The Historiography of the Holocaust

212 Jürgen Matthäus
for different forms of perpetration in historiographical perspective, see C.R. Browning,
‘German Killers: Orders from Above, Initiative from Below, and the Scope of Local
Autonomy – The Case of Brest-Litovsk’, in Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German
Killers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 116–42; idem, ‘German
Killers: Behaviour and Motivation in the Light of New Evidence’, ibid., pp. 143–69;
G. Paul, ed., Die Täter der Shoah. Fanatische Nationalsozialisten oder ganz normale
Deutsche? (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2002); W. Kaiser, ed., Täter im Vernichtungskrieg.
Der Überfall auf die Sowjetunion und der Völkermord an den Juden (Berlin: Propyläen,
2002); T. Sandkühler, ‘Die Täter des Holocaust. Neuere Überlegungen und Kontroversen’,
in Wehrmacht und Vernichtungspolitik. Militär im nationalsozialistischen System,
ed. K.H. Pohl (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), pp. 39–65. The opinions
presented here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of
the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
2 See Declaration of German Atrocities by the United Kingdom, the U.S. and the
Soviet Union (Moscow Declaration), 30 October 1943; Agreement by the U.S.,
France, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union (London Agreement), 8 August
1945; Control Council Law No. 10, 20 December 1945, printed in each volume of
Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council
Law No. 10, 1946ff.
3 See T. Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1992), pp. 35–42 (quotation, p. 36). On the wider context, see D. Bloxham,
Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
4 For the history of German trials, see A. Rückerl, NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht. Versuch
einer Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Heidelberg: C.F. Müller, 1982).
5 Taylor, Anatomy, p. 638.
6 G. Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation (New York: Viking Press, 1957). Characteristically,
Reitlinger’s book was published in German in 1957 with the subtitle Tragödie
einer deutschen Epoche.
7 F. Meinecke, Die Deutsche Katastrophe. Betrachtungen und Erinnerungen (Wiesbaden:
Brockhaus, 1946), p. 140 (my translation). On Meinecke and West German historiography
in general, see N. Berg, Der Holocaust und die westdeutschen Historiker.
Erforschung und Erinnerung (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2003).
8 E. Kogon, ‘Das Dritte Reich und die preußisch-deutsche Geschichte’, Frankfurter
Hefte. Zeitschrift für Politik und Kultur, 1, 3 (1946), 44; see also idem, ‘Das deutsche
Volk und der Nationalsozialismus’, ibid., 1, 2 (1946), 62–70; idem, Der SS-Staat. Das
System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag der Frankfurter
Hefte, 1946).
9 See N. Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik. Die Anfänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit
(Munich: C.H. Beck, 1996); K.-M. Mallmann and G. Paul, ‘Omniscient, Omnipotent,
Omnipresent? Gestapo, Society and Resistance’, in Nazism and German Society,
1933–1945, ed. D.F. Crew (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 166–96.
10 F. Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1942); K. Heiden, Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1944), p. 774.
11 T. Abel, Why Hitler Came to Power: An Answer Based on the Original Life Stories of Six
Hundred of his Followers (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1938), p. 156. See also idem, The
Nazi Movement (New York: Atherton, 1965) and, based on Abel’s collection of autobiographical
statements, P.H. Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika: 581 Early
Nazis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). For an overview of sociological