IWM

Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder (1969, Ohio) is the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a Permanent Fellow at the IWM. He received his Bachelor of Arts in European history and political science from Brown University in 1991. He then became a British Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford, where he completed his doctorate in 1997.

He has held fellowships at the Centre Nationale des Recherches Scientifiques, Paris (1994-1995); the Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies (1997); served as an Academy Scholar at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs (1998-2001); and has held multiple fellowships at the IWM in Vienna.

Among his publications are five award-winning books, all of which have been translated.  Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing on the lands between Berlin and Moscow, received a number of honors, including the Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought, the Leipzig Prize for European Understanding and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award in the Humanities.

Projects:

Selected Publications

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017.
Über Tyrannei: Zwanzig Lektionen für den Widerstand, München: C.H.Beck, 2017.

Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, New York: Tim Duggan Books, September 2015.
Black Earth: Der Holocaust und warum er sich wiederholen kann, München: C.H.Beck, September 2015.

Stalinism and Europe: Terror, War, and Domination, 1937-1947 (edited with Ray Brandon), Oxford University Press, 2014

Thinking the 20th Century (with Tony Judt), London: Penguin Books, 2011
Nachdenken über das 20. Jahrhundert (gemeinsam mit Tony Judt), München: Hanser, 2013

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, New York: Basic Books, 2010
Bloodlands. Europa zwischen Hitler und Stalin 1933-1945, München: C.H. Beck, 2011

The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke, New York: Basic Books, 2008
Der König der Ukraine: Die geheimen Leben des Wilhelm von Habsburg, Wien: Zsolnay, 2009

Furthermore, Snyder is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the New York Review of Books Blog.

[ Complete List of Publications ]

 

Former affiliations at the IWM:
2004-05, Visting Fellow
1996, Junior Visiting Fellow

 

 

 

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The Reichstag Warning

Timothy Snyder
The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime. There is nothing new, to be sure, in the politics of exception. The American Founding Fathers knew that the democracy they were creating was vulnerable to an aspiring tyrant who might seize upon some dramatic event as grounds for the suspension of our rights. As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency.” What changed with the Reichstag fire was the use of terrorism as a catalyst for regime change. To this day, we do not know who set the Reichstag fire: the lone anarchist executed by the Nazis or, as new scholarship by Benjamin Hett suggests, the Nazis themselves. What we do know is that it created the occasion for a leader to eliminate all opposition.
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On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timothy Snyder
In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised to protect them from global existential threats, and rejected reason in favour of myth. European history shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, …
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20 Lessons from the 20th Century

Timothy Snyder
Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so.
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Timothy Snyder was Awarded “Man of the Year” Prize by Gazeta Wyborcza

Timothy Snyder
Gazeta Wyborcza, the first Polish independent broadsheet established in 1989, celebrated its 27th anniversary and awarded its “Man of the Year” prize to Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University and a Permanent Fellow at the IWM.
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Poland vs. History

Timothy Snyder
Perhaps the greatest surprise in the Polish government’s decision is the implicit alliance with current Russian memory policy. The move to limit the Polish history of World War II to the week-long engagement with Germany at Westerplatte in 1939 follows a Russian script that is entirely on the record. In a speech at Westerplatte in 2009, Vladimir Putin accepted that Poland, and not the USSR, was the first victim of German aggression. But there was an important proviso, which he has amplified several times since. The German attack on Poland, Putin asserts, was a consequence of Poland’s own dealings with Nazi Germany before the war, rather than a result of the Soviet-German alliance of 1939.
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Warnings from Another Refugee Crisis

Timothy Snyder
The last world war began amidst a refugee crisis. In discussions of refugees today, many European politicians neglect to mention how exclusion led to murder the last time around.
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Black Earth. The Holocaust as History and Warning

Timothy Snyder
Black Earth. The Holocaust as History and Warning New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2015 In this epic history of extermination and survival, Timothy Snyder presents a new explanation of the great atrocity of the twentieth century, and reveals the risks that we face in the twenty-first. Based on new sources from eastern Europe and forgotten …
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When Stalin was Hitler’s Ally

Timothy Snyder
As Russia revives the tradition of wars of aggression on European territory, Vladimir Putin has chosen to rehabilitate the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact as good foreign policy. But why violate now what was for so long a Soviet taboo? Timothy Snyder explains.
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Putin’s New Nostalgia

Timothy Snyder
As Russian military convoys continue the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has chosen to rehabilitate the alliance between Hitler and Stalin that began World War II. Speaking before an audience of Russian historians at the Museum of Modern Russian History, Putin said: “The Soviet Union signed a non-aggression agreement with Germany. They say, ‘Oh, how bad.’ But what is so bad about it, if the Soviet Union did not want to fight? What is so bad?”
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Moskaus Waffen und Lügen

Timothy Snyder
Der Abschuss des Passagierflugzeugs über der Ukraine und die fast 300 Todesopfer werden die Haltung Moskaus im Ukraine-Konflikt kaum beeinflussen. In Europa aber könnte sich eine härtere Gangart durchsetzen. Fraglich ist, ob das reicht, den sinnlosen Krieg zu beenden.
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