Genocides will be a history podcast in the vein of other long-form history podcasts. My inspiration for this project is the incomparable Revolutions Podcast presented by Mike Duncan. His take on using the framework of various historical revolutions as a method to compare and contrast the phenomenon had a big impact on the style I’m going for in this show. My own idiosyncratic ways will likely influence the show a lot, so I don’t expect there to be any one to one relationship with that show. But in some ways of general format, it is intended to be similar. Other long form history podcasts that have shaped a lot of my desire to make Genocides includes The Age of Napoleon, The History of Byzantium, and The History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.
The first series of the Genocides Podcast will be on The Nazi Genocides committed by the German state during World War Two. This will not be a series exclusively on the Holocaust, the killing of millions of Europe’s Jews, but on all genocidal actions undertaken by the Nazi state during this time. This includes crimes against the Roma and Sinti, Poles and Slavs, and people suffering from mental illness. The term Genocide was coined for use to describe The Holocaust, and thus I think starting with the Nazis makes sense. Once we’ve understood the context in which all later genocide studies were written in, then we can delve more effectively into other events before and after world war two.
The second series will be on the Armenian Genocide. Even while writing about the holocaust, Raphael Lemkin was considering the Armenian Genocide as a historical precursor to what he was seeing happening in Europe. After the Holocaust, it is probably one of the most studied and discussed genocides, especially for those that took place before the Holocaust.