HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: The official website for BBC History Magazine
date: 2025-12-10T09:01:06.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: AI: good or bad for history? Our experts weigh in
items: I've just been inside a Nazi monster's mansion – and what I found there was deeply haunting
items: Did Hitler have a secret Jewish grandfather? Our DNA research has solved the mystery
items: “I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”
items: Who was Hermann Göring? The truth about Hitler’s drug-fuelled enforcer who met his downfall at Nuremberg
items: The Holocaust | HistoryExtra Academy video lecture
items: Why Schindler’s List remains relevant decades on
items: “We need to understand the Nazis as human beings”: Richard J Evans on the motivations of Hitler’s followers
items: Are we right to fictionalise the Holocaust? It’s a question The Tattooist of Auschwitz should make us ask ourselves
items: The real tattooists of Auschwitz: who were the men who turned people into numbers?

AI: good or bad for history? Our experts weigh in
type: item
date: 2025-12-10T09:00:39.000Z
subject: General History
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Column
subject: Debate
subject: Holocaust
description: As artificial intelligence penetrates almost every aspect of our lives, six historians debate whether the opportunities it offers to the discipline outweigh the threats
encoded: “We must experiment thoughtfully, push back critically, and make the case that slow, humanistic thinking still matters” Artificial intelligence isn’t inherently good or bad. Like the printing press or the written word itself, AI is a force – and whether it enhances or undermines historical practice will depend on who uses it, how, and why. AI’s most obvious advantage is that it can process vast amounts of data much faster than your regular historian, which turns it into an incredible asset. The trick here is to use it as it was originally meant to be used – not to replace human interpretation but to identify patterns that humans might not notice and, thus, to enable us to come up with better, more nuanced questions. But it goes beyond that. AI is forcing historians to rethink what constitutes evidence, authorship and interpretation. In doing so, it is not just supporting existing historical methods, it’s helping evolve them. Though I am not worried that historians will be replaced by AI any time soon, there is a risk that indiscriminate use might flatten out the practice. Good history requires doubt, contradiction, ambivalence, even uncertainty, but AI models are designed to produce smooth answers even when the data is messy or the past is unknowable. Moreover, history isn’t just knowledge – it’s a method of knowing. If AI shortcuts the method, it threatens the discipline’s integrity. There is little doubt that AI will be part of historical research, but it is crucial that historians shape its use to enhance rather than undermine our craft. We should resist the urge to scale for scale’s sake, and instead use AI to deepen, not dilute, historical understanding. If we do that, and embed AI within the discipline’s values – critical thinking, reflexivity, contextual awareness – then historians will become central in answering the question of whether AI is good or bad for history. We must experiment thoughtfully, push back critically, and make the case that slow, humanist…

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I've just been inside a Nazi monster's mansion – and what I found there was deeply haunting
type: item
date: 2025-11-28T18:00:32.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical people
subject: Holocaust
description: Earlier this year, Keith Lowe was granted access to the home of one of the Nazi regime’s most notorious war criminals. Here, he reveals what he discovered within the chateau’s crumbling walls – and the challenges of separating a building from its disturbing past
encoded: It’s the summer of 2025 and I find myself standing at the entrance of an old, abandoned mansion just outside Prague. It looks like a stereotypical haunted house. On either side of the wrought-iron gates is a Gothic statue of a wild boar, glowering towards the road as if to deter all visitors. Beyond lies an overgrown garden and an austere-looking building with crumbling walls and dark windows. Just looking at this place sends a shiver down my spine – not because of the Scooby Doo atmosphere, but because I know its history. It was once the home of a Jewish industrialist, who used to hold lavish parties here for the cream of Czech society. But at the beginning of the Second World War it was requisitioned by the Nazis, who made it the official residence of one of their most notorious war criminals: Reinhard Heydrich. It has taken months to gain access. I first came here in September 2024 with a small group of historians from the US National World War II Museum in New Orleans. We had been tasked with scouting out sites related to Heydrich, but the Czech tourist office told us that this particular place would be impossible to visit because it was private property. Undeterred, my colleagues did a little detective work and managed to locate the owner, and after months of negotiation he finally agreed to give us exclusive access. And so here we are again – only this time the chateau’s gates are open, and we are allowed to go in. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/HeydrichGettyImages-107425114-31d8c6f-e1764247394375.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of a man in full military uniform. He has right hand on his hip" title="Reinhard Heydrich pictured in 1942. The top-ranking Nazi was one of the chief architects of the ‘Final Solution’ (Image by Getty Images)" /> Portrait of a killer The historical significance of this site cannot be overstated. Its owner, Reinhard Heydrich, was one of the most important me…

