By this, Kershaw meant the progress leading up to Auschwitz was motivated by anti-Semitism of the most vicious kind held by the Nazi elite, but it took place in a context where the majority of German public opinion was completely indifferent to what was happening.

As Kershaw noted, these divergent interpretations such as the differences between the functionalist view of the Holocaust as caused by a process and the intentionist view of the Holocaust as caused by a plan are not easily reconciled, and that there was in his opinion the need for a guide to explain the complex historiography surrounding these issues.

Kershaw has argued that it is absurd to seek to explain German history in the Nazi era solely through Hitler as Germany had sixty-eight million people during the Third Reich, and to seek to explain the fate of sixty-eight million people solely though the prism of one man is in Kershaw ’ s opinion a flawed position.

Kershaw has a low opinion of those who seek to provide " personalized " theories about the Holocaust and / or World War II as due to some defect, medical or otherwise in Hitler.

Kershaw sees this rivalry as causing the " cumulative radicalization " of Germany, and argues that though Hitler always favored the most radical solution to any problem, it was German officials themselves who for the most part, in attempting to win the Führer's approval, carried out on their own initiative increasingly " radical " solutions to perceived problems like the " Jewish Question ", as opposed to being ordered to do so by Hitler.

Charles has also chosen music as a guest of other broadcasters such as Ken Bruce on Radio 2 and Liz Kershaw on 6 Music.

Given that all Jews had been expelled from the province of Styria ( which includes Graz ) in the 15th century and were not allowed to return until the 1860s, scholars such as Ian Kershaw and Brigitte Hamann dismiss as baseless the Frankenberger hypothesis, which before had only Frank's speculation to support it.

In the past 50 years, entertainment such as Matt Dillon, Festus, Dennis Weaver and from the popular Western series on television in the 1950s and 1960s have appeared at the rodeo as have some of today's top country music stars including Alabama, Lonestar, Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Tracy Lawrence, Sammy Kershaw, Doug Stone, Lorrie Morgan, Tanya Tucker, Pam Tillis, and many more.

The authenticity of the book is controversial and is claimed by some historian such as Wolfgang Hänel to be a fabrication, while others such as Richard Steigmann-Gall, Ian Kershaw and Hugh Trevor-Roper have avoided using it as a reference due to its questionable authenticity.

However functionalist historians such as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, and Ian Kershaw argue that the document shows no such plans, and instead contend that the Hossbach Memorandum was an improvised ad hoc response by Hitler to the growing crisis in the German economy in the late 1930s.

Scholars such as Ian Kershaw and Brigitte Hamann dismiss the Frankenberger hypothesis ( which had only Frank's speculation to support it ) as baseless.

Kershaw noted the huge disparity of often incompatible views about the Third Reich such as the debate between:

With regard to the Nazi foreign policy debate between “ globalists ” such as Klaus Hildebrand, Andreas Hillgruber, Jochen Thies, Gunter Moltman and Gerhard Weinberg, who argue that Germany aimed at world conquest, and the " continentalists ” such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, Eberhard Jäckel, and Axel Kuhn, who argue that Germany aimed only at the conquest of Europe, Kershaw tends towards the “ continentalist ” position.

At the same time, Kershaw sees considerable merit in the work of such historians as Timothy Mason, Hans Mommsen, Martin Broszat and Wolfgang Schieder, who argue that Hitler had no “ programme ” in foreign policy, and instead contend that his foreign policy was simply a kneejerk reaction to domestic pressures in the economy and his need to maintain his popularity.

In his 2000 edition of The Nazi Dictatorship, Kershaw quoted with approval the dismissive remarks made by the German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler in 1980 about such theories.

Kershaw has argued in his two-volume biography of Hitler that Hitler did play a decisive role in the development of policies of genocide, but also argued that many of the measures that led to the Holocaust were undertaken by many lower-ranking officials without direct orders from Hitler in the expectation that such steps would win them favour.

Citing the work of the American historian Christopher Browning in his biography of Hitler, Kershaw argues that in the period 1939 – 41 the phrase " Final Solution to the Jewish Question " was a " territorial solution ", that such plans as the Nisko Plan and Madagascar Plan were serious and only in the latter half of 1941 did the phrase " Final Solution " come to refer to genocide.

Besides his work with Toto, he also performed as a session musician with artists such as Paul McCartney, Dire Straits, Willy DeVille, Jackson Browne, Donald Fagen, Steely Dan, Rickie Lee Jones, Michael Jackson, Go West, Nik Kershaw, Love and Money, Paul Simon, Don Henley, Madonna, Airplay, Al Jarreau, George Benson, the Manhattan Transfer, America, Peter Frampton, the Bee Gees, Tom Scott, Michael McDonald, Amy Holland, Joe Cocker, Stan Getz, Sérgio Mendes, Lee Ritenour, Christopher Cross, James Newton-Howard, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh, Jim Messina, Poco, Exile, the Four Tops, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Natalie Cole, Les Dudek, Gerry Sack, Warren Zevon, Bonnie Raitt, David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Pink Floyd, Roger Hodgson, Paul Anka, Eric Carmen, Eric Clapton, Miles Davis, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Tommy Bolin, Larry Carlton, Mari Iijima and Seals & Crofts.

Boot knives have been made by companies such as Blackjack Knives, Ek Knives, Valor Cutlery, Gerber Legendary Blades, Kershaw Knives, Parker Brothers, and Cold Steel.

