Sir Ian Kershaw (born 29 April 1943) is an English historian whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th-century Germany. He is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is particularly noted for his biographies of Hitler. He was the leading disciple of the German historian Martin Broszat, and until his retirement, he was a professor at the University of Sheffield. Kershaw has called Broszat an "inspirational mentor" who did much to shape his understanding of Nazi Germany. Kershaw served as historical adviser on numerous BBC documentaries, notably The Nazis: A Warning from History and War of the Century. He taught a module titled "Germans against Hitler". Background Kershaw was born on 29 April 1943 in Oldham, Lancashire, England, to Joseph Kershaw and Alice Robinson. He was educated at Counthill Grammar School, St Bede's College, Manchester, the University of Liverpool (BA), and Merton College, Oxford (DPhil). He was originally trained as a medievalist but turned to the study of modern German social history in the 1970s. At first, he 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, he 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 Nazism. His wife, Dame Betty Kershaw, is a former professor of nursing and dean of the School of Nursing Studies at the University of Sheffield. Bavaria Project In 1975, Kershaw joined Martin Broszat's "Bavaria Project". During his work, Broszat encouraged Kershaw to examine how ordinary people viewed Hitler. As a result of his work in the 1970s on Broszat's "Bavaria Project", Kershaw wrote his first book on Nazi Germany, The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich, which was first published in German in 1980 as Der Hitler-Mythos: Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich. This book examined the "Hitler cult" in Germany, how it was developed by Joseph Goebbels,