Some of you have contacted me privately to ask about Trevor-Roper's criticisms of Shirer.
Here they are, all raised in the form of questions:
Is he fair to Nietzsche and Gobineau?
Is he still so sure about the Reichstag fire?
Might he not have freed himself a little more from the day-to-day diplomacy fo 1938-39 to say more of the internal structure of Nazi Germany?
Might he not, in view of his own residence in Germany, have captured and conveyed a little more of the atmosphere of the time, portrayed the personalities, re-created the sense of permanent crisis in which Hitler kept the world?
Great question. I usually associate the “Working towards the Führer” thesis with Ian Kershaw.
And Kershaw, who was a social historian, based large parts of his research around how the average German understood Hitler, Nazism, and antisemitism. Shirer, for better or for worse, was a journalist with a more traditional great man theory of history. He focuses much more on the diplomatic skirmishes and big decisions. So there isn’t a lot about how Nazi Germany manufactured consent for Hitler. Shirer is more likely to say “Hitler did this…” even if he wasn’t terribly interested in bureaucratic minutiae.
Some of you have contacted me privately to ask about Trevor-Roper's criticisms of Shirer.
Here they are, all raised in the form of questions:
Is he fair to Nietzsche and Gobineau?
Is he still so sure about the Reichstag fire?
Might he not have freed himself a little more from the day-to-day diplomacy fo 1938-39 to say more of the internal structure of Nazi Germany?
Might he not, in view of his own residence in Germany, have captured and conveyed a little more of the atmosphere of the time, portrayed the personalities, re-created the sense of permanent crisis in which Hitler kept the world?
Does Shirer even hint at Evan’s ‘working towards the fuhrer’ thesis, or is that something that is only developed by Evans or other historians later?
Great question. I usually associate the “Working towards the Führer” thesis with Ian Kershaw.
And Kershaw, who was a social historian, based large parts of his research around how the average German understood Hitler, Nazism, and antisemitism. Shirer, for better or for worse, was a journalist with a more traditional great man theory of history. He focuses much more on the diplomatic skirmishes and big decisions. So there isn’t a lot about how Nazi Germany manufactured consent for Hitler. Shirer is more likely to say “Hitler did this…” even if he wasn’t terribly interested in bureaucratic minutiae.
I’m such an idiot, of course it’s Kershaw
Got my Hitler biographers mixed up, ooops