William Sheridan Allen

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William Sheridan Allen was born in Evanston, Illinois, and studied at the universities of Michigan, Connecticut, and Minnesota, and in Germany at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Gottingen. The Nazi Seizure of Power was his first book. He also wrote The Infacy of Nazism and is at work on studies of the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda and of the Social Democratic underground in the Third Reich. He is now professor of history at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

William Sheridan Allen wrote two books on Adolf Hitler debunking the point of view that he came to power through violence. Rather, Allen claims, Hitler's Nazi movement "seized power" in an act akin to democratic tactics.

One of his books, The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a single German Town, was written to expain how one city, (Northeim, Germany) fell into the Nazi trap. Fed by Nazi Propaganda, the people of Northeim, in the midst of the Depression, saw the Nazis as a way to get their country back to greatness that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis promised they would do.