the Nazis

Seeds of hope in the siege of Leningrad

16 November 2024 9:00 am

A Russian biologist’s dream of creating the world’s first seed bank is thwarted by Stalin’s paranoia and the Nazi invasion. But the pioneering project remains a potent symbol of hope

For Jews in Occupied France, survival was a matter of luck

28 March 2020 9:00 am

Late in his life, I asked my uncle René about his exploits in wartime France. What I knew was that…

Poland was no walkover for the Reich

30 November 2019 9:00 am

‘The victor will never be asked if he told the truth,’ Hitler remarked on the eve of invading Poland in…

Nazis in the dock: Hans Frank replies to questioning during the Nuremberg Trials

Genocide is named and shamed

21 May 2016 9:00 am

Prosecution for genocide or crimes against humanity is now a given in international law. But before the Nuremberg Trials, these two groundbreaking notions didn’t exist. Daniel Hahn describes their origins and inspiration

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,…

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

German history is uniquely awful: that’s what makes it so engrossing

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…

Paul Rosenberg with a Matisse painting in the 1930s

Picasso’s dealer

4 October 2014 9:00 am

When she was four, Anne Sinclair had her portrait painted by Marie Laurencin. It is a charming picture, a little…