09/01/2025
"A PhD is about shaping your life on your own terms"
Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich examines the life stories of prominent Nazis and regime supporters, with a view to challenge the veneer of legend surrounding them and present a more realistic view of Nazi perpetrators.
“I want readers to think about what makes people fascists and what makes them want to destroy democracy and put in a dictatorship in its place,” says Sir Richard. “We now have in our own time the rise of strong men and extreme right-wing politicians, and we need to learn some lessons from how the Nazis came up to power.”
Sir Richard, who has published extensively – including the groundbreaking three-volume The Third Reich Trilogy – says that the genesis of this book was his involvement in a BBC Two series, Rise of the Nazis (2019-22).
“The series focused on individuals within the regime, and I was asked to talk about Hitler – to say what he would have been thinking and feeling through the whole sweep of the 1930s and early 1940s. The focus on personalities led me back to individuals within the Nazi regime, and I realised that since the turn of the century there’s been a huge mass of material released on them.”
It took Sir Richard three years to write Hitler’s People, and he says much of that time was spent ploughing through recently released material on the people he was writing about, having previously focused on a narrative history of Nazi Germany as a whole. Sir Richard was Regius Professor of History at Cambridge from 2008 until his retirement in 2014 and served as the lead expert witness in the libel case brought unsuccessfully by Holocaust denier David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt, the subject of the Hollywood film Denial (2016).
Among these many achievements, Sir Richard says his time as Wolfson’s President stood out.
“The most important thing about being President is that you have to like people and find them interesting. And Wolfson is full of wonderful people, particularly the students. I had a hugely enjoyable time as President, and it’s nice to be coming back for this event - although I do occasionally come in to see the IT department so they can fix my computer!”
More information
The event with Sir Richard will take place on Wednesday 30 October at 17.30, in Wolfson's Dining Hall. Please visit the event page for more information and for booking details.
