Prof. Dr. Alan Kramer

• 2025 – present: Principal Investigator, ERC-Synergy Projekt BLOCKADE (2025-31).
• 2025 – present: Senior Professor University of Hamburg.
• 2015-16 Forschungspreis der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung; Guest professor, University of Hamburg.
• 2008-19 Personal Chair in European History, Trinity College Dublin.
• 2005-08 Associate Professor, Trinity College Dublin.
• 2002-03 Research in Rome.
• 1996-2005 Senior Lecturer, Trinity College Dublin.
• 1996-97 Guest professor, University of Cape Town.
• 1994 – present: Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.
• 1991-92 Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation.
• 1987-96 Lecturer in history, Trinity College Dublin.
• 1987 Doctorate in history, University ofHamburg, thesis on British Politics of Dismantling in Hamburg, 1945-1950.
• 1986-87, Lecturer in history, University College Dublin.

• German, European, and global history in the era of the world wars (1914-1945), with particular reference to the cultural history of violence, economic history, military history, with a transnational approach.
• Global history of concentration camps.
• Imperial history
• History of blockades, 1900-1960.

(https://blockades.eu/about/)

BLOCKADE: The Hidden Weapon. Blockade in the Era of the Two World Wars.

ERC-Synergy Grant (2025-31). Project start date: 1 May 2025.

During the total wars of the twentieth century, the belligerents fought each other with weapons both visible and invisible, with violence both immediate and slow, with guns and with blockades. But while guns and bombs have been studied in abundance, the slow and invisible weapon of blockade has not.
BLOCKADE (ERC Synergy Grant #101166983) will be the first to fully explore the two blockades of the First and Second World Wars, and their aftermaths – the greatest in history. In these total wars, the Allies imposed a global blockade on their enemies, and the Central and Axis powers responded with blockades of their own.
Over a period of six years, the BLOCKADE team, based in Trondheim, Hamburg, Amsterdam and Freiburg, will analyse the impact of blockades on households, states, corporations and the international order; on the development of political and military strategy; on how the wars were prepared, experienced and remembered; and on how peace was made.
BLOCKADE sets out to prove that these blockades are crucial to understanding not only the way the world wars were fought but also their globality and totality, their immediate effects and their long-term global repercussions.

Books

• Concentration Camps: A Global History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025.
• “Menschen, die plötzlich nicht mehr da waren.” Jüdisches Leben in Hamburg-Blankenese, Hg. Friedemann Hellwig, Alan Kramer, Frauke Steinhäuser, Petra Bopp, Hamburg: Dölling & Galitz, 2024.
• 1914. Les Atrocités allemandes. La vérité sur les crimes de guerre en France et en Belgique, mit John Horne, Paris: Texto/Tallandier, 2023 (mit aktualisiertem Nachwort: ‘À propos de la réception de ce livre depuis 2001’).
• Fascist Warfare: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation (1922-1945), Hg. Miguel Alonso, Alan Kramer, and Javier Rodrigo, Cham: Palgrave  Macmillan, 2019.
• Deutsche Kriegsgreuel 1914. Die umstrittene Wahrheit, mit John Horne, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2018 (mit einem neuen Nachwort).
• Welt der Lager. Zur “Erfolgsgeschichte” einer Institution, Hg. mit Bettina Greiner, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013.
• Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; Taschenbuch-Ausgabe 2008.
• Les atrocités allemandes, mit John Horne, Paris: Tallandier, 2005.
• Deutsche Kriegsgreuel 1914. Die umstrittene Wahrheit, mit John Horne, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2004.
• German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial, mit John Horne, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. (Fraenkel Prize of the Institute of Contemporary History and Wiener Library, London (2000), and the Western Front Association’s Norman B. Tomlinson, Jr. Book Award (2002) for the best work on the First World War.
• The West German Economy 1945-1955, Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1991.
• Die britische Demontagepolitik am Beispiel Hamburgs, 1945-1950, Hamburg: Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, 1991.

Online publication

• Founding co-editor of 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of World War I. This is a collaborative, open-access virtual reference work with 1600+ multimedia-enriched articles by experts from more than 60 countries world-wide. Scholarly integrity is assured by a seven-member editorial board, external referees comprising more than one thousand experts, and a two-stage peer-review process. Funded by the German Research Council (DFG) and the FU Berlin.

