Hello and welcome to the History of the Germans Podcast, the podcast that does exactly what it says on the tin. What you get here is a narrative history of the German people from the early Middle Ages to German Reunification in 1991 in 20-30 minute, episodes coming out every Thursday.

Why would you want to come along to this journey? Can German history reach places, other histories cannot? Oh yes, it can.

Geographically Germany sits in the centre of Europe sharing borders with Denmark, Poland, Czechia, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands. And if you take the Holy Roman empire, which is a major feature of German history there is also Hungary, the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and Italy. The Hanseatic League was active in Norway, Sweden, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estland and England. The Habsburgs ruled Spain, Portugal, South America and the Balkans.

As we follow the continuous exchange of projectiles, peoples and cultures we will not just get a better understanding of German history, but also Austrian, Swiss, Dutch, Belgian, Italian, French, Danish, Czech, Polish and Hungarian history and lots more besides.

Basically German history is European history. It features pagans, popes and protestants, emperors and hermits, warriors and writers, merchants and megalomaniacs, and – not even all of them are Germans.

In terms of style, I am modelling myself on Mike Duncan’s History of Rome (aren’t we all), Robin Pierson’s History of Byzantium, Jamie Jeffer’s British History Podcast, David Crowther’s History of England and others, who have created and shaped an entire genre. Where we differ though is that it being German the podcast is entirely devoid of humour. Nada, zippo, zilch!

The other specifically German thing is that you cannot look at its history without reference to the moral abyss this country entered into - by and large voluntarily and with the tacit and sometimes not so tacit support of most of its population. It will be a long while before we get there, but we will.

As far as the current episodes are concerned, I want to tell the stories of the events as they happened and -to the extent that is at all possible – through the eyes of the people who were there at or near the time. I am a believer in the philosophy of the great Gregory of Tours who observed in the 6th century that “a great many things keep happening, some good, some bad”. History has no purpose, aim or natural outcome. But unfortunately, historians, and German historians in particular have a habit of harnessing historical events to prove the inevitability of their current regimes, be it the Kaiserreich, the Nazis, the GDR or the Bundesrepublik. Hence, we will from time to time look at how protagonists or events have been perceived through the centuries and their stories altered. Something that can be almost as fascinating as the actual history itself.

Each episode will be between 20 and 30 minutes long and should be published weekly, normally on a Thursday. The podcast will run in seasons, and I may take a few weeks of rest between seasons to recharge and do research.

Season zero is the Prologue, where I give a super rapid rundown of the earlier Germanic history from Julius Caesar to Charlemagne. The reason I skip this period is mainly because I can. I am just simply not very excited by Germanic hordes running here or there, creating oddly named states that disappear as quickly as they have appeared.

The first real season starts in 919 CE, when the German nobles elect the first of the Ottonian kings who lays the foundations of the political entity that would later be called the Holy Roman Empire. Season 2 from episode 22 onwards focuses on the Salian emperors (1024- 1125) whose first two monarchs bring the empire to its zenith and whose longest ruling member, Henry IV is one of the central protagonists in the medieval world revolution known as the Investiture Controversy. In Season 3 starting at episode 43 we talk about the glamour boy of German medieval history, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa and his immediate predecessors. Season 4 from episode 70 onwards deals with the high Middle Ages and in particular the long reign of the emperor Frederick II, the Wonder of the World as his contemporaries saw him.

In the following 3 season we looked at events in the northern parts of the empire. Season 5 (episodes 95-108) deals with the eastern expansion of the empire as German settlers cross the Elbe in the 12th century to make a living in these former Slavic lands. Season 6 (episodes 109-127) looks at the Hanseatic League, the association of merchants and cities that dominated the trade in the Baltic Sea for centuries. Season 7 (episodes 128-137) takes on the Teutonic Knights whose conquest and reorganisation of Prussia remains a cornerstone event in Polish-German history.

We have just finished season 8 (episodes 138-163) where we go back to imperial history, following events from the death of emperor Frederick II through the Interregnum to the Golden Bull of emperor Karl IV of Charles Bridge fame. Season 9 that starts in Autumn 2024 will take the story further through the Council of Constance, the Hussite War and the beginnings of the Habsburg empire.

If you follow us you will hear about knights carrying dogs, princesses escaping from towers, emperors kneeling in the snow, royals in barrels, war entrepreneurs and martial flutists, kings that bend horseshoes with their bare hands, revolutionaries on the barricades and conservatives who change everything so that everything stays the same, more revolutionaries, the Nazis and what I still believe is a unique bit of German history, the 1970s attempt to learn from the horrors. And at the end the only successful German revolution in 1989/1990. We will have truly world beating art, music, literature and philosophy as well as depravity, delinquency and desperation. German history has it all and more!

So come along and listen. Either start the whole show from the Prologue episodes onwards, or, if you are only interested in some of the seasons, I have released each of the seasons as a separate podcast. You can find links to those in the show notes. You can listen on any podcasting platform or on my website, historyofthegermans.com which has all the transcripts, maps, book recommendations and lots more.

And – the show is entirely advertising free thanks to the generosity of our patrons who have signed up on historyofthegermans.com/support