Germany

Giles MacDonogh visits the History Today archive to examine Nancy Mitford’s 1968 article on one of the ‘oddest’ biographies ever written, Thomas Carlyle’s massive study of Frederick the Great.

Nancy Mitford finds that Carlyle’s biography of the King was one of the oddest ever written, but it is ‘so carefully drawn that it finally presents a perfect likeness’.

When the England football team visited Germany in May 1938, diplomatic protocol resulted in the team giving a Nazi salute.

Richard Cavendish remembers January 13th 1935.

Russell Tarr sees similarities but also important contrasts in the foreign policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy

Simon Lemieux examines examples of German Protestant propaganda.

Nick Smart scrutinises Chamberlain's foreign policy and the historiography of appeasement.

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 two German nations became one for the first time in almost half a century. Paul Betts looks at the further consequences of the collapse of Soviet Communism.

The German army’s training, discipline and Blitzkrieg tactics – directed by the supremely confident Führer – swept away Polish resistance in 1939. It took the shell-shocked Allies another three years to catch up, writes Andrew Roberts.

Richard Overy examines recent analyses of how Europe became embroiled in major conflict just two decades after the trauma of the Great War and we look at events and broadcasts commemorating September 1939.