Talk:Historikerstreit

Untitled

"... West Germany, where historians enjoy more prestige than they do in the English-speaking world." This should be proved and explained. Why that? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.143.149.161 (talk) 22:06, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

"By the mid-1980s, right-wing German historians started to feel enough time had passed and it was time for Germans to start celebrating their history again"

That's pleasantly sarcastic, but an exaggeration nonetheless. How do others feel about this sentence? 134.106.199.31 15:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

In fact, there was something very naive about Nolte's essentially populist demand that the time had come to draw a line under the Nazi past. Perceptions of the past simply don't work like that. It's tough, very tough for young Germans to be 'burdened' with Germany's past, but one can't just declare it 'history' as opposed to 'politics' (or whatever) and expect the world to leap to attention.

Some comments on the extraordinarily vicious tenor of much of the debate might be useful.

It seems to me that the article should be linked to 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung'. Norvo 02:31, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

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this is a starting point and I'm sure there is a lot to change (my english for example). I wrote it because I think it should be linked in some kind with Vergangenheitsbewältigung and Geschichtsaufarbeitung.

I did copy editing, but someone needs to make sure I didn't distort anything! Also, there needs to be more information here, and a for-sure balanced approach. Halcatalyst.

I' sorry but Nolte did not argue that Auschwitz were no worse than the Gulag Archipelago, he said the Gulag Archipelago was the original one and Auschwitz a "reaction". He said you have to see what happend in that time for a better understanding - so he finally saw the terror of Stalins Russia and concluded the terror of Nazi Germany was a reaction to prevent the same things in Germany. But I'm not familiar enough with his argumentation (and my english...) that's because I don't want to change the article directly.

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Thanks for getting this article started! It's useful for people in the English-speaking world (the US in particular) to see how the Holocaust influences German thought and politics decades later. I've edited it to make the English clearer. I hope I haven't changed the sense of what you meant to say. Please let me know if there are any places that need improvement. FreplySpang (talk) 03:55, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm glad you worked on it. It's very good. I think there is no need to change something, but I'm not really a specalist.

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I'm currently writing an essay on the Historikerstreit for my German class. I'm going to do a bit of work first on the structure of the article as it stands, and one I've done more reading I may flesh out the details as well. 60.240.224.177 02:26, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

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Copyright problem: Historikerstreit

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.192.105.132 (talk) 10:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

The identified source is a mirror of Wikipedia. Please note that at the bottom it says, "Article courtesy of Wikipedia.org under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License ". --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Left and right, POV, and other issues

I think the article might need to be revised regarding its classification and categorization. "Right" and "left" only have political meaning within a given context and are often ambiguous. "Right" can refer to anything from Nazism and fascism to libertarianism, neo-liberalism, religious conservatism, etc. Likewise, "left" can refer to anything ranging from Stalinism to anarchism, liberalism, democratic socialism, social liberalism, secular humanism, moral relativism, etc.

What seems to be described in this article is a debate between functionalism versus intentionalism. The functionalist side seems to be generally labeled as "left" while the intentionalist side is labeled "right." I think it would make more sense to the readers if they were labeled "functionalist" and "intentionalist" rather than "left" or "right," while a section could discuss how each side's views relate to the larger German political landscape.

It's also confusing, because the group which is described as "right" seems to include advocates of two very different positions. One seems to be the clasic intentionist position - "Hitler and the other Nazi-elite masterminded it," while the other seems to be a variant of the functionalist position - "the German populace as a whole is indeed responsible, but they did it in response to a threat or percieved threat from despotic communism." So it looks to me like there are at least three distinct positions on this issue.

I've also noticed that the overall tone of the article seems to side more with the group described as "leftist." (Perhaps this is why the views of the other two groups have been akwardly conflated?...)

All and all, I think the article needs attention and cleanup.

ENpeeOHvee 22:17, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

ENpee, I fully agree with your remark that the article needs a differenciation in terms of scientific categories and not in terms of political camping. In fact, the notion of the historians being labeled left- or right wing rose within the discussion itself ideologising the opponent. It was thus a dialectic twist of the discussion itself and not any deliberate political stand that the participants brought into the discussion. As you seem to have quite an elaborate analytical inside into the issue and as you seem a native speaker, why not edit the text yourself? Also, placing a link to the [functionalism versus intentionalism] side in WIKI would seem a good idea, respectively expanding that link with a section pointing at the Historikerstreit.

As I was not logged in yet this comment is unintendedly anonymous.I logged in just now. Bloom2006 10:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

hi all cool article good work.Hypnosadist 00:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Fully agree with Enpee's comments. Although the debate may have opposed mostly left-wing historians on one hand, with right-wing historians on the other hand, to use these terms too much (as does the article, which could limit itself to a sentence concerning political affiliations) leads one to think that arguments are tied to the left/right dichotomy (i.e. one who would support the uniqueness of Holocaust compared to others genocides would be left-wing, while one who would compare it to others genocides would be

right-wing; this is obviously false, left-wing historians, as well as Hannah Arendt who is more or less of a liberal, left-wing tendency, have underlined roots of the Holocaust in colonial genocides (such as the Herero genocide). Tazmaniacs 15:39, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

In the context of historiography, isn't "liberal" normally the opposite of "left-wing"? I would not describe Hannah Arendt by any means as a "left-wing" historian (or political scientist, which is what she was - she was not a historian). I would add that I don't think the issue of the Historikerstreit was really about whether the Holocaust was unique. It was largely about the ways that people like Nolte, Hillgruber, and Stürmer were contextualizing it, and particular with efforts to relegitimize the actions of the Wehrmacht during the war in terms of anti-communism. john k 16:26, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

In Germany there are left-liberals and right-wing liberals. It sometimes hinges on the fiscal policies they prefer. But calling Habermas & Co. "Left-to-Centre" is quite an understatement. Habermas was/is essentially a Neo-Marxist. In other words, he's even left of the Old-School Marxist (Communist). The rest wasn't really to different from this. Of course they were upset that their object of worship and fetish (the Holocaust) was to become a subject of discourse on not the paradigm that it still at present is. During the same period, there was also a push for "Holocaust Denial Laws", which is essentially anti-blasphemy legislation. So there were people that were afraid of loosing this important component of their cultural capital. 105.8.3.189 (talk) 17:14, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Careless editing

In the External Links shortly after the article was created nearly two years ago, a "Buffyg" added an exhortation that "strongly recommended" or "strongly "advised" readers to read more about "his [Nolte's] publishers". This is blatantly inappropriate advocacy. Not only that, but it was inaccurate to write "his publishers" in place of "its publisher", "it" being the article. It was ONE article, an interview with Nolte, and ONE publisher. When I say, "with the cumulation of edits increasingly misleading", I mean that as other articles and books by Nolte have been added to the entry, this exhortation would naturally be interpreted to refer to ALL the publishers who published the various Nolte citations.

In general, the citations for this entry have been shabbily done, in contrast to the body of the entry. Hurmata 02:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Origins heading

On rereading, I have realized the first paragraph was incoherent. The phrase "the dominant interpretation of Nazism" was uninterpretable: first, what *was* this interpretation according to the contibutor; and, dominant among *which* historians: European historians generally, or just the foreign ones alluded to in the preceding sentence? Furthermore, the contributor does not make clear how the Marxist and liberal assessments correspond to the two major questions identified at the start of the paragraph. In fact, the phrase "dominant interpretation . . . was splitted [sic] . . . " is grammatically ambiguous. From the context, it probably means, "there were two rival interpretations competing to be accepted as the dominant [i.e., overwhelmingly accepted] one" -- and this would then be poor grammar; but grammatically, it could also mean "there was already a dominant interpretation, which was represented by Marxist and liberal variants". Since I have no genuine familiarity with this area of history, all I have done was try to render the paragraph self consistent, without quite knowing what the previous contributors meant to claim. Hurmata 04:44, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Herero and Nama genocides, the Armenian genocide

In the more recent parts of the existence of this article, somebody has added mention of the genocides perpetrated against Herero and Nama tribes of Germany's colony of Southwest Africa. The article notes that one of the issues in the Historikerstreit was the validity of equating other genocides to the genocide of the European Jews. Earlier versions of this article mentioned the Armenian and Kampuchean genocides. I have just deleted the mention of the genocides in Southwest Africa. The only reason to do so is skepticism as to whether they *were* invoked by any participants in the Historikerstrei. If not, then it would be misleading to invoke them in this article -- without an explicit annotation that it is the article which is invoking the Southwest African genocides.

