Peter Fritzsche grew up in Hyde Park, Chicago, in a political and academic family; his mother was a civil-rights lawyer and his father a physicist and eventually chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago. Even from an early age, he wanted to be an archeologist or a historian. Already in high school, he worked at the big Koster site near Kampsville, Illinois, in 1973 and again in 1975 when he operated the Central Data Processing laboratory. As a college student at the University of Pennsylvania, he switched from paleolithic archeology to modern history. He received his Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley, in European history in 1986–excavating was more fun than archival work, but writing a creative book was much more satisfying than writing up provisional site reports.

After a year as a postdoc at Tel-Aviv University, he was lucky enough to be hired at the University of Illinois where he has taught since 1987. In the years since, he has mentored a cohort of more than twenty-five graduate students, who, almost without exception, went to get jobs and publish their dissertations. He has pursued several tracks of research. The whole disaster of Germany in the twentieth century has preoccupied him and led to the publication of Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (Oxford University Press, 1990), Germans into Nazis (Harvard, 1998), Life and Death in the Third Reich (Harvard, 2008), and Hitler’s First Hundred Days (Basic Books, 2020).

Fritzsche has also pursued cultural and intellectual history--during the French Revolution with Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History (Harvard, 2004), in the industrial age with A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Harvard, 1992), and in World War II with An Iron Wind: Europe under Hitler (Basic Books, 2016). And finally he has explored the power of words in Reading Berlin 1900 (Harvard, 1996) and Friedrich Nietzsche and the Death of God (Bedford, 2007). Forthcoming is 1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe (Basic Books, 2025). More than fifty articles have explored all manner of things from rock’n’roll and suburbs to diaries and the literature of the Iraq war.

Fritzsche is grateful for the recognition that has come his way including reviews in the New York Times, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Cundhill Prize. But he is even more grateful simply for having had the opportunity to continue his creative work at the university. One way to promote that work is teaching, and, over the years, Fritzsche has offered courses on topics such as the Holocaust, Cities, and Shipwreck–the last explores emergency from The Tempest to the Titanic to refugees on the southern border.

Hiking mountains and sailing lakes have helped him change course and keep direction, as have his four children who all grew up in Urbana and two of whom are still going to school here.

Since receiving his Ph.D in modern European history at the University of California, Berkeley, Peter Fritzsche has taught at the University of Illinois since 1987. Over the years, he has pursued several tracks of research. The whole disaster of Germany in the twentieth century has preoccupied him and led to the publication of Rehearsals for Fascism: Populism and Political Mobilization in Weimar Germany (Oxford University Press, 1990), Germans into Nazis(Harvard, 1998), Life and Death in the Third Reich (Harvard, 2008), and Hitler’s First Hundred Days (Basic Books, 2020). Fritzsche has also pursued cultural and intellectual history--during the French Revolution with Stranded in the Present: Modern Time and the Melancholy of History (Harvard, 2004), in the industrial age with A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination (Harvard, 1992), and in World War II with An Iron Wind: Europe under Hitler (Basic Books, 2016). And finally he has explored the power of words in Reading Berlin 1900 (Harvard, 1996) and Friedrich Nietzsche and the Death of God (Bedford, 2007). Forthcoming is 1942: When World War II Engulfed the Globe (Basic Books, 2025).

Fritzsche’s work has received international recognition including reviews in the New York Times, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Cundhill Prize, and now the appointment as CAS professort. At Illinois, he has offered courses on topics such as the Holocaust, Cities, the Iraq War, and Shipwreck–the last explores emergency from The Tempest to the Titanicto refugees on the southern border.