Eric C. Steinhart earned a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2010. His dissertation received the 2011 Fritz Stern Prize from the Friends of the German Historical Institute for best doctoral dissertation on German history written in North America. From 2009 until 2012, he worked as a historian for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, serving as the Curt C. and Else Silberman International Tracing Service Research Scholar.