Richard J. Evans

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Professor Richard Evans (born 1947) is a British historian of Germany.

[edit] Life

Interior east side of Gonville and Caius Court

He was born in London, of Welsh parentage, and is now Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Gonville & Caius College. Evans applied for the distinguished Cambridge position whereas his predecessors were chosen - marking a procedural change at Cambridge.^[1] Evans has also taught at the University of Stirling, University of East Anglia and Birkbeck College, London. He was also a Visiting Professor in History at Gresham College during 2008/09.

He was educated at Forest School (Walthamstow), Jesus College, Oxford, and St Antony's College, Oxford.

[edit] Career as a historian

As an undergraduate, Evans was much influenced by the History Workshop school, which was in its founding phase at Oxford while he was studying there, and by the English Marxist historians. He was also influenced by What Is History?, a book outlining radical historiographical principles by the quasi-Marxist historian E. H. Carr.^[2] He was drawn to modern German history in the late 1960s because of what he saw as parallels between the Vietnam War and German imperialism. Evans first of all established his academic reputation on pre-1914 German history. He admired the work of Fritz Fischer. Evans' main interests are in social history and he is much influenced by the Annales School. He largely agrees with Fischer that the way that German society developed in the 19th century led to the rise of Nazi Germany, although Evans takes pains to point out that this outcome was one among many possibilities and was not inevitable. For Evans, the values of the 19th century German middle class had the seeds of National Socialism already germinating.

He studied under Fritz Fischer in Hamburg in 1970-71, but came to disagree with the ‘Bielefeld school’ of historians who saw the roots of Germany’s political development in the first half of the twentieth century in a ‘failed bourgeois revolution’ in 1848. As Editor of a collection of essays by young British historians on Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany, he launched a critique of the ‘top-down’ approach of the Bielefeld School and with Geoff Eley and David Blackbourn emphasized instead the ‘self-mobilization from below’ of key sociopolitical groups, as well as the modernity of National Socialism. In the 1980s, Evans organized ten international workshops on modern German social history at the University of East Anglia that did a good deal to refine these ideas, to pioneer research in this new historical field and, in six collections of papers, present it to an Anglophone readership. ^[3]

In the 1980s, Evans played a prominent role in the Historikerstreit. Evans took issue with the historical work and theories of Ernst Nolte, Joachim Fest, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stürmer and Klaus Hildebrand, all of whom he described as German apologists seeking to white-wash the German past. Evans's views on the Historikerstreit were best summarized in his 1989 book, In Hitler's Shadow. Evans took Nolte, the central target of his book to task for his defence of the Commissar Order as a legitimate military order, his argument that the Einsatzgruppen massacres of Soviet Jews were a reasonable "preventive security" response to partisan attacks, his statements citing Viktor Suvorov that Operation Barbarossa was a "preventive war" forced on Hitler by an alleged impeding Soviet attack, and his claim that too much scholarship on the Shoah has been done by "biased" Jewish historians.^[4] In addition, Evans took Nolte to task for his claim that the victors write history, and that the only reason why Nazi Germany is seen as evil is because Germany lost the war rather than because of the Holocaust^[5].

Evans denounced Stürmer for writing a laudatory biography of Otto von Bismarck, which he felt marked a regression to the Great man theory of history and an excessive focus on political history.^[6] Evans argued that a social historical approach was a better way of understanding German history.^[6] In addition, in his book about the Historikerstreit, In Hitler's Shadow, Evans attacked the historical work of Robert Conquest, Hugh Thomas, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, all of whom Evans viewed as part of a neo-conservative historical trend.^[7]

One of his most famous works is In Defence of History, a book in defence of the study of history against postmodernist theories that hold the study of history to be outmoded and no longer useful. However, Evans stresses throughout his book that some of the criticisms made by postmodernists have been beneficial to history as a whole, in particular that subjectivity is an inevitable and unavoidable part of the historic construct.

His two major research works are Death in Hamburg (1987), a study of class conflict and liberal government in 19th-century Germany using the example of Hamburg’s cholera epidemics and applying statistical methods to the exploration of social inequality in an industrializing society, and Rituals of Retribution (1996), a study of capital punishment in German history applying structural anthropological concepts to the rituals of public execution up to the mid-19th century, and exploring the politics of the death penalty till its abolition by the GDR in 1987.

[edit] Role as an Expert Witness in Irving v. Lipstadt

Richard Evans is probably best known to the general public in the role of an expert independent witness in the high profile libel case of David Irving against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt, Irving v. Lipstadt, for which Evans received £70,181.^[8] Lipstadt was sued for libel by the British historian David Irving, after she referred to Irving as a "holocaust denier" and "an ardent follower of [Adolf Hitler]." in her book Denying The Holocaust. Lipstadt further accused Irving of "distorting evidence and manipulating documents to serve his own purposes...[as well as] skewing documents and misrepresenting data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions, particularly those that exonerate Hitler."^[9].