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Did Hitler have a secret Jewish grandfather? Our DNA research has solved the mystery
type: item
date: 2025-11-22T22:00:41.000Z
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Fascism
subject: Holocaust
subject: Trends-News
description: Geneticist Turi King and historian Alex J Kay are in the spotlight after their research into Hitler’s DNA was featured in a new Channel 4 series. Shortly after the first episode aired, Matt Elton spoke to them about the complex ethical dimensions of this work and some of the stunning revelations that have emerged from it
encoded: Matt Elton, HistoryExtra: How did you get involved in this project and did you have any concerns? Alex J Kay: I got involved in the project in March 2023. I was contacted by Dan Chambers from Blink Films, who had already been working on this project for quite some time. I knew that Turi was already involved and they were looking for a lead historian for the programme. My big concern – because there’s so much out there about Hitler, so many documentaries, so many studies, so many books – was that this was going to be done in a serious way. Not sensationally, but really following the science, and very much based on research and evidence. Everybody who was involved with the project was clearly following science and really wanted to do a good job, and make sure it was as ironclad as possible in terms of the research and the evidence, so that reassured me. Turi King: I was brought on almost exactly four years ago. My first question was around not wanting to be involved if this was going to be done in a sensationalist way. And I did agonise [over doing it] because of who it is. But then, as an ancient DNA specialist, there have been thousands of individuals, archaeological and historical specimens, who have had their whole genome sequenced – including Beethoven. And I was thinking: “Well, why should Hitler be seen as this kind of mystical figure whom we could never do this DNA analysis on? And who is it who makes those kinds of decisions?” As Alex has said, Hitler has been the subject of so many books and articles and television programmes and so on, but this would add a new layer of information that hasn’t been available before. The other thing was that, because the swatch [a small sample of material] was being made available for DNA analysis, somebody was going to do this at some point, so let’s make sure it’s done in an absolutely rigorous way. My first question was: “Is this actually Hitler’s DNA?” My first role in this was to go through the entire process around auth…

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“I hope I would have defended the Nazis at Nuremberg”
type: item
date: 2025-11-07T16:34:36.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical events
subject: Holocaust
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: That’s what renowned barrister, and bestselling historian, Philippe Sands told us, but could you? With the 80th anniversary of the famous war trials upon us – and a new movie to boot – Dave Musgrove reflects on the perils of staging a trial the likes of which the world had never seen before
encoded: To have defended someone like Hans Frank, the governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland during WW2, charged with the murder of four million human beings, is a tough thing to imagine. Nevertheless, when I asked Philippe Sands – lawyer and writer – whether he would have defended the Nazis in the dock at the Nuremberg Trials, he told me “I hope so! I'm a believer that everyone is entitled to have their lawyer to defend their rights and their interests, irrespective of who they are or what they've done.” That was my final question to Sands after we’d recorded four episodes of an upcoming HistoryExtra podcast series on the Nuremberg Trials at the conclusion of the Second World War. I wanted to know where he’d stand on that question, because our conversation had reminded me how complicated some of the moral, as well as legal, questions were around the decision by the Allies to put a selection of leading Nazis on trial in November 1945. As a UK barrister, Sands is subject to the ‘cab-rank rule’, which obliges members of his profession to “take on any case provided that it is within their competence and they are available and appropriately remunerated”, but the idea of having to defend a Nazi war criminal, quite understandably, gave him pause for thought. Read more | Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich The trial of the century We shall all be given pause to reflect on the Nuremberg Trials as they hove back into public consciousness on their 80th anniversary. The trials ran from November 1945 through to October 1946. Twenty-four leading Nazis were indicted, though only 21 of them eventually stood trial in the courtroom proceedings. Neither Adolf Hitler nor the SS leader Heinrich Himmler were among them, as both had already taken their own lives. That left the biggest name in the dock as Hitler’s successor Hermann Göring, along with Hans Frank, Rudolf Hess, Admiral Karl Donitz and others. As with many big anniversaries, there will be media depictions, …

