Ian Kershaw |
About Ian Kershaw
An Interview with Ian Kershaw
More About Ian Kershaw
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Ian Kershaw is Professor of Modern History at the University of Sheffield and one of
the world's leading authorities on Hitler. He was the historical advisor to the highly
successful BBC series The Nazis; A Warning from History.
He is the author of
'The Hitler Myth': Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Popular Opinion and Political
Dissent in the Third Reich, Bavaria 1933-45, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and
Perspectives of Interpretation and Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World,
1940-1941.
He is editor of Weimar: Why Did German Democracy Fail? and Hitler: A Profile in Power; and
co-editor, with Moshe Lewin, of Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison.
He was knighted in 2002.
» Read an extract from Hitler 1936-1945
PROFILE: IAN KERSHAW
I was born to a working-class family in Oldham, Lancashire, in 1943. At school, a
Catholic grammar-school in Manchester, I was not particularly interested in history until
inspired by an excellent sixth-form teacher, Father Burke. I went on to study history at
Liverpool University, then, for my doctorate, at Merton College, Oxford. My intellectual
passion at the time was, however, medieval, not modern, history, and I was appointed to my
first job in 1968 as Assistant Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of
Manchester. My first book was, accordingly, in medieval history – a specialist work (for
which, disappointingly, no film offers were made!) on Bolton Priory: the Economy of a
Northern Monastery (Oxford University Press, 1973). Meanwhile, however, I was making rapid
progress in mastering German, which I had been unable to learn at school or university,
and, through my increasing linguistic competence, I became ever more drawn to trying to
understand how Germany had succumbed to Hitler. The possibility of attempting some serious
research in this area improved drastically in 1974, when I was miraculously appointed to a
new post in modern history at Manchester University and, the following year, when I was
invited to work on a major research project in Germany, based at Munich, on the social
history of Bavaria in the Nazi era.
For more than thirty years since that time I have been researching and writing on the
darkest episode in German history, involving me in studying the appalling brutalities of
the most destructive war in history and the depths of inhumanity that created the
Holocaust, the most terrible genocide yet known to mankind. Why work for so long on such a
depressing era in history? Perhaps, like many historians, I’m more drawn to trying to
explain disasters and destruction than success and stability, so that the collapse of the
Weimar Republic always struck me as inherently more interesting that accounting for the
uneventfulness of 18th-century Geneva. But, mainly (and more seriously), there have been
few episodes in history as tragically crucial for modern times as the Nazi era. This era
belongs to world history, not just German history, and is vital to any understanding of
the world we live in. That in itself is justification for subjecting this period of
history to intensive study. I’ve felt privileged that I have been able to do this.
My first book in modern history, Der Hitler-Mythos, Volksmeinung und Propaganda im
Dritten Reich (Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart, 1980) was prompted by my work on the
Bavaria project and looked at the popular image of Hitler during the Nazi Dictatorship. I
later recouched my original German text and brought out an extended English version, The
‘Hitler Myth’. Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 1987).
Meanwhile, I had written another book that emanated from my Bavarian research, this time
exploring the oppositional mentalities in the German population under Hitler, Popular
Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich (Oxford Univerity Press, 1983), and then
turned to investigating the heated controversies that had arisen in interpreting Nazism in
The Nazi Dictatorship. Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation (Arnold, London,1985,
4th edition 2000). This book had taken me from the social history of the Third Reich into
debates about the governmental structure under Hitler. Inevitably, this drew me
increasingly to the key figure in the regime: Hitler himself. I had earlier shown little
specific interest in the dictator, and was more concerned with the nature of the regime
that he headed. Influenced by German historical writing, I was also somewhat adverse to
the genre of biography. But the invitation to write a short book analysing Hitler’s power,
Hitler. A Profile in Power (Longman, London, 1991) focused my attention much more than
hitherto on how Hitler’s rule operated in practice. By this time, I had already committed
myself to writing a full-scale Hitler biography. When the invitation to undertake this had
come in 1988, I had initially declined, on the grounds that at least two important
biographies, by Alan Bullock and Joachim Fest, already existed. However, I was
sufficiently intrigued to re-read these, and came to the conclusion that, for all their
merits, they were not the last word. Each had deficiencies that, in my view, it was
possible to transcend. So I agreed to write a new biography, a work which I could not
really commence (on account of duties at my university) until 1994. This work expanded so
much in the concept and writing that it became two volumes - Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris
(Penguin, 1998) and Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis (Penguin, 2000).
While working on the Hitler volumes, a chance find in the Public Record of Northern
Ireland in Belfast led me to the voluminous correspondence of Lord Londonderry, a
Conservative peer and prominent German sympathiser in the 1930s. I became increasingly
interested in his dealings with the German leadership, not just from a biographical
standpoint but also because of the light it cast on the British government’s difficulties
in dealing with Hitler, rearmament policy in Britain, appeasement and British fellow-
travellers of the Nazis. The outcome was Making Friends with Hitler. Lord Londonderry and
Britain’s Road to War (Penguin, 2004). Then, a casual chat with my friend Laurence Rees,
the brilliant television producer with whom I had collaborated on three major series (The
Nazis: A Warning from History, War of the Century, and Auschwitz: the Nazis and the Final
Solution) made me turn my attention to a study of decision-making in the leaders of the
major belligerent powers in a crucial phase of the Second World War, published as Fateful
Choices. Ten Decisions that Changed the World (Penguin, 2006).
In all this time, my ‘day-job’ has been as a university lecturer (and, when ‘elevated’,
as a professor) at Manchester (1968-87), Nottingham (1987-9) and Sheffield (1989 to
present). Just as I am about to retire (end of September 2008) from the splendid
Department of History at the University of Sheffield, it has been gratifying to see
published a collection of some of my essays (Hitler, the Germans the Final Solution, Yale
University Press, 2008) and – after some pain in removing 350,000 words, together with
footnotes and bibliograpy from my original two volumes – an abridged, single-volume
version of my Hitler biography, now just entitled Hitler (Penguin, 2008), though I am glad
that the full version will remain in print.
Will I continue writing? Yes, for the forseeable future. It’s not that I find the
process of writing hugely enjoyable. There’s a lot of hard slog and long hours involved,
and at times I’d almost rather doing anything else. Ultimately, though, it’s rewarding.
Anyway, I’ve done it for so long that I would be lost without it. Moreover, I still have
things I want to do, and writing has always been for me the best way to wrestle with
difficult problems (even if facing a blank computer screen and knowing that no one but you
can fill it with words is a daunting one). That others have been interested in what I have
written has been an enormous bonus and given me great satisfaction. But explaining complex
historical issues for myself has always been the underlying driving-force. Has it been
worth it? Every essay or book I have written has taught me a great deal. I feel immensely
lucky to have had a career that has allowed me time and space for teaching, research and
writing. So, for me: unquestionably. For others: that’s for them to judge.
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