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TODAY'S VIEW OF THE THIRD REICH AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR INGERMAN HISTORIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE

ULRICH SCHLIE

The Historical Journal / Volume 43 / Issue 02 / June 2000, pp 543 - 564DOI: null, Published online: 08 September 2000

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0018246X9900120X

How to cite this article:ULRICH SCHLIE (2000). TODAY'S VIEW OF THE THIRD REICH AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN GERMANHISTORIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE. The Historical Journal, 43, pp 543-564

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TODAY’S VIEW OF THE THIRD REICH AND

THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN GERMAN

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL DISCOURSE

ULRICH SCHLIE

Bonn, Germany

. This review summarises the current state of knowledge and present trends in German

historiography on the Third Reich. In Germany, assessment of the Nazi past has moved first from

silence, and then from an emotionally charged engagement, to the more critical analyses of today. There

has been a closer examination of the involvement of particular professional groups during the Nazi era,

such as historians and lawyers. The ideological background of Hitler and the Nazi elite are being

examined closely. Particular interest has also been shown in the ordinary aspects of living and coping

in Hitler’s Germany, the daily struggle and the moral dilemmas. An enormous interest in the German

opposition against Hitler continues. In unified Germany, the memory of the struggle of the German

resistance is kept alive in public consciousness as a positive line of continuity.

I

The Go$ ttingen historian Hermann Heimpel once wrote that every present begins with

the last catastrophe." More than fifty years since it ended, memory of this last

catastrophe, the Second World War, is still alive in various ways in Germany, even

though only a proportion of today’s Germans actually lived through Nazism and the

war. Despite the caesura of , still remains the defining moment for the present.

German politics continues to be influenced by the Nazi heritage. The politics of history

is concerned, above all, with the Nazi period. The past is constantly catching up with

German society – it is a past that will not go away. Even after fifty years the possibility

that public figures may have some sort of Nazi past is pounced upon by the media.

Statements and attacks are examined minutely for signs of an extreme-right agenda.

Public debates about commemoration days and memorials in Germany are in-

comprehensible without the Nazi heritage. Meanwhile suspicions of fascist tendencies

have become an instrument in domestic political conflict, where the reputation of a

political opponent can be called into question without any solid evidence of Nazi

connections. However, this review is not about the present role of Nazism in society or

its instrumentalization in everyday politics. It is about the level of knowledge and

present trends in German historiography on the Third Reich and the Second World

War.

In the s in Germany ignorance and deliberate silence prevailed as far as Nazism

was concerned. However, by the mid-s at the latest, influenced by an increasingly

" Hermann Heimpel, Der Mensch in seiner Gegenwart (Go$ ttingen, ), p. .

critical Zeitgeist and the penetrating questions of the younger generation, a more

enlightened approach set in which led to a flood of publications. Beyond the narrow

confines of the historical profession, especially in the early days of television, questions

about the past were addressed, about an era which in Germany had, with a sense of

shame, come to be called ‘ the most recent past ’. This interest, which has endured

undiminished ever since, accounts for the fact that the state of research on Nazism in

Germany today has advanced to a level that can be considered exemplary for other

areas of history. There are several constants in German research on Nazism: public

interest, the demand for enlightenment, and the certainty that anyone who can discover

new twists and put forward his thesis in a new way will undoubtedly attract attention.

This is part of the reason why the debates about Nazism in Germany are far from

finished.

Historical research cannot be seen in isolation from its overall political context and

the intellectual mood of its time. The questions it poses arise from the present within

which it occurs and the answers it provides must take account of the possible extent of

contemporary influence. This is why analysis of the major new publications in German

on the Nazi period also makes it possible to say something about present-day attitudes

to Nazism in Germany, and how it is anchored in the Germans’ public consciousness

and understanding of history.

Worth noting, first of all, is something seemingly obvious. Serious political literature

in Germany has not produced anything that could remotely be considered a justification

of Nazism or an attempt to diminish Hitler’s responsibility for the outbreak of the

Second World War.# After the ‘German catastrophe’ (Friedrich Meinecke) Nazism

was so utterly discredited as an ideology that no one who wants to be taken seriously in

the political discourse can embrace it. In today’s Germany Hitler’s supporters are

marginalized, restricted to a handful of eternal yesterday’s men, socially degraded,

political illusionists. As an independent political force Nazism has disappeared from the

scene. It is alive in political consciousness only in an entirely negative sense. In German

society Hitler and his accomplices have become the paradigm of evil, the exact anti-

image, invoked as a salutary lesson whenever the basis of the democratic community

appears threatened.

Precisely because serious historical literature in Germany has produced nothing to

exonerate Hitler and the Nazi leadership, new, supposedly revisionist approaches

adopted by a so-called ‘New Right ’ have attracted great attention. After all, they were

suspected of picking up the baton from those accused of apologetic tendencies during the

Historikerstreit (historians’ dispute) of the s.$ But just as those accused of such

tendencies by Ju$ rgen Habermas at that time did not constitute a homogeneous group,

indeed included historians whose writings and methodological emphases were as diverse

as Ernst Nolte, Andreas Hillgruber, Michael Stu$ rmer, and Klaus Hildebrand, so there

can be no talk of an organized ‘New Right ’ in the German historical profession today.

It would certainly be going too far to describe the ceaseless efforts of Rainer Zitelmann,

# The unorthodox or apologetic interpretations of Hitler’s war aims by A. J. P. Taylor (The

origins of the Second World War (London, )) and David Hoggan (Der erzwungene Krieg: die

Ursachen und Urheber des �. Weltkrieges (Tu$ bingen, )) were clearly rejected in Germany – and

not only there. See Gotthard Japer, ‘U$ ber die Ursachen des Zweiten Weltkrieges : Zu den Bu$ chern

von A. J. P. Taylor und David Hoggan’, Vierteljahrshefte fuX r Zeitgeschichte, (), pp. ff.$ See the tendencious article by Jacob Heilbrunn in Foreign Affairs (), pp. ff.

a former Ullstein copy-editor born in , as representative of an intellectual trend

worthy of the epithet ‘New Right ’. Zitelmann, like a political nomad, has wandered

from Marxist beginnings to the attempt to create a right-wing conservative Berlin Free

Democratic Party (FDP). In the early s, he and a few of his comrades set about

promoting the idea of a more independent Germany, no longer trapped one-sidedly in

the Western alliance, and therefore more self-assured. This turned out to be little more

than a storm in a teacup.% That Germany, even a reunified Germany, will remain firmly

anchored in the West is not open to question as far as the German public is concerned.

One of Rainer Zitelmann’s journalist comrades, of virtually the same age, is the

Go$ ttingen Studienrat Karlheinz Weißmann. He did a PhD on the political symbolism of

the German Right, and in set tongues wagging with an essay entitled RuX ckruf in die

Geschichte.& So it was a fair bet that critics would have a go at Weißmann’s all-embracing

portrayal of the Nazi period published in the famous series PropylaX en Geschichte

Deutschlands. When some of the series co-editors retrospectively distanced themselves

from the decision to give the volume on Nazism to Weißmann when Hans Mommsen

had let them down, a storm was unleashed in the German media that suggested the very

worst. Even before the book was published in autumn it was already a much-

discussed scandal.' But on closer inspection this historical scandal turns out to be a

media hype which more than anything sheds light on dubious practices by publishers

and reviewers and raises questions as to the Germans’ intellectual state and

understanding of history.

The suspicion where Weißmann is concerned is that he wants to whitewash the Nazi

past. Political imputations, such as those by the emeritus Zurich historian Walther

Hofer, namely that Weißmann was writing a history of Nazi Germany from the

perspective of the perpetrators( rather than objectively assessing the material, are

typical of how the book was reviewed. When a new managing director took over at

Propyla$ en, the decision was taken to remove the book from the series and thus from the

book trade: a quite unprecedented action in the German media landscape. Weißmann

took Propyla$ en to court and was granted a financial settlement. Then, in the summer

of , he managed to get his controversial book back on to the market, virtually

unchanged but with evidence of his sources, this time with Herbig-Verlag in Munich.)

This ramified pre-history suggested that the book could indeed be an attempt to

whitewash Hitler, a suspicion not borne out, however, by reading it carefully.

