Ian Kershaw

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Professor Sir Ian Kershaw (born April 29, 1943 in Oldham, Lancashire, England) is a British historian, noted for his biographies of Adolf Hitler. Educated at St Bede's College, Manchester, Liverpool and Oxford Universities, he was originally trained as a medievalist but turned to the study of German history in the 1970s. He is a professor at the University of Sheffield where his wife Dame Betty Kershaw also works and is the leading disciple of the late West German historian Martin Broszat. He teaches a module entitled 'Germans against Hitler'.

Contents

[edit] Bavaria Project

In the 1970s, Kershaw worked on Martin Broszat's "Bavaria Project", which resulted in his first book on the Third Reich, The 'Hitler Myth'; Image and Reality in the Third Reich which was first published in German in 1980 as Der Hitler-Mythos : Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich. This book examined the "Hitler cult" in Germany, how it was developed by Joseph Goebbels, what social groups the "Hitler cult" appealed to and how it rose and fell.

Also from the "Bavaria Project" was Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich. In this 1983 book, Kershaw examined the experience of the Third Reich at the grass-roots in Bavaria. Kershaw showed how ordinary people reacted to the Nazi dictatorship, looking at how people conformed to the regime and to the extent and limits of dissent. Kershaw concluded that the majority of Bavarians were anti-Semitic. Kershaw also concluded that there was a fundamental difference between the anti-Semitism of the majority of ordinary people, who disliked Jews, and the ideological anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party, who hated Jews. Kershaw documented numerous campaigns on the part of the Nazi Party to increase anti-semitic hatred. Overall, Kershaw noted that the popular mood towards Jews was indifference to their fate. Kershaw made the notable claim that "the road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference".

In the Historikerstreit (Historians' Dispute) of the 1986-1989, Kershaw followed Broszat in criticizing the work and views of Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer, and Klaus Hildebrand, all of whom Kershaw saw attempting to white-wash the German past in various ways.

[edit] Structuralist views

Like Broszat, Kershaw sees the structures of the Nazi state as far more important than the personality of Hitler (or any other individual for that matter) as explanation for the way Nazi Germany developed. In particular, Kershaw subscribes to the view argued by Broszat and Hans Mommsen that Nazi Germany was a chaotic collection of rival bureaucracies in perpetual power struggles with each other. For Kershaw, the real significance of Hitler lies not in him but in how the German people saw him[1]. In his biography of Hitler, Kershaw presented him as the ultimate “unperson”; a boring, pedestrian man devoid of even the “negative greatness” attributed to him by Joachim Fest[2]. Kershaw has no time for the Great Man theory of history and has criticised those who seek to explain everything that happened in the Third Reich as the result of Hitler’s will and intentions[3]. Kershaw has argued that it is absurd to seek to explain German history in the Nazi era solely through Hitler as Germany had 68 million people during the Third Reich, and to seek to explain the fate of 68 million people solely though the prism of one man is in Kershaw’s opinion a flawed position. Kershaw’s biography of Hitler is an examination of Hitler’s power; how he obtained it and how he maintained it[4]. Kershaw has argued that Hitler's leadership is a model example of Max Weber's theory of Charismatic leadership[5].

In the Functionalism versus intentionalism debate, Kershaw has argued for a synthesis of the two schools, though Kershaw leans towards the functionalist school. Kershaw has argued in his two volume biography of Hitler that Hitler did play a decisive role in the development of policies of genocide, but also argued that many of the measures that led to the Holocaust were undertaken by many lower-ranking officials without direct orders from Hitler in the expectation that such steps would win them favor.[6] Though Kershaw does not deny the radical anti-Semitism of the Nazis, Kershaw favors Mommsen’s view of the Holocaust being caused by the “culminative radicalization” of the Third Reich caused by the endless bureaucratic power struggles and a turn towards increasingly radical anti-Semitism within the Nazi elite.

In recent years Kershaw has come to form a thesis based on the ideas of both traditions of Nazi theory.

[edit] Opposition to Weak Dictator Thesis

Kershaw disagrees with Mommsens's "Weak Dictator" thesis; the idea that Hitler was a relatively unimportant player in the Third Reich but has agreed with his idea that Hitler did not play much of a role in the day-to-day administration of Nazi Germany. Kershaw's way of explaining this paradox is his theory of "Working Towards the Führer", the phrase being taken from a 1934 speech by the Prussian civil servant Werner Willikens[7]. Kershaw has argued that in Nazi Germany, officials of both the German state and Party bureaucracy usually took the initiative in beginning policy to meet Hitler's perceived wishes[8]. Though Kershaw does agree that Hitler did possess the powers that the "Master of the Third Reich" thesis championed by Norman Rich and Karl Dietrich Bracher would suggest, Kershaw has argued that Hitler was a disinterested dictator who really did not have the interest to involve himself much in the daily running of Nazi Germany[9]. The only exceptions were the areas of foreign policy and military decisions, both areas that Hitler increasingly involved himself in from the late 1930s[10].

Thus, for Kershaw Nazi Germany was both a monocracy (rule of one) and polycracy (rule of many). Hitler held absolute power but did not choose to exercise it very much; the rival fiefdoms of the Nazi state fought each other and attempted to carry out Hitler's vaguely worded wishes and dimly defined orders by "Working Towards the Führer".

[edit] Endnotes

  1. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 pages xii-xiii
  2. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 pages xxiii-xxv
  3. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 page xx
  4. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 page xxvi
  5. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 page xiii
  6. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 pages 530-531
  7. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 pages 529-531
  8. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 pages 529-531
  9. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 pages 531-533
  10. ^ Kershaw, Ian Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris, W.W. Norton, New York, 1998 pages 531-533

[edit] Works

His books include:

  • Bolton Priory Rentals and Ministers; Accounts, 1473-1539, (ed.) (Leeds, 1969)
  • Bolton Priory. The Economy of a Northern Monastery, (Oxford, 1973)
  • Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich. Bavaria, 1933-45, (Oxford, 1983, rev. 2002)
  • The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, (London, 1985, 4th ed., 2000) ISBN 0-340-76028-1
  • The 'Hitler Myth'. Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987, rev. 2001). ISBN 0-19-280206-2
  • Weimar. Why did German Democracy Fail?, (ed.) (London, 1990) ISBN 0-312-04470-4
  • Hitler: A Profile in Power, (London, 1991, rev. 2001)
  • Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, (ed. with Moshe Lewin) (Cambridge, 1997) ISBN 0-521-56521-9
  • Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris, (London, 1998) ISBN 0-393-32035-9
  • Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis, (London, 2000) ISBN 0-393-32252-1
  • The Bolton Priory Compotus, 1286-1325, (ed. with David Smith) (London, 2001)
  • Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and the British Road to War, (London, 2004) ISBN 0-7139-9717-6
  • Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (London, 2007) ISBN 1-5942-0123-4

[edit] References

  • Working Towards the Führer Essays in Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw, edited by Anthony McElligott and Tim Kirk, Manchester University Press, 2003.
  • Marrus, Michael The Holocaust in History, Toronto : Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987.
  • Snowman, Daniel "Ian Kershaw" pages 18-20 from History Today Volume 51, Issue 7, July 2001.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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