Randall Bytwerk

Basic Information:

After graduating from Calvin College in 1971 I earned a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1975. I taught at Southern Illinois University from 1975 to 1985, and at Calvin College (now Calvin University) from 1985 to my retirement in 2014. During the Fall 2015 and Fall 2017 semesters I taught at LCC International University in Lithuania.

Major Links:

• The German Propaganda Archive. This is a large collection of propaganda materials produced during the Nazi and East German periods. It includes hundreds of translations from the German, along with thousands of images. These pages of the German Propaganda Archive are housed on this server. Additions to the site are posted on the GPA blog.
• My amazon page.
• Brief curriculum vitae (Outdated)
• List of publications
• My ORCID Page.
• My Google Scholar page.

Material Available On-line:

• Winston Churchill in Nazi Cartoon Propaganda: Published in Finest Hour.
• An essay on Nazi visual anti-Semitic rhetoric.
• An essay from Plum Lines on German editions of P. G. Wodehouse:  Some judicious editing was necessary.  
• An unpublished essay on Neues Deutschland after the collapse of East Germany.
• “The Well-Traveled Article”: The history of a scholarly article that was rejected eight times before finally being accepted. I hope it will be encouraging to new scholars who receive their first rejections.
• The rhetorical duel between FDR and Hitler: A CSPAN link to my talk on the subject (2016).
• Building Anti-Semitism on a Firm Foundation: My 2018 lecture at Oregon State University.
• The Religion Nature of Nazi Propaganda: My 2023 Lecture at the Harold Deutsch Forum. The talk begins at 16:15.
• My research files: My Zotero library with research notes is available. Feel free to use the material. Appropriate credit appreciated.

Blogs I Maintain:

• Goebbels Didn’t Say It: An attempt to slow the spread of a fabricated quotation.
• Propaganda Today: The past is prologue.

A Variety of Pages:

• Eastern German Studies Association: A defunct scholarly organization. I maintained its website years back.
• A page on a bad translation of Mein Kampf.
• The errata sheet for a book that didn’t do a very good job of citing my material.
• Sierra Nevada hiking page. I hiked in the Sierra Nevada for 40 years.
• University of Dubious Internet Studies: A long-needed addition to higher education.

Miscellaneous Links:

• Lawdromat: A friend’s blog on legal matters, written for a lay audience.
• Beware of Ciprian Pahoni: An Internet scoundrel I fell afoul of.

Last edited 4 January 2026