Weißmann has produced a fluently written, readable interpretation of the years under

Hitler, based on a sound knowledge of the era, and which takes account of the current

state of research. Weißmann does say that the Nazis were responsible for murdering the

Jews and he does not fall for the right-wing hobby-horse, namely the assertion that in

Hitler was merely badly advised by Ribbentrop when he ordered the attack on

% Rainer Zitelmann et al., eds., Westbindung, Chancen und Risiken fuX r Deutschland (Frankfurt}M.,

).& Karlheinz Weißmann, Schwarze Fahnen – Runenzeichen: Entstehung und Entwicklung der politischen

Symbolik der deutschen Rechten zwischen ���� und ���� (Du$ sseldorf, ) ; idem, RuX ckruf in die Geschichte

(Berlin and Frankfurt}M., ).' See Wilhelm von Sternburg, ‘Historisierende Dilettanten’, Frankfurter Rundschau, Aug. .( Walther Hofer, ‘Der deutsche Arbeiter, der englische Lord’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,

Feb. .) Karlheinz Weißmann, Der Weg in den Abgrund. Deutschland unter Hitler ����–���� (Munich,

).

Poland, that Operation Barbarossa in was in reality a preventative measure, or the

discussion about resistance to Hitler as simply treachery. Actually Weißmann tells a

well-constructed story of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. He sets out the particular

conditions in Germany that favoured a Nazi seizure of power, the foreign policy

successes in the early years that helped to rebuild national self-esteem, but does not omit

the systematic methods by which the democratic parties, the Christian churches, and

the trade unions were brought into line, or rather excluded (Gleichschaltung), in order to

secure a Nazi party power monopoly. He charts the relentless course towards war, and

examines the mixture of racist dogma and power-political tactics that was so

characteristic of Nazi foreign policy.

In a field of research that is both precarious and hotly disputed it virtually goes

without saying that not all of Weißmann’s judgements met with approval or could

claim validity. His approach, i.e. to describe the fascination which Hitler and the Nazi

movement held for many of their contemporaries and to focus on the German victims,

the sufferings of the civilian population as a result of Allied bombardment, and the

horrors of expulsion, is legitimate. In no way does it relativize the crimes committed by

the Nazis. Guilt cannot be set off against guilt, the crimes committed by Germans are

too appalling for that. To accuse Weißmann of this is deliberately to misunderstand his

view of the Third Reich. What Weißmann rejects, however, is that dogmatic

interpretation which denies Nazism any shred of humanity, damns the regime out of

hand, and thereby sows the first seeds of neo-Nazism because, for political reasons, it

refuses to take a differentiated perspective. With his narrative work Weißmann

attempted to contribute to the ‘historicization of Nazism’ called for in by Martin

Broszat, former Director of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.* His

intention, however, has been deliberately misunderstood. One of the most frightening

things about the reception of Weißmann’s book is the failure on the part of the critics

to distinguish between Weißmann’s academic work and the political objectives of the

group around Zitelmann.

The Historikerstreit of the s, which produced little of scholarly value, lends itself

to parallels because even at the time it was less a question of actual substance than of

political implications. In recent years Ernst Nolte, whose EuropaX ische BuX rgerkrieg set the

whole controversy off, has exaggerated his somewhat eccentric theses on Nazi Germany,

and amongst other things has formulated them misleadingly in various collections of

essays. In so doing Nolte has distanced himself more and more from the mainstream of

German historians, for example when he suggested in an interview with the editor of the

Spiegel, Rudolf Augstein, that the Second World War could also have been conducted

as a war of European unification."! In the epilogue to his latest book"" the retired Berlin

professor passes in review the media commotion surrounding his person and the

accusations made against him, and draws the conclusion that intellectual freedom in

* Martin Broszat PlaX doyer fuX r eine Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus (Merkun, ()),

pp. ff."! Ernst Nolte, Der europaX ische BuX rgerkrieg ����–����: Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus

(Frankfurt}M. and Berlin, ) ; idem, Streitpunkte: Heutige und kuX nftige Kontroversen um

den Nationalsozialismus (Berlin and Frankfurt}M., ). Interview: Spiegel-Gespra$ ch, ‘Ein

historisches Recht Hitlers? ’ (Der Spiegel, })."" Ernst Nolte, Die Deutschen und ihre Vergangenheiten: Erinnerung und Vergessen von der ReichgruX ndung

Bismarcks bis heute (Berlin, ).

Germany is under serious threat. Nolte has become a be# te noire of the German media

but to some extent he has caused these misunderstandings himself. He constantly makes

use of the opportunities presented by the media age, but does not always consider the

effect of his supposedly discriminating, abstract language. In the end he is mis-

understood by the media and misjudged by the reading public.

Nolte has become a victim in a dual sense and, with his typical inclination towards

eccentricity, has abandoned himself weeping and wailing to his fate. This is the only

possible explanation for the wingeing tone of the epilogue in which he states his position

in detail on the disputes regarding his person. He makes no attempt to fit the epilogue

thematically into what is a generally successful essay on remembering and forgetting in

Germany. In the main text Nolte takes an informed, stimulating, and original look at

the specific difficulties the Germans have with their history. He reminds us that the use

of history for a national cause, the transformation of files into weapons in everyday

politics, the instrumentalization of the collective memory, occurred as much during the

Empire as in the Weimar Republic, and reached its zenith during the Third Reich.

Over half the book, however, reflects on how the Germans dealt with their history after

the Second World War. And whenever German history was the topic after the Second

World War, what was generally meant were the years –. The unfortunate word

VergangenheitsbewaX ltigung (overcoming the past) slipped into common usage, as if the past

could be overcome like a difficult mathematical problem.

Norbert Frei chose a different term for dealing with the past, that of Verangenheitspolitik

(policy for the past)."# Unlike the vague notion of VergangenheitsbewaX ltigung, this refers to

the specific political process that went on into the mid-s ‘ for the benefit of millions

of former Party comrades who virtually without exception returned to their social,

occupational and nationality status quo ante’."$ Here Frei touches upon a topic over

which for a long time a cloak of silence was drawn. The tacit reintegration of former

Nazis was considered one of Adenauer’s achievements. It did, admittedly, do much to

create a peaceful society in post-war Germany, but the price was that in the immediate

post-war years the Nazi past was not adequately dealt with. Immediately after the war

there was broad consensus in Germany about an anmesty for the pardonable and less

pardonable political mistakes of the Nazi period. After all, many people had had a hand

in them, and the Allies’ sometimes arbitrary re-education and de-nazification policy

had done little for their popularity. The main strength of Frei’s work is its use of many

trial records from the immediate post-war period. However, given the sources he uses his

conclusions are not always logical and sometimes have more to do with political

assessments than with objective scholarship. There is certainly no denying the cult of

silence over individual guilt addressed by Frei, but there was also a whole range of other,

contrary behavioural patterns which do not fit into the picture he draws. They also

fundamentally contradict Frei’s conclusion that the political mistakes and moral

derelictions of the period of Vergangenheitspolitik had a long-term influence on the

intellectual climate of the Federal Republic.

Two further presentations of the entire Nazi period, from very different perspectives

and with very different approaches, show how difficult it is to do justice to the Hitler era

in an all-embracing work. The leitmotifs of Ludolf Herbst’s"% story of Nazi Germany are

"# Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik: die AnfaX nge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit

(Munich, ). "$ Ibid., p. ."% Ludolf Herbst, Das nationalsozialstische Deutschland ����–���� (Frankfurt}M., ).

racism and war. The main strengths of this work, orientated towards social history, are

the parts that deal with Herbst’s main research interests : mobilization for total war and

the German armament industry. On the other hand he does not deal adequately with

the ambivalence so typical of Nazism between modern and anti-modern – election

campaigns by aircraft on the one hand, blood-and-soil rhetoric on the other. The

history of Nazi Germany cannot be reduced to the facts of social science. Herbst

bombards his reader with details, but forgets that history should also tell a story. The

weakest section is the one on Mussolini’s fall and the resistance against Hitler. It shows

a serious failure to appreciate the difficult conditions under which resistance was

practised. To interpret the ‘resurgence of conscience ’ among the German opposition as

‘ the last vestige of a world politically long-dead’, and to talk of the ‘ social isolation’ of

the German resistance groups, is deliberately to distort the picture of the German

opposition."& Equally, the judgement that the leaders of the German army were deeply

implicated in the mass annihilation and, given that the war was likely to end with heavy

casualties, had more than mere loss of prestige to fear, can hardly be regarded as the

product of soberly assessed research findings. It says more about the author’s political

leanings.

It is not so much the author’s political leaning which makes Enrico Syring’s"'

attempts to produce a differentiated view of Nazi Germany a somewhat disappointing

read, but the difficulty in combining skilfully an accurate resume! of diplomatic events

with a comprehensive picture of German society under Hitler. Syring seeks to blaze

a trail through the by now virtually impenetrable literature, and sums up the various

different positions without losing sight of his own point of view. He has, he says,

distanced himself more and more from the so-called intentionalists, and now has serious

reservations about seeing Hitler’s actions as determined by a one-off incremental plan.

His work is neither a compact reader, nor a brilliant essay, neither an overview of

research nor an original general interpretation. This ambiguity is the basic problem

with the book. Moreover, the text is constantly interrupted by selected key documents,

which does not do much for its readability.

II

For valuable and comprehensive information on the Third Reich in all its aspects I

prefer the encyclopaedia of national socialism compiled by Wolfgang Benz, Hermann

Graml, and Hermann Weiss."( The structure of this encyclopaedia is convincing. New

literature is widely covered and the entries are generally well written, providing a dense

introduction both for beginners and specialists on Nazi Germany. The biographical

part with brief sketches of rank and file personalities in Nazi Germany is helpful as a first

approach, but for more detailed and exhaustive information one can turn to an

extremely valuable biographical dictionary edited by Hermann Weiß.")

"& Ibid., p. ."' Enrico Syring, Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland ����–����: FuX hrertum und Gefolgschaft (Bonn,

)."( EnzyklopaX die des Nationalsozialismus, ed. Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiß

(Stuttgart, ).") Hermann Weiß, ed., Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich (Frankfurt, ).

The debate about the Third Reich has always centred around the person of the

German dictator. Nazism is inconceivable without Hitler. The first popular reaction to

Hitler’s indescribable crimes, the extent and details of which gradually became known

after the war, was an attempt to portray Hitler as a foreigner. That helped to counter

the Anglo-American occupiers’ preoccupation with continuity in German history.

Hitler was regarded as a foreigner who did not belong to German history. After May

the Hitler-myth, which endured until the last days of the Third Reich, and was

used to excuse Nazi excesses, disappeared as completely as the regime itself. The dead

Fu$ hrer could thus be used by his former accomplices as a scapegoat, a deflection from

their own responsibility for the evils committed.

A really good Hitler biography has rightly been called the most important task of

German contemporary historiography. But the first to accept the challenge were, in

fact, British historians. Alan Bullock’s portrayal of Hitler as an unscrupulous,

machiavellian politician, an opportunist acting without any firm plan, was the first

serious scholarly biography of Hitler and set the tone for many years in Germany too.

He was not the only one to revise his view under the influence of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s

revelations about Hilter’s monomaniac obsession with Lebensraum in the East and the

establishment of a German continental empire, first explored in the s."* Building on

Trevor-Roper’s research the intentionalist school emerged, according to which an

incremental plan was drawn up which Hitler then followed. This view has had a crucial

impact on German research on Hitler ever since.

In , however, it was initially an outsider, Joachim C. Fest, whose Hitler

biography filled the literary gap. With his feeling for psychology and historically trained

eye for detail, Fest managed to plumb the depths of Hitler’s personality and to produce

a brilliant literary portrait. Fest shows the dictator in the context of the intellectual

trends of his time, without ignoring the question of Hitler’s significance for the Germans

and for German history. The challenge of a major biography – the delicate balance

between the life of an individual and the fate of a nation – is met brilliantly by Fest. So

it is good news that a new edition of his classic Hitler biography was published by

Propyla$ en in , with a new foreword by the author which attempts to make the

incomprehensible comprehensible.#!

Fest’s work makes it clear that even fifty years after his death Hitler has not become

historical, but in a strange way is projected into the present : a myth rather than an

object of normal historical observation. One way in which history takes its revenge is

that the ‘powerful wrecker ’ (Jacob Burckhardt) often achieves the exact opposite of

what he intended. In his assessment of Hitler the TV journalist Guido Knopp#" also

emphasizes the paradox that much, and at the same time little, remains of Hitler.

Although he has no supporters amongst the Germans of today, he has, in many ways,

had a crucial impact on the relationship between the Germans and the world. Knopp’s

six-part Hitler film and the follow-up series about Hitler’s accomplices were a brilliant

success. Previously unknown footage – including shots of the young Hitler at a meeting

"* Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Hitlers Kriegsziele ’, Vierteljahrshefte fuX r Zeitgeschichte, (),

pp. ff. Alan Bullock, Hitler: eine studie uX ber Tyrannei: VollstaX ndig uX berarbeitete Neuausgabe, Parallele

Leben (Kronberg and Taunus, ; orig. publ. in as Hitler: a study in tyranny). In the double

biography Hitler und Stalin (Berlin, ), Bullock completely retracts his original view.#! Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (Berlin, ; st edn ).#" Guido Knopp, Hitler: eine Bilanz (Berlin, ).

of the left-wing socialist Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils in the Munich of the

RaX terepublik – coloured pictures of the Berghof, eye-witness interviews and special effects

such as distortion of picture and sound contributed to the compulsive nature of these

films. They also sustained for a younger generation the mixture so characteristic of the

Nazi period of fascination and blindness, seduction and violence. The individual

sections on Hitler as a private person, as seducer, conqueror, dictator, and criminal not

only describe the metamorphoses of a politician, but show the various facets of one and

the same person. The different characteristics are not always seen with the same

intensity, but vary according to the time and the person; perceptions of Hitler often

depend on the perspective. The film gives a good impression of the inner contradictions

within the German dictatorship, the juxtaposition of the modern and the old-fashioned

mentioned earlier. The book of the film is not, of course, based on any original research

and is more of a compendium, a reader produced in a hurry, which raises more

questions than it answers and lacks cohesion. Knopp and his team avoid definitive

conclusions as regards the main research disputes – for example whether Hitler was a

strong or a weak dictator. Rather they present already-known material exhaustively – a

tendency which continues in the much weaker follow-up volume on Hitler’s

accomplices – Go$ ring, Goebbels, Hess, Speer, Bormann, and Do$ nitz – a work of little

scholarly value which combines poor research with an appalling style.##

The lance-corporal of the First World War, the deracinated Adolf Hitler, set out on

that remarkable quest for ideological substance that led him temporarily to extreme

left-wing groups during the Munich RaX terepublik. This was already typical of the

stranded good-for-nothing and occupant of a men’s hostel in fin de sie[ cle Vienna.

Certainly none of his biographers have ever doubted the significance of these crucial

years before the First World War for Hitler’s Weltanschauung, but so far none has ever

bothered to trace these influences in detail in a cultural history. With great diligence,

sensitivity, and literary skill Brigitte Hammann has now filled this gap with Hitlers

Wien.#$ She has created an intricate panorama of this Vienna of the little people, ‘who

had no comprehension of Viennese modernity and rejected it as ‘‘degenerate ’’, too

remote from the people, too international, too ‘‘Jewish’’, too free-thinking’. The author

circumvents the extraordinary inadequacy of sources by presenting the lives of some of

Hitler’s contemporaries and a detailed picture of the world in which he lived. She draws

too heavily, however, on the recollections of Kubiczek, a friend of Hitler’s during his

youth, which are not always a reliable source. Hitler carved out a world for himself with

the revolutionary zeal of the deU classeU and the eclecticism of the autodidact. Its main

pillars were already in place in the early years ; all it needed was to find an active form

of expression in a political ideology. For all their inner cohesion, Hitler’s thought

processes also reveal contradictions which correspond with his tentative attempts to

gain approval. Thus, for example, it emerges that the young Hitler had far more Jewish

acquaintances – amongst them various gallery-owners who accepted his pictures – than

has so far been realized. However, Brigitte Hammann also fails to answer the crucial

question. How did the stranded occupant of a men’s hostel during the Vienna years

become the man who has left his mark upon and changed our era like none other, except

perhaps Lenin, and in whose head the most horrendous deeds of this century were

conceived?

## Idem, Hitlers Helfer (Munich, ).#$ Brigitte Hammann, Hitlers Wien: Lehrjahre eines Diktators (Munich, ).

Hitler is anything but an easy subject for his biographers, as the Geneva political

scientist Marlis Steinert was also to discover in her biography.#% She has certainly

failed in her objective ‘ to show the interaction between Hitler’s person and his

environment’. In Steinert’s book Hitler remains a stranger, whose dire personality is

closed to her and whose portrait lacks clear contours. In a sort of handbook style

Steinert describes the revisionism in foreign policy in the years –, implying a

logical consistency which does not do justice to the fluidity of historical events. Nor is the

attempt to portray Hitler’s Weltanschauung as the ‘world-view of a revolutionary’

successful, because it is restricted to a description of the ideology of Mein Kampf and

leaves unanswered the great controversial questions of Hitler research. Steinert sums up

the sort of knowledge contained in handbooks, while she should have given clear

opinions. To be fair, its meticulousness, sober style, and lack of accusatory moralizing

makes this a readable history of Nazi Germany, but it does little to solve the mystery of

Hitler.

