I’m launching a new weekly series each Monday to highlight what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and experiencing in public history. Stay tuned on Mondays for these “Monday Dispatches.”

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As we mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War this summer, we find ourselves reckoning once again with the darkest legacies of that era.

I’ve continued to sound the alarm about the dangerous moment we’re living in – one shaped by the fading of lived memory from the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the catastrophic consequences of fascism and extremist politics.

As we lose the “Greatest Generation,” a wave of crass, ahistorical revisionists has seized massive platforms, aided by figures like Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan with audiences of millions. These revisionists have tried to reframe Nazism and Adolf Hitler as misunderstood or even sympathetic – casting Winston Churchill, not Hitler, as the true villain behind the war.

This is nonsense. And it should be called out as such, again and again.

One of my favorite writers and podcast hosts, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic and the Plain English podcast, recently took on this very topic. In his “Plain History” series, Thompson explores the ongoing relevance of historical narratives in today’s world.

In a recent episode, he interviewed historian Richard J. Evans about his latest book, Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich. I read the book in October 2024.

Their conversation explores the brutal realities of Hitler’s antisemitism and the regime’s genocidal campaign across Eastern Europe.

The episode also dismantles common myths about Nazism – especially its supposed ties to “socialism” – and dives into the volatile politics of Weimar Germany. Evans, one of the world’s foremost scholars of the Nazi era, draws on newly released documents to tell this story with depth and clarity.

He also delves into numerous conspiracy theories from the era, including the 1933 Reichstag Fire – perpetuated by both right and left – and provides a historian’s perspectives about the validity of these claims.

Evans also reflects on the millions of Germans – especially the middle class – who supported the Nazi regime or went along with its policies.

He emphasizes that the most terrifying aspect of the Nazis’ rise and the devastation they unleashed is this: the perpetrators saw themselves not as villains, but as respectable patriots. They believed they were restoring Germany’s greatness after the humiliation of defeat in the First World War and that justified their participation in expansionist war and mass murder on an industrial scale.

If you are interested in this topic like I am, I highly recommend picking up a copy or an audiobook of the scholarship by Richard J. Evans. And if you love jumping into the weeds about everything from American history to economics and the most recent scientific studies, check out Derek Thompson’s Plain English podcast.

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Read previous posts about Coal Region perspectives on the Nazis and World War II

The Scranton Tribune condemns Kristallnacht | A 1938 editorial against Nazi violence

“The stark truth” – A Pennsylvania soldier witnesses the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945

A Schuylkill County veteran’s memory of V-E Day and liberating a concentration camp in 1945

Letters from War – The first letter from inside Hitler’s crumbling “Third Reich,” October 1944

A 1938 editorial from the Coal Region urged loosening of immigration restrictions for refugees

A powerful V-E Day advertisement by Deisroth’s of Hazleton | May 1945

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