Ill Literacy, Episode 179: Out of the Darkness (Guest: Frank Trentmann)

Published March 27, 2025
Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Frank Trentmann, professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London, to discuss his latest book, Out of the Darkness: The Germans, 1942–2022. They chat about how a nation whose past has been marked by mass murder, a people who cheered Adolf Hitler, reinvented themselves, and by how much. 
 
 
Show Notes:
Literary Review: David Blackbourn – “A Mercedes in Every Garage”
 
New York Review of Books: Timothy Garton Ash – “Big Germany, What Now?”
 
The New Statesman: Brendan Simms – “What it means to be German”
 
The Times: Oliver Moody – “Out of the Darkness by Frank Trentmann review — how Germans became good (and rather complacent)”
 
Times Literary Supplement: Ben Hutchinson – “New moral order”
 
The Wall Street Journal: Ian Brunskill – “‘Out of the Darkness’ Review: War Crimes and Remembrance”
 
The Washington Post: Bryn Stole – “An ambitious history of Germany interrogates the country’s moral makeover”