor ­Adolf Hitler, Paul Schmidt, an interpreter, and Nevile Henderson, the British ambassador to Berlin, at a meeting in Berchtesgaden to discuss Hitler’s demand that Czechoslovakia cede the Sudetenland to Germany, September 1938

Appeasement: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill, and the Road to War

by Tim Bouverie

The Bell of Treason: The 1938 Munich Agreement in Czechoslovakia

by P.E. Caquet
When the Czech government, faced with an imminent German attack and total abandonment by its Western democratic allies in September 1938, accepted without military resistance the annexation by Germany of one fifth of the country as decreed by the Munich Agreement between Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, the angry, …

The Fake Threat of Jewish Communism

A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

by Paul Hanebrink
One of the great merits of Paul Hanebrink’s A Specter Haunting Europe is its demonstration of how Europe’s most pervasive and powerful twentieth-century manifestation of anti-Semitic thought—the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism—emerged before the rise of National Socialism and has continued to have a curious life long after the Holocaust and the defeat of Nazi Germany. Hanebrink’s approach is not to repeat what he considers an error of the interwar era—the futile attempt to refute a myth on the basis of historical facts and statistical data. Trying to discredit powerful political myths with mere facts, as we know all too well today, is a frustrating endeavor. Thus Hanebrink seeks instead to understand the historical background and the “cultural logic” of the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism—how it functioned and morphed through different phases.

The Suffocation of Democracy

German President Paul von Hindenburg and Chancellor Adolf Hitler on their way to a youth rally at the Lustgarten, Berlin, May 1933

Whatever secret reservations Mitch McConnell and other traditional Republican leaders have about Trump’s character, governing style, and possible criminality, they openly rejoice in the payoff they have received from their alliance with him and his base: huge tax cuts for the wealthy, financial and environmental deregulation, the nominations of two conservative Supreme Court justices (so far) and a host of other conservative judicial appointments, and a significant reduction in government-sponsored health care (though not yet the total abolition of Obamacare they hope for). Like Hitler’s conservative allies, McConnell and the Republicans have prided themselves on the early returns on their investment in Trump.

‘For Fighting We Were Born’

Stormtroopers without their brown uniforms, which were banned by German authorities several times between their introduction in 1926 and Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933. Daniel Siemens writes that an ‘SA troop...with members dressed in white shirts or other surrogate “uniforms” still remained highly recognizable.’

Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts

by Daniel Siemens
The torchlight parade of some ten to fifteen thousand brown-shirted stormtroopers through the streets of Berlin on the night of Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of Germany in January 1933 is certainly one of the best-known images of the Nazi era. It is no surprise, then, that it was invoked …

Lessons from Hitler’s Rise

Supporters greeting Adolf Hitler as he arrived at the Berghof, his retreat at Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps, circa 1935

Hitler: Ascent 1889–1939

by Volker Ullrich, translated from the German by Jefferson Chase
Even if there are many significant differences between Hitler and Trump and their respective historical circumstances, what conclusions can the reader of Volker Ullrich’s new biography reach that offer insight into our current situation?

The Two Different Ways of Looking at Nazi Murder

Niklas Frank—son of Hans Frank, Adolf Hitler’s personal lawyer—looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine for the first time since he was a small child, Wawel Castle, Kraków, January 2014. According to Philippe Sands in East West Street, the elder Frank confiscated the painting from a Polish museum for ‘protective’ reasons while he was governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland, and kept it in his private rooms at the castle.

East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes Against Humanity”

by Philippe Sands

The Extermination of the European Jews

by Christian Gerlach
The Nuremberg Trials marked a milestone in the development of international law in part because individuals who participated in the commission of state crimes were no longer shielded by the legal defenses of either sovereign immunity (for leaders) or obedience to orders (for underlings). But the trials were also notable …