Philip Decker is a fifth-year PhD candidate working on European political and cultural history in the twentieth century, with a focus on Germany and its external relationships. His dissertation, “The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: A Cultural History, 1939-1941,” explores cultural ties between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union before and after their rapprochement of August 23, 1939. Research areas include cinema, opera and concert music, tourism, radio broadcasting, and dramatic theater, as well as cultural bureaucracies and their censorship regimes. The dissertation also pays close attention to the ideological temperaments of Hitler, Goebbels, Ribbentrop and other Nazi elites, and provides new insight into the failed efforts of German diplomats to prevent the invasion of the USSR. Philip has published articles in German Studies Review, Problems of Post-Communism, Oxford German Studies, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, and The English Historical Review.