Wolf Gruner, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Most histories highlight the shattered storefronts and synagogues set aflame. But it was the systematic ransacking of Jewish homes that extracted the greatest toll.
Nick Chater, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick
We all like to think of ourselves as heroes. But according to science, the vast majority of us wouldn’t be prepared to rebel against totalitarian rulers.
During the Nazi era, roughly 300,000 additional Jewish refugees could have gained entry to the U.S. But the immigration law’s “likely to become a public charge” clause kept them out.
Michael Haneke’s allegorical 2009 film showed how a peaceful society can be shattered within a single generation. It’s a lesson for us now in a world drifting toward populism and violence.
The initial aim of the 1937 Foreign Agents Registration Act was long forgotten: the prosecution of Nazis for interfering with American democracy. But that law is startlingly relevant to the US now.
Physician Magnus Hirschfeld advocated for those he called ‘sexual intermediaries.’ His activism began before World War I – and ended only when the Nazis came to power.
The political power of Germany’s Russian community is significant, and it’s helped fuel the rise of the right-wing, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party known as the AfD.
The ‘resistance’ to the Trump administration has many forms, from grassroots organizing to making music. But a historian of 20th-century Germany asks whether opposing Trump is a real resistance.
President Trump has been attacking the Fed’s current policy of slowly raising interest rates. A former central bank official explains why that’s so troubling.
The more notorious concentration camps of the 20th century must serve as a stark reminder of the depravity of tearing children away from their parents and putting them in camps.
Recent historical research has revealed that after the Nazis surrendered at end the Second World War, thousands of German women were raped by Allied forces.
Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History; Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences