In 2001 Neitzel discovered a new source for researching the Third Reich and its military machine: secretly recorded conversations of German prisoners of war (POWs) in British and American captivity. LSE Professor of International History Sönke Neitzel specialises in the history of war, especially the First and Second World Wars. However, it was generally assumed that, because of the totalitarian nature of the Nazi military, no comparable records existed that could reveal what those who were actually doing the fighting and killing, the German soldiers, thought and felt about the war and their role in it. This recasting of the war from the German perspective has been largely based on individual memoirs, diaries and interviews, many of which emerged long after the war ended. Only in recent years has a more nuanced view emerged, as represented in films like Downfall and the recent television series Generation War, both of which attempted to convey the war from the point of view of ordinary Germans. For many decades after the end of World War II (WWII), a broad popular narrative-reinforced through thousands of films and books-cast the German military as unthinking tools of Nazi ideology.
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