Anton Joachimsthaler, however, has succeeded in this, by addressing a far more

narrowly defined issue.#& In his impressive and diligent work the amateur historian does

away with many of the myths surrounding Hitler’s end. The main butt of

Joachimsthaler’s criticism is the disputed biography by Werner Maser, oft-cited

because of its rich details. After the de-mythologizing in Hitlers Ende Maser’s book can

only be used with great caution and careful source assessment. The last days in the

bunker, the life-loving Eva Braun’s desperate flight from reality in champagne parties

in the bunker atmosphere, the reconstruction of the suicide in every minute detail, the

removal of the bodies, the dental records for identifying the remains of the Fu$ hrer’s

charred corpse – Joachimsthaler has omitted nothing in his detective zeal and love of

detail. No doubt there will be a few passing shots from established historians, whose

research has so far been so negligent. All in all Joachimsthaler’s book is a gripping read,

not only because it again recaptures the eery atmosphere of that bunker-world so

divorced from reality, but also because, let us face it, the material he uses makes for

utterly fascinating contemporary history.

Alongside Hitler in recent years there has also been an upsurge in biographies of his

underlings. This is partly due to the much improved accessibility of sources and partly

because there has been an increased interest in biographies in general. Top of the list is

perhaps the most interesting of all the Nazi ‘giants ’, Joseph Goebbels, engineer of the

people’s soul, murderer of his own six children, and certainly one of the most glittering

Nazis. It is hardly surprising that in recent years Goebbels has constantly been the

subject of new publications.#' This is mainly because of the excellent availability of

sources, thanks in no small measure to the work of the Munich Institute for

Contemporary History and its continuing task of editing the Goebbels diaries.#(

His diabolic vivacity and zealous enthusiasm made him a pillar of the power-

personnel without which Nazi Germany would have been unable to unleash its

destructive power. He was never, however, one of those who made the decisions about

peace and war. For a time he even fell out of favour with the Fu$ hrer because of his

#% Marlis Steinert, Hitler (Munich, ).#& Anton Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Ende: Legenden und Dokumente (Munich and Berlin, ).#' Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels (Munich and Zurich, ) ; Ulrich Ho$ ver, Joseph Goebbels: ein

nationaler Sozialist (Bonn, ).#( Elke Fro$ hlich, ed., Die TagebuX cher von Joseph Goebbels, : Januar–Ma$ rz (Munich, ).

numerous love affairs. It was not until the end of the war, when the Reich lay in ruins,

that as Gauleiter of Berlin and organizer of total deployment for war he managed to rise

in Hitler’s esteem and triumph over his opponents, Bormann and Go$ ring. Goebbels’s

dubious strength lay in his fanatical devotion to Nazism. He was the one who was still

hammering home belief in ultimate victory to his compatriots even when the war had

long-since been lost.

Goebbels, the propagandist, wanted to secure Nazi power and behaved in keeping

with his motto: ‘If ever we give up power, it will be over our dead bodies. ’ Awareness

of power, sovereign mastery of the keyboard of propaganda, was, in Goebbels’s case,

inextricably bound up with overestimation of his own person. The diaries also bear

witness to this. The way in which the war was progressing, the inescapable military

situation in the second half of the war, did not pass Goebbels by. He concealed his

doubts behind stylistic conceits, the use of indirect speech when reproducing statements

by the Fu$ hrer assuring victory. He attempted to give himself courage and invoked the

‘miracle of the House of Brandenburg’ when the death of Tsarina Elisabeth in led

to a crucial turning-point in the Seven Years War and liberated Friedrich II from a

seemingly hopeless situation.

His diaries do not contain any secret revelations. They are written with a purpose and

with a view to later publication. Goebbels’s main concern was his place in history. He

wrote, or more precisely in the later years he dictated, sub specie aeternitatis. Posthumous

fame was just as important to him as fame and recognition during his lifetime. He knew

that his diaries would have a crucial impact on historiography about Nazi Germany. As

he wrote in February in a leader article for the periodical Das Reich which he

edited: ‘We have made our mark on this century and one day it will bear our name. ’#)

Goebbels proved to be right in this threatening prophecy, though, of course, in a

different sense from the one he intended. One of the requirements of proficient source

assessment is that Goebbels’s diary entries should not be taken at face value. This does

not detract from their worth. The Goebbels diaries span a period of twenty years,

encompassing the rise, zenith, and decline of the Third Reich. They reveal Goebbels’s

Weltanschauung and the web of intrigue so characteristic of totalitarian states, designed

to curry favour with the dictator. Goebbels involuntarily becomes the chronicler of the

sometimes quite contorted decision-making processes and the mendacity of the Third

Reich, devoid of all respect for human beings, and of the ideology of sub-humans with

its blood-and-soil rhetoric. The secret of his success is that Goebbels composed his entries

like a man possessed. They are compelling evidence of that racist mania for which

Goebbels paved the way with his defamatory talents, coldly calculating and fully aware

of the evil he was setting in motion.

In a different way from Joseph Goebbels Albert Speer is also a source of fascination

for historians. He stands out amongst the leading Nazi clique due to his intellectual, and

above all organizational, abilities, his close relationship with Hitler, with whom he was

more intimate than any other, and linked to this his exceptional rise within the

hierarchy. Other Nazis gave the lie to the much-proclaimed Nazi image of the new

Adam, and were more the stuff of caricatures and popular jokes : the bespectacled

‘Reichsheini ’, Heinrich Himmler, the ‘perfumed Parsifal ’, and renaissance man

Hermann Go$ ring or the ‘Reich’s drunkard’ Robert Ley. Speer, by contrast, was the

#) Joseph Goebbels, ‘Das Jahr ’, Das Reich, Feb. .

embodiment of the power-conscious, innovative technocrat, whose artistic self-

perception as an architect did not preclude a special relationship with Hitler.

At the beginning of Speer was given the job for the first time of staging the mass

Nazi May Day rallies at the Tempelhofer Feld. His innovations, amongst them the

famous dome of light – floodlights positioned all round the marching area which

created the effect of mammoth proportions – gave the rallies the profane solemnity of

medieval military parades. Not only was Speer the imaginative director of artistic Nazi

spectacles, he was also the tireless manager of war-material production. In , barely

thirty-two years old, he became architect general and in , as successor to Todt,

Reich minister for armaments and munitions. Speer’s dubious accomplishment was to

have again increased German armaments production in by straining every

resource. If Goebbels invented the propaganda formula ‘ total war’, Speer was the

father of total military deployment. It was not until the final months, when Hitler

proclaimed the destruction of what remained of Germany’s infrastructure with his

famous-infamous command a[ la Nero, and stated that in the war against the Slavs the

Germans had proved to be the weaker, that Speer began to wonder whether his political

activity had been correct. On the stand at Nuremberg he staged, with some success, his

belated resistance, his intention (naturally never carried out) to poison the dictator in

the bunker. He was the only one at Nuremberg to accept responsibility for the policy of

the Third Reich and to recognize the need for a trial. His relatively lenient

sentence – twenty years in prison – was due in no small measure to the favourable

impression he made on the judges.

During his years in the Allied military prison at Spandau Speer wrote large sections

of his memoirs. After his release in they were published by Siedler and were on top

of the best-seller lists in no time. The two books, the memoirs first published in and

the Spandau diaries published in , have now been re-issued.#* In both cases the

motive was to get these classics back on to the market in time for the anniversaries (and

associated boom in sales), rather than to produce a critical new edition.

The importance of a critical approach to source material, and how appropriate it

would have been for these two eminently successful books, was ultimately revealed by

Gitta Sereny’s biography of Speer.$! Certainly, many parts of the published version of

Speer’s memoirs do not entirely correspond either to the published interrogation report

of Allied intelligence officers from the summer of ,$" or to the draft version written

during his period of captivity in Nuremberg and Spandau. And as far as the Spandau

diaries are concerned, Wolf Jobst Siedler and Joachim Fest certainly did more than just

help with formulations. It is their work that has made the diaries into a cohesive whole.

