January 5, 2001
HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR OF BEST-SELLING HITLER BIOGRAPHY TO SPEAK AT UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ian Kershaw, a leading authority on Adolf Hitler and Nazism, will speak at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Thursday, January 11, 2001, at 7:00 p.m.
Kershaw, chair of Modern History and head of the Department of History at Sheffield University, is the author of a highly acclaimed two-part biography on Hitler. The first installment, Hitler 1889 - 1936: Hubris, (W.W. Norton & Company) was published in January 1999. The second volume, Hitler 1936 - 1945: Nemesis, was published in November 2000. Both volumes quickly became bestsellers.
Hailed as the definitive work on Hitler, Hubris and Nemesis trace the avatars of Hitler’s life, from his illegitimate birth in Austria to his reign as uncontested dictator of Nazi Germany. Kershaw vividly recounts Hitler’s spectacular military successes and the collapse of Germany’s war effort, culminating in his inglorious suicide. Utilizing myriad primary sources and new materials - including Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbel’s recently unearthed diaries - Kershaw paints the most complete picture to date of the megalomaniac leader who simultaneously was a product of his time and had an enormous hand in shaping it. The Museum’s Director of Oral History, Joan Ringelheim, will interview Kershaw, and a book signing will follow the program.
Kershaw’s other publications include Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-45 (Oxford University Press, 1983); The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 1997); Hitler: A Profile in Power (Longman, 1991); (ed.with Moshe Lewin) Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America’s national institution for the documentation, study and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country’s memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust. Since opening in April 1993, the Museum has welcomed more than 15 million visitors. The Museum’s primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.
