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.
- 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 biography of Meisl.
Books (as Editor)
With Christopher 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
'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 Christopher Young, 'The Will of the Führer? Financing Construction for the 1936 Olympics', Journal of Contemporary History 57, 1 (2022). pp. 24-44.
Book Chapters
"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 ‘The Nazis Enter History’, History Today vol. 71, no. 8 (August, 2021).
Reviews (select) 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 und Arbeitskräftelenkung im 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).
