Ian Kershaw
Sir Ian Kershaw FRHistS FBA (born 29 April 1943) is an English historian whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th-century Germany. He is regarded by many as one of the world's foremost experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler.[1]
Sir Ian Kershaw
29 April 1943
2
Joseph Kershaw, Alice (Robinson) Kershaw
"Working Towards the Führer" theory
He was a follower of the German historian Martin Broszat, and until his retirement, he was a professor at the University of Sheffield. Kershaw has called Broszat an "inspirational mentor" who did much to shape his understanding of Nazi Germany.[2] Kershaw served as historical adviser on numerous BBC documentaries, notably The Nazis: A Warning from History and War of the Century. He taught a module titled "Germans against Hitler".[3]
In 1985, Kershaw published a book on the historiography of Nazi Germany, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, in which he reflected on the problems in historiography of the Nazi era.[18] Kershaw noted the huge disparity of often incompatible views about the Nazi era such as the debate between:
As Kershaw noted, these divergent interpretations such as the differences between the functionalist view of the Holocaust as caused by a process and the intentionalist view of the Holocaust as caused by a plan are not easily reconciled, and that there was in his opinion the need for a guide to explain the complex historiography surrounding these issues.[19]
Likewise, if one accepts the Marxist view of Nazism as the culmination of capitalism, then the Nazi phenomenon is universal, and fascism can come to power in any society where capitalism is the dominant economic system, whereas the view of Nazism as the culmination of Deutschtum means that the Nazi phenomenon is local and particular only to Germany. For Kershaw, any historian writing about the period had to take account of the "historical-philosophical", "political-ideological" and moral problems associated with the period, which thus poses special challenges for the historian. In The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw surveyed the historical literature and offered his own assessment of the pros and cons of the various approaches.[18] For example, in the 2015 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw, although he acknowledged plausible objections to the application of a common "totalitarianism" paradigm to both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, agreed with those who have generally made these criticisms "that it is in itself a wholly legitimate exercise, whatever essential differences existed in ideology and socio-economic structures, to compare the forms and techniques of rule in Germany under Hitler and the Soviet Union under Stalin."[20]
In a 2008 interview, Kershaw lists as his major intellectual influences Martin Broszat, Hans Mommsen, Alan Milward, Timothy Mason, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, William Carr, and Jeremy Noakes.[21] In the same interview, Kershaw expressed strong approval of Mason's "Primacy of Politics" concept, in which it was German Big Business that served the Nazi regime rather than the other way around, against the orthodox Marxist "Primacy of Economics" concept.[21] Despite his praise and admiration for Mason, in the 2000 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw was highly skeptical of Mason's "Flight into War" theory of an economic crisis in 1939 forcing the Nazi regime into war.[22]
In the Historikerstreit (Historians' Dispute) of 1986–89, Kershaw followed Broszat in criticising the work and views of Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer, Joachim Fest and Klaus Hildebrand, all of whom Kershaw saw as attempting to white-wash the German past in various ways. In the 1989 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw devoted an entire chapter towards rebutting the views of Nolte, Hillgruber, Fest, Hildebrand, and Stürmer. In regard to the debate between those who regard Nazism as a type of totalitarianism (and thus having more in common with the Soviet Union) versus those who regard Nazism as a type of fascism (and thus having more in common with Fascist Italy), Kershaw, though feeling that the totalitarianism approach is not without value, has argued that in essence, Nazism should be viewed as a type of fascism, albeit fascism of a very radical type.[23] Writing of the Sonderweg debate, Kershaw finds the moderate Sonderweg approach of Jürgen Kocka the most satisfactory historical explanation for why the Nazi era occurred.[24] In the 2000 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw wrote a scathing criticism of Gerhard Ritter's claim that one "madman" (i.e. Hitler) "single-handedly" caused the Second World War in Europe, and added that he found the historical approach of Ritter's arch-enemy Fritz Fischer to be a far better way of understanding and recoiling German history.[25] Along the same lines, Kershaw criticised the 1946 statement by the German historian Friedrich Meinecke that Nazism was just a particularly unfortunate Betriebsunfall (industrial accident) of history.[25]
