1939 and 2026: The Furies of War

The story of the residents of Weimar during the rise and reign of Hitler.

Weimar – On the Edge of Catastrophe is written by Katja Hoyer.
The reader is Sian Thomas.
The abridger is Julian Wilkinson.
The producer is Lu Kemp.

Hiking in the Ettersberg Carl Weirich is conscious of how the concentration camp has ruined the beautiful natural landscape of his local area. Meanwhile the net is drawing in around Rosa, as more and more demands are made to authenticate her heritage.

In the early 2020s historian Katja Hoyer visits Weimar to research the story of the people who lived there, and meets those who remember them.

Weimar explores ‘the question of how and why a nation that prided itself on its culture and civility enabled the catastrophe of Nazism haunts us to this day because we fear a repeat.’ The book is about the tension between individual and collective responsibility and sounds a warning for our own times.

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian, journalist and the author of the international bestseller Beyond the Wall as well as Blood and Iron. A visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she writes for Bloomberg and Berliner Zeitung and is a commentator on German current affairs for many British newspapers. She was born in Germany and is now based in the UK.