Out of Hitler’s Shadow – Tobias Straumann in Conversation with Frank Trentmann
On Thursday, 19 February 2026 from 6.30pm to 7.30pm, the two historians Frank Trentmann and Tobias Straumann will discuss Tobias’s book Out of Hitler’s Shadow: Debt, Guilt, and the German Economic Miracle on Zoom.
The book explores why the United States and its Western Allies chose an unexpectedly lenient approach toward Germany after the Second World War, despite the catastrophic destruction and suffering caused by the Nazi regime. Instead of demanding sweeping reparations, the Western powers decided at the 1952 London Debt Conference to forgo all war-related debts, requiring West Germany to repay only a portion of its pre- and post-war obligations.
This controversial decision challenged conventional ideas of justice, leaving many victims uncompensated. Yet key statesmen – including Dean Acheson, Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Sharett – believed that harsh financial terms would destabilise Europe and hinder long-term recovery. Tobias Straumann reveals how their strategic foresight reshaped post-war Europe and why their choices still resonate today.
Prof. Dr. Tobias Straumann is an economic historian teaching at the University of Zurich and director of the MAS in Applied History. He also writes columns for the NZZ am Sonntag. He is the author of 1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford University Press 2019).
Prof. Dr. Frank Trentmann is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, and at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of Empire of Things, Free Trade Nation, and Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942–2022. He was a Moore Scholar at Caltech and has been awarded the Whitfield Prize, the Austrian Science Book Prize, the Humboldt Prize for Research and the 2023 Bochum Historians’ Prize.
Please note that registration is necessary for the event. Only logged-in members of the BGA will be able to see the Zoom registration link (starting https://) below. Once you have logged in to your BGA account, please navigate back to this page via the “Events” tab on the menu bar and register below. If you are still unable to see the Zoom registration link after logging in, please check your membership is up-to-date or contact us.