Book chapters

•  “Rache oder Reintegration? Die aus den NS-Lagern Befreiten, die britischen Befreier und die Hamburger, Mai bis Oktober 1945”, in: Helmut Stubbe da Luz (Hg.), Befreite und Befreier? Kriegsende in Hamburg 1945, Hamburg: Bibliothek der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität, 2025, S. 125-145.
• “‘Nunmehr hat der Führer entschieden...” Von Blankenese ins Konzentrationslager: Das Schicksal der deportierten Juden’, in: “Menschen, die plötzlich nicht mehr da waren.” Jüdisches Leben in Hamburg-Blankenese, ed. by Friedemann Hellwig, Alan Kramer, Frauke Steinhäuser, Petra Bopp, Hamburg: Dölling & Galitz, 2024, pp. 366-374.
• ‘Introduction’, in: Miguel Alonso, Alan Kramer, and Javier Rodrigo, eds., Fascist Warfare: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation (1922-1945), Cham: Palgrave  Macmillan, 2019, pp. 1-23 [with Miguel Alonso and Javier Rodrigo]
• ‘From Great War to Fascist Warfare’, in: Miguel Alonso, Alan Kramer, and Javier Rodrigo, eds., Fascist Warfare: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation (1922-1945), pp. 25-50.
• ‘The Sharp End. Witnessing, Perpetrating, and Suffering Violence in 20th Century Wars’, in Catriona Pennell and Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, eds., A World at War, 1911-1949. Explorations in the Cultural History of War, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019, pp. 83-107.
• ‘Introduction: The World of Camps. A Protean Institution in War and Peace’ in: Gregor Feindt, Anke Hilbrenner, and Dittmar Dahlmann, eds., Sport under Unexpected Circumstances: Violence, Discipline, and Leisure in Penal and Internment Camps, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht 2018, pp. 23-40.
• “Too early to say?” Centennial perspectives on the First World War’ in Edgar Wolfrum, Odila Triebel, Cord Arendes, Angela Siebold, Joana Duyster Borredà, eds, European Commemoration: Locating World War I, Stuttgart: Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, 2016, pp. 17-30.
• ‘La dinamica della distruzione. Cultura e uccisioni di massa nella Prima guerra mondiale’, in Marco Mondini, ed., La Guerra come apocalisse: Interpretazioni, disvelamenti, paure, Bologna: Il Mulino, 2016, pp. 43-61.
• ‘Blockade and economic warfare’, in Jay Winter, ed., The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. II: The State, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014, pp. 460-89.
• ‘Aseinatos en masa y genocido de 1914 a 1945: un intento de anális comparativo’ in Javier Rodrigo, ed., Políticas de la violencia. Europa, siglo XX, Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2014, pp. 33-61.
• ‘Einleitung’ in Bettina Greiner and Alan Kramer, eds, Welt der Lager. Zur “Erfolgsgeschichte” einer Institution, Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2013, pp. 7-42.
• ‘Surrender of soldiers in World War I’ in Holger Afflerbach and Hew Strachan, eds, How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, pp. 265-79.
• ‘German War Crimes 1914 and 1941. The Question of Continuity’ in Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp, eds, Imperial Germany Revisited, Oxford/New York: Berghahn, 2011, pp. 239-50.
• ‘Ethnische Säuberungen vom Ersten Weltkrieg zum Nationalsozialismus’, in Gerd Krumeich, ed., Nationalsozialismus und Erster Weltkrieg, Essen: Klartext, 2010, pp. 323-45.
• ‘Prisoners in the First World War’ in Sibylle Scheipers, ed., Prisoners in War, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 75-90.
• ‘Combatants and Noncombatants: Atrocities, Massacres, and War Crimes’ in John Horne, ed., A Companion to the First World War, Oxford, Chichester, Malden: Blackwell-Wiley, 2010, pp. 188-201.
• ‘The First World War as cultural trauma’ in Richard J.B. Bosworth, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Fascism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 32-51.
• ‘Deutsche Kriegsverbrechen 1914/1941: Kontinuität oder Bruch?’ in Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp, eds, Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009, pp. 341-56.
• ‘German War Crimes 1914/1941: Continuity or Break?’ in Matteo Paesano, ed., Conflitti militari e popolazioni civili. Guerre totale, guerre limitate, guerre asimmetriche, Rome: Ministero della Difesa, 2009, pp. 361-65.
• ‘The First World War and German Memory’ in Heather Jones, Jennifer O'Brien, and Christoph Schmidt-Supprian, eds, Untold War. New Perspectives in First World War Studies, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008, pp. 385-415.
