Felix Bohr Talks About Before the Downfall on the Dichtung und Wahrheit Podcast

In the latest episode of the Suhrkamp podcast Dichtung & Wahrheit, author Felix Bohr spoke (in German) to Annika von Taube about his book Before the Downfall: Hitler’s Years in the »Wolf’s Lair«. In this book, Bohr draws on meticulous research to portray everyday life in Hitler’s most important Führer’s command centre, and shows how heavily isolation, an obsession with power, and a loss of contact with reality shaped the decisions made by the Nazi regime.

Eighty years after the end of the war, the historian and journalist looks back at a place that only few people have any clear idea of, and asks the question of how we can interact with the sites of crimes against humanity without idealising them or making them into empty tourist attractions.

A conversation about the responsibility of historians, about working with subjective source material, and about the attempt to make history palpable to readers – through the use of language, and through creating a sense of intimacy with the places where historical events occurred.

You can listen to the podcast below.