Join me for discussions with interesting authors, thinkers, and other guests to talk about current affairs, global politics, history, culture, and everything in between.
Book Talk – Dr. Klaus H. Schmider (Royal Academy Sandhurst), “Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation: Why Germany Declared War on the United States”
In the popular recollection of the Second World War, the month of December 1941 is associated almost exclusively with what Roosevelt famously termed “the date that will live in infamy”, namely, the 7th of December, Pearl Harbor. Yet a mere four days later another momentous event took place which would see the war take on a whole new dimension and a truly global scale: on the 11th of December, Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States.
Why did he do that? Was he driven, already in late ‘41, by an apocalyptic vision of his role in history? Was the decision, in other words, totally irrational, the result of a dark, brooding, ultimately inexplicable death wish?
Or can the sources of this fateful decision, on the contrary, be located in the German dictator’s understanding of several complex, interrelated spheres – economic, political and military – and in his general sense of how the war was proceeding at the time?
That is the task my guest today set himself in writing Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation: Why Germany Declared War on the United States.
Dr. Klaus Schmider earned his doctorate at the University of Mainz and has been on the staff of the War Studies Department of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurstsince 1999. In 2007, he co-authored Volume 8 of the official German history of the Second World War.
19 Apr 2025
Book Talk – Prof. Holger Afflerbach (University of Leeds), “On a Knife Edge: How Germany lost the First World War”
“I fear that the war will now lead to revolution.”
Those words were uttered by Erich von Falkenhayn on the 29th of August 1916, the day he was replaced as Chief of the General Staff by Paul von Hindenburg and his associate, Erich Ludendorff. Those words proved to be prescient: the wardid in fact lead to revolution, in fact to several. Indeed, the First World War led to the cataclysmic collapse of entire societies and of the European order that had underpinned almost a century of relative stability and peace among thegreat powers.
And yet the war lasted for another 2 years, resulting in millions more dead, both soldiers and civilians.
Why did the war last so long? And why did Germany ultimately lose it?
Those are just some of the questions Professor Holger Afflerbach returns to the center of historiographical attention in his sweeping and masterfully written account ofthe Great War, titled, “On a Knife Edge: How Germany lost the First World War”.
Holger Afflerbach is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Leeds and is the author of a number of groundbreaking monographs on Erich von Falkenhayn, Kaiser Wilhelm II, as well as on the Triple Alliance.
7 Oct 2024
Interview – Dr. Ahron Bregman (King’s College, London) on the one-year anniversary of October 7
A year on from the tragic and fateful events of October 7, and in the wake of the most recent extension of the ensuing conflict to the northern front, in Lebanon,
Israel seems to have turned the tables on its enemies: Hamas’ forces have been either wiped out or rendered combat-ineffective, Hezbollah’s command-and-control
structure has been decapitated, and Iran’s ballistic-missile barrage seems not to have caused significant damage.
So is Israel winning? Is that the right way to evaluate the current balance of forces in the region? And what does winning, in this troubled and conflict-ridden region, even mean?
With me to discuss all this and more is Dr. Ahron
Bregman, senior teaching fellow in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, and a previous guest on this podcast.
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