Background
Kershaw was born into a working-class Catholic family in Oldham, Lancashire, England, to parents Joseph Kershaw and Alice Robinson. He was educated at the local grammar school. During his youth, he became fascinated with the early modern and medieval periods when England was Catholic. Educated at St Bede's College, Manchester, the University of Liverpool (BA) and Merton College, Oxford (D.Phil), Kershaw was originally trained as a medievalist but turned to the study of modern German social history in the 1970s. At first, Kershaw was mainly concerned with the economic history of Bolton Abbey. As a Lecturer in Medieval History at Manchester, Kershaw learned German to study the German peasantry in the Middle Ages. In 1972, Kershaw visited Bavaria and was shocked to hear the views of an old man he met in a Munich café who told him: "You English were so foolish. If only you had sided with us. Together we could have defeated Bolshevism and ruled the earth!", adding in for good measure that "The Jew is a louse!" As a result of this incident, Kershaw became keen to learn how and why ordinary people in Germany could support National Socialism.
Read more about this topic: Ian Kershaw
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