The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and the East Central European Center present:

“On Fighting, Killing and Dying: New perspectives on Wehrmacht soldiers in WWII”

A book talk with Sönke Neitzel
Professor of International History, London School of Economics

This event is free and open to the public. Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Books will be available for purchase.

Since 1945 many historians have examined the behavior of German’s armed forces in the Second World War, the Wehrmacht: why they were willing to commit atrocities during the war, and why they continued fighting after it was clear that they had been defeated. Based on the analysis of 150,000 pages of secretly recorded conversations of German soldiers in British and American captivity, Sönke Neitzel presents a new interpretation of the way in which German soldiers saw themselves and their country in World War II. Dr. Neitzel uses this information to provide insights into the behavior and psychology of modern military forces.

Sönke Neitzel is a Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. He previously held the Chair of Modern History/Global Security at University of Glasgow and taught until 2011 at the Universities of Saarbrucken, Bern and Mainz. Dr. Neitzel is the co-author, with Harald Welzer, of Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying (Knopf, 2012), which will be translated into 17 languages. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.