Confrontation with the Nazi period became the dominant theme of Speer’s life after

the verdict : first during his twenty years in Spandau after the judgement in Nuremberg,

and then for the remaining fifteen years of his life until his death in , which Speer

used mainly for writing contemporary history. The question as to his personal guilt, his

knowledge of and part in the murder of the Jews haunted Speer more than he was

prepared to admit. He kept finding new excuses and interpretations, trying to find a

#* Albert Speer, Erinnerungen, Neuausgabe (Berlin, ) ; idem, Spandauer TagebuX cher, unveraX nderteNeuauflage (Berlin, ). For Speer’s architectural plans, see the recently published reprint,

Albert Speer, Architektur. Arbeiten, ����–���� (Frankfurt}M. and Berlin, ).$! Gitta Sereny, Das Ringen mit der Wahrheit : Albert Speer und das deutsche Trauma (Munich, ).$" Ulrich Schlie, ed., Albert Speer: ‘Alles was ich weiß ’ (Munich, ).

way to go on living. The great achievement of Gitta Sereny’s biography is that it

mercilessly exposes Albert Speer’s battle with his conscience, his lifetime of lies, and that

she, more than any other historian, has managed to get Speer to talk about his

relationship with Hitler. Sereny has not written the usual sort of biography. She takes

the reader with her into her numerous conversations with Speer himself, with his family,

colleagues, and accomplices. This has produced an unusually vivid picture of Speer’s

life, captured in retrospective dialogues. Sereny was able to get the former armaments

minister to talk – and Speer certainly had plenty to say, more than he was prepared to

commit to his memoirs. Most interesting is what he has to say about Adolf Hitler, to

whom he was bound by a devotion hard to explain and quite irrational, and with whom

he, more than any other, built up a personal relationship (if one can talk of such a thing

at all where Hitler is concerned).

In future no scholar dealing with Speer and the Third Reich Hitler will be able to do

without Sereny’s book. But it is far from being a rounded biography. This would have

required a broader source-base, especially as regards the unpublished sources, greater

concentration on, and detailed analysis of, the German armaments industry and

production of war material, on the question of foreign workers and other aspects of rule

in the Third Reich.

Compared to the recent works on Goebbels and Speer, Stefan Kley’s Stuttgart

dissertation on Hilter, Ribbentrop, and the unfolding of the Second World War$# is

clearly second rate. This is largely due to Kley’s failure to penetrate the subject

intellectually and also to the fact that the study is restricted to the pre-history of the

Second World War, which has already been well researched, and the limited source

material on which it is based. Kley, whose main interest is actually Ribbentrop, does not

bother to use any new sources on Hitler’s foreign minister. He only consults David

Irving’s selection of Ribbentrop’s revealing interrogations by American officers, and

seems completely unaware of the files on Ribbentrop’s defence lawyer at Nuremberg,

Fro$ schmann. The extensive literature is assessed by Kley according to criteria that are

not always apparent, and things that have been known about for ages are put forward

as new. It is therefore hardly surprising that Kley has nothing innovative to say about

the unfolding of the Second World War. None the less, his study confirms the impression

that Ribbentrop’s contemporaries had at the time. Ribbentrop definitely had his own

ideas, but could not get Hitler to accept them: ‘Ribbentrop was unable to have a

decisive impact on German foreign policy because all the major decisions were taken by

Hitler. ’$$ In many respects Kley’s work can be seen as an appendage to the two

Ribbentrop biographies published in Britain and the United States in , to which he

adds very little.$%

Scholars and journalists have concerned themselves with Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s

scurrilous deputy, for quite different reasons from those that attracted them to Goebbels

or Speer. More than anything, the circumstances of his decision to fly to Britain in May

have produced a veritable flood of speculations. More than five decades since the

end of the war, Rudolf Hess’s flight to Britain remains one of the unsolved mysteries of

the Second World War. The Wurzburg Habilitation by Rainer Schmidt does little to

$# Stefan Kley, Hitler, Ribbentrop und die Entfesselung des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Paderborn, ).$$ Ibid., p. .$% John Weitz, Hitler’s diplomat: the life and times of Joachim von Ribbentrop (New York, ) ;

Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (London, ).

change this state of affairs.$& Certainly Schmidt deals in detail with the background to

the spectacular flight and has assessed all available publications on Hess. Ultimately,

however, he ends up with nothing more than a new version of the conspiracy theory,

first put forward by David Irving in ,$' according to which Rudolf Hess was caught

in a British secret service trap and was enticed to Britain under false pretences. In the

central chapter of the book Schmidt describes ‘Britain’s role in the background to the

flight ’. The game of deception seems to hinge upon the fate of a letter which Albrecht

Haushofer sent from neutral territory in September to the duke of Hamilton, later

Rudolf Hess’s reluctant host. This letter ended up in the hands of MI and did not reach

the addressee until March . The conspiracy theory is not new. It was already

mentioned in the Nazi news announcement of May which raised the possibility

‘ that Hess had been deliberately enticed into a trap by the English’. The head of Nazi

foreign espionage, SS-Fu$ hrer Walter Schellenberg, also assumes in his memoirs that

there was considerable involvement on the part of the secret service. There are, indeed,

a number of inconsistencies which suggest that at least the official British version of the

Hess story cannot be true.

Schmidt does not want Hess’s flight to Britain to be seen as an ‘ idiot’s mission’ or Hess

to be deemed a ‘ fool ’ or ‘Hitler’s last emissary’. Instead, he sees the flight as the

result of his (Hess’s) contacts with the British upper class, which had become ever closer since the

early s, the outcome of his conviction that the German Reich should not run the risk once

again of a war on two fronts, … [and] above all … [as] the consequence of a plot by the British

secret service.

Schmidt’s study of Hess is a verbose and often redundant collection of conjectures,

which adds little to previous research findings. He produces no conclusive proof. The

only good thing about the book is the knowledgeable re! sume! of Rudolf Hess’s political

career in the first two chapters. But the veil of mystery surrounding Rudolf Hess’s flight

to Britain is, if anything, more impenetrable than ever.

Another biographically orientated work that has attracted attention beyond the

world of historians, and which deserves recognition for its methodological originality, is

Ulrich Herbert’s critically acclaimed study of Werner Best.$( Anselm Doering-

Manteuffel writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) called it ‘a great success ’

and Eberhard Ja$ ckel said in Die Zeit that this book opened a new era in research on

Nazism. Yet Herbert’s book is not a biography in the classical sense. Werner Best’s life

history as such is not the main focus of attention. Best was a qualified lawyer who, in

, drew up the Nazi counter-revolutionary plans that became known as the Boxheim

Documents. After he was Staatskommissar fuX r das Polizeiwesen in the state government

of Hesse, from onwards Reinhard Heydrich’s colleague in the Gestapo, head of

office (organization, administration, and law) in the Reich Security Main Office

(RSHA), head of administration on the staff of the military commander in France

(–), and from November to May Reich plenipotentiary of the

AuswaX rtiges Amt in Copenhagen, with the rank of under-secretary.

$& Rainer F. Schmidt, Rudolf Heß. ‘Botengang eines Toren? ’ Der Flug nach Großbritannien vom ��. Mai

���� (Du$ sseldorf, ).$' David Irving, ‘Wir lockten Rudolf Hess in die englische Falle ’ Weltwoche ( Apr. ).$( Ulrich Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien uX ber Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft,

����–���� (Bonn, ).

Werner Best is not, however, particularly well known. The dry administrative lawyer

and SS general managed, by his relatively lenient approach, to prevent large numbers

of Danish Jews from being deported. Admittedly he was put on trial in Copenhagen

after , but thanks to the testimony of numerous Jews who had survived with his

help, his sentence was commuted from death to five years’ imprisonment.

What interests Herbert about Best, and is the focal point of his book – which goes far

beyond a traditional biography – is the voX lkisch mentality, the similarity of the

biographies of the leading group within the RSHA. They were almost all administrative

specialists with academic ambitions, barely over thirty, members of the war generation

who had not seen active service in the First World War, but had been crucially affected

by their experience of war and, as students in the s, had had access to voX lkisch-nationalist circles.

