The History Book Buffs

We’re back — and starting with a book that genuinely floored us.
In 1949, Polish resistance fighter and journalist Kazimierz Moczarski was thrown into a Warsaw prison cell with Jürgen Stroop, the SS general responsible for the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. They lived together for 255 days.
The result was Conversations with an Executioner: Moczarski’s extraordinary attempt to understand the man beside him. Stroop talks about his childhood, his embrace of Nazism, his rise through the SS and the murder of tens of thousands of people — with a chilling absence of remorse.
We talk about how an apparently ordinary man becomes a committed Nazi; the seductive appeal of hierarchy, comradeship and obedience; Stroop’s horrifyingly matter-of-fact account of crushing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; and the big question hanging over the book: can we trust conversations reconstructed years after they happened?
For both of us, this is an astonishing book — intimate, disturbing and one of the most remarkable examinations of the Nazi mind we’ve read.
BOOKS
📚 Kazimierz Moczarski, Conversations with an Executioner: 255 Days Imprisoned with the Nazi Who Destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto, translated by Sean Gasper Bye

And coming up on History Book Buffs:
📚 Terry Stiastny, Believable Lies: The Misfits Who Fought Churchill’s Secret Propaganda War — the extraordinary characters, dirty tricks, fake radio stations and black propaganda of Britain’s Political Warfare Executive.

📚 Miranda Malins, The House of Cromwell: Power, Family and the Making of Modern Britain — Thomas, Oliver and the extraordinary family that produced two of the most consequential commoners in British history.

Follow History Book Buffs on X, Instagram and TikTok — and send us the history books you think we should be reading next.

Forget the latest releases.
For this special summer edition, The History Book Buffs are joined by Ollie Webb-Carter from the History Book Club to recommend the history books they've returned to again and again—the classics that have earned a permanent place on their bookshelves.
From the Black Sea to Ancient Greece, from the English Civil War to Alexander the Great, from the American Revolution to Flashman, this episode is packed with books that combine outstanding scholarship with brilliant storytelling.
Whether you're reading on a beach, in the garden or on a long train journey, these are the history books we think every history lover should own.
📚 Black Sea – Neil Asherson
📚 Alexander the Great – Robin Lane Fox
📚 God's Fury, England's Fire – Michael Braddick
📚 The March of Folly – Barbara Tuchman
📚 Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War – Robert K. Massie
📚 Flashman and the Redskins – George MacDonald Fraser
📚 Captain Corelli's Mandolin – Louis de Bernières
Books discussed

Hitler's most dangerous enemies weren't outside the Nazi Party—they were inside it.
In this episode, historian Roger Moorhouse takes us inside the dramatic events of 30 June–2 July 1934, when Hitler unleashed a wave of assassinations against his own comrades in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives. Except it wasn't just one night. It was a murderous long weekend that cemented his dictatorship and changed the course of history.
Why did Hitler betray Ernst Röhm, one of his oldest allies? How did the SA become a threat to the regime it helped create? And what role did the army, conservative elites and Himmler play in one of the most shocking political purges of the twentieth century?
We discuss:
Why Hitler turned on his closest supporters.
Ernst Röhm, the SA and the power struggle at the heart of the Nazi regime.
The dawn raid at Bad Wiessee and the purge's most notorious killings.
The murder of former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and the widening of the purge beyond the Nazi Party.
How the Nazis dressed up political murder as an act of state.
Why the purge marked the moment Hitler became untouchable.
How ordinary Germans reacted as the true nature of the regime became impossible to ignore.
Roger also reveals why he's writing the first major English-language history of the Night of the Long Knives in decades—and why this pivotal episode deserves far more attention than it has received.

On 18 June 1940, with France collapsing and Britain seemingly standing alone against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill delivered one of the most famous speeches in modern history: "Their Finest Hour".
In this episode, Antonia Senior and historian Roger Moorhouse revisit the speech that became synonymous with British defiance. What was Churchill trying to achieve? Who was he speaking to? And how persuasive was his message to those living through the crisis of 1940?
The conversation explores the political context of the speech, the arguments for and against fighting on, Churchill's appeal to American opinion, and the uncomfortable question of whether Britain's eventual victory justified the enormous sacrifices that followed.
Along the way, Antonia and Roger discuss Churchill's reputation as an orator, contemporary reactions to the speech, the threat posed by Nazism before the Holocaust was fully understood, and the enduring tension between heroic national myth and historical reality.
Books discussed:
• The Roar of the Lion – Richard Toye
• Churchill: Walking with Destiny – Andrew Roberts
• Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940–1941 – Ian Kershaw
Was this truly Britain's finest hour—or is that a story we have told ourselves ever since?

In August 1991, a group of hardliners inside the Soviet leadership launched a desperate bid to save the USSR. Led by the head of the KGB, they placed Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest, declared a state of emergency, and attempted to reverse the reforms of perestroika and glasnost.
Instead, they accelerated the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This week on History Book Buffs, Antonia Senior and Roger Moorhouse discuss historian Robert Service's gripping new account of the August Coup: the dramatic three days that changed the course of world history.
They explore:
Why Gorbachev's reforms destabilised the Soviet system
The secret KGB recordings that helped trigger the coup
Boris Yeltsin's famous stand on a tank
Why the plotters failed to act decisively
How the coup directly led to the dissolution of the USSR
Whether the roots of Putinism can be found in 1991
Why history may judge Yeltsin more kindly than it does today
Along the way they discuss Soviet decline, Russian nationalism, the Baltic states, corruption, and the extraordinary speed with which a superpower disappeared.
Robert Service – The August Coup: The Plot to Overthrow Gorbachev
Buy the book here
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