Roger Moorhouse is a historian and author, specialising in Nazi Germany, Central Europe and World War Two in Europe. A fluent German speaker, he graduated from The School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), University of London, in 1995, and undertook post-graduate research at the Universities of Düsseldorf and Glasgow.
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Roger was the co-author, with Professor Norman Davies, of Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City in 2002, and has since written a number of books, including Killing Hitler (Cape, 2006), The Devils’ Alliance (Bodley Head/Basic Books, 2014) – on the subject of the Nazi-Soviet Pact – and the critically-acclaimed Berlin at War (Bodley Head/Basic Books, 2010), a social history of the German capital in World War Two, which was short-listed for the Hessel-Tiltman Prize in 2011. His books have been published in over 20 languages.
His latest book First to Fight – which was published in the US as Poland 1939 – was shortlisted for both the Duke of Wellington Medal for Military History, and for the British Army’s Military Book of the Year award.
A regular lecturer and book reviewer for the national and specialist history press, Roger is a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Warsaw, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London. In 2020 he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland at the Polish Embassy in London. He lives in Hertfordshire, UK.
“Hitler in the bunker” said would-be assassin Claus von Stauffenberg, “that’s the real Hitler”. He was right. Reinforced concrete seemed to follow Hitler like a Wagnerian leitmotiv; his Reich was not only the largest builder of bunkers in history, it also perfected its art constructing ...
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in?It’s a whole host of intersecting fascinations, actually. I started off studying Central European history in the aftermath of 1989, then gravitated to Germany – specifically Nazi Germany – which I still find fascinating. My last two books –
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact stunned the world when it was revealed at the end of August 1939. Stalin and Hitler, who had been denouncing each other throughout the 1930s, were now allies. Not only did their agreement, at a stroke, wipe out Poland and the Baltic states, it also meant Hitler could concentrate on his enemies to the West.
Roger, firstly, can you tell us a little bit about the origins of your latest book? Who were the forgers and how did you find out about their story?The forgers were a group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists – known as the Ładoś Group – who were illegally producing Latin American passports during the war, with the intention of using them to help Jews