Ulrich Herbert’s objective is to combine biographical studies with more general issues

of contemporary historiography. This is all the more challenging in his chosen case

because of the specific phenomenon ‘that the political history of our century,

characterized by numerous and far-reaching caesuras, was to some extent held together

by the life-histories of individuals and divided in a different way, so that what seems to

be quite separate historically and politically, was still experienced by people as a

biographical unit ’. Herbert also traces the continuity in the life of Best, who remained

true to himself, after . As legal adviser to Stinnes Best gave evidence at numerous

post-war trials as a defence witness for his former collegues, organized a campaign for

a general amnesty for former Nazis in conjunction with the FDP in North Rhine

Westfalia, and sought to influence historiography on the Nazi period by willingly

providing information. His voX lkisch mentality remained the major constant in Best’s

seventy-year political activity. He attributed the collapse of the Third Reich to mistakes

and shortcomings, particularly to the fact that ‘Hitler did not have a voX lkisch mentality

and did not act in accordance with a voX lkisch ideology. ’

This biographical study is exceptional in the breadth of source material the author

uses, his masterly command of research to date and the excellent reconstruction of Best’s

career. However, the method chosen does have two essential drawbacks : uncritical

acceptance of Best’s contemporary statements, and overestimation of his role in the

genocide and in the Nazi hierarchy. Reviewers such as Eberhard Ja$ ckel have taken this

even further than Herbert. However, there must be serious doubts about branding Best

as one of those mainly responsible for murdering the Jews and as a formulator of Nazi

ideology. One only has to look at the structure of his personality, and at the fact that,

because of his notorious tendency towards dogmatism and insistence on legal niceties,

Heydrich could not stand him and effectively put him on the shelf. The crucial role in

the organizational development of the RSHA was played by SS-Fu$ hrer Ho$ hn and

Ohlendorf, and the most important SS-Fu$ hrer under Heydrich in later years were

Mu$ ller and Nebe, not Best who had left the RSHA in .

Despite these obvious shortcomings and questionable methodology Herbert’s book

marks a turning point in research on the Third Reich. Its reception shows, first, the

enhanced status of biography-type studies in present-day German historiography.

Secondly, Herbert addresses issues already raised by critical historical science, for

example those first formulated in the s and s by the Bielefeld school around Hans-

Ulrich Wehler. In Germany today dealing with the Nazi past has generally become less

emotional. But the moral legacy, the inconceivable nature of the murder of the Jews,

remains the focal point of research on Nazism. Critical theses, even if connected with an

accusation of collective guilt as in the case of Daniel Goldhagen, have greater appeal in

Germany today than twenty or thirty years ago.

This general climatic change may also account for the fact that in the mid-s the role

of historians suddenly became the subject of critical examination. To be more precise,

it was a question of the early careers of now-prominent German historians during the

Nazi period: Karl Dietrich Erdmann, Theodor Schieder, and Werner Conze. There

had previously been no great inclination amongst German historians to delve into the

history of their own discipline during the Nazi period. But, as the baton was passed to

a younger generation, the tacit consensus that had existed for years was suddenly called

into question. The accusations made by Martin Kro$ ger and Roland Thimme$) or Go$ tzAly$* hit home and could not remain unchallenged. After all, the charge of having kept

quiet about ‘brown patches ’ in their own lives was aimed at historians who had had a

decisive influence upon contemporary research on the Third Reich and on the

university landscape in Germany.

The Kiel historian Karl Dietrich Erdmann died in . In his obituary, written by

his pupil Eberhard Ja$ ckel for the Historische Zeitschrift, he was praised for his refusal to

compromise and his Christian humanity, which had protected him from national

arrogance.%! Erdmann was born in , and, having completed his studies, spent some

time from onwards as a school teacher. The Nazis had banned him from a

university career. In } he had several different jobs with various industrial

concerns, among them as a time-keeper and a French translator. With the outbreak of

war in Erdmann became a soldier. In , wounded and decorated, he left active

service as a battalion commander and spent the last years of the war as an instructor.

After the war he completed his Habilitation under Peter Rassow () and then

embarked upon a glittering career : founder and editor of the periodical Geschichte in

Wissenschaft und Unterricht, –, a chair at Kiel University, –, chairman of the

Verband der Historiker Deutschlands, member of the presidium (from ), and president

of the Internationales Kommitee der Geschichtswissenschaften (–).

In the light of new documents Erdmann is now accused by the historians Kro$ ger and

Thimme of having fabricated parts of his curriculum vitae before and of having

presented himself, wrongly, as a determined opponent of Nazism. The key element in

the accusations is Erdmann’s contribution to the school textbook Das Erbe der Ahnen, in

which he wrote the section in the fourth volume on the early Bismarck era and the one

in the fifth volume which ended with the Anschluß of Austria in . The book was

never actually published since the control authority refused permission. The style and

theme of the sections dealt with by Erdmann, the emphasis on the heroic, the national,

and the social, do bear a striking resemblance to the Lingua Terzi Imperii, as described

by Victor Klemper. Kro$ ger and Thimme liberally quote these passages, which sound so

strange today. But they fail to take account of the fact that, although the formulations

$) Martin Kro$ ger and Roland Thimme, Die Geschichtsbilder des Historikers Karl Dietrich Erdmann

(Munich, ).$* Go$ tz Aly, Macht, Geist, Wahn: KontinuitaX ten deutschen Denkens (Berlin, ).%! Eberhard Ja$ ckel, ‘Karl Dietrich Erdmann – ’, Historische Zeitschrift, (),

pp. ff, also in Hartmut Boockmann and Kurt Ju$ rgensen, eds., Nachdenken uX ber Geschichte:

BeitraX ge aus der OX kumene der Historiker: in memoriam Karl Dietrich Erdmann (Neumu$ nster, ),

pp. ff. The memorial volume for Erdmann, in its scholarly depth and intellectual complexity, is

testimony to Erdmann’s exceptional international reputation.

they object to can certainly be seen as evidence of Erdmann’s ability to adapt to the

exigencies of his time, they do not serve as evidence of a Nazi mentality. The ‘burden

of proof ’ of the other documents appears to be similarly fabricated: a circular letter by

German exchange students in France composed by Erdmann as a twenty-three-year-

old student, or Erdmann’s letters from the front, in which the historian expands on the

subject of how France’s future role in Europe depended on the extent of its military

involvement. To conclude from Erdmann’s letters as a soldier that he shared Hitler’s

views on France’s place in the new Nazi system for Europe is really contrived.

Erdmann’s pupils Agnes Bla$ nsdorf and Eberhard Ja$ ckel have therefore quite rightly

vehemently rejected the interpretation of Kro$ ger and Thimme.%"

Go$ tz Aly attacks the established historians even more forcefully.%# Werner Conze,

doyen of German social history, did his Habilitation under Gunther Ipsen in . In the

early s he was writing on population issues, and recommended – in the language of

the time – ‘that Jews be removed from cities and small market towns to make room in

trade and commerce for the new rural generation, as an effective measure against the

poverty in the many over-populated rural areas of eastern central Europe’.%$ Aly also

considers the Cologne historian Theodor Schieder (–) to be similarly discredited,

since in a memorandum of October he had called for ‘ the eradication of the Jews

from Polish cities ’.%% Now, however dubious the traditional anti-Semitism in the above

quotations may be, individual pieces cannot – as Aly, Kro$ ger, and Thimme have

done – simply be taken completely out of context and blown up into a political issue. On

another page they say that Conze and Schieder, despite all they have done for German

historical science, have not, in their own recollections of their early years and works

during the Nazi period, applied the same critical method and open-mindedness that

they demand for their academic work. Lamentable shortcomings become apparent

here, which in some cases certainly lead to personal disappointments and require

unprejudiced clarification by historical science. The historical scandal which Go$ tz Aly

and other authors make of it all is not supported by evidence, but their work is

representative of a historical profession which, in its research into Nazism, is now only

marginally influenced by personal experience, and is increasingly critical of members of

its ‘own guild’.

The diaries of the German Jew Victor Klemperer, over , pages long, have also

enjoyed enormous public success, and this too is connected with the changed

perspectives and enduring interest in the Nazi period.%& Victor Klemperer, member of

a famous academic family and professor of romance languages at Dresden, shared the

fate of those Jews who, despite relentless harassment by the Nazis and an ever-increasing

danger to body and soul, remained in Germany. Having fought in the First World War,

he considered himself a German patriot and chose to defy the demon at the side of his

non-Jewish wife, Eva Klemperer. He sacrificed his professional position and became

socially more and more isolated, made it his mission, as he wrote in July , ‘ to carry

on observing, noting and studying right up to the very last ’. The product of this process

is a unique document humain : the minute details of a hopeless struggle for spirit, culture,

%" See ‘Diskussion: Karl Dietrich Erdmann und der Nationalsozialsmus, mit Beitra$ gen von

Winfried Schulze, Eberhard Ja$ ckel und Agnes Bla$ nsdorf ’, Wissenschaft und Unterricht, (),

pp. ff. %# Aly, Macht, Geist, Wahn. %$ Ibid., p. . %% Ibid., p. .%& Victor Klemperer, Ich will Zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten: TagebuX cher ����–���� ( vols., Berlin,

).

and daily survival. Klemperer was neither a hero nor a resistance fighter. For a long

time he closed his eyes to the fatal consequences of Nazi ideology. He misjudged the

banality of evil, but at the same time his eye was good enough to expose the Third Reich

mercilessly through the lens of his diary entries. In the individual fate of the educated

Jewish bourgeois, whose very existence was threatened, and in his daily struggle, the

history of Germany and the Third Reich is again unfurled before the reader’s eyes :

seizure of power and Gleichschaltung, rejoicing and agreement in the early years,

outbreak of war and military triumph, murder of the Jews, total war, inferno, and

twilight of the gods. The inner cohesion and merciless frankness with which Klemperer

records his life story, or rather his daily resistance, and thereby writes an inglorious

chapter of German history, are what distinguish the book. It is also a reminder that in

Nazi Germany there was only a handful of decent men and women who actually

embarked upon the road to resistance.

