William Sheridan Allen (October 5, 1932 – March 14, 2013) was an American historian.

Biography

Allen was born in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, ...

, and studied at the universities of

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capita ...

, and

Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...

, and in Germany at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

and the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

. ''The Nazi Seizure of Power'' (1965) was his first book. He also wrote ''The Infancy of Nazism'' and worked on studies of the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda and of the Social Democratic underground in the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. He retired in 2001 as professor of history at the

State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...

. Allen wrote two books on

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

debunking the assertion that he came to power through violence. Rather, Allen claims, Hitler's

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

movement "seized power" in an act akin to democratic tactics. His most famous book, '' The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1930–1935'', was written to explain how one city, ( Northeim, Germany, in the book with the fictional name of ''Thalburg'') fell into the Nazi trap. Fed by Nazi propaganda, many people of ''Thalburg'', especially in the middle classes, in the midst of the Depression saw the Nazis as a way to get their country back to greatness that Hitler and the Nazis promised they would do. The book was widely reviewed and extremely influential.

References

External links

* University of Michigan alumni University of Connecticut alumni University of Minnesota alumni Free University of Berlin alumni University of Göttingen alumni University at Buffalo faculty Historians of Nazism 1932 births 2013 deaths Historians of Germany American historians American expatriates in Germany {{US-historian-stub