However, some critics such as TV and radio presenter Andy Kershaw directed criticisms at Geldof himself and the motives for Live 8:

A number of scholars such as Arno J. Mayer, Yehuda Bauer, Ian Kershaw and Michael Marrus have developed a synthesis of the functionalist and intentionalist schools.

Image: Kershaw courthouse 0077. jpg | Kershaw County, South Carolina, original courthouse in Camden, South Carolina by Robert Mills built about 1827, now home of the Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center

* Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889 – 1936: Hubris ( about Adolf Hitler )

While imprisoned, Ewell organized a group of sixteen former generals also at Fort Warren, including Edward " Allegheny " Johnson and Joseph B. Kershaw, and sent a letter to Ulysses S. Grant about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, for which they said no Southern man could feel anything other than " unqualified abhorrence and indignation " and insisting that the crime should not be connected to the South.

Kershaw had argued that it was likely that Hitler's apocalyptic remarks before Barbarossa about the necessity for a war without mercy to “ annihilate " the forces of “ Judeo-Bolshevism ” were taken as both permission and encouragement by the Einsatzgruppen commanders to engage in extreme anti-Semitic violence with discretion being given to each Einsatzgruppen commander about how far he was prepared to go.

In July 2007, following a complaint from Buckingham Palace about the mis-representation of the Queen in a BBC documentary, Mark Thompson, the BBC Director General, in a public purging exercise, singled out Kershaw ’ s show in what became an infamous BBC scandal, announcing that some of the DJ ’ s shows that were aired as live were in fact pre-recorded and that members of the production team had passed themselves off as listeners texting and emailing in to competitions.

Kershaw was forbidden from commenting on this by a clause in her contract which prevented her from speaking publicly about the BBC and its affairs.

Kershaw concluded that the majority of Bavarians were either anti-Semitic or more commonly simply did not care about what was happening to the Jews.

Kershaw argued that during World War II, most Bavarians were vaguely aware of the Holocaust, but were vastly more concerned about and interested in the war than about the " Final Solution to the Jewish Question ".

For Kershaw, any historian writing about the period had to take account of the " historical-philosophical ", " political-ideological " and moral problems associated with the period, which thus poses special challenges for the historian.

Regarding the historical debates about Widerstand ( resistance ) in German society, Kershaw has argued that there are two approaches to the question, one of which he calls the fundamentalist ( dealing with those committed to overthrowing the Nazi regime ) and the societal ( dealing with forms of dissent in " everyday life ").

During the " Goldhagen Controversy " of 1996, Kershaw took the view that his friend, Hans Mommsen, had " destroyed " Daniel Goldhagen's arguments about a culture of " eliminationist antisemitism " in Germany during their frequent debates on German TV.

Though Kershaw had little positive to say about Goldhagen, he wrote that he felt that Norman Finkelstein attack on Goldhagen had been over-the-top and did little to help historical understanding.

Kershaw wrote about the problems of an excessive focus on Hitler that "... even the best biographies have seemed at times in danger of elevating Hitler's personal power to a level where the history of Germany between 1933 and 1945 becomes reduced to little more than an expression of the dictator's will ".

Following up on ideas that he had first introduced in a 1991 book about Hitler, Kershaw has argued that Hitler's leadership is a model example of Max Weber's theory of Charismatic leadership.

Kershaw's 1991 book Hitler: A Profile in Power marked a change for Kershaw from writing about how people viewed Hitler to about Hitler himself.

As an example of how Hitler's power functioned in practice, Kershaw used Hitler's directive to the Gauleiters Albert Forster and Arthur Greiser to " Germanize " the part of north-western Poland annexed to Germany in 1939 within the next 10 years with his promise that " no questions would be asked " about how this would be done.

Broszat's protégé Ian Kershaw wrote about the relationship between Broszat's party membership and his later historical work :" Broszat's driving incentive was to help an understanding of how Germany could sink into barbarity.

Ian Kershaw considered the role of the Centre Party in Hitler's removal of almost all constitutional restraints as " particularly ignominious.

Ian Kershaw, The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler's Germany, 1944-1945, ( New York: Penguin Press, 2011 ).

Writing of the work of the German historian Rainer Zitelmann, Kershaw has argued that Zitelmann has elevated what were merely secondary considerations in Hitler's remarks to the primary level, and that Zitelmann has not offered a clear definition of what he means by " modernization ".

Kershaw wrote that he agreed with Eberhard Jäckel's assessment that Hitler's Willing Executioners was " simply a bad book ".

Kershaw has argued that in Nazi Germany officials of both the German state and Party bureaucracy usually took the initiative in initiating policy to meet Hitler's perceived wishes, or alternatively attempted to turn into policy Hitler ’ s often loosely and indistinctly phrased wishes.

Kershaw argues that by 1938 the German state had been reduced to a hopeless, polycratic shambles of rival agencies all competing with each other to win Hitler's favor, which by that time had become the only source of political legitimacy.

As Kershaw notes, the completely different ways Forster and Greiser sought to " Germanize " their Gaue with Forster simply having the local Polish population in his Gau signing forms saying they had " German blood " and Greiser carrying out a program of brutal ethnic cleansing of Poles in his Gau showed both how Hitler set events in motion, and how his Gauleiters could carry out totally different policies in pursuit of what they believed to be Hitler's wishes.

Mommsen's friend, the British historian Sir Ian Kershaw wrote he thought that Mommsen had " destroyed " Goldhagen during their debates over Goldhagen's book Hitler's Willing Executioners.