PDF file: History - Advanced Higher - Germany - Education Scotland

In his Introduction Kershaw argues that the circumstances of the time involving
factors like social Darwinism, xenophobic nationalism, defeat in the Great War and
the events surrounding the history of the Weimar Republic ensured that this Austrian
drifter was catapulted to power. Even when Hitler came to power in 1933, Kershaw
sees developments in Nazi Germany, taking place in spite of Hitler (through the
actions and exertions of other leading Nazis and lesser officials and zealous
supporters throughout Germany) and not because of Hitler (who was lazy and
indolent).
The 1980s saw the so-called Historians’ Dispute or Historikerstreit which flared up
between the distinguished historian Martin Broszat and other eminent German
historians. (Anyone wishing to study the Historikerstreit at length should consult the
edited collection of sources produced by Gates and Knowlton, Forever in the Shadow
of Hitler?) Quite apart from its content the Dispute showed how rancorous and
personally vituperative German scholarship and German historians could be. Broszat
argued it was important for the historical profession to try to understand Hitler and
Nazism and move away from the continuing demonisation of Hitler and the Third
Reich (or what Ian Kershaw has called ‘bland moralisation’). Broszat felt it was no
longer adequate or analytically sufficient to call Hitler, as William Shirer had done, as
‘evil’ and possessing ‘a demonic personality’. He argued in various German language
studies that Hitler should be brought back into mainstream history and analysed by
historians as a historical figure and phenomena. In the jargon of the time he felt it
was important to move towards the ‘historicisation’ or Historisierung of Hitler. In
response, amongst others, Saul Friedlander argued that placing Nazism in the wider
context of German history would downplay the moral awfulness of regime. Secondly
the concept of ‘historicisation’ was too vague and open-ended and demanded
clarification if individual actions by people during the Nazi era ranging from
‘normality’ to ‘criminality’ were to have any meaning.
In the 1980s Michael Sturmer (Forever in the Shadow of Hitler?, 1993) argued that it
was important, in a domestic context of pacifism and a lack of national
self-confidence, that German historians should present their country’s history in a
positive national identity for the German people. Sturmer argued that Germany’s
unique and exposed position in central Europe had largely determined her tragic
history. Therefore in a sense he felt the personal responsibility of German leaders for
both world wars was somehow diminished. At the same time Ernst Noltke attracted
enormous controversy by contending that Bolshevism in Soviet Russia and Nazism
were interrelated and that Bolshevism triggered a response in Germany which
crystallised into Nazism. Noltke went on to argue that Stalin and Pol Pot, amongst
others, should be examined in the same context as Hitler. Some critics of Noltke
interpreted this as an attempt to relativise or ‘historicise’ the Nazi era and experience.
(For a sample of Noltke’s writing in English see ‘Between Myth and Revisionism?
The Third Reich in the Perspective of the 1980s’, in H.W. Koch’s Aspects of the Third
Reich.) Noltke argued in favour of Nazism as a bulwark and protective barrier
against Communism and the evils of Stalinism. Furthermore he contended that the
Nazi experience should be treated as dispassionately as other past historical events. In
a wider perspective he placed Nazism as the counterpoint to Soviet communism in a
European civil war between 1917 and 1945.
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 47