Author: Helen Roche

An essay by Helen on Hitler's foreign policy, commissioned by Hodder Education, has now appeared in the publisher's new Edexcel-approved A-level textbook, entitled History+ for Edexcel A Level: Nationalism, dictatorship and democracy in twentieth-century Europe.

The textbook is intended to encourage students to develop high-level skills in historical studies.Read more...

On 6 April 2016, Helen presented a paper entitled 'Between Forgetting and Demonisation: Nazi elite-school pupils and German collective memory' at a conference on 'Places of Amnesia', held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge.Read more...

Presented at a conference entitled 'Places of Amnesia', CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 6 April 2016.Read more...

On 16 March 2016, Helen presented a paper entitled 'A Love-Hate Relationship? The impact of historical philhellenism on Germany's view of the "Greek Crisis"' at a workshop held at the Taylor Institution, University of Oxford.

The student-led workshop was organised under the auspices of the UK Society for Modern Greek Studies and the Sub-Faculty of Modern Greek at the University of Oxford, with the support of the Onassis Foundation. The workshop also formed part of "The Cultural Politics of the Greek Crisis" research network.Read more...

Presented at a workshop on 'Renegotiating History in Light of the Greek Crisis', Taylor Institution, University of Oxford, 16 March 2016.Read more...

On 17 February 2016, Helen Roche and Yvonne Zivkovic hosted Lucy Cavendish College's termly Anna Bidder Research Evening, presenting two talks addressing the theme of 'Difficult Heritage? Exploring German History and Culture in the 21st Century'.Read more...

in Europa. Ideologie, Machtausbau, Beharrung (Regionen des östlichen Europas im 20. Jahrhundert Bd. 3), ed. Burkhard Olschowsky, Ingo Loose, Berlin (De Gruyter) 2016, pp. 128-51.

From their very inception in 1933, the Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten (Napolas) were conceived by their founders not only as the principal training schools for the future elite of the Third Reich, but as being of crucial benefit to the Nazi regime’s mission to Germanise the Eastern territories.Read more...

in Making Sacrifices: Visions of Sacrifice in European and American Cultures
, ed. Nicholas Brooks, Gregor Thuswaldner, Vienna (New Academic Press) 2016, pp. 66-86.

Since antiquity, the heroic fight to the last of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans against the overwhelming might of the Persian Empire has often been considered the ultimate expression of sacrificial patriotism. This article considers the juxtaposition of supposedly ‘ancient’ and ‘modern’ notions of patriotic self-sacrifice in German military propaganda during the 20th century.Read more...

Classical Receptions Journal 8 (1), 2016 (special issue on The Legacy of Greek Political Thought, edited by Barbara Goff and Miriam Leonard), pp. 71-89.

During the Third Reich, radical reinterpretations of Classical texts were always on the agenda. The Reich Education Ministry decreed that only those ancient texts which were deemed of value for the Nazi regime’s new ‘national-political’ education should be taught in schools. This sometimes led to the pre-eminence of texts which had previously been considered less worthy – the writings of Xenophon being a case in point.Read more...

Helen's article 'Xenophon and the Nazis: A case study in the politicisation of Greek thought through educational propaganda' has now been published in the January 2016 issue of Classical Receptions Journal.

The article forms part of a special issue on The Legacy of Greek Political Thought, edited by Barbara Goff and Miriam Leonard.Read more...