Modern

Starting with the nineteenth century and bringing us right up to the debates of today this section contains many brilliant podcasts that explore the recent and current work around us. Here the transformative events of war and peace between European nations are examined, while recent arguments of unity and separation provide an insight to contemporary political debate. Read more

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  • Recorded webinar: The Cult of the Duce: Mussolini and the Italians at the time of Fascism

    Article

    The Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini understood more than other leaders of his generation the power of images and used them to great effect in building his personality cult which was central to Italian Fascism. In this illustrated webinar, Professor Giuliana Pieri will explore the evolution of the iconography of...

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  • Recorded webinar: Researching the history of migration and refugees in Europe

    Article

    Research on the history of migration continues to flourish and grow, but scholarship is also becoming increasingly splintered, often focusing on particular settings or population groups. Migration is often used as a way to discuss questions of national identity or diverse religious, ethnic, religious and local identities in the UK,...

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  • Film: A conversation on Goethe with A.N. Wilson

    Article

    In Goethe: His Faustian life, award-winning biographer, critic and writer A. N. Wilson tells the spellbinding story of the life of Goethe. From his youth as a wild literary prodigy, to his later years as Germany’s most heroic intellectual figure, Wilson hones in on Goethe’s undying obsession with the work he would spend his...

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  • Recorded webinar series: Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the UN Convention on Genocide

    Multipage Article

    9 December 2023 was the 75th anniversary of the passing of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (known as the UN Convention on Genocide). The convention was a clear statement by the international community that crimes of that nature should never happen...

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  • Virtual Branch recording: The Women's World Committee against War & Fascism

    Article

    How did a group of women activists with varied ideological backgrounds construct several important campaigns against fascism in the interwar period? How did this Women's World Committee against War and Fascism (Comité Mondial des Femmes contre la Guerre et le Fascisme) undertake effective humanitarian and propaganda work and forge extensive...

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  • Twentieth-century Poland

    Podcast

    In this podcast Dr Janek Gryta (University of Southampton) discusses the history and development of modern Poland from the emergence of the Second Polish Republic after World War I, Poland's experience during the interwar period, its role during and the consequences of World War II, how the Polish People's Republic evolved...

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  • Recorded webinar: Teaching the 'People's History' of the Munich Crisis

    Article

    Professor Julie Gottlieb has written extensively on inter-war British political and gender history, and her more recent work has provided alternative perspectives on seemingly settled debates in the historiography of British foreign policy and the history of appeasement. Through the lens of women/gender, social history, and now psychology/emotion, she argues for a...

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  • Film: Rome in the world/the world in Rome with Dr Lucy Donkin

    Article

    To give you a taster of the fantastic sessions on offer at the HA's annual conference, we've published one of the sessions from the 2022 HA Conference on Rome in the world/the world in Rome with Dr Lucy Donkin.   In many cultures, earth has been used to represent a place...

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  • Film: Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea

    Article

    Professor Jan Rüger joined the Virtual Branch on 9th February 2023 to talk about his book Heligoland: Britain, Germany, and the Struggle for the North Sea, tracing a rich history of contact and conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to the Cold War. For generations this North Sea island expressed a German...

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  • Recorded Webinar: Ukraine and the Soviet Politics of Empire

    Article

    Dr Zbigniew Wojnowski is a historian based at the University of Oxford. He specialises in the history of the Cold War and is particularly interested in the history of Soviet social, cultural, and political interactions with Eastern Europe after 1945. In 2017, he published a book entitled The Near Abroad:...

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  • Recorded webinar: Ordinary people - Holocaust Memorial Day 2023

    Article

    To choose to act, to have no choice to be who you are, to live an ordinary life in extraordinary times? These are all questions that the Holocaust raises. Millions of people became victims of the Nazis, millions more choose not to act to stop the events around them, felt...

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  • Film: Rethinking the origins of the Cold War

    Article

    In this HA Virtual Branch talk Professor Richard Toye explores Churchill’s response to the USSR and how his actions during the early Cold War years intersected with his views of traditional Anglo-Russian tensions and the legacy of the ‘Great Game’. Richard Toye is Professor of Modern History at the University...

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  • Virtual Branch recording: Why has Monarchy survived in Europe?

    Article

    In the lead-up to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, Dr Bob Morris joined the HA Virtual Branch in March 2022 to consider why the monarchy has survived in Europe.  Dr R. M. (Bob) Morris is a Senior Honorary Research Associate at the Constitution Unit, University College London. He was formerly a...

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  • The Nazi Economy

    Podcast

    In this podcast, Dr Christopher Dillon of King's College London, discusses the importance of the German economy to the rise of the Nazi Party and discusses the development of the Nazi economy between 1933 and 1945.

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  • Recorded webinar: Using 'One Day' to explore the actions that helped to lead to the Holocaust and actions of genocide

    Article

    This year's Holocaust Memorial Day the theme is 'One Day'. In this webinar with historian Paula Kitching, we will use the one day Wannsee Conference of January 1942 to help explore the actions of the perpetrators, the Holocaust victims and how decision making by people can lead to genocide. This...

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  • Film: The Partitions of Poland-Lithuania (1772-1795)

    Article

    Karin Friedrich recently joined the Virtual Branch to discuss aspects of its complex history in her talk on the partitions of Poland, their repercussions for German-Polish relations and their legacy. Professor Friedrich is chair in Early Modern European History at the University of Aberdeen, co-director of the Centre for Early Modern...

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  • Was the Weimar Republic the heir to the German Empire?

    Podcast

    In this podcast Dr Colin Storer of the University of Warwick asks to what extent was the Weimar Republic a continuation of the German Empire and to what extent it was a break with the past.

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  • Film: Life and Death in Occupied France

    Article

    Robert Pike joined the HA Virtual Branch to discuss the research for his latest book Silent Village: Life and Death in Occupied France. This work explores life in the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane before, during and after the infamous massacre and destruction by Nazi Germany that took place on 10 June...

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  • How democratic was Germany by 1914?

    Podcast

    In this podcast Dr Colin Storer of the University of Warwick looks at the origins of the democratic tradition in Germany and discusses how democratic Germany was on the eve of the First World War. Dr Storer examines to what extent was there mass participation in elections, high levels of...

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  • How unified was Germany in 1914?

    Podcast

    In this podcast Dr Colin Storer of the University of Warwick looks at how unified Germany was on the eve of World War I. This podcast looks at the religious, linguistic and ethnic divides in Germany. How different was life for people living in towns rather than the countriside? What...

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