Thirteen episodes tracing the full history of the Holocaust — from Himmler’s early camp system and SS ideology through the Wannsee Conference and the industrialisation of murder, to Auschwitz, the genocide across occupied Europe, and the long reckoning of memory and de-Nazification that followed.
Part One: Persecution and the Camps Before the War (1933–41)
The Nazi concentration camp system was built before the genocide. From Dachau in 1933 onward, the camps served as instruments of political terror and SS training grounds — the infrastructure that would later be repurposed for industrialised murder.
Himmler’s Orders and the SS Camp System 1933–39
In the pre-war camp system, Himmler imposed strict regulations on prisoner treatment — not out of humanity, but to ensure that violence was centrally organised and directed. This episode examines the institutional culture that made genocide possible.
SS Training and the Nazi Camp System
The camps as proving ground — how the SS used the camp system to train and brutalise a generation of men who would later perpetrate the Holocaust. The culture of sadism that the pre-war camps deliberately cultivated.
Part Two: The Road to Genocide (1939–42)
The Holocaust did not begin with a single decision. It evolved through a sequence of escalations — the murder of Soviet POWs at Sachsenhausen, the establishment of death camps in occupied Poland, the Wannsee Conference, and the shift from mass shooting to industrialised gassing. These episodes trace that terrible evolution.
Sachsenhausen, Soviet POWs and the Origins of the Final Solution
In 1941, Sachsenhausen became the first existing concentration camp to become a site of mass killing — 9,000 Soviet POWs murdered by gas or shooting. This episode examines how Himmler used these experiments to develop the methods that would later be applied to Europe’s Jews.
The Holocaust and the General Government in Occupied Poland
Drawing on Nikolaus Wachsmann’s research in KL, this episode traces the path to genocide through the Nazi occupation of Poland — the General Government, the ghettos, and the transformation of persecution into systematic mass murder.
The Wannsee Conference
In January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich convened senior Nazi officials at Wannsee to coordinate the extermination of all of Europe’s Jews. This episode explores what the conference decided — and what it reveals about the nature of Nazi decision-making.
The Development of the Holocaust 1941–42
From Barbarossa to Wannsee, the Holocaust developed through a series of chaotic, contradictory escalations. This episode — based on Wachsmann’s KL — examines why the decision-making process was so fragmented, and what that tells us about the structure of the Nazi state.
Part Three: Auschwitz and the Death Camps
Auschwitz-Birkenau was both extermination camp and slave labour site — a place where Himmler’s ideological aims and the Third Reich’s economic needs intersected in the most murderous way possible. These episodes examine the Auschwitz complex from multiple angles: ideology, economics, and the testimony of those who ran it.
Himmler and Auschwitz
In July 1942, Himmler visited Auschwitz-Birkenau intending it to serve both as an extermination site and a slave labour complex. This episode examines his intentions and the economic logic that shaped the Holocaust’s most notorious site.
Lebensraum, Genocide and Nazi Colonial Utopias 1941–45
Hitler and Himmler envisioned a transformed Eastern Europe — vast German cities, Russian slave labour, and the destruction of the existing population. This episode places the Holocaust within the broader Nazi colonial project and its murderous logic.
IG Farben and the Holocaust
In 1947 the last Nuremberg trial prosecuted the industrialists of IG Farben, who used slave labour at their Auschwitz Monowitz factory. This episode examines the complicity of German industry in the Holocaust and what it reveals about capitalism, genocide, and accountability.
Rudolf Höss: The Auschwitz Commandant
When Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz 1940–43, was tried in 1947 he gave remarkably open testimony about the process of genocide. This episode uses that testimony to examine both the mechanics of mass murder and the attitudes of those who carried it out.
Part Four: The Holocaust Across Europe and Memory
The Holocaust was a continental crime — carried out with the complicity of local police, governments, and citizens across occupied Europe. And in its aftermath, the reckoning was slow, incomplete, and shaped by Cold War politics. These episodes examine the Holocaust beyond Germany and the long struggle to remember.
Romania, Communism and the Holocaust
Romania was deeply involved in the Holocaust — its own nationalist aggression driving pogroms and deportations long before German occupation. This episode examines Romania’s complicity and how the communist era suppressed rather than confronted that history.
Dramatising the Diary of Anne Frank
In conversation with Adam Langer of the Forward podcast, this episode explores the history of how Anne Frank’s diary has been dramatised — and the complex politics of Holocaust memory on either side of the Iron Curtain.
De-Nazification
How did Germany deal with the legacy of Nazism and the Holocaust? This episode examines the de-Nazification process, comparing West and East German approaches to a history of crimes that neither society was fully ready to confront.
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Related Collections
Further Reading
These articles from the Explaining History archive go deeper on the history behind these episodes:
- IBM and the Holocaust — How technology became a force multiplier for industrial genocide.
- The Bureaucrat’s Holocaust — How the German civil service enabled and administered the Final Solution.
- The Nazi Camps and the ‘Workshy’ — The expansion of the camp system beyond its Jewish victims.
- The Holocaust — A longform article on the systematic murder of six million Jews and millions of others: its origins in Nazi ideology, the machinery of destruction, and the aftermath of genocide.
