Books & ideas

Geographers in Battalions

Cédric Tellenne — 2025-09-18T07:00:00Z

At the beginning of World War II, Americans were convinced that German geopolitical thinking was behind the stunning military successes of the Nazis. They sought to turn this thinking against their enemies, before using it as a weapon against the USSR during the Cold War.

Being a Man Under Nazism

Élisa Goudin — 2024-06-04T13:19:00Z

A history of masculinity and a history of men, this collective volume shows that while “ideal” Nazi masculinity was opposed to that of Jews and homosexuals, it was also contested and fragmented, both in the private sphere and on the battlefield.

Sexual Freedom under Nazism

Élisa Goudin — 2023-05-23T08:24:54Z

The Nazi regime encouraged Germans to indulge in playful heterosexual activity. Many “Aryan” women were given an opportunity to develop professionally and emotionally. Was there a contradiction between promoting people's sexual freedom while depriving them of political freedom?

On Earth (Not) As in Heaven

André Loez — 2023-05-16T15:13:46Z

In her study of the fate of the 100,000 or so airmen who fell during the Second World War, Claire Andrieu challenges the separation between civilians and soldiers, regular and irregular combatants, wait-and-see attitudes and active resistance, frontline and rear, through an empirical investigation that is destined to become a landmark work.

Barbarian, or Modern?

David Chopin — 2021-05-24T07:00:00Z

Can Nazi barbarianism resurface in our modern world? Yes, according to Johann Chapoutot, in the pleasant guise of management, as one of its key promoters started out as a Nazi technocrat

The New German Far Right

Élisa Goudin — 2018-04-09T07:00:00Z

The recent rise of the far right has disrupted the political balance in Germany. Its racism illustrates the failings of both denazification and historical introspection in the West. The next elections are in 2021… watch this space.

The Psyche of Fascists

Grégory Dufaud — 2017-08-31T07:00:00Z

The experience of the Second World War prompted the in-depth reform of psychiatry, as social factors were included in the explanation of psychic illnesses. It also served as a justification for the psychiatric and political re-education of political opponents—as Ana Antic shows, based on patient files from a Yugoslav institute.

An American Jewish Resistance during World War II

Laura Hobson Faure — 2016-07-04T07:00:00Z

Against the widespread idea that the American population remained indifferent to the genocide of European Jews, Catherine Collomp traces the history of the Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) and its action to raise awareness on Nazism, but also to save many Jewish lives in France and Poland.

Total Wagner

Karol Beffa — 2013-11-05T10:30:00Z

“Can Wagner the composer only be loved in spite of Wagner the man?” To answer this question, Timothée Picard points out that music is not “in and of itself anti-Semitic or nationalistic,” and his encyclopedic dictionary of Wagner goes a long way towards proving the point.

Opening the Nazi archives at Bad Arolsen

Jean-Marc Dreyfus — 2013-04-11T07:00:00Z

The International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, was set up after the war to trace millions of deported and displaced persons. During the Cold War, its archives – personal files, transport lists, records of deaths from several concentration camps, and records of individual and mass graves – served to inform victims' families and to substantiate compensation and pension claims. The archives have only recently been opened up to researchers, stirring up considerable interest in the international research community.