AKADEMIE FORUM: ALAN E. STEINWEIS

For many decades, the focus remained largely on the conspiracy that culminated in the failed anti-Nazi coup of July 20, 1944. More recently, attention has turned to the long-neglected Georg Elser, a cabinetmaker who as a lone assassin came close to killing Hitler with a bomb in a Munich beer hall on November 8, 1939.

A comparison of the two cases, and of how they have been chronicled and commemorated, raises important questions about how Germans have reflected upon issues of historical and moral responsibility for the crimes of Nazism. The cases have also provoked moral and philosophical debates about the legitimacy of political assassination as a method for combatting tyranny.

Alan E. Steinweis is Professor of History at the University of Vermont, where he also holds the Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professorship of Holocaust Studies. He is the author of four books on Nazi Germany, most recently The People’s Dictatorship: A History of Nazi Germany (2023). He has been a postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin and a guest professor at the universities of Hannover, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Munich, and Augsburg. Since 2012, he has been an associate editor of the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte.

Featuring a musical performance by Ali Hayyan (piano).

Presented in English.

Admission is free, registration is required. 

In cooperation with Fulbright Germany.