Christopher Hale

Pepresentatives of the French government at the war crimes trial in Leipzig, 1921. Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy Stock Photo.

The Failure of the Leipzig War Crimes Trials

An attempt to prosecute German war criminals in 1921 failed to such an extent that the entire enterprise is largely forgotten. What went wrong?

The gas chambers at Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk, Poland, c. 1945. Panstwowe Muzeum Stutthof. Public Domain

‘Final Verdict’ by Tobias Buck review

As the last living perpetrators are brought to justice, Final Verdict: A Holocaust Trial in the Twenty-first Century by Tobias Buck wonders what purpose the prosecution of Bruno Dey serves.

Will Putin Get His ‘Nuremberg Moment’?

As new crimes are committed, new laws must be written to punish them. When it comes to crimes committed by states like Putin’s Russia, who decides?

Defendants in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials, 1945.

Never Again by Andrew I. Port review

‘Real world’ German responses to postwar genocide.

Yalta Conference (Crimea), February 4 to 11, 1945. Onboard warship during the Crimean Conferences at Yalta, Russia. Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill with Marshall Joseph Stalin. U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (2016/03/22).

Personality Flaws

Do leaders and leadership matter most at times of crisis?

Wang Jingwei, Zhang Tailei and Mikhail Borodin, c.1925. Collection of C. H. Foo and Y. W. Foo. Historical Photographs of China, University of Bristol. Wang Jingwei, wearing a white changpao, seated second from the right. Borodin is second from the left. Zhang Tailei sits between them, and was Borodin's interpreter in this period.

Rebels in Rubber Soles

The denizens of an Asian underground who waged a clandestine struggle against European colonial powers.

Kaiser Wilhelm II (left) with his son, Wilhelm, German Crown Prince, during the First World War.

Backing Tyranny

The consequences of the German aristocracy’s Faustian pact.

The Exhumation of a Nazi Perpetrator

The origins of SS General Otto von Wächter’s rise to power.

Insurgency and Dissent on the Home Front

Documenting the men and women who took a stand against the imperial tide.

‘Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History’ by Richard J. Evans review

The man who, at the time of his death in 2012, was arguably the most famous historian in the world is brought into quotidian focus.