Gerhard Weinberg

American historian of World War II and Nazi Germany

Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg (born 1 January 1928) is a German born American diplomatic and military historian noted for his studies in the history of Nazi Germany and World War II. Weinberg is the William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a member of the history faculty at UNC Chapel Hill since 1974. Previously he served on the faculties of the University of Michigan (1959–1974) and the University of Kentucky (1957–1959).

Weinberg was born in Hanover, Germany, and resided there the first ten years of his life. As Jews living in Nazi Germany, he and his family suffered increasing persecution. They emigrated in 1938, first to the United Kingdom and then in 1941 to New York State. Weinberg became a U. S. citizen, served in the U. S. Army during its Occupation of Japan in 1946–1947 and became a corporal. He returned to receive a BA (1948) in social studies from the New York State College for Teachers at Albany. He received his MA (1949) and PhD (1951) in history from the University of Chicago. Weinberg recounted some of his childhood memories and experiences in a two hour long oral history interview for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In 1983, when the German illustrated weekly magazine Der Stern reported its purchase of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler, the U. S. weekly magazine Newsweek asked Weinberg to examine them hurriedly in a bank vault in Zürich, Switzerland. Together with Hugh Trevor Roper and Eberhard Jäckel, Weinberg was one of the three experts on Hitler asked to examine the alleged diaries. Having examined the documents for two hours, Weinberg reported in Newsweek that "on balance I am inclined to consider the material authentic." However, he expressed reservations by adding that more work would be needed to "make the verdict [of authenticity] airtight", Weinberg also noted that the purported journals would likely add less to our understanding of the Second World War than many might have thought. When further work was undertaken by the German Federal Archives, the "diaries" were deemed forgeries.

Weinberg was elected president of the German Studies Association in 1996. Weinberg has been a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, a Fulbright professor at the University of Bonn, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Shapiro Senior Scholar in Residence at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum among many other such honors. As part of his acceptance, he gave a webcast lecture at the library on "New Boundaries for the World: The Postwar Visions of Eight World War II Leaders." He was awarded the 2011 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize, a lifetime achievement award given by the Society for Military History.