Helen Roche, Associate Professor in Modern European Cultural History, Durham University

Helen Roche is Associate Professor in Modern European Cultural History at Durham University, having previously held research fellowships at Cambridge and UCL. She has published extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history, including the history of education, National Socialism, and classical reception studies. Key publications include Sparta's German Children (2013), Brill's Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (ed., 2018), and 'Surviving "Stunde Null": Narrating the Fate of Nazi Elite-school Pupils during the Collapse of the Third Reich', which was awarded German History journal's 'Best Article Prize' in 2015. Recently, she co-founded 'Claiming the Classical', a global research network which maps twenty-first-century political appropriations of the ancient world. She is currently researching the history of everyday life under fascism in interwar Europe.

"written with a keen eye for the modern reader" - Tim Mueller, H-German

"[E]xtensive, detailed and thorough... an essential reference point for future investigations into this field. This applies not only to historians of education but more broadly to people interested in the Nazi period and Nazi rule in particular... [Roche's] critical handling and deconstruction of autobiographical narratives...is exemplary... Overall, in combining a detail-oriented narration with anecdotal evidence, the book...explains the multifaceted functioning of the Napolas and of Nazi rule in an informative and captivating manner." - Lisbeth Matzer, History of Education

"Roche has managed what very few historians of institutional or organizational studies are able to do: she has successfully embedded the historical trajectory of an understudied system of Nazi elite schools in the wider currents of German and European history, employing a balanced and empathetic analytic approach, crystal-clear prose, and easy-to-follow expositional structure. Her work is therefore guaranteed to appeal to a wide and varied readership and hopefully attract other historians to this vital scholarly arena." - Tim Mueller, H-German

"The first comprehensive study of these National Socialist educational institutions..., founded on an impressive source base ... Roche very effectively carves out the schools' ambivalent relationship between tradition and innovation ... Overall, with her source-rich and interestingly-written total history of the NPEA, which includes countless individual case studies, Roche has not only achieved a weighty contribution to the history of education, but also offers beyond that vital insights into countless subjects of contemporary historical research, such as, for instance, the promising concept of the "Volksgemeinschaft"; polycratic institutional competition; the struggle over the inclusion of women in leadership roles; the significance of the church and hence the question of the interpretation of National Socialism as "political religion"; eugenics, as well as Germanisation policies and the construction of a New World Order." - Jana Wolf, Sehepunkte

"The Third Reich's Elite Schools can lay claim to the status of a standard work... The book's great merit lies in its abundance of meticulously researched case studies... At no point in her account does Roche indulge in moralisation or judgment, and that makes her investigation all the more nightmarish and impressive." - Rüdiger Gröner, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung