Conspiracy Theories in Europe During the Twentieth Century

Through the lens of the Internet, it would seem that there are more conspiracy theories than ever before – and it might be true. But conspiracy theories are not a new phenomenon: To a certain extent, the twentieth century could be considered their real golden age. This has been acknowledged by scholars, sometimes retracing their genealogy back to the Middle Ages (Pipes 1997). But, as conspiracy theories were not thought of as a fully-fledged historical topic until relatively recently (Münch 2008: 27–31), the research often remains fragmented and incomplete, with its most important contributions mainly investigating American history (Knight 2003; Butter 2014; Uscinski, Parent 2014).