Guido Knopp

Guido Knopp (born January 29, 1948, in Treysa, Hesse) is a German journalist, author and historian.

He is a well known historian in Germany, mainly because he has produced a great number of TV documentaries, predominantly about the "Third Reich" and National Socialism, but also about other topics, such as Stalinism.

After gaining his doctorate degree in history and political science, Knopp worked as a newspaper editor at the Welt am Sonntag and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In 1978 he took up employment at the German TV station ZDF. Since then, he has produced many documentaries about the Nazi dictatorship like "Hitlers Helfer" ("Hitler's helpers"), "Hitler-Eine Bilanz" ("Hitler-taking stock") or "Die SS: Eine Warnung der Geschichte" ("The SS: A warning of history"), but also for example "Vatikan" (about the power of the popes) or "Kanzler: Die Mächtigen der Republik" (about Germany's post-war federal chancellors) [ [http://www.mdr.de/riverboat/738077.html MDR TV] "Knopp, Guido: Porträt" (Knopp, Guido: A Portrait), 2003] . He also hosts a weekly show on German television, usually broadcast on Sundays, called "History". In 1999 he produced a series called "100 Jahre - der Countdown", which sums up the whole 20th Century year by year and is still sometimes broadcast, mainly during holidays, by the German TV station Phoenix [ [http://www.phoenix.de/100_jahre_der_countdown/12742.htm Phoenix TV, 100 Jahre - der Countdown] ] .

For the publication of his book "Top Spies - Traitors in the secret war" (1994) Knopp worked with the German Federal Intelligence Service and several retired spies to present their personal story and explain their work to a broad public [ [http://www.amazon.de/Top-Spione-Verräter-im-Geheimen-Krieg/dp/3442127254 "Top Spione. Verräter im geheimen Krieg"] , ISBN 3-4421-2725-4] .

Guido Knopp's history films are often attacked as presenting the Third Reich too superficially and as "editing history" so as to play down the role of the German public in building and supporting the Hitler regime. [ [http://www.tagesspiegel.de/magazin/wissen/gesundheit/;art300,2214451 Der Tagesspiegel, 25 September 2006] ] [ [http://www.zeit.de/2004/10/Steam_Punk Die Zeit, 26 February 2004] ] . Knopp has been criticized for rewriting history by leaving out the role of the Wehrmacht (German Army) in the cruelties of World War II [Die Zeit: Alle waren Opfer (Everyone was a victim). No. 48/2006 of 23 November 2006] [Unter Wölfen (Amongst wolves). Spiegel Magazine, 28 November 2006] . In 2004 a group of international historians warned that documentaries like the one's produced by Knopp could reduce important historic facts to mere infotainment [ [http://www.whoswho.de/templ/te_bio.php?PID=1780&RID=1 German Who is Who] ] .

In 2004 he received the Goldene Kamera and the Bavarian and European TV award for his work.

Today he teaches Journalism at the Gustav-Siewerth-Akademie in Weilheim-Bierbronnen (Baden-Württemberg) and is living in Mainz. His publishing house is the German Random House group (Bertelsmann group) [ [http://www.randomhouse.de/author_new/author.jsp?per=3576 Short bio on publisher's home page] ] .

In 2008 Knopp is working on a movie about the failed Hitler assassin Stauffenberg [ [http://www.jungewelt.de/2008/01-21/048.php Junge Welt: Marktschreier des Tages: Tom Cruise/Guido Knopp (Pitchman of the Day: Tom Cruise/Guido Knopp), 21 January 2008] ] .

Trivia

* In 2003 Guido Knopp plead for Konrad Adenauer to be featured in the "Unsere Besten" list of greatest Germans, compiled by ZDF TV [ [http://www.kas.de/proj/home/pub/94/1/year-2008/dokument_id-11578/index.html "Die Botschaft von Hambach - Verpflichtung für heute!", speech of Guido Knopp.] , quote: "Das ZDF, mein Sender, hat im Herbst des Jahres 2003 nach dem besten Deutschen der Geschichte gefragt. Ich habe für Konrad Adenauer gekämpft, weil er den geschlagenen demoralisierten Deutschen nach dem Krieg ein neues Selbstbewusstsein gegeben hat." (The ZDF, my station, was asking in autumn 2003 for the best German in History. I fought for Konrad Adenauer, because he gave the defeated demoralized Germans new self-consciousness after the war.")] .

External links

* [http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/26/0,1872,1020218,00.html ZDF-History] (German)

Published books

* "Hitler's Holocaust." Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-2700-3
* (1998) "Hitler's Henchmen." Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-3781-5
* (2002) "Hitler's Hitmen." Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-2602-3
* (2003) "Hitler's Women." Routledge. ISBN 0-415-94730-8
* "Hitler's Children" ISBN 0-7509-2732-1
* (2007) "Die Wehrmacht: Eine Bilanz", C. Bertelsmann Verlag. ISBN 978-3-570-00975-8

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Footnotes

ee also

*List of Adolf Hitler books