Norman Cohn is best known for three major histories around a single theme.

• The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957) related the apocalyptic beliefs of twentieth-century totalitarian movements, whether Nazi or Communist, to their origins in medieval heresy.

• Warrant for Genocide (1967) established that the key document alleging a Jewish world conspiracy, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was a nineteenth-century Tsarist forgery.

• Europe's Inner Demons (1975) argued that the belief in a Satanic pact was at the heart of witch persecution in early modern Europe