Kershaw was later in a 2003 essay to criticise both Ritter and Meinecke, stating that by their promotion of the Betriebsunfall theory or by blaming everything upon Hitler, they were seeking to white-wash the German past.[2] Writing of the work of the German historian Rainer Zitelmann, Kershaw has argued that Zitelmann has elevated what were merely secondary considerations in Hitler's remarks to the primary level, and that Zitelmann has not offered a clear definition of what he means by "modernization".[26]
With regard to the Nazi foreign policy debate between "globalists" such as Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, Jochen Thies, Gunter Moltman and Gerhard Weinberg, who argue that Germany aimed at world conquest, and the "continentalists" such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn, who argue that Germany aimed only at the conquest of Europe,[27] Kershaw tends towards the "continental" position.[28] Kershaw agrees with the thesis that Hitler did formulate a programme for foreign policy centering on an alliance with Britain to achieve the destruction of the Soviet Union, but has argued that a British lack of interest doomed the project, thus leading to the situation in 1939, where Hitler went to war with Britain, the country he wanted as an ally, not as an enemy, and the country he wanted as an enemy, the Soviet Union, as his ally.[29] At the same time, Kershaw sees considerable merit in the work of such historians as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, Martin Broszat and Wolfgang Schieder, who argue that Hitler had no "programme" in foreign policy, and instead contend that his foreign policy was simply a kneejerk reaction to domestic pressures in the economy and his need to maintain his popularity.[30]
Regarding the historical debates about Widerstand (resistance) in German society, Kershaw has argued that there are two approaches to the question, one of which he calls the fundamentalist (dealing with those committed to overthrowing the Nazi regime) and the other the societal (dealing with forms of dissent in "everyday life").[31] In Kershaw's view, Broszat's Resistenz (immunity) concept works well in an Alltagsgeschichte approach, but works less well in the field of high politics, and moreover by focusing only on the "effect" of one's actions, fails to consider the crucial element of the "intention" behind one's actions.[32] Kershaw has argued that the term Widerstand should be used only for those working for the total overthrow of the Nazi system, and those engaging in behaviour that was counter to the regime's wishes without seeking to overthrow the regime should be included under the terms opposition and dissent, depending upon their motives and actions.[33] In Kershaw's opinion, there were three bands ranging from dissent to opposition to resistance.[34] Kershaw has used the Edelweiss Pirates as an example of a group whose behavior initially fell under dissent, and who advanced from there to opposition and finally to resistance.[35]
In Kershaw's view, there was much dissent and opposition within German society, but outside of the working class, very little resistance.[36] Although Kershaw has argued that the Resistenz (immunity [against indoctrination]) concept has much merit, he concluded that the Nazi regime had a broad basis of support and it is correct to speak of "resistance without the people".[37]
Regarding the debate in the late 1980s between Martin Broszat and Saul Friedländer over Broszat's call for the "historicization" of Nazism, Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Friedländer that the Nazi period could not be treated as a "normal" period of history, but he felt that historians should approach the Nazi period as they would any other period of history.[38] In support of Broszat, Kershaw wrote that an Alltagsgeschichte approach to German history, provided that it did not lose sight of Nazi crimes, had much to offer as a way of understanding how those crimes occurred.[38]
During the "Goldhagen Controversy" of 1996, Kershaw took the view that his friend, Hans Mommsen, had "destroyed" Daniel Goldhagen's arguments about a culture of "eliminationist antisemitism" in Germany during their frequent debates on German TV.[39] Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Eberhard Jäckel's assessment that Hitler's Willing Executioners was "simply a bad book".[40] Though Kershaw had little positive to say about Goldhagen, he wrote that he felt that Norman Finkelstein's attack on Goldhagen had been over-the-top and did little to help historical understanding.[41] However, Kershaw later went on to recommend Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn's extremely critical assessment of Goldhagen's book, A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth; stating that "Finkelstein and Birn provide a devastating critique of Daniel Goldhagen's simplistic and misleading interpretation of the Holocaust. Their contribution to the debate is, in my view, indispensable."
Later career[edit]
Kershaw retired from full-time teaching in 2008.[71] In the 2010s, he wrote two books on the wider history of Europe for The Penguin History of Europe series: To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914–1949 and The Global Age: Europe, 1950–2017.
On Kershaw
Kershaw interviewed
By Kershaw