Philip Decker

Philip Decker is an Ernest May Fellow in History and Policy at the Belfer Center and a doctoral candidate at Princeton, where he was a Centennial Fellow from 2020 to 2025 and held the Porter Ogden Jacobus Honorific Fellowship in 2025-2026. He is a scholar of political, diplomatic, and cultural history in twentieth century Europe, with a focus on Germany and its foreign relations.

Based on his dissertation, Philip’s first book project tells a novel origin story of the Second World War. Drawing evidence from more than two dozen German, Russian, British and American archives, the project concerns the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the infamous non-aggression agreement concluded by Hitler and Stalin on August 23, 1939. It shows that, with Stalin’s encouragement, Hitler and his lieutenants tried to justify the Pact within the Nazi ideological framework; that the German and Soviet publics played a much more active role in shaping the character of this relationship than is generally assumed; and that German diplomats worked hard to foster a cultural exchange in hopes of normalizing ties and preventing war between these powers.

Philip has also begun work on his planned second project: an inquiry into how Stalin’s so-called ‘retreat from revolution,’ known at the time as Russian Thermidor, was discussed and debated across the interwar world, including in mainstream opinion, fascist and communist circles, and foreign ministries. Recurring themes in Philip’s scholarship include national self-doubt, hesitant or repressed attraction toward other countries, the quest for moral certainty, and the expression of these impulses in cultural production. 

Philip’s peer-reviewed articles have appeared in The English Historical Review, German Studies Review, Oxford German Studies, Studies in Eastern European Cinema, and Problems of Post-Communism. Philip has also written for Foreign Policy, Tocqueville 21, and Nationalities Papers, among other venues.

Philip’s scholarly work has been supported by grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the University of Oxford, George Washington University, the Central European History Society, Phi Beta Kappa, the German History Society, Princeton Judaic Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). He has presented his research at over 50 conferences in the U.S. and abroad.

Prior to pursuing a Ph.D. at Princeton, Philip earned an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford and a B.A. in History from Swarthmore College.