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Interviews with Scholars of Western Europe about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
New Books Network
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  • Brandon Bloch, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy" (Harvard UP, 2025)

    Brandon Bloch, "Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy" (Harvard UP, 2025)
    Sep 11 2025
    Germany’s Protestant churches, longtime strongholds of nationalism and militarism, largely backed the Nazi dictatorship that took power in 1933. For many Protestant leaders, pastors, and activists, national and religious revival were one and the same. Even those who opposed the regime tended toward antidemocratic attitudes. By the 1950s, however, Church leaders in West Germany had repositioned themselves as prominent advocates for constitutional democracy and human rights. Brandon Bloch reveals how this remarkable ideological shift came to pass, following the cohort of theologians, pastors, and lay intellectuals who spearheaded the postwar transformation of their church. Born around the turn of the twentieth century, these individuals came of age amid the turbulence of the Weimar Republic and were easily swayed to complicity with the Third Reich. They accommodated the state in hopes of protecting the Church’s independence from it, but they also embraced the Nazi regime’s antisemitic and anticommunist platform. After the war, under the pressures of Allied occupation, these Protestant intellectuals and their heirs creatively reimagined their tradition as a fount of democratic and humanitarian values. But while they campaigned for family law reform, conscientious objection to military service, and the protection of basic rights, they also promoted a narrative of Christian anti-Nazi resistance that whitewashed the Church’s complicity in dictatorship and genocide. Examining the sources and limits of democratic transformation, Reinventing Protestant Germany: Religious Nationalists and the Contest for Post-Nazi Democracy (Harvard University Press, 2025) sheds new light on the development of postwar European politics and the power of national myths. Guest: Brandon Bloch (he/him) is a historian of modern Europe, with an emphasis on Germany and its global entanglements. His research and teaching foreground themes of democracy, human rights, memory politics, and social thought. Brandon is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Host: Jenna Pittman (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990. Scholars@Duke: https://scholars.duke.edu/pers... Linktree: https://linktr.ee/jennapittman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
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    56 min
  • David Welsh, "The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europes Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

    David Welsh, "The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europes Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
    Sep 10 2025
    The Social Railway and Its Workers in Europe’s Modern Era, 1880-2023: Moments of Fury, Ramparts of Hope (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. David Welsh examines the evolution of rail transport and a number of railway workforces across Europe in the modern era, from around 1880 to 2023.Each chapter explores how, within the context of a social railway, rail workers developed distinct national and international perspectives on the nature of their work and their roles in societies and states. Dr. Welsh convincingly argues that workers formed a raft of entirely new and enduring organisations such as trade unions that, in turn, became ramparts of hope. Welsh goes on to consider how the insurgent character of these organisations produced moments of fury during tumultuous periods in the 20th century. The Social Railway and its Workers in Europe's Modern Era, 1880-2023 explores the national and European contexts in which both characteristics came to the fore, including the ecology of fossil fuel technology (coal and oil). Above all, it argues that social, economic and political forces are not simply external 'scene-shifting' but integral to the history of railway systems.The book examines the cultural construction of European railways through literature, art and other forms of writing as well as recent oral history. It also includes a detailed investigation of the role played by nationalisation and public ownership in Europe. In the context of neoliberalism and globalization, it proposes a 21st century programme for the social railway. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
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    1 h et 5 min
  • Joanne Yao, "The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order" (Manchester UP, 2022)

    Joanne Yao, "The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order" (Manchester UP, 2022)
    Sep 8 2025
    Environmental politics has traditionally been a peripheral concern for international relations theory, but increasing alarm over global environmental challenges has elevated international society's relationship with the natural world into the theoretical limelight. IR theory's engagement with environmental politics, however, has largely focused on interstate cooperation in the late twentieth century, with less attention paid to how the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century quest to tame nature came to shape the modern international order. The Ideal River: How Control of Nature Shaped the International Order (Manchester UP, 2022) examines nineteenth-century efforts to establish international commissions on three transboundary rivers - the Rhine, the Danube, and the Congo. It charts how the Enlightenment ambition to tame the natural world, and human nature itself, became an international standard for rational and civilized authority and informed our geographical imagination of the international. This relationship of domination over nature shaped three core IR concepts central to the emergence of early international order: the territorial sovereign state; imperial hierarchies; and international organizations. The book contributes to environmental politics and international relations by highlighting how the relationship between society and nature is not a peripheral concern, but one at the heart of international politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/european-studies
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    39 min
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