Robert Gellately

Robert Gellately (born 1943) is a Canadian academic who is one of the leading historians of modern Europe, particularly during World War II and the Cold War era. He earned his B.A., B.Ed., and M.A. degrees at Memorial University of Newfoundland and his Ph.D. at the London School of Economics. He began his professional career at Cornell University, followed by positions at the University of Western Ontario and Clark University, where he was the Strassler Family Professor in Holocaust History. Since 2003, he has been the Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University. He often teaches classes about World War II and the Cold War, but his extensive interest in the Holocaust has led to his conducting research regarding other genocides as well. He is occasionally known to give lectures on specific genocides. Gellately has very strict guidelines for what he will deem a genocide, and has had several televised debates regarding his somewhat controversial views. Gellately's most recent work is Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (Knopf (March 5, 2013). Gellately recently published a set of original documents by Leon Goldensohn dealing with the 1945–46 Nuremberg trials of war criminals in The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With The Defendants and Witnesses (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). His other books include Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). It has been published in German, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, Portuguese and Italian. Japanese and French translations are in press. Backing Hitler was chosen as a main selection for book clubs in North America and the United Kingdom. In the book Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945, Gellately argues that the Gestapo were not in fact all-pervasive and intrusive as they have been described. The Gestapo only numbered 32,000 for the entire population of Germany, and this clearly limited their i