Richard Evans acted as an indepedent expert witness in the case. His role was to investigate Irving's books, speeches, and other publications to determine whether Irving was, in fact, a Holocaust denier who had manipulated documents to serve his own political interests. Evans, along with two of his PhD students, closely examined Irving's work and found several instances in which he had used forged documents, disregarded contrary evidence, selectively quoted historical documents out of context, and mis-cited historical records.^[10] Among the many inaccuracies in Irving's work were the following:

1. Irving greatly exaggerated the death toll from the Allied bombing of Dresden, and also drastically under-reported the estimated death toll of the Holocaust. Irving then constantly used the unsupported estimates to draw false comparisons between the bombing of Dresden and the Holocaust. Irving based his inflated estimate of 250,000 Dresden dead on a document that was revealed to be a forgery. Even after the document's authenticity was conclusively discredited, Irving continued to rely on it and publish his greatly exaggerated death toll. The actual death toll is generally recognized to be less than 50,000.
2. Irving claims that Hitler knew nothing of the Holocaust. Evans exposed this as untrue and catalogued how Irving had discounted and ignored dozens of credible sources in favor of interviewing biased individuals, such as Hitler's car driver. Evans also exposed problems in Irving's interviewing techniques that tended to elicit testimony favorable to Irving's position.
3. Irving claims that there was no systematic Holocaust. Instead, Irving claims that any murders that occurred were the result of sporadic and unauthorized killing sprees by soldiers and local citizens. Irving further claims that the death toll of the Holocaust is less than 1,000,000 and that most of those deaths were the result of disease, not wilfull killing. Evans exposed this as untrue and once again catalogued how Irving had distorted the historical record by rejecting credible sources in favour of isolated documents whose authenticity were in serious dispute.
4. Irving called the authenticity of documents contrary to his position into question, even when there was no basis for such an argument. Most notable, he repeatedly referred to Anne Frank's diary as a forgery, even after forensics investigators had conclusively established its authenticity.
5. Irving claims that there were never any gas chambers set up for the extermination of Jews and other prisoners of the Nazis. Evans exposed this as untrue, and showed how Irving had arrived at that conclusion by relying in part on select quotations from Goebbels' diaries, often taken out of context. Most disturbing of all was the fact that Irving alternated between the original German version of the diary and the "official" 1954 English translation -- always choosing the translation that could best be taken out of context and twisted to suit his purposes.

Additionally, Evans uncovered several connections between Irving and known anti-semitic Holocaust deniers and "revisionist" organizations. Evans also uncovered many examples of outright racist and anti-semitic statements on the part of Irving.

The scope of Irving's dishonesty, his political connections to Holocaust deniers, and his well-documented anti-semitism led Richard Evans to conclude that Lipstadt's assessment was accurate. In other words, Evans concluded that Irving was a Holocaust denier who had twisted and distorted the historical record in order to further his own political ideals. Evans proved to be a powerful witness in Lipstadt's ultimately successful defense, and he later wrote a book about his experience, titled Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial.

In a 2001 interview, Evans described to the Canadian columnist Robert Fulford his impression of Irving after being cross-examined by him as: "He [Irving] was a bit like a dim student who didn't listen. If he didn't get the answer he wanted, he just repeated the question."His findings and his account of the trial were published in his book Telling Lies About Hitler (2002). The High Court rejected Irving’s libel suit and awarded costs to the defence. ^[11]

[edit] The Third Reich Trilogy

Between 2003 and 2008, Richard Evans published a three-volume history of the Third Reich. Drawing on years of experience as a leading scholar of German history, Evans wove together the most extensive and comprehensive history of the rise and fall of Hitler’s regime ever produced by a single scholar. Volume One: The Coming of the Third Reich (published by Penguin in 2003), shows how a country torn apart by the First World War, Versailles, hyperinflation and the Great Depression moved towards an increasingly authoritarian solution and explains how Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor in January 1933 and how swiftly he tranformed Germany into a one party dictatorship.

Adolf Hitler, at a window of the Reich's Chancellory, receives an ovation from supporters in his first day in office as Chancellor. (January 30, 1933)

Volume Two: The Third Reich in Power: How the Nazis Won Over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation, (published by Penguin in 2005) covers the peacetime years of Nazi rule between 1933 and 1939. The final chapter examines the road to the Second World War, but the real focus of Volume Two is on life inside Nazi Germany. One of the great strengths of Volume Two is the way Evans allows small stories of key individuals to illustrate many of the key events in the social, economic and culture of the period. The leading historian of the Third Reich, Professor Richard Overy, in a review in the Literary Review, described Volume Two as 'magisterial'. Volume 3: The Third Reich At War, 1919-1945: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster, published by Allen Lane in 2008, looks at major developments from 1939 to 1945, including the key battles of the Second World War, a vivid, moving and detailed account of the mass murder enacted during the Holocaust and Hitler’s dramatic ‘downfall’ in Berlin in 1945. The best selling historian Anthony Beevor, in a review in the Times in November 2008 on Volume 3 writes: 'With the third volume, Richard Evans has accomplished a materpiece of historical scholarship. He has produced the latest and most up to date synthesis of the huge work on the subject over the past decades.'

