1/2 Given the amount written on Hitler, and the pace at which the academy keeps on adding to the total, you seem to have set yourself quite a tough task!

You mention centring your work on Kershaw. So assuming you are taking an interest in the more theoretical side of his thinking, you will be paying a lot of attention to The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich.

If so you would certainly want to allude to Max Weber and his work on charismatic leadership, especially his famous lecture/essay “Politics as a Vocation” (first delivered in 1919). Weber developed the idea of a certain sort of political authority, “charismatic authority,” which depended entirely upon “a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” Weber distinguished this type of authority from more bureaucratic “traditional” or “legal” forms of leadership. He also highlighted that the most important aspect of a charismatic leader’s power was how he was “actually regarded by … his ‘followers’ or ‘disciples.’”

Although Kershaw was not the first to suggest a connection between Weber’s theory and Hitler’s rule, it was Kershaw’s in-depth use of the concept that popularised the idea more widely. Rather than merely likening Hitler superficially to the charismatic leaders in primitive societies that Weber had discussed, Kershaw extended his framework of interpretation in order to illuminate Hitler’s broader relationship with the German people. It's a theme he continued up to the publication of The End, which looked at the last 9 months of the Nazi state and again used the concept of charismatic authority to explain why no competing power locus sought to wrest power from the clearly failing (and fading) Hitler.

Looking at the historiography of the field prior to Kershaw, we can say that one key to understanding German historical studies is grasping the shift toward what is now known as Alltagsgeschichte—the history of everyday life. This was a specifically German variant of the burgeoning interest in social history—that is, historical inquiry focusing on the experiences of ordinary people rather than the actions of “great men”—that could be seen in universities throughout the Western world at this time. Its roots lay in the dissatisfaction that the younger generation of German historians felt with the forms of “structural history” (Strukturgeschichte) advocated by the so-called Bielefeld School. This latter group of scholars, foremost among them Hans-Ulrich Wehler and Jürgen Kocka, tended to focus on “an abstract analysis of the large structures and long-term historical processes that created a German Sonderweg (special path) leading to Hitler.” By contrast, Alltagsgeschichte sought to uncover the culture and experiences of ordinary people and the working classes.

At this time, the German historical establishment was also utterly polarised over the question of whether Hitler had been the prime mover behind the Third Reich’s murderous policies, or whether he had merely been a “weak dictator,” caught up in bureaucratic structures that had pushed these policies forward with a momentum all their own. In this debate between the “intentionalists” (who saw Hitler’s own intentions and ideological motivations as key) and the “functionalists” or “structuralists” (according to whom responsibility ultimately lay with structural elements within the state such as the Nazi Party and the SS, the elite corps responsible for the police and terror apparatus). Kershaw tended to stand in the latter camp. However, his work on Hitler’s public image in Bavaria can be seen as a way of exploring the dictator’s power that also took account of the prevailing trend toward exploring regional micro-histories, rather than merely focusing upon the actions of elites, institutions, and bureaucracies. Kershaw's views on this debate form the core of his The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, his major work of historiography (1985).

Looking next at Kershaw's own development as an historian, we can say that – given his abrupt shift from researching medieval British history to studying modern German history, many of his earliest mentors and influences, such as Christopher Brooke and Eric Stone, had little impact on his subsequent development as a historian of the Third Reich. However, Kershaw does name a number of British historians of Germany, including Timothy Mason, William Carr, and Alan Milward, as being “tremendously important to me as a novice in the field.”

That said, he names his most important intellectual influences as his senior colleagues at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, with whom he worked from the 1970s onwards. He describes Martin Broszat (then director of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History, where Kershaw did much of his research) in Munich, and principal investigator of “Bavaria in the Nazi era,” the collaborative research project that Kershaw joined there) as an “inspirational mentor.” He also declares that his close friendship with Hans Mommsen, a leading historian of the period and another colleague on the project, provided a vital stimulus for his own work. In particular, the concepts of resistance and consensus developed by the researchers on the project were extremely helpful when Kershaw came to formulate his own ideas on popular opinion and political dissent in the Third Reich, as well as on the role of Hitler himself.

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