• ‘War crimes’, in John Merriman and Jay Winter, eds., Europe Since 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of War and Reconstruction, 5 vols., Detroit and New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006, pp. 2671-81.
• ‘Perché i soldati uccidono i civili. L’esercito tedesco nel 1914’, in Bruna Bianchi, ed., La violenza contro la popolazione civile nella Grande Guerra, Milan: Unicopli, 2006, pp. 87-105.
• ‘Italienische Kriegsgefangene im Ersten Weltkrieg’, in Hermann J. W. Kuprian and Oswald Überegger, eds., Der Erste Weltkrieg im Alpenraum. Erfahrung, Deutung, Erinnerung. La Grande Guerra nell’arco alpino. Esperienze e memoria, Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2006, pp. 247-58.
• ‘The War of Atrocities. Murderous scares and extreme combat’, in Alf Lüdtke and Bernd Weisbrod, eds, No Man’s Land of Violence. Extreme Wars in the 20th Century, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006, pp. 11-33.
• (with John Horne): ‘German “Atrocities” and Franco-German Opinion, 1914: the Evidence of German Soldiers’ Diaries’ in Michael Neiberg, ed., World War I, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005, pp. 323-55. (First published in The Journal of Modern History, 66, 1994.)
• ‘Asymmetrische Wahrnehmung: Besatzer und Besetzte in Hamburg, 1945-1949’ in Angelika Eder, ed., with Kristina Vagt, ‘Wir sind auch da!’ Über das Leben von und mit Migranten in europäischen Großstädten, Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz 2003, pp. 143-164.
• ‘Kriegsrecht und Kriegsverbrechen’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich, Irina Renz, eds, Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003, pp. 281-292. English transl. ‘Martial Law and War Crimes’, Brill’s Encyclopedia of the First World War, Leiden and Boston, 2012, pp. 220-29.
• Entries in ibid on: ‘Besatzung’, pp. 381-4, ‘Deportationen’, pp. 434-5, ‘Franktireur’, pp. 500-01, ‘Kriegsgreuel’, pp. 647-8, ‘Löwen’, pp. 682-3, ‘Lusitania’, pp. 689-90. Published in English as Brill’s Encyclopedia of the First World War, Leiden and Boston, 2012.
• ‘Versailles, deutsche Kriegsverbrechen und das Auslieferungsbegehren der Alliierten 1919/20’, in Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Jahrhundert (Festschrift für Manfred Messerschmidt), Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2001, pp. 72-84.
• ‘War between soldiers and enemy civilians, 1914-1915’, co-author John Horne, in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, eds, Great War, Total War: Combat and mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918, Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 153-168.
• ‘Der Umgang mit der Schuld. Die “Schuld im Kriege” und die Republik von Weimar’, in Dietrich Papenfuß und Wolfgang Schieder, eds., Deutsche Umbrüche im 20. Jahrhundert, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau, 2000, pp. 77-96.
• “Wackes at War”: Alsace-Lorraine and the failure of German national mobilization, 1914-1918’, in John Horne, ed., State, society and mobilization in Europe during the First World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1997, pp. 105-121.
• ‘Les “Atrocités allemandes”: mythologie populaire, propagande et manipulation dans l’armée allemande’, in Jean-Jacques Becker, Jay Winter et al., eds, Guerres et Cultures 1914-1918, Paris: Armand Colin, 1994, 147-64.
• “Greueltaten”. Zum Problem der deutschen Kriegsverbrechen in Belgien und Frankreich 1914’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich, and Irina Renz, eds, “Keiner fühlt sich hier mehr als Mensch...” Erlebnis und Wirkung des Ersten Weltkriegs, Essen: Klartext, 1993, pp. 85-114. (Published in paperback Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1996, pp. 104-139).
• ‘British dismantling politics, 1945-9: A reassessment’, in Ian D. Turner, ed., Reconstruction in Post-War Germany. British Occupation Policy and the Western Zones 1945-1955, Oxford, Munich and New York: Berg Publishers, 1989, pp. 125-154.
• ‘“Law-abiding Germans”? Social disintegration, crime and the reimposition of order in post-war Western Germany, 1945-9’, in Richard J. Evans, ed., The German Underworld. Deviants and Outcasts in German History, London and New York: Routledge, 1988, pp. 238-261.
• ‘Demontage der Industrie und Wiederaufbau des Hafens: Die Hamburger Wirtschaft im Zeichen der britischen Besatzungspolitik’, in Jürgen Ellermeyer and Rainer Postel, eds, Stadt und Hafen. Hamburger Beiträge zur Geschichte von Handel und Schiffahrt (Arbeitshefte zur Denkmalpflege in Hamburg Nr. 8), Hamburg 1986, pp. 142-153.
• ‘Demontage in Hamburg’, in Josef Foschepoth and Rolf Steininger, eds, Die britische Deutschland- und Besatzungspolitik 1945-1949, Paderborn: Schöningh, 1985, pp. 265-290

