Lisa Pine

Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Hitler and the history of the Nazis remain extremely popular topics and ones that never cease to attract people’s interest, even fascination. It is crucial to comprehend the nature of Mein Kampf, the mindset of its author, Adolf Hitler, and the ideology he espoused that brought untold tragedy to millions of people – death, destruction, genocide and war. The book presents a dangerous set of ideas, regrettably ones that still have followers today, one hundred years after Mein Kampf was originally penned. This lecture focusses on some key themes of the text, as well as examining the work in its historical context.

Lisa Pine is Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her main research interests are the history of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. She is the author or editor of nine books, the most recent of which is a co-authored book (with Kees Boterbloem), Soviet and Nazi Posters: Propaganda and Policies (Bloomsbury, 2025).

This event is also the LBI Summer Lecture 2025

Does belonging always require exclusion? This lecture series explores this universal question through the lens of the German-Jewish experience, a community deeply shaped by its complex relationship to inclusion and exclusion. Spanning key moments in modern history, these talks examine German-Jewish thinkers’ responses to the dominant ‘Protestant ethic’, debates over nationalism in interwar Germany and Austria, the warped ideology of Adolf Hitler, and the long struggle of German Jews to reclaim citizenship after the Holocaust. Join us as we situate these experiences within today’s urgent debates about identity and belonging.

Lecture recorded at Senate House, University of London on Thursday, July 10, 2025

Images from the lecture, and other streaming links, are available on the Leo Baeck Institute London website: https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/pine-25

Nicholas CourtmanKing’s College LondonSince 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany has allowed former citizens, whose citizenship was revoked by the Nazis due to their Jewish faith or ‘race’, to reclaim it. Yet, over the past 75 years, there have been significant changes regarding which German Jews – and which descendants – can enjoy that right. This talk tracks those developments, from the restrictive, often antisemitic decisions made in the 1950s, to attempts to uphold those regulations in the following decades, through to the 2021 reform of the German Nationality Act that finally redressed such exclusions.Nicholas Courtman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History and Languages at King’s College London, working on the Alfred Landecker-funded project ‘Citizenship after Hitler: Continuity and Change in German Citizenship Law’. He completed his PhD in German Studies at the University of Cambridge and previously worked at The Expert Council on Integration and Migration in Berlin, authoring a report on naturalisation practices for the German government. He has also served as an expert witness in two Bundestag hearings on reparative justice in citizenship law.Does belonging always require exclusion? This lecture series explores this universal question through the lens of the German-Jewish experience, a community deeply shaped by its complex relationship to inclusion and exclusion. Spanning key moments in modern history, these talks examine German-Jewish thinkers’ responses to the dominant ‘Protestant ethic’, debates over nationalism in interwar Germany and Austria, the warped ideology of Adolf Hitler, and the long struggle of German Jews to reclaim citizenship after the Holocaust. Join us as we situate these experiences within today’s urgent debates about identity and belonging.Lecture recorded at Senate House, University of London on Thursday, March 27, 2025Organised by the Leo Baeck Institute London in cooperation with the German Historical Institute London.Images from the lecture, and other streaming links, are available on the Leo Baeck Institute London website: https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/courtman-25

Before the Holocaust: Antisemitic Violence and the Reaction of German Elites and Institutions during the Nazi TakeoverSpeaker: Hermann BeckHermann Beck has just been announced winner of the Yad Vashem Book Prize 2024 for his book Before the Holocaust: Antisemitic Violence and the Reaction of German Elites and Institutions during the Nazi Takeover.Historians have traditionally argued that antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany rose gradually, from low levels during the first years of Hitler's rule to a high point in the Reich-wide pogrom of November 1938. Before the Holocaust, based on research in more than twenty German archives, demonstrates that this long-held assumption is wrong. During the months-long Nazi takeover of power, beginning a mere five weeks after Hitler became Chancellor, waves of antisemitic violence engulfed large parts of Germany. Before the Holocaust examines the multitude of these hitherto unrecognized antisemitic attacks in the late winter and spring of 1933, as well as the reaction of German elites and institutions to this violence. Individual protests against violent attacks were already hazardous in March and April 1933, but established German elites were still able to voice their concerns and raise objections. By doing so, they could have stopped a radicalization that eventually led to the Kristallnacht pogrom and the Holocaust. But the elites chose to remain silent and even became complicit, if only passively, in the outrages perpetrated against German and foreign Jews in Germany. This online talk thus revises standard assumptions about antisemitic violence and it throws a powerful and revealing light on the reaction of the German elites.Hermann Beck is Professor of History at the University of Miami. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles after studying History and Literature at German universities (Mannheim, Freiburg, and Berlin), the London School of Economics, and the Sorbonne. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. His publications include books on nineteenth-century Germany, The Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia, and the late Weimar and Nazi periods, The Fateful Alliance: German Conservatives and Nazis in 1933, and (co-editor), From Weimar to Hitler: Studies on the Dissolution of Weimar Democracy and the Establishment of the Third Reich, 1932-34 (with Larry Jones), as well as articles on conservatism, socialism, the Prussian bureaucracy, antisemitism, and the early Nazi period. These were published in British, German, and American journals and in edited collections.More information: https://www.lbilondon.ac.uk/beck-25This online talk was hosted in cooperation with the Wiener Holocaust Library and the British-German Association, and was recorded on Zoom on 20 February 2025

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