Hitler

Members of the Hitler Youth clear debris after an air raid on Berlin, August 1944

The swastika was always in plain sight

24 October 2015 9:00 am

Ordinary Germans under the Third Reich did have wills of their own, argues Dominic Green. Most actively embraced Nazi ideology, and were aware of the extermination of the Jews. As the war worsened for them, what did they think they were fighting for?

What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?

24 October 2015 9:00 am

What was it like, asks Jay Nordlinger, to have Mao as your father, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc? The…

From top left: Lucian Freud, Rudolf Bing, Stefan Zweig, Walter Gropius, Rudolf Laban, Max Born, Kurt Schwitters, Friedrich Hayek, Fritz Busch, Frank Auerbach, Emeric Pressburger, Oskar Kokoschka

German refugees transformed British cultural life - but at a price

3 October 2015 9:00 am

German-speaking refugees dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn’t go down well in Stepney or Stevenage, says William Cook

What drove Europe into two world wars?

19 September 2015 8:00 am

Sir Ian Kershaw won his knight’s spurs as a historian with his much acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and…

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

Did Hans Asperger save children from the Nazis — or sell them out?

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

I can understand those seduced by Isis; once, it could have been me

25 July 2015 9:00 am

One of the great moments of my student life was opening the door and seeing visitors step back, shocked. I’d…

Ecclestone and Mosley at Brands Hatch in 1978 — a double-act worthy of Ealing Studios

The fast, furious life of Max Mosley

4 July 2015 9:00 am

Max Mosley’s autobiography has been much anticipated: by the motor racing world, by the writers and readers of tabloid newspapers,…

BBC2’s Napoleon reviewed: does Andrew Roberts’s pet Frog need rehabilitating?

13 June 2015 9:00 am

I adore Andrew Roberts. We go back a long way. Once, on a boating expedition gone wrong in the south…

Out of the woods: American forces attack a German machine gun post, December 1944. The grim determination of the Allies, whose heroism kept the Germans at bay, helped pave the way for the final Russian advance on Berlin

The beginning of the end

16 May 2015 9:00 am

Both German and Allied troops could be accused of war crimes in the struggle for the Ardennes. It’s a tragic and gruesome history, involving heavy casualties — but flashes of black humour make it bearable, says Clare Mulley

The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good

9 May 2015 9:00 am

The carpet-bombing of Hamburg killed 40,000 people. It also did good

Hitler with the Goebbels family in the late 1930s

Joseph Goebbels: Hitler’s ‘little doctor’ was devoted unto death

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…

Be different, be original: that’s what makes a popular politician

28 March 2015 9:00 am

I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like being a political leader. I find this difficult because I…

Admiral Dönitz, left in charge of the Reich after Hitler’s suicide, was lucky to have escaped the noose at Nuremberg

The madness of Nazism laid bare

14 February 2015 9:00 am

‘If the war is lost, then it is of no concern to me if the people perish in it.’ Bruno…

Tom Stoppard’s The Hard Problem review: too clever by half

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Big event. A new play from Sir Tom. And he tackles one of philosophy’s oldest and crunchiest issues, which varsity…

The face of evil: Irma Grese, one of the most hated of all camp guards, trained at Ravensbrück before moving to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Survivors testified to her extreme sadism, including her use of trained, half-starved dogs to savage prisoners

Process of elimination: the horrors of Ravensbrück revealed

31 January 2015 9:00 am

Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were originally set up in 1933 to terrorise Hitler’s political enemies; as war drew near,…

‘Exceptionally good’: Alicia Vikander as Vera Brittain in ‘Testament of Youth’

Shirley Williams: Saving my mother from the scriptwriters

17 January 2015 9:00 am

Jasper Rees talks to Shirley Williams about the forthcoming screen portrayal of her mother

Chico, Harpo and Groucho Marx (left to right) enjoy a day at the races

What unites Churchill, Dali and T.S. Eliot? They all worshipped the Marx Brothers

10 January 2015 9:00 am

Ian Thomson celebrates the anarchic genius of Groucho and his brothers

That’s another year gone and, against the odds, I’m still here

3 January 2015 9:00 am

A fruity voice on the train’s announcement system said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, make sure you have all your belongings, family…

Hiding in Moominland: the conflicted life of Tove Jansson

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Tove Jansson’s father was a sculptor specialising in war memorials to the heroes of the White Guard of the Finnish…

The Nazi origins of the Vienna Phil’s New Year’s Day concert

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Vienna’s New Year’s Day concert is still tarnished by its Nazi origins, says Norman Lebrecht

‘Before the Mirror’, 1913, by Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele at the Courtauld: a one-note samba of spindly limbs, nipples and pudenda

8 November 2014 9:00 am

One day, as a student — or so the story goes — Egon Schiele called on Gustav Klimt, a celebrated…

I felt so awful I almost prayed that we would crash

4 October 2014 9:00 am

This is about life up high. Two weeks ago The Spectator had that rapscallion and mischief-maker Peter McKay writing about…

Hugh Trevor-Roper: the spy as historian, the historian as spy

20 September 2014 9:00 am

Shortly after the war began in September 1939, the branch of the intelligence services called MI8, or the Radio Security…

Hitler’s Valkyrie: Unity Mitford at 100

9 August 2014 9:00 am

Unity Mitford at 100

Churchill reading in his library at Chartwell

Churchill was as mad as a badger. We should all be thankful

19 April 2014 9:00 am

The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith