History

On the podcast: Javier Cercas’s new book on the man who impersonated a Holocaust survivor.

Remembering the era of portable atomic bombs.

Brussels’s new European history museum could put anyone to sleep.

Foreign Policy staffers review recent releases.

South Africa needs to redistribute property—but not all appropriation is made the same.

Assam's citizenship crisis is the latest legacy of a division that made nations.

Francisco Franco ran Spain with an iron fist for decades—and created myths about his rule that are only now starting to come undone.

Two French best-sellers draw warnings for the present from the stories of Hitler’s henchmen.

Filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, dead at 92, showed the world the Holocaust through eyewitnesses.

The best improvisation requires prep work.

Western promoters of democracy aren’t seen as a threat to individual rulers but as a reminder of colonial history.

For the U.S. president, like the last German monarch, foreign policy is all about personal ego, not national interests.

If Kim Jong Un follows in F.W. de Klerk’s footsteps, denuclearization could allow North Korea to move from pariah status to prosperity.

Leftists want to celebrate revolutionary idealism; conservatives, the triumph of traditional authority. And Emmanuel Macron is trying to split the difference.

U.S. foreign policy has exacerbated many of the evils it set out to eradicate. It needs an overhaul.

Everyone's favorite historical analogy makes for disastrous foreign policy today.

"The Death of Stalin" turns tyranny into comedy.

The world’s best national security minds know to study every aspect of foreign policy. That’s not enough.

Contrary to what Niall Ferguson suggests, if the liberal international system gets reduced to economics, it will no longer exist.

France is back, thanks to a president committed to disrupting politics at home and abroad.