Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics Raised Faculty Building University of Cambridge Sidgwick Avenue Cambridge CB3 9DA United Kingdom
Darren is a historian of modern Germany. He received a PhD from Cambridge and his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from University College Dublin. He has held fellowships at the Humboldt and Technical universities in Berlin, and at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. He is also a Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
He teaches modern European and German History since 1871 with a particular emphasis on the history and memory of National Socialism.
- Modern Germany
- Modern European History
- The Third Reich and World War II
- The Weimar Republic
- Germany since 1945
- Sports History
- Politics and Ideology
Darren has recently co-edited a Handbook on Nazi Ideology and a Critical Edition of the writings of the Austrian-Jewish sports journalist Willy Meisl. At present, he is finishing two monographs: the first a history of the upper ranks of the civil service in Nazi Germany, the second a double biography of the football manager Hugo Meisl and his brother Willy.
Monographs
(Forthcoming) Hitler's Mandarins: Senior Civil Servants in the Third Reich
(Forthcoming, with Chris Young) The Marvellous Meisl Brothers and the Invention of Modern Football and Football Journalism
Books (as Editor)
With Chris Young, Willy Meisl – ‘King of the Sports Journalists’. A Jewish Career in Times of Change, 1918–1945 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Brill, 2025).
With Julien Reitzenstein, Handbook Ideologies in National Socialism, Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Brill, 2024).
Journal Articles
(Forthcoming, with Chris Young) '"Eine Nationale Aufgabe?". Konflikt und Zusammenarbeit bei der Organisation der Olympischen Spiele 1936,' Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (2026).
'Nazi Constitutional Designs. The State Secretaries' Meetings and the Annexation of East Central Europe', European History Quarterly 54, 2 (2024): 337-357.
‘“Self-Coordination” and its Origins. Civil Servants and Regime Change in 1933 and 1918/19’, Contemporary European History 33, 1 (2024), pp.70-83.
'Johannes Krohn and the German Social Insurance System under Democracy and Dictatorship', Vierteljahrschrift fuer Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 110 (2023): 471-493.
With Chris Young, 'The Will of the Führer? Financing Construction for the 1936 Olympics', Journal of Contemporary History 57, 1 (2022). pp. 24-44.
Book Chapters
(Forthcoming) ‘The State and Civil Service’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Weimar Republic, eds. Christopher Young and Malte Zierenberg, (Cambridge, 2027).
"What is National Socialist Ideology?", in Ideologies in National Socialism. Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals, eds. Darren O'Byrne, Julien von Reitzenstein (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Brill, 2024).
'Johannes Krohn. Ideology and Adaptation Across Regimes', in Ideologies in National Socialism. Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals, eds. Darren O'Byrne, Julien von Reitzenstein (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Brill, 2024).
'Herbert Backe and the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture in the "Third Reich". Actions and Ideologies', in Ideologies in National Socialism. Volume 1: Ideology and Individuals, eds. Darren O'Byrne, Julien von Reitzenstein (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Brill, 2024)..
‘Perpetrators? Political Civil Servants in the Third Reich’, in Perpetrators: Dynamics, Motivations and Concepts for participating in mass Violence, eds. Timothy Williams and Susanne Buckley-Zistel (London: Routledge, 2018).
Other
‘German burials of Nazi remains stir controversy over national memory’. An interview with the French news agency France 24, 8 Mai 2025.
‘Wil Duitsland voorvechter blijven van de internationale rechtsorde, of wil het Israël blijven verdedigen?’. An interview with the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, 30 November 2024, pp. 8–9
‘The Nazis Enter History’, History Today vol. 71, no. 8 (August, 2021).
Reviews (select)
The English Historical Review y 140, no. 602 (April 2025). Heinrich August Winkler, Die Deutschen und die Revolution: Eine Geschichte von 1848 bis 1989 (C.H. Beck, 2023).
The Critic (May 2024), 'Fighting lies with lies', review of Pomeranstev, Peter Frank, 'How to Win and Information War. The Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler' (Faber & Faber, 2024).
The Critic (Nov. 2023), 'The Tangled Roots of the Third Reich', review of McDonough, Frank, 'The Weimar Years. Rise and Fall 1918-1933' (Apollo, 2023) and Fulbrook, Mary, 'Bystander Society. Conformity and Complicity in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust' (OUP, 2024).
History Today vol. 72, no. 11, Spicer, Charles, 'Coffee with Hitler. The British Amateurs Who Tried to Civilise the Nazis' (OneWorld, 2022).
HSozKult (June 2020), Marx, Henry, ‚Die Verwaltung des Ausnahmezustands. Wissensgenerierung undArbeitskräftelenkungim Nationalsozialismus‘. (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019).
German Politics and Society 37, no. 1 (Spring 2019). Noah Strote, Lions and Lambs: Conflict in Weimar and the Creation of Post-Nazi Germany (Yale: Yale University Press, 2017).
Journal of Contemporary History 54, no. 1 (Jan. 2019). Guenter Lewy, Perpetrators: The World of Holocaust Killers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).
Journal of Contemporary History 53, no. 2 (April 2018). Roshan Magub, Edgar Julius Jung, Right Wing Enemy of the Nazis: A Political Biography (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2016).
