Professor Richard J. Evans, University of Cambridge
In the years after the end of the Second World War, historians saw the Third Reich as a totalitarian dictatorship in which terror and coercion cowed the population into submission and prevented any serious resistance to Nazi rule. More recently however, this view has come under increasing attack, and a new consensus has emerged which sees the regime as one to which the great mass of ordinary Germans gave their voluntary and often enthusiastic support. Dissent and resistance were crushed not by terror imposed from above, but by the 'self-surveillance' of the population, who secretly denounced non-conformists to the Gestapo. This lecture questions the new consensus and argues that it is time to take a fresh look at the balance of coercion and consent in Nazi Germany.
Richard J. Evans is Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. His main area of interest is German history, especially social and cultural history from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Since acting as principal expert witness in the David Irving libel trial before the High Court in London in 2000, his work has dealt with Holocaust denial and the clash of epistemologies when history enters the courtroom. He is the author of numerous books including In Hitler's Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (1989), In Defence of History (second edition with Reply to Critics 2001, first published 1997), and Telling Lies about Hitler: History, the Holocaust and the David Irving Trial (2002). He is currently writing a large-scale history of the Third Reich; volume one, covering the period to July 1933, was published in October 2003, volume two, dealing with the years 1933-39, is scheduled for publication in October 2005, and volume three, covering the years 1933-45 is to be published in September 2007.
