Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYwar, 242 had written a preface to the English edition of the book StalinsVernichtungskrieg 1941–1945 by Freiburg (Germany) historian Dr. JoachimHoffmann. 243 This English edition had been prepared in the years2000/2001 by the Theses & Dissertations Press publishing company inthe USA, which occurred formally with Dr. Robert Countess at thehelm, although I myself took on the most important tasks for implementingthis project. In his original preface Prof. Topitsch had describedardently how freedom of science and research are being restrictedin an unacceptable manner in Germany for historians dealing withWorld War II due to the ever escalating measures of governmental persecution.This preface would have complemented Dr. Hoffmann’s dramaticdescription in his own introduction to the English edition, as tohow he managed to escape from prosecution for his book only becausethe judge on whose table his file had ended happened to have been agood friend of his. But Dr. Hoffmann was told in no uncertain termsthat any change of content of his book would reopen the case and that insuch a case no guarantees could be given anymore. Hence while translatingthe book we had to adhere slavishly to the German original, evenif certain issues had turned out to be in need of corrections.But Prof. Topitsch’s passionate freedom speech as a preface to thisedition came to nothing, because he retracted it and replaced it with abrief, nondescript, lamblike preface. He wrote the letter mentioned injustification of his retraction of the original preface. In it he refers to thesuicide of a professor, which had warned him to be cautious. I may deliberatesomewhat more in order to explain the background.In the mid-1990s the Austrian Prof. Dr. Werner Pfeifenberger, whoat that time taught political science at a German university, published anarticle in an anthology edited in Austria by the Austrian right-wing partyFPÖ. In this contribution Pfeifenberger compared the ideologies ofnationalism and internationalism, while letting his sympathies for nationalismshine through. In this article he also used, among other things,several quotations which he had taken somewhat infelicitously out ofcontext. As a result of this paper, Pfeifenberger was initially removedfrom his teaching position, but he managed to litigate himself back intohis old position for the moment. After this, however, a second wave ofpersecution against him began, as a result of which he was first involun-242 Ernst Topitsch, Stalins Krieg, Busse-Seewald, Stuttgart 1985; Engl.: Stalin’s War, Fourth Estate,London 1987.243 Stalin’s War of Extermination 1941-1945, Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, AL, 2001.198