Gerhard Weinberg facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Gerhard Weinberg
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Weinberg in January 2003
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| Born | 1 January 1928 |
| Academic work | |
| Notable students | Doris Bergen Norman J.W. Goda |
| Main interests | History of the Third Reich, diplomatic history and military history |
| Notable works | A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II and other books |
Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg (born in 1928) is a well-known American historian. He was born in Germany and is famous for his studies on Nazi Germany and World War II. Weinberg was a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for many years. He also taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Kentucky.
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Growing Up and Learning
Weinberg was born in Hanover, Germany. He lived there for his first ten years. As a Jewish person in Nazi Germany, he and his family faced increasing unfair treatment. They moved away in 1938, first to the United Kingdom, and then to New York, USA, in 1941.
Weinberg became a U.S. citizen. He served in the United States Army during the Occupation of Japan from 1946 to 1947. After his military service, he went to college. He earned his bachelor's degree in social studies in 1948. He then received his master's degree in 1949 and his PhD in history in 1951 from the University of Chicago. Weinberg has shared some of his childhood memories in an interview for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Early Work as a Historian
Weinberg has spent his whole career studying the foreign policy of Nazi Germany and World War II. His first major work, published in 1954, was about Germany's relationship with the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941.
From 1951 to 1954, Weinberg worked on a project to study war documents. He also helped microfilm captured German documents. This work helped him become an expert on historical records. He even published a guide to these documents in 1952.
Weinberg often debated with other historians about important events. For example, he disagreed with historians who claimed that Operation Barbarossa (Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941) was a "preventive war." This idea suggested Hitler was forced to attack because he feared a Soviet attack. Weinberg believed this was not true.
He also challenged historians who said World War II started because Britain and France declared war on Germany. Weinberg always pointed out that the war truly began with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.
Another debate involved a book that claimed the war in 1939 was due to a plot against Germany. Weinberg reviewed this book and found that the author had likely made up or changed documents to support his claims. Weinberg showed how the author twisted facts and timelines to fit his story. He proved that the author had even changed what famous leaders like Neville Chamberlain had said.
Important Books and Ideas
Weinberg's early major work was a two-volume history called The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany (published in 1970 and 1980). In these books, he showed that Hitler was determined to follow his own ideas, no matter how strange they seemed. This was different from other historians who thought Hitler acted like a normal leader. The first volume of this work won a special award called the George Louis Beer Prize in 1971.
Later, Weinberg focused on World War II itself. He wrote many articles and collected essays, like World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II (1981). All this work led to his huge, 1000-page book in 1994, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. This book won him another George Louis Beer Prize.
He continued to study the war era. In 2005, he published Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders. In this book, he explored what eight important leaders hoped the world would be like after the war. These leaders included Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Weinberg has continued to argue against the idea that Operation Barbarossa was a "preventive war." He calls such ideas "fairy tales."
He also believes that Hitler planned to murder Europe's Jews (the Holocaust) even before he came to power. Weinberg has discussed when the decision for the "Final Solution" (the plan to kill all Jews) was made, suggesting it was earlier than some other historians believe. He also highlighted how the Action T4 program, which killed disabled people, was a step towards the Holocaust.
A big part of Weinberg's work has been changing how people view Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement. He found that Hitler's demands for parts of Czechoslovakia were not meant to be accepted. Hitler wanted to use them as an excuse to start a war. Weinberg showed that Hitler saw the Munich Agreement as a defeat because it stopped him from starting a war he wanted in 1938.
Weinberg also argued that Chamberlain was not to blame for a failed plan to overthrow Hitler in 1938. He explained that the people trying to overthrow Hitler were not well-organized, and it would have been hard for Chamberlain to trust their unproven words.
Awards and Honors
Weinberg has received many honors for his work. He was elected president of the German Studies Association in 1996. He has also been a fellow at important organizations like the American Council of Learned Societies and a professor in Germany through the Fulbright Program. He was also a scholar at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
In 2009, Weinberg received the $100,000 Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for his excellent military writing. In 2011, he was given the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize, a lifetime achievement award from the Society for Military History.
Books by Gerhard Weinberg
- Germany and the Soviet Union, 1939–1941, 1954.
- The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933–36, 1970.
- (editor) Transformation of a Continent: Europe in the Twentieth Century, 1975.
- The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Starting World War II, 1937–1939, 1980.
- World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II, 1981.
- A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, 1994, revised edition 2005.
- Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History, 1995.
- Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf, 2003.
- Visions of Victory: The Hopes of Eight World War II Leaders, 2005.
- with Hugh Trevor-Roper, Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944: Secret Conversations, 2007.
- Hitler's Foreign Policy, 1933–1939: The Road to World War II, 2010.
- World War II: A Very Short Introduction, 2014.
