Jeffrey Herf

Jeffrey C. Herf (born April 24, 1947) is an American historian of modern Europe, particularly modern Germany. He is professor emeritus of modern European history at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Biography He was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Herf's father escaped from Nazi Germany in 1937 and emigrated to the United States. His mother's parents left Ukraine and came to the United States before World War I. He grew up in a Reform Jewish family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He went on to write that Bartov's 2026 book, Israel: Where Did It Go Wrong, "is likely to contribute to the ongoing effort to make hatred of Israel respectable in the faculty lounge, the editorial office, the think tank, and in many political parties. I hope… that more discerning readers will ponder the question ‘What went wrong with Omer Bartov?’ The book does not represent the standards expected from professional historians nor from what we should expect from a distinguished publisher such as Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Nevertheless, initial responses indicate that it may be a successful polemic and a commercial success... it will not be the first time that a very bad book has an outsized impact on public and published opinion."

He is married to the historian and artist Sonya Michel.

Awards and honors 1996 Charles Frankel Prize (co-winner) of the Wiener Library and Institute of Contemporary History, Divided Memory 1998 George Louis Beer Prize, Divided Memory 2006 National Jewish Book Award, The Jewish Enemy 2010 Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Bronze Prize for Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World 2011 Sybil Halpern Prize, German Studies Association for Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World 2014 Appointed Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, College Park 2022 Bernard Lewis Prize, Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa for "Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949"

Published works Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich French edition, Le Modernisme Réactionaire: Haine de la Raison et Culte de la Technologie aux Sources du Nazisme, trans. Frederic Joly, Paris: Editions L’Echappée, 2018 Greek edition, University of Crete Press, 1994 Italian edition, Il modernismo reazionario: Tecnologia, cultura e politica nella Germania di Weimar e del Terzo Reich, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988 Spanish edition, El Modernismo Reaccionario: Tecnologia, cultura y politica en Weimar y el Tercer Reich, Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Economica, 1990 Japanese edition, Iwanami Shoton, Tokyo, 1991 Greek edition, 1996 Portuguese edition, O Modernismo Reacionario: Tecnoligia, Cultura e Politica na Republica de Weimar e No 3 Reich, São Paulo: Editora ensaio, 1993. War By Other Means: Soviet Power, West German Resistance and the Battle of the Euromissiles, The Free Press, 1991. Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys, Harvard University Press, 1997 German edition: Zweierlei Erinnerugn: Die NS Vergangenheit im geteilten Deutschland, Berlin: Propylaen Verlag, 1998 The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust, Harvard University Press, 2006 Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, Yale University Press, 2009 Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left, 1967–1989, Cambridge University Press, 2016 German edition: Unerklärte Kriege gegen Israel: Die DDR und die westdeutsche radikale Linke, 1967-1989, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019 Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, Cambridge University Press, 2022 Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist, Routledge, 2023

As Editor Anthony McElligott and Jeffrey Herf, eds. (2017), Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust: Altered Contexts and Recent Perspectives, London: Palgrave Macmillan Jeffrey Herf, ed. (2007), Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Historical Perspectives: Convergence and Divergence, New York: Routledge

Translations Alfred Schmidt (1981), History and structure: an essay on Hegelian-Marxist and structuralist theories of history. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,

Articles

"What is Old and What is New about the Terrorism of Islamic Fundamentalism". Partisan Review, No. 69, Winter 2002