News!
20 Jun 2022
One Month until We Have Ways Fest II
Excited to be speaking again at this great history festival.
I am very excited to again be speaking at the We Have Ways Fest II history festival in July. This is such a great event and I am looking forward to presenting with Alex Ritchie and Bastiaan Willem about the end of the war in Europe. I will likely be talking about the end phase of the Holocaust and liberation of the camps. Hope to see you all there!
12 May 2022
The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust on the Eastern Front in WW2
Combat Morale Podcast
Dr Waitman Beorn, Senior Lecturer in History at Northumbria University, talks about the Wehrmacht and motivation to participate in the Holocaust on the Eastern Front in WW2. In the interview, he talks about the extent and nature of Wehrmacht involvement in the Holocaust on the Eastern Front. He points out that while Nazi death squads routinely carried out mass executions on the Eastern Front, many units of the regular German army conducted and participated in such actions. Waitman explains what motivated them to carry out such actions which they frequently did on their own initiative. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served with the US Army as a tank commander in Iraq during 2003-2004. After leaving the Army, he attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, earning his PhD in history in 2011.
24 Mar 2022
Is Russia's Invasion of Ukraine a Genocide?
MSNBC- The Mehdi Hassan
Governments are extremely reluctant to label conflicts as genocides since it’s a legal term that invokes consequences. Genocide historian Waitman Wade Boern joins Mehdi Hasan to discuss the past reluctancy and Zelenskyy’s current claims that the Russian invasion is, in fact, a genocide.
5 Mar 2022
Scales of Persecution: Digitally Mapping the Holocaust through the Janowska Camp
Digital History Seminar (Institute for Historical Research- London)
How can we apply digital spatial methods and theory to the Holocaust? This presentation seeks to showcase some ways in which mapping and visualization have been used in the study of one concentration camp but also to highlight some (unanswered) questions that inform the use of digital techniques in analysis and presentation. Some of these questions are centered around ethics, ambiguity, sources, and the strengths/weaknesses of various approaches.
10 Sept 2021
10 Facts about the Holocaust everyone should know
WW2 TV
Dr Beorn will offer 10 facts about the Holocaust, challenging some commonly believed notions. For example as many as one-third of the victims were killed by a bullet rather than gas and many of the worst perpetrators of the murders were never brought to justice.
29 Dec 2020
Crimes of the Wehrmacht
We Have Ways of Making You Talk
One of the enduring myths arising from the war is that the extreme violence in the east was carried out by the Waffen SS, not the Wehrmacht.
Historian and former US serviceman Waitman Wade Beorn tells Al Murray and James Holland about the atrocities committed by Wehrmacht soldiers on the Eastern Front. Waitman discusses their crimes and what psychological factors create extreme levels of violence.One of the enduring myths arising from the war is that the extreme violence in the east was carried out by the Waffen SS, not the Wehrmacht.
14 Sept 2020
Evoking History
Evoking History
This week I am joined by Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn, Senior Lecturer in History at Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK. We discuss his career path that bridges the gaps between the public and academic history spheres. Dr. Beorn provides an excellent debunking of the "clean Wehrmacht" myth and goes into detail about his current project, a combination monograph digital history project on the Janowska Concentration Camp, an urban camp located in the city of Lviv. We also discuss how to frame historical questions/projects and the ethical issues that arise when doing digital history projects on topics like the Holocaust.