Hitler Biographer Alan Bullock Dies at 89

LONDON - Alan Bullock, distinguished historian and author of an important postwar biography of Adolf Hitler, has died at age 89, Oxford University said Tuesday.

The cause of his death Monday was not announced.

Bullock's "Hitler: A Study in Tyranny," was published in 1952, and revised in 1964. The book made his reputation, and, according to an obituary in The Times of London, the book sold some 3 million copies over the decades.

Bullock's other most famous work was a three-volume biography of Ernest Bevin, the union leader, Labour Party politician and former foreign secretary.

Bullock was a founder of St. Catherine's College at Oxford, and was its master from 1960 to 1980.

In 1976, Britain's Labour government commissioned Bullock to carry out an inquiry into industrial democracy. The Bullock Report, which appeared in 1977 with proposals for workers' seats on boards of directors, was mainly ignored.

Sir Colin Lucas, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, said Bullock was "a gifted academic whose works continue to be read by new generations of historians, he will also be remembered at this university as an extraordinary vice-chancellor, as well as for his role as Founding Master of St. Catherine's College.'

Bullock was born Dec. 13, 1914, the only child of a gardener who became a Unitarian minister, and a lady's maid. Bullock won a scholarship to Oxford's Wadham College, and earned first-class degrees in 1936 and 1938.

He worked for Winston Churchill in writing "A History of the English Speaking Peoples," and was a correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corp. during World War II.

Bullock edited "The Twentieth Century" (1971) and "The Faces of Europe" (1980), wrote "The Humanist Tradition in the West" (1985), "Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives" (1992) and was general editor, with Sir William Deakin, of "Oxford History of Modern Europe."

A funeral will be held on Feb. 10 in Harris Manchester College chapel in Oxford.