III

In striking contrast to proportions of this historical phenomenon is the enormous

journalistic interest since in German opposition against Hitler. The way in which

resistance to Nazism is dealt with in Germany reflects the historical consciousness of the

present and the contemporary political climate of the Federal Republic. The debates

about the failed coup d ’etat of July have become a reflection of the political

present. The Cold War and German Question, the great discussions of the post-war

period on rearmament, Western integration, emergency legislation, the statute of

limitations and VergangenheitsbewaX ltigung, are all reflected in the stages and phases of

research into resistance against Nazism.

At the time of the assassination attempt the majority of Germans may no longer have

been pro Hitler, but they had not yet really turned against him. The German resistance

was no Resistenza and no French Resistance, rebelling against an oppressive foreign

power. Under the specific conditions of the Second World War German resistance was

always tied up with the moral dilemma that the price for bringing down the regime

might be defeat of the fatherland. The stigma of supposed treachery constantly dogged

the resistance fighters after the war. Even during the war the British and Americans

found it difficult to understand the strange attitude of the German opposition: against

Hitler, but for their own nation.

The vain attempts by Hitler’s German opponents to gain support from the British

and Americans have always been of interest to German resistance literature. But it has

remained the preserve of Anglo-Saxon historians and former e!migre! s from Nazi

Germany to make the crucial contributions regarding the foreign contacts of the

resistance to Hitler within Germany.%' This fact is brought home to us again by a

collection of essays recently edited by Klaus-Ju$ rgen Mu$ ller and David Dilks.%( The

essays are of variable quality : Lothar Kettenacker’s review of the historiography is

%' Above all Klemens von Klemperer, The search for allies abroad: the Allies and the German resistance

against Hitler, ����–���� (Oxford, ).%( Klaus-Ju$ rgen Mu$ ller and David Dilks, eds., Großbritannien und der deutsche Widerstand,

����–���� (Paderborn, ).

masterly, Klemens von Klemperer on the foreign policy of the resistance and Peter

Hoffmann on Stauffenberg are solid. Heinz Boberach has little new to say about ‘ the

effects of the Allied air-war in the light of SD reports ’, Pauline Elkes says nothing

significant about the political warfare executive, and just what Ulrich Herbert’s essay

on resistance by foreign forced labourers is doing in a volume about Great Britain and

the German resistance remains the editors’ little secret.

By and large, much the same applies to the socio-political ideas of those who opposed

Hitler as to the German resistance’s relations with other countries. All in all, German

historians have been much more critical of the German opposition than those in Britain.

In particular the angry young men among German historians see the men of July as

predominantly conservative, sometimes even reactionary, notables, whose aim was not

to re-establish democracy but to transform the country into an authoritarian

corporative state and who, in their attempts to achieve peace, would have done better

to follow the motto: ‘Less talk, more action. ’

Anyone interested in an accurate overview of the present trends, focal points,

controversies, and methodological problems in research on the German resistance

should take a look at the proceedings of an academic conference held in Berlin to mark

the th anniversary of July, which were re-published in .%)

In the decade since the book was first published various details of research may have

changed, but the essence remains largely the same. The essays in this collection show

how the approach to research on the resistance has changed since the decades

immediately after the war. Nowadays it does not only focus on the conservative and

Christian opposition to Hitler. Other socially relevant groups are also looked at, and

likewise the development of resistance during the consolidation phase of the Nazi

regime, the social and political objectives of individual actors, and the relationship

between the resistance and German society. In resistance research, which has become

quite ramified, methodological questions and establishing concepts play an increasingly

important role. The themes of this collection of essays are the motives of the men of

July, a comparison of the coup d ’eU tat of July with that of July (Jerzy W.

Borejsza) and the ambivalent position of Canaris and the Abwehr (Heinz Ho$ hne). Thus

this collection edited by Schma$ decke and Steinbach takes up the issues first presented

in Hermann Graml’s edition of the mid-s,%* and develops the approaches adopted

there.

The extent to which the concept of resistance in Germany is still a political issue

became apparent in the discussion that unfolded on the occasion of the th anniversary

in July as to whether the communist resistance and the Nationalkomitee Freies

Deutschland should be included in an overall view of the German opposition. This is

precisely the approach taken by Peter Steinbach who, as head of the GedenkstaX tteDeutscher Widerstand, is responsible for the permanent exhibition in Berlin devoted to the

resistance against Nazism. He pleads emphatically for the concept of resistance to be

extended to include the men of the Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland, formed in Soviet

captivity, and the Bund Deutscher Offiziere. Steinbach, who is also co-editor of the

collection Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, has done much to broaden our

%) Ju$ rgen Schma$ decke and Peter Steinbach, Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: die

deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler (Munich, ).%* Hermann Graml, ed., Widerstand im Dritten Reich: Probleme, Ereignisse, Gestalten (Frankfurt}M.,

).

knowledge of the resistance. When it comes to acquainting a wide public with the events

of July , Steinbach is one of the most prolific writers of brochures and newspaper

articles. The diverse pieces collected here bear witness to this in a most impressive way,

even if in the case of Steinbach, as so often, quantity does not necessarily equal quality.&!

This reviewer is not really convinced by Steinbach’s view that resistance should be

interpreted in the broader sense. Resistance behind barbed wire and an appreciation of

the espionage activities of the Rote Kapelle do not belong in the same exhibition room as

the would-be assassins of July.

Since it began immediately after the war, research into German resistance against

Hitler has always concentrated on the lives of outstanding personalities in the resistance

movement. The choice and emphasis allows political conclusions to be drawn and

indicates that views of the resistance can change with time. Thus it is hardly surprising

that Adam von Trott, whose fate caused a stir in the s with the publication of Henry

Malone’s Encounter, has attracted far greater interest in Britain than in Germany. For his

personality, which matured at an early stage, displayed characteristics hardly

identifiable with the German national character. ‘He was a young genius, sensitive and

irritable, and no one found him easy to get on with’, was how his friend and colleague

in the German resistance, Albrecht von Kessel, put it. Personality, background,

international friends, and understanding of the Anglo-Saxon culture predestined Trott,

the Rhodes Scholar, to be a middle-man between the German resistance and the free

world. A member of the German Foreign Service since , Trott undertook numerous

secret missions, even after the outbreak of war, in which he tried to get Britons and

Americans to listen to the voice of the ‘other’, better Germany and to sound out possible

peace conditions. In vain; he came up against a wall of silence and in , in the

United States, was suspected of being sent abroad by Hitler as an agent provocateur.

By the s Adam von Trott’s widow, Clarita, had already assembled all the written

evidence of her husband’s activities on behalf of the resistance. This collection was a

treasure-trove for historians, and extracts were published in various places in .

Only now, however, is it available in book form.&" The strange mixture of commentary

and original quotations taken out of context is certainly no substitute for a trip to the

archive. But this collection of material does give an impression of Trott’s fascinating

personality and ceaseless commitment, the self-doubts that tormented him, his inner

tribulations, the loneliness of the conspirator, and the dilemma of a patriot who was

praying for his country’s defeat, while his main concern was Germany’s future role in a

free Europe. Germany and Europe – Trott was still preoccupied with this topic even in

the face of death. He wrote to his wife from prison: ‘What pains me most is that I will

perhaps no longer be able to serve our country using the powers and experiences I have

gained by an almost excessively one-sided concentration on standing up for it amongst

the foreign powers ’ ( August ). We can only hope that this material will lead to

a comprehensive biography, after Christopher Sykes’s failed attempt&# and Henry

Malone’s&$ work which, though pertinent enough, only goes up to .

