Paul von Hindenburg
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and role of one of the most significant figures in early 20th Century German history. Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) had been famous since 1914 as the victorious commander at the Battle of Tannenberg against Russian invaders, soon burnishing this fame on the Western Front and Hindenburg was to claim he would have won there too, if enemies at home had not ‘stabbed Germany in the back’. He won Germany’s Presidential election twice during the Weimar Republic, as a candidate of national unity and, while he gained his second term as a ‘stop Hitler’ candidate, President Hindenburg was to appoint Hitler as Chancellor and transfer some of his charisma onto him - a move so disastrous that Germans were later to ask if the myth of Hindenburg had always been an illusion.
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Guests
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Anna von der Goltz No other episodes
Professor of History at Georgetown University, Washington DC -
Chris Clark No other episodes
Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge -
Colin Storer No other episodes
Associate Professor in Modern European History at the University of Warwick
Reading list
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Hindenburg: Icon of German Militarism
William J. Astore and Dennis E. Showalter (Potomac Books, 2005) -
The Death of Democracy: Hitler's Rise to Power
Benjamin Carter Hett (William Heinemann, 2018) Google Books → -
Hindenburg and the Weimar Republic
Andreas Dorpalen (Princeton University Press, 2016) Google Books → -
The Two Hindenburg Elections of 1925 and 1932: A Total Reversal of Voter Coalitions
Jurgen W. Falter (Central European History, 1990) -
Presidential Victory and Popular Festivity in Weimar Germany: Hindenburg's 1925 Election
Peter Fritzsche (Central European History, 1990) -
Hitler Versus Hindenburg: The 1932 Presidential Elections and the End of the Weimar Republic
Larry Eugene Jones (Cambridge University Press, 2016) Google Books → -
The Silent Dictatorship: The Politics of the German High Command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff, 1916-1918
Martin Kitchen (Routledge, 2021) Google Books → -
The Warlords: Hindenburg and Ludendorff
John Lee (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005) Google Books → -
The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall, 1918-1933
Frank McDonough (Apollo, 2023) Google Books → -
The Oxford Handbook of the Weimar Republic
Nadine Rossol and Benjamin Ziemann (eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2022) Google Books → -
Hindenburg: The Cartoon Titan of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1934
Richard Scully (German Studies Review, 2012) -
A Short History of the Weimar Republic
Colin Storer (Bloomsbury, 2024) Google Books → -
Hindenburg: Power, Myth and the Rise of the Nazis
Anna von der Goltz (Oxford University Press, 2009) Google Books → -
Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary at War, 1914-1918
Alexander Watson (Penguin, 2015) Google Books → -
Hindenburg: The Wooden Titan
J. W. Wheeler-Bennett (Macmillan, 1967) Google Books →
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Programme ID: m002cfjz
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002cfjz
Auto-category: 943.085 (Germany - 20th century)