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How do you write the history of something that never happened?  What were the chances of Nazis creating a Fourth Reich?  And what do our fears of a Nazi resurgence tell us about the past and present.

In this wide-ranging conversation with Gavriel Rosenfeld, we talk about the history of the Fourth Reich, both as a rhetorical device but also as a very real political reality that former Nazis tried to engineer.  We also discuss the challenges postwar Germany faced in coming to terms with the very real Third Reich.  We also look at the uses and abuses of the Nazi past in the context of the rise of the modern political far-right.

Gavriel Rosenfeld is President of the Center for Jewish History in New York City and Professor of History at Fairfield University.  He can be found on Twitter @gavrieldrosenfe

His book is The Fourth Reich: The Specter of Nazism from World War II to the Present.

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Email the podcast at [email protected]

The Holocaust History Podcast homepage is here

You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.