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To tell you about the history of war crimes and criminals... because they are bad and need to be remembered
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
It traces how eugenic ideas crossed borders and became laws, court decisions, sterilization programs and genocidal administration.
Jeremy Leland follows war crimes backward into the laws, institutions and racial theories that made them administratively possible. His solo narration spends sustained time on eugenics, moving through forced sterilization in the United States and Canada, the removal of…
State-fair baby contests meet sterilization laws, and Jeremy Leland walks you through the connection.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A wartime portrait shaped by propaganda, occupation, and shifting loyalties.
Jeremy Leland's episode on Andrei Andreevich Vlasov tracks a wartime figure moving through Soviet territory, German-occupied ground, and the propaganda he tried to build around himself.
Two wartime radio personalities frame a history of coercion, accusation, pardon, and uneasy aftermath.
World of War Crimes centers this single episode on two wartime radio personalities whose lives complicate the usual shorthand around propaganda and loyalty.
A blunt closing chapter on eugenics, with Germany at the center.
World of War Crimes ends its eugenics mini-series by moving into Germany, where Jeremy links the earlier country-by-country groundwork to the Nazi era.
Buck v. Bell is traced through a family, a law, and the labels applied to them.
World of War Crimes follows Buck v. Bell through Carrie Buck's family and the labels attached to them: feeble-minded, promiscuous, imbecile. It ties that doctor-made family tree to state policy in California and Virginia, where sterilization and exclusionary ideas were used to…
A loose, morally urgent tour of sterilization and eugenics from Alberta to Brazil.
World of War Crimes! follows a hard line from Alberta's sterilization act into Canada's industrial schools and the graves of First Nations children, then on to Brazil's whitening policies.
A direct, conversational look at how Australian law and official assumptions enabled Aboriginal children to be taken from their families.
Australia's eugenics history is framed through the removal of Aboriginal children, with the episode showing how state power and legally sanctioned control turned family separation into policy.
A State Fair baby-judging exhibit opens a sharp look at the institutions that helped eugenics spread.
The episode finds its cleanest way into eugenics through a baby-judging exhibit at the Indiana State Fair, where white Hoosier children were assessed for mental development, physical health, and traits.
A direct return that traces Eichmann from his birth into the machinery of deportation and Nazi policy.
Otto Adolf Eichmann is presented through the machinery of Nazi deportation policy, and the episode follows him from his birth on March 19th, 1906 in Solingen into the planning around ghettos, deportations, the Madagascar proposal, and the escalation after Operation Barbarossa.
Outnumbered units, remembered under fire.
Battle maps, war films, and patient context.
War news, tested against military reality.
Antique European history, read aloud.
The host explores the contrasting stories of two WWII-era radio broadcasters: Iva Toguri D'Aquino, the Japanese-American woman wrongly convicted as 'Tokyo Rose,' and Mildred Sisk, the American who willingly became 'Axis Sally' for Nazi Germany.
Jeremy Leland returns to World of War Crimes after a two-year hiatus and opens with Otto Adolf Eichmann’s early life, including his 1906 birth in Solingen, his move to Linz in 1913, and his later SS and NSDAP memberships.
Jeremy Leland opens The World of War Crimes by saying he is spacing episodes two weeks apart so he can do more research before tackling Andrei Vlasov.
World of War Crimes!
["Jeremy closes a five-part eugenics mini-series by tracing German racial hygiene from the 1871 unification of Germany to Nazi policy.", "He names the German Society for Racial Hygiene, Alfred Ploetz, Eugen Fischer, Ernst Rudin, Madison Grant, Harry Laughlin, and the Rockefeller Foundation as part of the network.", "He connects the 1933 sterilization law, the 1935 Nuremberg laws, and the T4 program to more than 400,000 sterilizations, the German blood certificate, and the Hadamar gas vans.", "The episode also covers the Mutterkreuz, the Lebensborn program, stolen children, and how churches and IBM were folded into the system."]
World of War Crimes!
World of War Crimes!
World of War Crimes!
World of War Crimes!