Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw , born the April 29th 1943 in Oldham, is a British historian known for its work on Adolf Hitler and the Nazisme. He is the author of a biography in two volumes which is one of the principal current references on the German Dictateur, as well as work entitled Hitler. Test on the charisma in policy , who explains how the dictatorship Nazi could settle. He sees of them the paramount causes in Adolf Hitler itself, strong the traditional Xénophobie, a déboussolée company, unconscious and authoritative elites, finally in the traumatism of the First World War and the civil war which followed.

Biographical elements

Ian Kershaw made its higher learning with Liverpool and thereafter with Oxford. Lecturer in the years 1980 in medieval History then modern, it is in 1983 professor visiting in modern history, with the the Ruhr Universität Bochum in Germany. In 1989, it is named full professor with the Université of Nottingham, and, since 1989, it was appointed professor of modern history to the Université of Sheffield. He is currently member of the British Academy, of Royal Historical Society, Wissenschaftskolleg of Berlin and Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung of Bonn.

Research

Ian Kershaw is the principal disciple of Martin Broszat (1926 - 1989), German historian specialist in the period of the Nazism and Structuraliste which saw the history as a Social science which was to concentrate on the company and its culture, rather than on precise individuals, to explain the past. Although Ian Kershaw was in disagreement with him on certain points, it takes again many conclusions and the methods of work of this one.

If Ian Kershaw thus expressed its dissension with regard to the thesis of the “weak dictator”, who wants that Hitler was an actor relatively not very important in the history of the Third Reich, it takes up nevertheless the ideas that Hitler did not play a big role in the daily organization of the organization what rather turns into to Führer a “lazy dictator” ( lazy dictator ), but also that Hitler was essential to the installation of this dictatorship and that it was not a pawn. It returns back to back the liberal theories , which would like that Hitler is the incarnated evil and that the company and controlling them traditional did not have nothing to do with the installation Nazi regime, and the Marxist theories which see in Hitler only one interchangeable pawn and for which the cause of the mode was to be seen in the State, the elites and big industries German.

Two of its works, published in France in 1995, intend to exceed the problems of the Totalitarisme. After having listed specificities of the Nazism with regard to the Stalinism, he prefers to have recourse, in his field of study, with the concept of “charismatic capacity” (starting from the concept of charisma of max Weber).

Some works of Ian Kershaw

Der Hitler-Mythos. Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich , Stuttgart, 1980. English edition: The “Hitler Myth”. Image and Reality in the Third Reich , Oxford, 1987.
What Nazism? Problems and perspective of interpretation , Paris, Gallimard, coll “Folio”, 1992, rééd. 1999 (ED. original: The Dictatorship Nazi. Problems and Perspective off Interpretation , London, 1985).
(to dir.), Weimar. Why did German Democracy Fail ? , London, 1990.
Hitler. Test on the charisma in policy , Paris, Gallimard, 1995 (ED. original: Hitler. Profile Power , London, Longman, 1991 has off).
the German Opinion under the Nazism. Bavaria 1933-1945 , Paris, CNRS Editions, 1995.
with Moshe Lewin (to dir.), Stalinism and Nazism. Dictatorships in Comparison , Cambridge University Near, 1997.
Hitler, volume 1: 1889-1936 , Flammarion, 1999,1157 p. (ED. original: Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris , London, Penguin Books, 1998).
Hitler, volume 2: 1936-1945 , Flammarion, 2000,1632 p. (ED. original: Hitler, 1936-1945: Némésis , London, Penguin Books, 1999).
is it Necessary to kill Hitler? , Paris, Italics, 1999.

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