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Gordon Alexander Craig (November 13, 1913 – October 30, 2005) was aScottish-American liberal historian ofGerman history and ofdiplomatic history.
Craig was born inGlasgow. In 1925 he emigrated with his family toToronto, Ontario, Canada, and then toJersey City,New Jersey. Initially interested in studying the law, he switched tohistory after hearing the historian Walter "Buzzer" Hall lecture atPrinceton University. In 1935, Craig visited and lived for several months inGermany, to research a thesis he was writing on the downfall of theWeimar Republic. This trip marked the beginning of lifelong interest with all things German. Craig did not enjoy the atmosphere ofNazi Germany, and throughout his life, he sought to find the answer to the question of how a people who, in his opinion, had made a disproportionately large contribution toWestern civilization, allowed themselves to become entangled in what Craig saw as the corrupting embrace ofNazism.
OfAdolf Hitler, Craig once wrote,
Adolf Hitler wassui generis, a force without a real historical past ... dedicated to the acquisition of power for his own gratification and to the destruction of a people whose existence was an offense to him and whose annihilation would be his crowning triumph. Both the grandiose barbarism of his political vision and the moral emptiness of his character make it impossible to compare him in any meaningful way with any other German leader. He stands alone.[1]
Craig graduated in history fromPrinceton University, was aRhodes Scholar at Balliol College,Oxford, from 1936 to 1938, and served in theU.S. Marine Corps as a captain and in theOffice of Strategic Services duringWorld War II. In 1941, he co-edited withEdward Mead Earle andFelix Gilbert, on behalf of the American War Department, the bookMakers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought From Machiavelli to Hitler, which was intended to serve as a guide to strategic thinking for military leaders during the war.
After 1945, Craig worked as a consultant to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the State Department, the U.S. Air Force Academy and the Historical Division of the U.S. Marine Corps. He was a professor at Princeton University from 1950 to 1961 and atStanford University from 1961 to 1979. In 1956–1957, he taught at theCenter for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In addition, he often held visiting professorships at theFree University of Berlin.[2] In 1967, Craig was the only professor there to sign a petition asking for an investigation into charges of police brutality towards protesting students. Craig was chair of the history department at Stanford in 1972–1975 and 1978–1979. Between 1975 and 1985, he served as the vice-president of theComité International des Sciences Historiques. In 1979, he became anemeritus professor and was awarded the title J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities.
During his time at Stanford, Craig was considered to be a popular and innovative teacher who improved both undergraduate and graduate teaching, while remaining well liked by the students. After his retirement, he worked as a book reviewer for theNew York Review of Books. Some of his reviews attracted controversy, most notably in April 1996, when he praisedDaniel Goldhagen's bookHitler's Willing Executioners and later in September of the same year when he argued thatDavid Irving's work was valuable because of what Craig saw as Irving'sdevil's advocate role. Craig argued that Irving was usually wrong, but that by promoting what Craig saw as a twisted and wrongheaded view of history with a great deal of élan, Irving forced other historians to fruitfully examine their beliefs about what is known about theThird Reich. Craig later took back and apologized for his positive review of Goldhagen’s work.[3]
Craig was formerly President of theAmerican Historical Association. He was also a member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and theAmerican Philosophical Society.[4][5] In 1953, together with his friendFelix Gilbert, he edited aprosopography of inter-war diplomats entitledThe Diplomats, an important source for diplomatic history in theinterwar period. He followed this book with studies on thePrussian Army, theBattle of Königgrätz and many aspects of European and German history. Craig was particularly noted for his contribution to theOxford History of Modern Europe series entitledGermany, 1866–1945 and its companion volume,The Germans. The latter was a wide-rangingcultural history that explored aspects of being German, such as attitudes towards German-Jewish relations, money, students, women, and democracy, amongst others. The book was a best-seller in both theUnited States andGermany and Craig was awarded thePour le Mérite medal for this book. Increasingly interested in cultural history in his later years, Craig subsequently wrote studies of several German writers, most notablyTheodor Fontane. During this time, he also emerged as a celebrity in theGerman-speaking world, frequently appearing as a guest on Germantelevision talk shows. By his later years, Craig was widely regarded as the doyen of American historians of Germany, and his opinions carried much weight.
Craig died in 2005, and was survived by his widow Phyllis, four children and eight grandchildren.
Craig saw modern German history as a struggle between the positive, as exemplified by the values of humanist intellectuals, and negative forces in German life, as exemplified by Nazism. In a broader sense, he viewed this conflict as between enlightened spirit and authoritarian power. He was highly critical of those who sawNazism as the culmination of German national character, while at the same time criticizing those who argued that Nazi Germany was just aBetriebsunfall (industrial accident) of history. Craig felt that the particular wayOtto von Bismarck created theGerman Empire in 1871 was a tragedy, as it entrenched the forces ofauthoritarianism in German life. Similarly, Craig viewed the autonomous role of theGerman Army as a "State-within-the-State" as highly adverse to the development ofdemocracy.
Craig considered history not to be asocial science, but rather a "human discipline". He censured those historians who saw their work as social science and frequently called for historians to return to the methods of former times by seeking to "interconnect"history andliterature. Craig was noted for his sparse, highly elegant literary style, together with a tendency to keep an ironic distance from his subjects. He was very fond ofGerman literature, and praised the novels ofTheodor Fontane as the best portrayal of 19th centuryGermany, which he considered superior to many works produced by historians. Craig's last project, incomplete at the time of his death, was a survey of novels set inBerlin – Craig's favorite city – in the 20th century.
Research resources
