Sitting across from Professor Richard J. Evans, his dark academia style of chinos, a shirt, and a crew neck jumper very much give off the impression that he is a historian and former Cambridge professor. But, this professor isn’t just your average lecturer-by-day, researcher-by-night academic. He’s the former Regius Professor of History, one of the foremost experts on the Nazis, and, alongside his academic career, has lived a full life outside of the Cambridge bubble.

We begin discussing his new book, Hitler’s People. Each chapter is a biography of a different Nazi, from different levels of the Nazi hierarchy, with 22 chapters in total. “It’s about perpetrators … at every level, so not just about his associates, but about people further down. Sort of middle ranking Nazis, down to ordinary mass murderers.”

Evans tells me that the most striking thing that he learnt about the Nazis whilst writing this book was how middle class they were. “You don’t find working class people, really. Especially not in the upper and middle ranks.”

He adds that, largely due to most high-ranking Nazis coming from the German middle class, they had interests in line with that background, “particularly with music”. Although their hobbies were in line with their class background and fits “the centrality of music to German culture,” it is still striking to think that such brutal people could have such a hobby. Evans gives Ernst Rohm as an example, the head of the SA (the Nazi stormtroopers) – who he says liked to portray himself as “a rough-tough soldier-type” – “used to entertain his friends by playing the piano,” as did Hans Frank. “The butcher of Poland” who governed Nazi-occupied Poland, was “quite a good alto-pianist”.

“Well, I’ve never thought ‘never again’ meant anything. Never again what?”

Evans recounts to me that he first became interested in the Nazis, having grown up in London’s East End, after “seeing the bomb sites” which were so common in postwar London. He then went on to study at Oxford, which he confesses he’s “still very fond of” despite Cambridge’s best attempts to turn him against his former university. He received a scholarship to study for a PhD at St Anthony’s College and then a large scholarship to go to study in Hamburg for two years, which made him “a well-off postgraduate,” whereas he felt “plunged into academic poverty” when he eventually found out the size of his paycheck he would go on to receive from his first job.

He goes on to tell me how he thinks that governments need a more concrete and strategic approach to combating antisemitism “Well, I’ve never thought ‘never again’ meant anything. Never again what? Never again the Nazis? Never again the Holocaust? History never repeats itself.” Simply using the phrase ‘never again’ isn’t going to solve anything, Evans believes. He puts a lot of the blame, both for antisemitism and for an increase in the popularity of “anti-democracy, lies, fantasies, and conspiracy theories,” on the rise of social media.

However, he doesn’t believe that we should have a law against Holocaust denial, because it will give deniers attention that they don’t deserve and “turn them into martyrs,” even though “freedom of speech is something they don’t actually believe in.” On the subject of Holocaust deniers, he recounts his experience of the Lipstadt trial – a trial in which Professor Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust historian, was accused by David Irving, a conspiracy theorist and neo-Nazi, of libelling him in her book Denying the Holocaust.

“Irving was both disingenuous and hateful”

The trial took three years, far longer than the three months he expected the trial to last, but, to him, “it was worth it”. He was, however, “very nervous” about testifying as, at the time, the professor didn’t yet consider himself “an expert” on German history, “and that includes the Nazis.” David Irving, however, the accuser and prominent Holocaust denier, proved to be a surprisingly weak opponent and lawyer (he acted for his own defence), and one who “couldn’t get the broader picture,” in making a historical or legal argument. Irving was an opponent who, he believes, was “both disingenuous and hateful,” one who had many biases but who was also too incompetent to recognise them, a fatal flaw in both a historian and lawyer.

Moving on from the Lipstadt trial, Evans explains that he doesn’t think that today’s far-right is the same as the far-right in the 1930s. “They share a hostility to democracy and a belief in strong men and dictators, but what drives the far-right today is hostility to immigration,” whereas what drove the far-right between the wars was “militarism and a drive for conquest”. He points to a speech Hitler gave in 1930, in which he spoke about the scramble for Africa and how Germany was “left behind,” but that he believed Germany would “end up ruling the world” next time there was a redistribution of land.

He says that he’s generally sceptical of predicting the future, dating back to 1989 when he published a book in which he predicted that Germany would never reunite. Yet, as a historian, he’s “committed to finding out the truth” and points out that, with populist figures like Trump and Musk, he’s feeling gloomier about the future of that endeavour.