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PODCAST

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast

Katja Hoyer & Dr. Christopher Dillon

Takes you beyond the familiar clichés to uncover the richness and diversity of the German past. Join us as we untangle this complex story, dispelling the popular myths and misapprehensions about a national history that still shapes the world we live in. Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! Host: Katja Hoyer & Dr Christopher Dillon ⁠⁠https://battleguide.co.uk/reichs-republics#host⁠⁠ To comment and ask questions, please join our community:⁠

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All Episodes

55:31

Episode 30: Augustus the Strong - Europe's Worst...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/10/06

In this week's episode, Katja and Chris are joined by Professor Tim Blanning to discuss Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. Famous for his strength, mistresses and lavish parties, Augustus has been called one of Europe's worst monarchs. They explore how he won and lost the Polish crown, his failures in the Great Northern War, and his triumph as the patron who transformed Dresden. So was he really such a bad king?Books Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and

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51:58

Episode 29: The Guillaume Affair: A Stasi Spy in the...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/09/29

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the Guillaume Affair, one of the Cold War's most dramatic spy scandals. Günter Guillaume was an East German Stasi officer who spent nearly two decades climbing the ranks of the SPD to become Chancellor Willy Brandt's personal aide. They ask how he got there, what West German intelligence knew, and why his arrest in 1974 brought down one of West Germany's most charismatic chancellors.Join us as we untangle this complex story, dispelling the popular myths

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52:13

Episode 28: Wilhelm I with Jan Markert

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/09/22

In this episode, Katja and Chris are joined by historian Dr. Jan Markert to look past the myth of Wilhelm I as a passive "soldier on the throne" and uncover the shrewd, hands-on monarch who shaped Germany's path to unification. They trace his Napoleonic-era childhood, his doomed teenage romance, his brutal role in crushing the 1848 revolution, and the real story behind his appointment of Bismarck, one that overturns the popular image of Bismarck as the mastermind and Wilhelm as his pawn. Along the

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46:26

Episode 27: The Hidden Germans of the White House

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/09/15

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the hidden history of German America in the White House. From Friedrich Trump's secretive teenage flight from Kallstadt in 1885 to the presidencies of Dwight Eisenhower, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, they trace how the largest immigrant group in American history became so thoroughly assimilated that its influence all but disappeared from public view. The episode also uncovers Donald Trump's decades-long insistence that his family was Swedish

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61:59

Episode 26: A Bureaucracy of Death: Nazi Germany's T4...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/09/08

In this episode, Katja and Chris examine the origins and implementation of Aktion T4, the Nazi regime’s systematic programme of mass murder targeting disabled people. They trace the intellectual and political foundations of the programme, from nineteenth-century eugenic thought and Weimar-era anxieties about demographic decline to the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring and, ultimately, the establishment of a coordinated system of mass killing by gas, which anticipated

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60:28

Episode 25: The Dark Legacy of Nietzsche’s Sister

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/09/01

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the extraordinary life of Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, the sister who became the architect of her brother Friedrich's public legacy. From a devout Protestant upbringing in Saxony and a doomed attempt to found a "racially pure" German colony in Paraguay, to her return as a penniless widow who transformed herself into the gatekeeper of Nietzsche's writings, they trace how she edited, curated and sometimes fabricated his work, most notoriously assembling "The

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52:05

Episode 24: From the Rhine to the Reich: German...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/08/25

In this episode, Katja and Chris trace the long and sometimes misunderstood history of Jews in German-speaking Europe, from Roman Cologne to the founding of the German Empire in 1871. They explore how Jewish communities settled along the Rhine under Frankish and medieval rulers, survived cycles of expulsion and violence including the Crusades and the Black Death pogroms, and gradually built livelihoods as traders, doctors, and financiers who were excluded from land ownership and the guild system

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52:41

Episode 23: Building Socialism: How the GDR Tried to...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/08/18

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the East German regime's ambitious drive to build socialism one prefabricated apartment at a time. Between 1971 and 1989, the GDR pledged to build millions of new homes, using concrete, steel and propaganda to try to eliminate the post-war housing shortage and forge a "classless" society. Drawing on Katja's own family history growing up in a GDR housing block, they trace the story from the rubble of 1945 and the Bauhaus's prefabrication experiments in Weimar,

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43:03

Episode 22: How Germany Invented the Way You Eat with...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/08/11

In this episode, Katja and Chris are joined by historian Dr Claudia Kreklau to uncover the surprising German origins of the way the world eats today. They explore how chefs fleeing the French Revolution found new homes in Prussian courts, how volcanic eruptions and failed harvests triggered starvation and revolution in the 1840s, and how the German middle class turned household preservation tricks into an industrial food empire. From Liebig's meat extract and the rise of tinned goods to the 1879

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49:08

Episode 21: Blood and Iron in Africa - Germany's...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/08/04

