Richard J. Evans Offers Lessons for Today from His Study of the Third Reich
Air Dates: January 6-12, 2025
The world will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II later this year. Richard J. Evans helps us understand the murderous leaders of Nazi Germany, and the people at every level of German society who did their bidding.
Evans is an historian of modern Germany and modern Europe and is the preeminent historian of the Third Reich today. He has published over 20 books in the field, including his trilogy on the Third Reich. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Society of Literature and the Learned Society of Wales, and an Honorary Fellow of Gonville and Caius College Cambridge, Birkbeck, University of London, and Jesus College Oxford. In 2022, he was made an Honorary Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He has been Vice-Master and Acting Master of Birkbeck, University of London, Chairman of the History Faculty in the University of Cambridge. He currently serves as Provost of Gresham College in London and a visiting Professor of History at Birkbeck University of London.
On this episode of “Story in the Public Square,” Evans describes lessons we can learn from studying the Third Reich’s rise to power. He says, “once you start dehumanizing a category of people, then that’s the road to mass murder…you have to resist racism wherever it appears and not allow it to flourish, and fester, and destroy society from within.” He adds a warning to citizens and mainstream politicians alike, saying, “do not go along and collaborate with ultra extremists of the right or indeed the left—you have to keep them out of mainstream politics.”
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