Today’s guest is the funny and brilliant Matthias Strohn. Matthias is Head of the Historical Analysis Program at the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research and an Honorary Visiting Professor at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Buckingham. Matthias has also served as a senior lecturer in War Studies at the UK Ministry of Defence and a Military History Instructor at the German Staff College in Hamburg. He is a Lieutenant-Colonel in the German Bundeswehr and as a member of the German Military Attaché Reserve served in Paris, London, and Madrid. Matthias deployed to Iraq with the British Army and Afghanistan with the British Army and Bundeswehr. In 2022, he was awarded the Golden Cross of Honour, the German Armed Forces’ highest non-combat decoration.

Matthias was educated at the University of Münster before earning his MSt and DPhil at the University of Oxford. He is the author or editor of more than 20 books, including The German Army and the Defence of the Reich (Cambridge), How Armies Grow: The Expansion of Military Forces in the Age of Total War 1789-1945 (Casemate), Winning Wars: The Enduring Nature and Changing Character of Victory from Antiquity to the 21st Century (Casemate), and World War I Companion (Osprey). His forthcoming book Blade of a Sword: Ernst Jünger and the 73rd Fusilier Regiment on the Western Front, 1914–18, will be published by Osprey in 2025. Outside of his military and academic life, Matthias gives battlefield tours through The Cultural Experience.

“So join us for an energetic and wide-ranging discussion of speaking English, studying at Oxford, growing up in Muenster (the “most livable place on Earth”), being a historian while deployed, Stalingrad staff rides, pink Stetsons, and Johnny Cash!

Rec. 02/08/2024