Second World War (World War II)
The Front Row
“The Zone of Interest” Is an Extreme Form of Holokitsch
Jonathan Glazer’s drama, set among the Nazis who ran Auschwitz, turns the horrors of the Holocaust into scenes from a marriage.
The New Yorker Documentary
In “Nina & Irena,” a Holocaust Survivor Breaks Her Silence After Eighty Years
Amid rising antisemitism, the filmmaker Daniel Lombroso turns the focus to his grandmother, in a film presented by Errol Morris.
The Front Row
“Oppenheimer” Is Ultimately a History Channel Movie with Fancy Editing
Christopher Nolan’s bio-pic is so intent on being a morality tale that it misses its protagonist’s complexity.
Persons of Interest
The Anonymous Postcard That Inspired a French Best-Seller
Anne Berest’s “The Postcard” reads like a detective story, uncovering her Jewish family’s experiences during the Second World War.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
State Legislatures Go Rogue
The political scientist Jacob Grumbach on what to make of Republican lawmakers expelling or censuring their political opponents. Plus, a tribute to the American journalist imprisoned by Russia as a spy.
A Critic at Large
The Making of Norman Mailer
The young man went to war and became a novelist. But did he ever really come back?
Rabbit Holes
On TikTok, an Album Containing Old Wartime Photos Causes Havoc
An antique dealer in Minnesota believed that he had found rare photographic evidence documenting the Nanjing Massacre.
Cultural Comment
Ken Burns Turns His Lens on the American Response to the Holocaust
Commemorating the Holocaust has become a central part of American culture, but the nation’s reaction in real time was another story.
Our Columnists
“Z” Is the Symbol of the New Russian Politics of Aggression
In the days following the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine, the letter came to stand for devotion to the state, murderous rage, and unchecked power.
Books
Harry Truman Helped Make Our World Order, for Better and for Worse
Institutions meant to secure peace, from NATO to the U.N., date back to Truman’s Presidency. So do the conflicts threatening that peace.
Q. & A.
How to Confront a Racist National History
Susan Neiman, a philosopher who studies Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past, examines how the United States can remember slavery and segregation.
On Television
The Odd Nostalgia of a New “Catch-22”
There is an odd sense of romance—a glory beneath the gruesomeness—in “Catch-22” ’s portrait of the paradise that so many of the young men in this six-part series are doomed to lose.
Page-Turner
A New History of the Second World War
Briefly Noted
Double Cross
A Critic at Large