[edit] Regius Professor of History

In 2008, Richard Evans was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. Previously, the post was a royal appointment in the gift of the prime minister of the day and dated back to 1724. Previous holders of the title have included Geoffrey Elton (1983), and Herbert Butterfield (1963). But Evans is the first historian to gain the title in a competition against other leading contenders before an expert panel, including Cambridge's vice chancellor, Professor Alison Richard, and a group of other eminent academics, as well as historians from Yale, Harvard, Oxford and London. The panel selected a shortlist of four, each of whom was asked to give a presentation to the entire Cambridge history faculty. A shortlist of four was reduced to two – and finally Evans triumphed. As well as being Regius Professor, he is now chairman of the history faculty. But Evans is used to combining administration with research. At Birkbeck College, London, where he worked before Cambridge, he acted as Master when Baroness Blackstone left suddenly to become Tony Blair's first higher education minister.

[edit] TV and Media Appearances

Richard Evans has appeared regularly as 'talking head' on a number of TV documentaries related to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. He recently appeared on a major TV documentary on the History Channel which examined the Valkyrie bomb plot against Hitler in July 1944, which was the subject of a recent Hollywood film starring Tom Cruise. He also appears regularly on the BBC Radio 4 programme 'Start the Week' and he often writes reviews of history books in his specialist era in major newspapers and periodicals. He is also a noted lecturer and gives numerous key note lectures at international conferences around the world and also at student conferences as part of his remit to take history to a wider audience beyond academia.

[edit] Endnotes

[edit] Work

• The Feminist Movement In Germany, 1894-1933, London : Sage Publications, 1976.
• The Feminists : Women's Emancipation Movements in Europe, America and Australasia, 1840-1920, London : C. Helm, 1977.
• Society And Politics In Wilhelmine Germany edited by R.J. Evans, London : Croom Helm, 1980, 1978.
• The German Family : Essays On the Social History Of The Family In Nineteenth And Twentieth-Century Germany, London : C. Helm ; Totowa, N.J. : Barnes & Noble Books, 1981.
• The German Working Class, 1888-1933 : The Politics Of Everyday Life, London : Croom Helm ; Totowa, N.J. : Barnes & Noble, 1982.
• The German Peasantry : Conflict And Community In Rural Society From The Eighteenth To The Twentieth Centuries edited by Richard J. Evans and W.R. Lee, London : Croom Helm, 1986.
• The German Unemployed : Experiences And Consequences Of Mass Unemployment From The Weimar Republic To The Third Reich, London : C. Helm, 1987.
• Rethinking German History : Nineteenth-Century Germany And The Origins Of The Third Reich, London : Allen and Unwin, 1987.
• Comrades And Sisters : Feminism, Socialism, And Pacifism In Europe, 1870-1945, Brighton, Sussex : Wheatsheaf Books ; New York : St. Martin's Press, 1987.
• "The New Nationalism and the Old History: Perspectives on the West German Historikerstreit" pages 761-797 from The Journal of Modern History, Volume 59, No. 4, December, 1987
• Death In Hamburg : Society And Politics In The Cholera Years, 1830-1910 Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1987.
• The German Underworld : Deviants And Outcasts In German history, London : Routledge, 1988.
• In Hitler's Shadow : West German Historians And The Attempt To Escape From The Nazi past, London : I.B. Tauris, 1989.
• Proletarians And Politics : Socialism, Protest, And The Working Class In Germany Before The First World War, New York : Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990.
• The German Bourgeoisie : Essays On The Social History Of The German Middle Class From The Late Eighteenth To The Early Twentieth Century London: Routledge, 1991.
• Rituals Of Retribution : Capital Punishment In Germany 1600-1987, New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.
• Rereading German History : From Unification To Reunification, 1800-1996, London ; New York : Routledge, 1997.
• Tales From The German Underworld : Crime And Punishment In The Nineteenth Century, New Haven [Conn.] ; London : Yale University Press, 1998.
• In Defense of History, New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 1999.
• Lying About Hitler : History, Holocaust, And The David Irving Trial, New York : Basic Books, 2001; published in the United Kingdom as Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial, Verso Books, 2002.
• The Coming Of The Third Reich, London : Allen Lane, 2003.
• The Third Reich In Power, 1933-1939, New York : Penguin, 2005.
• The Third Reich at War: How the Nazis Led Germany from Conquest to Disaster , London: Allen Lane, 2008.
• Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and The European Continent, Cambridge University Press, 2009

[edit] See also

• List of Adolf Hitler books

[edit] References

• Guttenplan, D.D. The Holocaust On Trial, New York: Norton, 2001.
• Snowman, Daniel "Richard J. Evans" pages 45-47 from History Today Volume 54, Issue #1, January 2004.

[edit] External links

• Personal website
• Faculty member webpage at University of Cambridge