Professor Alan Kramer

Professor of European History

Alan Kramer’s research has moved from regional economic history of post-Second World War Germany to the transnational history of violence in Europe in the First World War. He has published on atrocities and war crimes, prisoners of war, fascist warfare, and memory in Europe, recently broadening the scope to encompass the extra-European sphere in both world wars and their interconnections. He has worked on two global history projects, (1) as founding co-editor of 1914-1918-Online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, and (2) as author of Concentration Camps. A Global History, due for publication by OUP in 2024. In the last decade he has turned to the history of blockades, including their economic history, along with a new concept of the ‘slow violence’ of this strategy, with its implications for social, medical, and cultural history. Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and recipient of the Humboldt Foundation Research Prize, 2015-16.

Select Publications
Books

• Miguel Alonso, Alan Kramer, and Javier Rodrigo, eds, Fascist Warfare: Aggression, Occupation, Annihilation (1922-1945), Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
• Alan Kramer and Bettina Greiner, eds, Welt der Lager. Zur "Erfolgsgeschichte" einer Institution, Hamburg, 2013.
• Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War, Oxford, 2007; paperback 2008.
• German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial, London and New Haven, 2001 (with John Horne); (German ed., Hamburg, 2004. French ed., Paris, 2005; paperback ed. with updated preface, Hamburg, 2018; new paperback ed. with updated postscript, Paris, 2023).

Articles

• 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).
• ‘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. 
• ‘From Great War to Fascist Warfare’, in Alonso, Kramer, and Rodrigo, eds., Fascist Warfare, 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.
• ‘Blockade and economic warfare’, in Jay Winter, ed., The Cambridge History of the First World War, vol. II: The State, Cambridge, 2014, pp. 460–489.

Teaching and Supervision

Since retiring from Trinity College in 2019, Prof. Kramer no longer teaches or supervises.

Contact Details

Email: alkramer@tcd.ie