Emil Nolde, Red Clouds, watercolour on handmade paper, 34.5 x 44.7 cm.

How a Postwar German Literary Classic Helped Eclipse Painter Emil Nolde’s Relationship to Nazism

While Nolde was one of the many victims of the Third Reich’s repressive responses to “degenerate art,” he was also one of Nazism’s great admirers.
The "Hungaria Skins" group on the 1997 Day of Honour demonstration, Budapest, Hungary

How Hungary’s Hard Rock Became Hard Right

Punk and hard rock—or at least extremist, right-wing versions of them—are alive and well in post-Cold War Hungary.
Photoshopped Nazi propaganda from 1939

Portrait of a Nazi Bigamist

Otto M was a university researcher who was both an enthusiastic Nazi and a bigamist, openly married to two women.
The Lady with an Ermine by Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1490

Lady with an Ermine Meets Nazi Art Thief Hans Frank

Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting bore witness to the administrative acts that enabled the crimes committed against Polish Jews during World War II.
A uniformed member of the Nazi SA and a student of the Academy of Physical Exercise examine materials plundered from the library of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, director of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin on May 6, 1933.

90 Years On: The Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science

In May 1933, Nazi-led student groups organized public burnings of "un-German" books, including those held in the library of the Institute for Sexual Science.
Nicholas Murray Butler, 1921

Silence in the Face of Intellectual Conflagration

Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler's actions (and inaction) towards Nazi Germany spoke loudly, while he said nothing.
Maurice Papon, 1958

The “Stone Face” of Racism

On October 17, 1961, Parisian police attacked a group of Algerians. The event would be lost to French history until a Nazi collaborator was exposed.
Thomas Mann

How Thomas Mann Turned against the German Right

The best-selling author supported the Kaiser during World War I. What made him change his mind about politics later?
Two teenagers dancing the jitterbug, 1942

Germany’s Real-Life “Swing Kids” 

Rebellious teenagers thumbed their noses at Hitler with jazz music, wild dancing, and the greeting “Swing Heil.” But how serious was their resistance?
The Eldorado Nightclub

Gender Identity in Weimar Germany

Remembering an early academic effort to define sexual orientation and gender identity as variable natural phenomena, rather than moral matters.