In this episode, Katja and Chris continue their exploration of Germany's colonial empire, turning to the violence that underpinned it. They examine the daily brutality of plantation and settler life, the international suppression of China's Boxer Uprising, and the genocidal war waged against the Herero and Nama peoples in German South West Africa under General Lothar von Trotha's extermination order. They also explore the lesser-known Maji Maji uprising in East Africa, the fierce backlash this

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54:49

Episode 20: The Reich Overseas

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/07/28

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore Germany’s colonial empire, from its early roots in Brandenburg to its rapid expansion under the Kaiserreich. They examine why Germany pursued colonies, how empire was sold to the public at home, and the violence, racial hierarchy, and dispossession behind the colonial dream.Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! Host: Katja Hoyer & Dr Christopher Dillon https://battleguide.co.uk/reichs-republics#host To comment and ask

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60:38

Episode 19: Reichs and Wrongs: Your German History...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/07/21

In this special Q&A episode, Katja and Chris tackle listener questions on everything from whether the Nazis were really right-wing, to why Hitler never invaded Switzerland, the myth of the German Sonderweg, and the deep roots of Germany's "Russlandversteher" sympathies. They explore a counterfactual on Kaiser Frederick III, unpack why the "stab-in-the-back" legend took such powerful hold after 1918, and discuss the lingering identities of Germans displaced from the East. Along the way: East German

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58:33

Episode 18: Hitler’s Long Death with Caroline Sharples

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/07/14

In this episode, Katja and Chris are joined by historian Dr Caroline Sharples to discuss Adolf Hitler’s death. Drawing on Caroline’s new book, The Long Death of Adolf Hitler: An Investigative History (Yale University Press), they explore the ways the Nazi dictator’s demise was imagined for years beforehand, what really unfolded in the Führerbunker on 30 April 1945, and how forensic detective work, from dental records to skull fragments, pieced together the truth from charred remains in the garden

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53:33

Episode 17: Konrad Adenauer and the Making of West...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/07/07

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the long chancellorship of Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first postwar leader. From the narrow vote that brought him to power in 1949 to the economic miracle, Western integration, NATO membership, and the slogan “No Experiments”, they examine how Adenauer helped turn a defeated and divided country into a stable democracy. But they also ask what this success cost: the sidelining of reunification, the compromises made over Germany’s Nazi past, Adenauer’s

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53:28

Episode 16: Konrad Adenauer, the Rhineland and the Reich

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/06/30

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the life of Konrad Adenauer before he became West Germany’s first chancellor. From his Catholic Rhineland upbringing and bitter opposition to Prussian dominance to his transformation of Cologne and uneasy survival under the Nazis, they examine the experiences that shaped his political outlook. Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! Host: Katja Hoyer & Dr Christopher

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50:21

Episode 15: The Eulenburg Affair and the Kaiser's...

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/06/23

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the Eulenburg Affair, a royal scandal that struck deep into the heart of Kaiser Wilhelm II's circle of friends and advisors with grave and unintended consequences for Europe. They examine Wilhelm's intense friendship with diplomat Philipp zu Eulenburg, and how accusations of homosexuality became a weapon in the struggle over power. Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! Host: Katja Hoyer & Dr Christopher

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51:18

Episode 14: Erich Mielke and the Origins of the Stasi

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/06/16

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the origins of the Stasi, East Germany’s notorious secret police, and the ruthless mindset of its long-serving chief, Erich Mielke. From Soviet influence and early political repression to mass surveillance and paranoia, they examine how the GDR built one of the most intrusive police states in modern history.Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! Host: Katja Hoyer & Dr Christopher

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45:22

Episode 13: Austria and Germany: The Anschluss

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/06/09

In this week’s episode, Katja and Chris continue their exploration of the tangled relationship between Austria and Germany, from the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 to the Nazi regime’s annexation of Austria in 1938. Why had so many Austrians believed their new republic could not survive alone? Why was union with Germany banned in the post-war peace settlement? And how did an idea previously associated with liberals and socialists become synonymous with ultranationalism, militarism, and

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49:16

Episode 12: Why is Austria not in Germany?

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/06/02

In this episode, Katja and Chris explore the long and complicated relationship between Germany and Austria. They explain how religious differences and Great Power rivalry sustained two competing German identities in Central Europe. Starting from Katja’s childhood memories of crossing the Austro-German border into a familiar yet foreign world, they debate the Holy Roman Empire, the impact of Napoleon, the Hohenzollern-Habsburg dynastic rivalry, the 1848 revolutions, Bismarck, and the competing

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63:45

Episode 11: 1923 The Ruhr Crisis with Mark Jones

Reichs & Republics | The German History Podcast ·

2026/05/26

In this week’s episode, Katja and Chris are joined by historian Mark Jones to discuss the 1923 Ruhr Crisis: the French and Belgian occupation of Germany’s industrial heartland, the policy of passive resistance, and the crisis of violence, hyperinflation, and political extremism that pushed the Weimar Republic to the brink.Guest: Mark Jones Book: 1923: The Forgotten Crisis in the Year of Hitler’s Coup Do you like our podcast? Then please leave us a review, it helps us a lot! Host: Katja

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