Podcast: An interview with Roger Moorhouse

This month’s History Today Book Club selection is Roger Moorhouse’s critically acclaimed Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital 1939-1945 (Vintage, 2011). Here Moorhouse discusses his motivations for writing the book with History Today editor Paul Lay.

A particular ambition was to examine the experience of war from the ‘bottom up’, something that had not really been done before in the case of wartime Berlin. Moorhouse spoke to many residents who lived through the war, experiencing the heady early years of victory, before enduring the Gotterdämmerung of the Allied bombing raids and the final Soviet rampage.

But can we trust the voices of people recalling events of a lifetime ago, particularly when they are so morally compromised? Is there an element of justification in their recollections, or does Moorhouse capture the authentic voice of these young people experiencing bewildering highs and lows culminating in one of the greatest catastrophes in human history?

You can also download this podcast on iTunes.