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Who was Hermann Göring? The truth about Hitler’s drug-fuelled enforcer who met his downfall at Nuremberg
type: item
date: 2025-11-07T16:34:25.000Z
creator: James Osborne
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Evergreen
subject: Fascism
subject: Historical people
subject: Holocaust
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: Hermann Göring was once Hitler’s chosen successor, and the most powerful man in Nazi Germany after the Führer. He embodied the spirit of the Third Reich and later, at Nuremberg, he became the most prominent member of the regime to stand trial
encoded: Hermann Göring held a uniquely prominent position among the architects of Nazi Germany. As the founder of the Gestapo, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, and Adolf Hitler’s chosen successor, his name became synonymous with the Third Reich at the height of its power – and while it collapsed. To the rest of the world, Göring often appeared as the public face of Nazi Germany during the 1930s as an example of the regime’s ambition and arrogance. And within Nazi Germany, he was Hitler’s closest ally, who served as a bridge between the Führer’s radicalism and the traditional elites. Read more | Hitler's downfall and the end of the war and the Third Reich When the Second World War ended, Göring was the most senior surviving Nazi official to stand trial at Nuremberg. There, his intelligence, arrogance and courtroom performances made him the defining symbol of the proceedings. But how did he get there? Who was Hermann Göring? Hermann Göring was a decorated First World War pilot who became Hitler’s second-in-command, head of Germany’s air force – the Luftwaffe – and the most prominent Nazi leader tried at Nuremberg for his central role in the crimes of the Third Reich. But before he reached the highest strata of the Nazi war machine, he had been an ambitious opportunist, whose charm and vanity had carried him from serving in a cockpit during the First World War to the heart of Hitler’s new Reich. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1855434891-1e9cefa-e1762529704264.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Hermann Göring sits in the cockpit of a biplane during pilot training with the Imperial German Air Service at Freiburg, around September 1915. Years before rising to power under Hitler, Göring served as a decorated First World War fighter ace." title="World War One: War in the Air 1915 Hermann Goering" /> Hermann Göring’s early life and career Hermann Wilhelm Göring was born in January 1893 in Rosenheim, Bavaria, into a fami…

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The Holocaust | HistoryExtra Academy video lecture
type: item
date: 2025-02-04T17:14:43.000Z
creator: Laurence Rees
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Holocaust
description: In the fifth episode of our Academy series on Nazi Germany, Laurence Rees gives an expert overview of the Holocaust – from Nazi antisemitism to the horrors of the death camps
encoded: View Green Video on the source website

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Why Schindler’s List remains relevant decades on
type: item
date: 2025-01-15T11:11:03.000Z
creator: Roger Moorhouse
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Holocaust
description: Roger Moorhouse reflects on the lasting legacy of perhaps the most famous movie about the Holocaust ever filmed, Schindler’s List…
encoded: Schindler’s List chronicles the true story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman, who helped to save the lives of more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust. Directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 1993, it addresses one of the darkest chapters of human history – the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis – through the story of Schindler, a man who starts out as a profit-driven opportunist but evolves through the film into a selfless saviour. Shot in black and white, it presents a gripping picture of moral courage in the face of unspeakable horror, and stands as one of the most powerful historical films ever made. Is Schindler's List a true story? Schindler's List is based on a true story. Though, as with most historical movies, some creative liberties were taken for narrative clarity. The film is adapted from Thomas Keneally's 1982 historical novel Schindler's Ark, which tells the story of Oskar Schindler’s efforts to protect Jews during the Holocaust. Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, initially arrived in Kraków in 1939, driven by the prospect of financial gain in the ‘wild east’ of German-occupied Poland. However, as the horrors of the Holocaust unfolded around him, his perspective changed, and he began to use his enamel factory as a refuge for Jewish workers. He would ultimately save some 1,200 lives. How historically accurate is Schindler's List? While Schindler's List is widely regarded as a historically sound portrayal of the Holocaust – its events anchored in archival documentation and in the testimonies of those that Schindler saved – there are nuances to consider regarding its accuracy. For instance, that some minor characters and scenes were added or altered for dramatic purposes. A good example of this is the character of Itzhak Stern, played by Ben Kingsley, who is a composite of several people who helped Schindler to run his factory. The film also takes a few creative liberties to maximise its emotional impact, and the …

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“We need to understand the Nazis as human beings”: Richard J Evans on the motivations of Hitler’s followers
type: item
date: 2024-11-21T15:06:45.000Z
creator: Sir Richard J Evans
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Fascism
subject: Holocaust
description: Adolf Hitler and those at the top of the Nazi hierarchy are universally denounced as monstrous aberrations. But, as Sir Richard J Evans stresses, separating them from the lessons of human history is the last thing we should be doing at a moment when democracy is under attack
encoded: A little over two decades ago, the first volume of my history of the Third Reich was published. My aim was to produce a comprehensive study encompassing the origins and rise of the Nazi Party, the transformation of Germany under Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship, and the events and impacts of the Second World War. It was, of course, a major undertaking and, after the third and final volume was published in 2008, I moved on to other topics. But a commission to contribute to a nine-part television series, BBC Two’s Rise of the Nazis, shown from 2019 to 2022, prompted me to take a fresh look at the Third Reich and its crimes. What struck me forcibly, given the biographical orientation of the TV series, was that I knew relatively little about the individuals involved in Nazism and the Reich – and, specifically, very little about their personalities and motivations. For decades, German historians in particular had avoided biography, long tainted by its indirect association with the ‘great man’ approach to history – or, as they called it, personalisierende Geschichtsschreibung (‘personalising history-writing’). Read more | Fake news and Nazis: Richard J Evans on the spectre of conspiracies The rise of ‘perpetrator research’ Yet in recent years, a massive amount of new documentation and research has been published about the leading Nazis. What historians describe as ‘perpetrator research’ has been at the forefront of scholarship since the turn of the century, and has yielded innumerable fresh insights. A 12-volume edition of Hitler’s speeches before his seizure of power was completed in 2003. The final volume of the diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels appeared in 2008. The diaries of self-proclaimed Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg were published in 2015. The second volume of SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s appointments diary, discovered in an obscure Russian archive, came out in 2020. And many other sources have come to light documenting the thoughts and actions of what…

