Second World War

Financing the SS

Milton Goldin explores Himmler’s ambitions to establish the SS as a ‘state within a state’, and highlights schemes the Nazis devised to finance the organisation through industrial enterprise and plundered Jewish assets.

Ribbentrop

Richard Wilkinson challenges the consensus of contempt for the Nazis' leading diplomat.

A Fatal Guarantee: Poland, 1939

How did Britain come to make the promises to Poland that resulted in a declaration of war against Germany in September 1939? Sir Nicholas Henderson unravels a curious story.

Franco's Nazi Haven

Paul Preston amplifies recent claims that Franco offered safe havens to fugitive Nazis

Shakespeare and the Nazis

Why did Goering and Goebbels fall out over a performance of Richard III? Gerwin Strobl on this and other intriguing reasons why the Bard mattered to the Third Reich.

Nazism in the Classroom

In the first of our mini-series on the Nazis and social culture, Lisa Pine looks at how lessons in the classroom were perverted in the service of the Third Reich.