&! Peter Steinbach, Widerstand im Widerstreit : der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus in der

Erinnerung der Deutschen (nd edn, Paderborn, ).&" Clarita von Trott zu Solz, Adam von Trott zu Solz: eine Lebensbeschreibung, Schriften der

Gedenksta$ tte Deutscher Widerstand, series B: Quellen und Berichte, ed. Peter Steinbach and

Johannes Tuchel (Berlin, ). &# Christopher Sykes, Troubled loyalty (London, ).&$ Henry Malone, Adam von Trott zu Solz: Werdegang eines VerschwoX rers ����–���� (Berlin, ).

Understandably, of all the men of July the one that attracts the greatest

interest in Germany is the would-be assassin himself. Amongst broad sections of the

public the name of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg has, in some way, become

synonymous with resistance to Hitler. Early biographical sketches were produced in the

immediate post-war period, but recent years have seen no less than three biographies :

Kurt Finker’s work, which shows his long path from Marxist historiography to a refined

picture of the ‘aristocratic conspirator ’, Peter Hoffmann’s double biography of the

Stauffenberg brothers that combines definitive, scholarly meticulousness with the nose

of the detective and masterly command of the material, and, right on time for the

anniversary, Eberhard Zeller’s portrait, written with great sensitivity and sympathy.&%

Zeller had been to the same school as Stauffenberg, had briefly met him during the war,

and – crucial for his biography – was a close friend of Stauffenberg’s colleague, Fahrner.

What distinguishes Zeller’s work is its proximity to the ‘hero’. It picks up – sometimes

verbatim – parts of the author’s earlier work, including Geist der Freiheit,&& which has

since become a history of resistance in itself. Obviously Zeller, a GP by profession, could

not grapple with the state of research and source material to the same extent as someone

like Peter Hoffmann whose double biography represents the sum of a life of research on

the German resistance. Zeller’s strength is his personal touch, his presentation of

Stauffenberg’s formative years, and his intellectual development. Personal testimonies

and numerous conversations with Stauffenberg’s accomplices allow the picture to

emerge of a literary-minded, highly gifted officer, a picture which in many respects is

extraordinary.

Most extraordinary of all is the determination with which, having recovered from

injuries sustained during the Africa campaign in , he pushed for action as chief-of-

staff to the commander-in-chief of the reserve army. While still in the field hospital

Stauffenberg had written to his wife that he must do something to save the Reich. In his

new job he became a driving force, killing Hitler his vital objective. Via middlemen,

including Otto John and Hans-Bernd Gisevius, he took soundings abroad as to how the

Western powers would react to a Germany free of Hitler. In the last resort Stauffenberg

not only took upon himself the burden of the assassination attempt, but also, on July

, travelled the km from Rastenberg to Berlin to set the coup d ’etat in motion

himself. In the end the would-be assassin was himself unsure about his chances of

success. And at the decisive moment fortune did not favour the conspirators. But at this

stage, the main thing, as far as Stauffenberg was concerned, was to have tried to save

Germany’s honour by this liberating deed for the sake of his own conscience and that of

the German people.

Finally, two further collections are dedicated to the lives of the ‘men of July’ : one

by Lill and Oberreuther,&' of which a new edition came out in time for the th

anniversary, and one by Klemperer, Syring, and Zitelmann.&( Some authors appear in

&% Kurt Finker, Der ��. Juli ����: MilitaX rputsch oder Revolution? (Berlin, ) ; Peter Hoffmann,

Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg und seine BruX der (Stuttgart, ) ; Eberhard Zeller, Oberst Claus Graf

Stauffenberg: ein Lebensbild (Paderborn, ).&& Eberhard Zeller, Geist der Freiheit (Munich, ).&' Rudolf Lill and Heinrich Oberreuther, eds., ��. Juli. PortraX ts des Widerstands (Du$ sseldorf and

Vienna, ).&( Klemens von Klemperer, Enrico Syring, and Rainer Zitelmann, eds., ‘FuX r Deutschland ’: die

MaX nner des ��. Juli (Frankfurt}M. and Berlin, ).

both volumes, for example Gregor Scho$ llgen on Hassell and Reiner Pommerin on

Witzleben. In both cases the selection of authors is not always convincing – renowned

scholars alongside those who have done little original research on the topic in question.

The quality of the essays therefore varies considerably. Surprising in the case of

Klemperer, Syring, and Zitelmann is the unfortunate attempt in the introduction to

present a revisionist view of the resistance from a national-conservative perspective.

What is useful, however, is the editors’ decision to conclude each essay with brief notes

on sources and other literature. Both volumes make it immediately apparent that the

information available about individual members of the resistance in Germany is

extremely variable. German resistance historiography, with its inclination towards

systematics, has often concentrated too much on particular groups (Kreisau circle,

Hassell-Goerdeler-Beck group). In so doing it has lost sight of the fact that resistance

against Hitler was largely a matter of a few courageous individuals, linked to a greater

or lesser degree by bonds of friendship. This concentration on groups has meant that

research into the resistance has progressed most unevenly in Germany, and in particular

that those personalities who cannot readily be categorized as belonging either to the

regime or the opposition have not been given adequate attention. So far there is no work

on the Berlin police chief Graf Helldorf, an alter KaX mpfer and former SA lout, who was

hanged for his part in preparing the July coup, or the Reichskriminaldirektor Arthur

Nebe, an equivocal character of dubious reputation, who only escaped Helldorf ’s fate

by committing suicide. Likewise there is nothing on Hans-Bernd Gisevius who went to

ground after July and escaped to Switzerland with the help of Allen Dulles, or

another of Dulles’s chums, the naturalized American Gero von Gaevernitz.

Other recent works on the German resistance worth a mention are a competently

compiled lexicon&) which provides initial orientation, and a historical reader of classical

resistance texts selected by Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel.&* This is likewise

intended as an introduction, though because it is based on such a broad concept of

resistance (including the Rote Kapelle) it brings with it a specific political view. Another

work is the volume of illustrations edited by Ulrich Cartarius,'! in which the vividness

of the impressive pictures is often more expressive than many of the words in the

accompanying text.

Finally, also in time for the th anniversary, the German resistance was duly

honoured in the masterly work by Joachim Fest.'" Like the new edition of the classical

appreciation written in the immediate post-war period by Hans Rothfels'# – who

returned from America and became the doyen of contemporary history – the great

achievement of Fest’s book is that it follows the long and winding road of the German

resistance right to its bitter end, the failed assassination attempt, and presents the story

in its entirety for a wide public. Fest does not, however, produce any new material, but

relies exclusively on the existing literature, without investigating new archive sources.

&) Wolfgang Benz and Walter H. Pehle, eds., Lexikon des deutschen Widerstands (Frankfurt}M.,

).&* Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel, eds., Widerstand in Deutschland ����–����: ein historisches

Lesebuch (Munich, ).'! Ulrich Cartarius, Opposition gegen Hitler: Bilder, Texte, Dokuments: Mit einem Essay von Karl

Othmar von Aretin (Berlin, ).'" Joachim Fest, Staatsstreich: der lange Weg zum ��. Juli (Berlin, ).'# Hans Rothfels, Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler: eine WuX rdigung (Zurich, ; st edn ).

One of the surviving conspirators, Otto John, described Stauffenberg’s assassination

attempt as wrong and too late. But was the net result of the secret struggle against

Hitler’s Third Reich really nothing more than a big ‘zero’? In the summer of the

German Reich’s room for manoeuvre, both politically and militarily, was small, to say

the least. Defeat was inevitable, free choice between East and West no longer possible.

Even if the assassination attempt had succeeded, Stauffenberg would have had no

alternative but to end the war by quick capitulation. At the time of the putsch the

victorious powers had already decided to divide the Reich into zones of occupation. And

yet, beyond all disappointments about the lack of support from abroad, and despite the

numerous instances of half-heartedness, mistakes, and wrong calculations in preparing

the assassination attempt, July is still an essential part of the nation’s heritage – as

Fest points out in his concluding remarks. By bearing witness to a decent Germany, the

men of July played a crucial part in ensuring that after the war the Federal Republic

was embraced relatively quickly by the free democracies of the Western world. And

memory of this also has its place in the reunified Germany. The German state is aware

that the post-war democracy was built upon the ruins of the dictatorship, and that the

line of continuity in Germany history was broken by the barbarism of the Nazis. So it

has kept alive in the public consciousness the memory of the courageous struggle by a

few decent men who resisted totalitarian seduction, by the annual state ceremony to

commemorate July , by declaring January, the day on which Auschwitz was

liberated by Allied troops in , to be a national memorial day, and by the teaching

of history and political education. This will not change, even though in the years to

come the number of people who personally experienced the Nazi period will continue

to decline. The task of historians and the public is to make sure that interest does not

dwindle. For, as the Jewish wisdom goes, memory is the secret of deliverance.