[1] Bessel earned his BA at Antioch College and his DPhil at the University of Oxford.
[1] He is also a fellow of the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies.
[2] Bessel's Germany 1945: From War to Peace (2009), dealing with the transition from German defeat at the end of the Second World War to peace, was positively reviewed by Jeffry Diefendorf in H-Net with the reviewer noting its relevance to modern debates about failed states and nation building.
[3] Brian Ladd, in The New York Times, noted Bessel's "sober" treatment of the topic and his preference for understatement over pathos.
[5] Ian Bell, in The Herald, noted the denseness of the material and the hellishness of the twentieth century outlined by Bessel, but also that the work was thoughtful rather than being a polemic against violence.