JOINED THE DEPARTMENT

2011

BIO

Dr. Gerald J. Steinacher is the James A. Rawley Professor of History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) and an internationally recognized scholar of modern European history. His research focuses on Holocaust and genocide studies, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, antisemitism, and the politics of justice and accountability after war and dictatorship. His work combines archival research with international collaboration and contributes to both scholarly and public debates on twentieth-century mass violence, transitional justice, and memory.

Steinacher has published eighteen books and more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on these topics. His research has been featured in major international media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Jerusalem Post, and Der Spiegel.

Steinacher’s award-winning monograph Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice (Oxford University Press, 2011) examines the postwar trajectories of Nazi perpetrators and the international networks that facilitated their escape. The book, translated into multiple languages, received the 2011 National Jewish Book Award (Holocaust category) and has become a standard work in the study of postwar justice and impunity. In Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2017), Steinacher analyzes the International Committee of the Red Cross and its evolving approach to genocide, civilian victims, and humanitarian norms in the decades following World War II. His most recent monograph, The Pope Against Nuremberg: How the Vatican Helped Nazis Escape Postwar Justice (NYU Press, 2026), investigates Catholic responses to Allied war crimes trials and broader questions of guilt, reconciliation, and justice after war and genocide.

Beyond his research, Steinacher is deeply engaged in academic leadership and service at both the institutional and disciplinary levels. At UNL, he has served in multiple administrative roles, including Graduate Chair, with responsibility for graduate program leadership, curriculum development, mentoring, and has participated extensively in departmental, college-level, and university committees. He also holds leadership roles in professional associations in the fields of Holocaust studies and modern European history, including service on executive boards and academic councils. He has regularly contributed to the profession by serving on commissions of historians, acting as a consultant, undertaking editorial work, participating in fellowship and prize selection committees, and serving as an external reviewer of academic programs in Europe and the United States. Steinacher also serves as co-editor of the University of Nebraska Press book series Contemporary Holocaust Studies.

Steinacher has held numerous prestigious fellowships and visiting appointments, including at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research, the Institute for Contemporary History (Munich), and the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. He has also been a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a visiting professor at several US, Australian and European universities, including Central European University in Vienna.

Steinacher teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the Holocaust, antisemitism, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, modern Jewish history, migration and refugee history, intelligence and espionage history, memory culture, and digital history.

CV

TEACHING

Undergraduate Courses

• HIST 131: Modern Europe
• HIST 328: History of Germany: 1914 to the Present
• HIST 333 / JUDS 333 / RELG 333: Jews in the Modern World
• HIST 337: History of Modern Espionage and Intelligence 
• HIST 339 / JUDS 339: The Holocaust 
• HIST 429: History of Fascism in Europe
• HIST 448: History Harvest
• HIST 450: Capstone Seminar
• UHON 395H: Honors Seminar

Graduate Courses

• HIST 828: History of Germany: 1914 to the Present
• HIST 829: History of Fascism in Europe
• HIST 839: The Holocaust
• HIST 848: History Harvest
• HIST 894: Independent Study 
• HIST 900: Introduction to Historical Study
• HIST 933: Readings and Problems in Recent European History
• HIST 985 / GERM 985: Readings and Problems in Central European History

SELECTED BOOKS

• Fascist Legacies: Far-Right Ideologies Then and Now. Co-edited with Ari Kohen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming.
• Antisemitism on the Rise: The 1930s and Today. Co-edited with Ari Kohen. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021.
• Humanitarians at War: The Red Cross in the Shadow of the Holocaust. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Nazis on the Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Südtirol und die Geheimdienste 1943-1945. Vienna: Studienverlag, 2000.

BOOK REVIEWS

• Professor Steinacher’s talk at Harvard University about his new book project The Pope Against Nuremberg
• UNL Professor Steinacher talks about his book Nazis on the Run on C-SPAN TV
• Gerald Steinacher interviewed by HNN History News Network
• Review of Nazis on the Run by Philip Kerr in the Wall Street Journal
• Review of Nazis on the Run by David Cesarini in the New Statesman
• Review of Nazis on the Run by Robert Gerwarth in The Irish Times
• Review of Nazis on the Run by Steven P. Remy in Holocaust and Genocide Studies
• Review of Humanitarians at War by Edward B. Westermann in the German Studies Review
• Review of Humanitarians at War by Peter Crossland in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

SELECTED ARTICLES

• "Le pape contre Nuremberg: Les procès des crimes de guerre nazis, le Vatican et la question de la justice après la guerre", in Revue d’Histoire de la Shoah, automne 2023 (Vatican, Église et Shoah: Renouveau historiographique autour des archives Pie XII), pp. 301-322, [English version here: "The Pope against Nuremberg: Nazi war crimes trials, the Vatican, and the question of postwar justice"]
• "Forgive and Forget? The Vatican and the Escape of Nazi War Criminals from Justice" in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation, 9 (2022) 1, 4-28.
• "Introduction", in: Antisemitism on the Rise: The 1930s and Today, ed. A. Kohen & G. Steinacher. Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 2021, 1-20.
• "The Oldest Post-Truth? The Rise of Antisemitism in America and Beyond", in: History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis, edited by Marius Gudonis and Benjamin T. Jones (Oxford: Routledge: 2020), 121-141.
• "Österreich und die Flucht von NS-Tätern nach Übersee", in: Jahrbuch Mauthausen 2016: NS-Täterinnen und Täter in der Nachkriegszeit, pp. 35-50.
• "Dolmetscher, Spione und Mörder: Südtiroler im Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers SS in Italien 1943-45", in: Das Lehnswesen im Alpenraum/Vassalli e feudi nelle Alpi, Geschichte und Region/Storia e regione, 22. Jahrgang, 2013, Helft 1 – anno XXII, 2013, n. 1, (Innsbruck, Wien, & Bozen/Bolzano: Studien Verlag, 2014), 109–136.
• "The University in Exile and the Garden of Eden: Alvin Johnson and his rescue efforts for European Jews and Intellectuals", in: Reassessing History from Two Continents: Festschrift Günter Bischof, edited by Martin Eichtinger et al., (Innsbruck: Innsbruck University Press, 2013) 49–68.
• "Il Signor Mengele di Bolzano": L'Alto Adige come via di fuga dei criminali nazisti (1945-1951), in: Dalla liberazione alla ricostruzione: Alto Adige/Südtirol 1945–1948, ed. Giorgio Mezzalira, Fabrizio Miori, Giovanni Perez, and Carlo Romeo (Bolzano: Edition Raetia, 2013) 33–56.
• "’A Man with a Wide Horizon’: The Postwar Professional Journey of SS Officer Karl Nicolussi-Leck", in: Nazi Self-Help and Recast Identities: Post-War Fates of Nazi Functional Elites, edited by David A. Messenger and Katrin Paehler (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013) 225-248.
• "The Cape of Last Hope. The Postwar Flight of Nazi War Criminals through Italy/South Tyrol to South America", in: Transatlantic Relations: Austria and Latin America in the 19th and 20th Century (Transatlantica 1), edited by Klaus Eisterer and Günter Bischof (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2006) 203-224.

EXPERTISE

• Nazi Germany
• Holocaust
• Catholic Church
• Italian Fascism
• Antisemitism
• Jewish History
• Intelligence and Espionage History
• Central European History