Dieter Pohl studied History and Political Science at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich . After graduating with a Master of Arts in 1990, he received his doctorate in 1995 with a thesis on Nazi persecution of Jews in Eastern Galicia 1941-1944. From 1995 to August 2010 he was a research assistant at the Munich Institute for Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, IfZ), and later became head of the department. In addition to his work at IfZ he was a lecturer at the History Department of the University of Munich.

Since September 2010, Dieter Pohl is Professor of Contemporary History with a special emphasis on Eastern and South-Eastern Europe at the University of Klagenfurt . His research interests include the history of the Soviet Union, the National Socialist occupation regime and violent crime, the Second World War in Europe and Asia, research on the impact of war, the history of communist systems after 1945, mass violence in the 20th century and the contemporary history of Poland and Ukraine.

Pohl is a member of the Bureau of the International Committee for the History of the Second World War and co-publisher of periodicals Dapim. Studies on the Shoah and Holokost i Sucasnist (Kiev). He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) .