The Hugo Valentin Lecture 2015: Professor Dieter Pohl

The thirteenth Hugo Valentin Lecture, titled The New Empire of Violence 1930-1950, was held by Professor Dieter Pohl of the Institut für Geschichte, University of Klagenfurt.

Dieter Pohl is a prominent name in contemporary European history, not least for his work on the organization, methods and crimes of Nazi Germany and the German armed forces in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. With his 2008 study, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht. Militärverwaltung und Bevölkerung in den besetzten Gebieten der Sowjetunion 1941–1944, Pohl made a significant contribution to the understanding of the nature and extent of the Wehrmacht's complicity in the crimes on the Eastern Front, in what Pohl described as "the most brutal military occupation administration in history until then”.