I am a historian of modern Europe, with particular interests in the History of the Holocaust and in modern German history. My publications have covered a wide range of topics in German, European and Jewish history, including life-reform and protest in 1920s and 1930s Germany; Holocaust survival and memory; Nazi policy and perpetrators; the social impact of total war; post-1945 German and European reconstruction; generation conflict and youth rebellion; Jewish and other minorities in modern German history. I also have an interest in comparative history and in particular in German-Japanese comparisons. My current research projects include a critical synthesis of recent work on Nazi perpetrators, and a project looking at a life-reform and resistance group in Germany 1920-2000.
Education
Selected Awards
- Geschwister Scholl Prize (2003)
- Lucas Prize Project Mark Lynton prize (2002)
- Jewish Quarterly's Wingate Literary Prize (2001)
- Fraenkel prize (2000)
- Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (1998)
Research Interests
- History of the Holocaust
- 20th-Century German history
- European post-1945 reconstruction
- Comparative history, including German-Japanese comparisons
Courses Recently Taught
- History of the Holocaust
- Antisemitism since the enlightenment
- Perpetrators of the Holocaust
- The rise and fall of racial empire in Germany and Japan 1870-1950
- Nazism and German Society
- War and Violence in 20th Century Europe
- Life after Death. Rebuilding German Society after 1945
Publication Highlights
Books
The villa, the lake, the meeting. The Wannsee Conference and the 'final solution', Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002
The past in hiding, Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, the Penguin Press 2000.
Recasting the Ruhr 1945-1957. Manpower, economic recovery and labour relations, Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1992.
(with Carl Levy) Three postwar eras in comparison. Western Europe 1918-1945-1989, London, New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Generations in conflict. Youth rebellion and generation formation in modern Germany 1770-1968, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995
German History from the Margins, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2006 (with Neil Gregor and Nils Roemer)
Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity. Essays on Modern German History, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2007 (with Frank Biess and Hanna Schissler)
