Darren O’Byrne
Darren is a historian of modern Germany. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in History and Politics and a Master’s Degree in the History of International Relations, both from University College Dublin. During his PhD he was a DAAD research fellow at Berlin’s Humboldt University, and a visiting fellow at the Technical University in Berlin. Since receiving his PhD he has held a visiting fellowship at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, and is now a Research Associate and Affiliated Lecturer in Modern German History, and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College.
Right now he is writing his first monograph on the history of the civil service under under Nazism, and researching sport and sports journalism in inter-war Germany. He is also a project coordinator for Ideologies in National Socialism, a digital humanities project on Nazi Ideology and its global dimensions. He teaches German and European History.
Contact
Tags & Themes
Wolfson College, Cambridge
Publications
Books (as Editor)
With Julien Reitzenstein, Handbook Ideologies in National Socialism, Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals (forthcoming, DeGruyter)
With Christopher Young, Willy Meisl – ‘King of the Sports Journalists’. A Jewish Career in Times of Change, 1918–1945 (forthcoming, DeGruyter)
Journal Articles
'Nazi Constitutional Designs. The State Secretaries' Meetings and the Annexation of East Central Europe', European History Quarterly 54, 2 (2024): 337-357.
‘“Self-Coordination” and its Origins. Civil Servants and Regime Change in 1933 and 1918/19’, Contemporary European History 33, 1 (2024), pp.70-83.
'Johannes Krohn and the German Social Insurance System under Democracy and Dictatorship', Vierteljahrschrift fuer Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 110 (2023): 471-493.
With Christopher Young, 'The Will of the Führer? Financing Construction for the 1936 Olympics', Journal of Contemporary History 57, 1 (2022). pp. 24-44.
Book Chapters
'Johannes Krohn. Ideology and Adaption Across Regimes', Ideologies in National Socialism. Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals, eds. Darren O'Byrne, Julien von Reitzenstein (forthcoming, DeGruyter)
'Herbert Backe and the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture in the "Third Reich". Actions and Ideologies', in Ideologies in National Socialism. Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals, eds. Darren O'Byrne, Julien von Reitzenstein (forthcoming, DeGruyter)
‘Perpetrators? Political Civil Servants in the Third Reich’, in Perpetrators: Dynamics, Motivations and Concepts for participating in mass Violence, eds. Timothy Williams and Susanne Buckley-Zistel (London: Routledge, 2018).
Other
‘The Nazis Enter History’, History Today vol. 71, no. 8 (August, 2021).
Reviews (select)
The Critic (May 2024), 'Fighting lies with lies', review of Pomeranstev, Peter Frank, 'How to Win and Information War. The Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler' (Faber & Faber, 2024).
The Critic (Nov. 2023), 'The Tangled Roots of the Third Reich', review of McDonough, Frank, 'The Weimar Years. Rise and Fall 1918-1933' (Apollo, 2023) and Fulbrook, Mary, 'Bystander Society. Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust' (OUP, 2024).
History Today vol. 72, no. 11, Spicer, Charles, 'Coffee with Hitler. The British Amateurs Who Tried to Civilise the Nazis' (OneWorld, 2022).
HSozKult (June 2020), Marx, Henry, ‚Die Verwaltung des Ausnahmezustands. Wissensgenerierung und Arbeitskräftelenkung im Nationalsozialismus‘. (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019).
German Politics and Society 37, no. 1 (Spring 2019). Noah Strote, Lions and Lambs: Conflict in Weimar and the Creation of Post-Nazi Germany (Yale: Yale University Press, 2017).
Journal of Contemporary History 54, no. 1 (Jan. 2019). Guenter Lewy, Perpetrators: The World of Holocaust Killers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Journal of Contemporary History 53, no. 2 (April 2018). Roshan Magub, Edgar Julius Jung, Right Wing Enemy of the Nazis: A Political Biography (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2016).