Jane Caplan is Professor Emeritus of Modern European History at the University of Oxford, and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College, Oxford. Her main fields of research and publication are the history of Nazi Germany, the relationship between states, bureaucracies and everyday life, and the history of the technologies of individual identification in modern Europe. She is a member of the German ministerial commissions investigating the history of the finance ministry and the interior ministry in Nazi Germany, and has been an editor of History Workshop Journal, the UK's leading radical history journal, for many years. She has also authored and edited several books, including Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories (Routledge, 2020) and Nazi Germany (OUP, 2008) for the Oxford Short History of Germany series.
"In what seems like an almost insurmountable challenge, Caplan succeeds in describing the details of the ""horrifying"" main events of this historical catastrophe, and identifying its main criminals, without simplifying. And she writes with an ""edge"" that is missing in many history narratives. * Graham Forst, Jewish Independent * In this brilliant concise account, Caplan succeeds in outlining the startling rise and devastating impact of National Socialism in Germany under Hitler, conveying both illustrative detail and the broad shape of developments, as well as finely balancing different historical interpretations. A major achievement. * Professor Mary Fulbrook, University College London *"