The Luftwaffe, Politicization, and Public History

My guest today is Victoria Taylor! Victoria is an award-winning aviation historian based at the University of Hull and Sheffield Hallam University, where she recently defended her PhD thesis on the Luftwaffe and National Socialism in the Third Reich. Her main historical focus is on British and German aviation during the interwar period and the Second World War. In recognition of her PhD research, she was awarded the 2020 Royal Air Force Museum Doctoral Academic Prize in 2021. She also completed her Masters in Historical Research on Britain’s wartime and post-war mythologization of Operation CHASTISE – better known as the “Dambusters raid” – at Hull, for which she was awarded the Royal Air Force Museum’s RAF Centenary Master’s Academic Prize in 2019.

In 2020, she served as narrator, co-writer, and historical consultant on Inside the Battle of Britain, the second series of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund podcast series All Stations. This five-part series was nominated for a Best Independent Podcast award by the Radio Academy in 2021. Victoria has contributed to popular history magazines such as BBC History Extra, Iron Cross Magazine and Britain at War, along with publishing in academic journals and volumes. Since 2018, she has widely featured as an onscreen expert in history documentaries made for BBC Two, Channel 5, the Smithsonian Channel, History Hit, and SBS Australia. Victoria is an Assistant Editor of the scholarly online airpower platform From Balloons to Drones and serves on the Editorial Board of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Journal of Aeronautical History.