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Are we right to fictionalise the Holocaust? It’s a question The Tattooist of Auschwitz should make us ask ourselves
type: item
date: 2024-05-10T10:13:08.000Z
creator: Rob Attar
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Holocaust
subject: Trends-Entertainment
description: In the pantheon of historical drama, the Holocaust is among the hardest topics to cover without making difficult – and some might say questionable – choices. Rob Attar spoke to historian Professor Richard J Evans about the perils of fictionalising an episode of such horror and sensitivity
encoded: Whether we like it or not, the fact remains that most people’s introduction to historical topics comes from fiction. And that’s as true for the Holocaust as it is for the Tudors, ancient Rome or medieval Europe. But should the sheer horror of the Nazi genocide impose additional constraints on authors and filmmakers? And should we even be fictionalising it at all? These are questions I was keen to put to Professor Richard J Evans, one of the world’s leading experts on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. We spoke just before the release of the TV adaptation of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which is one of 2024’s most hotly anticipated historical dramas. It’s based on a 2018 novel by Heather Morris, which is itself centred on the real story of Slovakian Jewish Holocaust survivor Lale Sokolov (a tattooist at Auschwitz), who met the author in later life. The trouble with The Tattooist of Auschwitz The Tattooist of Auschwitz has sold millions of copies around the world and won plaudits from many reviewers, but also come in for criticisms from some Holocaust scholars for a number of inaccuracies within the book. Evans read the novel in advance of our conversation and found himself sharing many of these concerns. “I'm afraid the historian in me is always on the lookout for little mistakes and little errors, which can be a bit irritating,” he said. “But the major one for me is that this book cannot cope with the extremes of inhumanity, brutality, and horror that you find in Auschwitz. “For 99 per cent of the inmates, the concentration camp is a degrading, humiliating, appalling and shocking experience from which there's no escape. And this novel is about escape: escape through love, escape through an affair, escape through the humanity and the help of other prisoners and of some of the camp auxiliaries and camp guards. That softens the contours of what was really a horribly appalling experience. So, to me, that doesn’t ring true.” In response to the critics of the book, both Heath…

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The real tattooists of Auschwitz: who were the men who turned people into numbers?
type: item
date: 2024-05-02T15:44:57.000Z
creator: Roger Moorhouse
subject: Period
subject: Second World War
subject: Holocaust
description: A love story between two prisoners at the worst of the Nazis’ concentration camps? The plot of the Tattooist of Auschwitz might be considered unduly light given its setting but, as Roger Moorhouse explores, the job of inking those dreaded identification numbers on prisoners’ arms was indeed a real one
encoded: Auschwitz: the largest of the concentration camps in the Second World War, where more than a million were put to death in the Holocaust. That is the setting for a six-part period drama streaming on Sky Atlantic in the UK from 2 May, based on the 2018 novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris. Lale Sokolov (played by Jonah Hauer-King), a Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942, is made to tattoo new arrivals to the camp with a registration number on their arms. When he meets a young prisoner named Gita (Anna Próchniak), he falls in love and so is offered a slither of hope in this otherwise hopeless place. Here, Roger Moorhouse, an expert in modern German and Central European history, explains that not only was tattooing exclusive to Auschwitz, but that the drama series’ protagonist – Lale Sokolov – was a real person. Was there really a tattooist at Auschwitz? There were a few, in fact. From the middle of the Second World War, it was standard procedure in Auschwitz to identify those arriving prisoners who had been selected for work by tattooing them with their camp registration number. The logic was that the corpses of dead prisoners, which were sometimes stripped of their clothing, had to be identifiable to ensure that camp records could be satisfactorily maintained. WW2 | The Big Questions Member exclusive | Historian and broadcaster Laurence Rees explains major moments of the global conflict in this five-part series. Listen to all episodes now Was everyone at Auschwitz tattooed? Initially, the SS had only tattooed Soviet prisoners of war, and those who were in the infirmary or scheduled to be executed. The expansion of Auschwitz in 1942, however, saw the practice extended to include all prisoners that were selected to work. Those that were exterminated upon arrival were not registered, so there was no need for them to be tattooed. In the early phase, prisoners were tattooed on the left side of the chest using a form of metal stamp that could be changed to…

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