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Hugh Trevor-Roper

Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003), was an English scholar and historian of early modern Britain and Nazi Germany and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University. Trevor-Roper was made a Life Peer in 1979 upon the recommendation of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, choosing the title Baron Dacre of Glanton. Trevor-Roper was a conversationalist, polemicist, and essayist on a wide range of historical topics, particularly England in the 16th and 17th centuries and Nazi Germany. These essays established Trevor-Roper's reputation as a scholar who could succinctly define historiographical controversies. By the standards of the British historical profession, however, the mark of a successful historian is the publication of a ‘big’ book. Decade after decade Trevor-Roper failed to produce that book. His biographer spelled out the consequences for his reputation: "the mark of a great historian is that he writes great books, on the subject which he has made his own. By this exacting standard Hugh failed." Trevor-Roper's most widely read and financially rewarding book was titled the The Last Days of Hitler (1947). It emerged from his assignment as a British intelligence officer in 1945 to discover what happened in the last days of Hitler's bunker. From his interviews with a range of witnesses and study of surviving documents he demonstrated that Hitler was dead and had not escaped from Berlin. He also showed that Hitler's dictatorship was not an efficient unified machine but a hodge-podge of overlapping rivalries. Trevor-Roper's reputation was damaged in 1983, however, when he authenticated the Hitler Diaries and they were shown shortly afterwards to be forgeries.