Journal articles

• ‘Introduction: The Blockade in the Era of the World Wars’, in: International History Review 46/4 (2024), pp. 383-392 (with Samuël Kruizinga, Elisabeth Piller und Jonas Scherner).
• Review article: The War Lords and the Gallipoli Disaster. How Globalized Trade Led Britain to Its Worst Defeat of the First World War, by Nicholas A. Lambert. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2021, War in History 30/2 (2023), pp. 203-217 (Online First: August 2022).
• Review of Buggeln, Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps; Dillon, Dachau and the SS; and four other books on concentration camps, in The Journal of Modern History 2017 (89/2), pp. 402-412.   
• ‘Recent Historiography of the First World War’, Part I, Journal of Modern European History 12:1, 2014, pp. 5-27.
• ‘Recent Historiography of the First World War’, Part II, Journal of Modern European History 12:2, 2014, pp. 155-74.
• ‘Deutsche Kriegsgräuel im Ersten Weltkrieg?’ Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 63:7/8, 2012, pp. 389-401.
• Review of With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918, by David Stevenson, English Historical Review CXXVII, 524, 2012, pp. 216-19.
• ‘Editorial’, Mittelweg 36. Zeitschrift des Hamburger Instituts für Sozialforschung 20:4, 2011, pp. 36-9 [Special theme issue on the history of camps].
• Review of Civilians in a World at War, 1914-1918, by Tammy M. Proctor, Journal of Military History 75:4, 2011, pp. 1322-23.
• ‘Asesinatos en masa y genocidio entre 1914 y 1945: un intento de análisis comparativo’, Ayer. Revista de Historia Contemporánea 76:4, 2009, pp. 177-205.
• Review of Kameradschaft: Die Soldaten des nationalsozialistischen Krieges und das 20. Jahrhundert, by Thomas Kühne, The English Historical Review, CXXIV, 506, 2009, pp. 235-8.
• ‘The First Wave of International War Crimes Trials: Istanbul and Leipzig’, European Review, 14:4, 2006, pp. 441-55.
• (with John Horne): ‘Response to Margaret Lavinia Anderson’, German History 24:1, 2006, pp. 118-21. (A response to Anderson: ‘A German Way of War’ in German History 22:2, 2004, pp. 254-8).
• ‘“German atrocities” and Franco-German opinion, 1914: the evidence of German soldiers’ diaries’, co-author John Horne, The Journal of Modern History, 66:1, 1994, pp. 1-33
• ‘Les “Atrocités allemandes”: mythologie populaire, propagande et manipulation dans l’armée allemande’, Guerres Mondiales et conflits contemporains, 171, 1993.

Articles in 1914-1918 Online:

•  ‘Naval Blockade (of Germany)’ , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2020-01-22. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.11451.
• ‘Introduction’, 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War, mit Oliver Janz.

Memberships

• German History Society.
• International Society for First World War Studies.
• Arbeitskreis Historische Friedensforschung.
• Arbeitskreis Militärgeschichte.
• Royal Irish Academy.

New publications:

Concentration Camps: A Global History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/concentration-camps-9780198800620?lang=en&cc=qa#