All we need is a reference from a Historikerstreit document confirming which genocides were specifically cited. By the way, it would be nice to confirm that the Armenian and Kampuchean genocide were specifically invoked. But it is likely they were, because the Kampuchean was fresh in people's minds, having occurred just ten years earlier, and the Armenian was well known. But the Herero and Nama genocides are hardly known outside of Germany and Namibia. The articles on it in both English Wikipedia and German Wikipedia fail to mention that any agitation about it took place between about 1910 and 1997. Therefore, please just find where a Historikerstreitler invoked it. Thank you. Hurmata (talk) 04:07, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I have read a great deal about the Historikerstreit, and I have never read anything about the Hereo and Nama genocides being mentioned. It is true that the Armenian and Cambodian genocides were talked about quite a bit. --A.S. Brown (talk) 03:01, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

self-contradictory sentence

"Various non-German historians in the immediate post-war era, such as A. J. P. Taylor and Sir Lewis Namier, argued that Nazism was the culmination of German history and that the vast majority of Germans were responsible for Nazi crimes. Such assessments of Nazism were common among Marxists, who insisted on the economic aspects of Nazism and conceived of it as the culmination of a capitalist crisis, and liberals, who emphasized Hitler's personal role and responsibility, and bypassed the larger problem of the relation of ordinary German people to the regime." - the conclusion does not follow from the premise. In fact, it suggests the opposite.Volunteer Marek (talk) 23:59, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Your quite right, Marek as usual.--A.S. Brown (talk) 02:30, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

This page is not neutral

This page is full of misinformation and is badly slanted towards a particular viewpoint, namely that everything that Stalin did was just as bad as Hitler. The general bias of the page can be seen in the opening paragraph which tells the reader that historians who argued that Hitler was worse than Stalin have now all been "discredited". That is an absurd statement that seen in that Richard J. Evans who played a leading role in the Historikerstreit is one of the most respected historians around today; I have never read anything saying Evans is "discredited" amongst historians today because of his book attacking Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber. It is perfectly true that there many people out there who believe that Stalin was as bad as Hitler, but there are also many people out there who believe that Hitler was worse. It is completely false to say that only the former are respected today while the latter are all "discredited".

Beyond that, a lot of this page is off topic, telling the reader that most people in Eastern Europe believe that Stalin was bad as Hitler (which is true), but that's only the viewpoint in one part of the world. Why do the viewpoint of let's say, Hungarians on this issue count more than do the viewpoint of Israeli historians? It is very wrong for this page to arbitrarily elevate the viewpoint of people from one part of the world over the viewpoint of people from another. Beyond, I am not aware of there been any such "debates" in Eastern Europe by the moral equivalence of Communism and National Socialism in Eastern Europe. Anyone who ever seen any of the "genocide museums" in the Baltic States will know that the most Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians believe in the moral equivalence of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Anyhow, none of that has anything to do with the Historikerstreit.

Furthermore, what does Keith Windschuttle have to do with the Historikerstreit? Beyond, this page is very wrong on a number of points. It is not true that all left-wing historians are functionalists and believed in the Sonderweg. Eberhard Jäckel is a very left-wing historian, but he is an intententionist and opposed to the Sonderweg theory, so this page is giving viewpoints that he does not hold. Hans-Ulrich Wehler was a left-wing historian who believed very strongly in the Sonderweg, but he was an intentionist. The division between left-wing and right-wing historians has some validity, but is a bit misleading. John Lukacs is a Hungarian-American historian of quite right-wing views (he proudly calls himself a "reactionary"), and he was quite vocal about criticizing Nolte and Hillgruber. Having said that much, it is true that leftist historians tended to believe in the Sonderweg while conservative historians generally do not, and that conservatives tended to be intententionists. But it is not true that these historical divisions are always political.

Above all, this page does not tell you what Ernst Nolte's central thesis was, namely that Hitler was somehow forced into committing the Holocaust by the fear of the Soviet Union. Beyond that, Nolte does not believe in the moral equivalence of Stalinism and Nazism. Nolte has often written that Jews were killed without suffering in the gas chambers (a statement that is totally untrue by the way) whereas the kulaks died a slow death via starvation. Nolte's viewpoint is clearly that Stalin was worse than Hitler. If all Nolte had just merely written that everything Stalin did was just as bad as Hitler, there would had been no controversy, for that actually a very common viewpoint amongst conservatives, and has been for a long time. What sparked the controversy was Nolte's claim that Hitler was forced into waging genocide against the Jews. That is what really generated the passion and anger, and that is what the Historikerstreit was really all about. Furthermore, this page tells you nothing about Nolte's infamous statement that because Chaim Weizmann wrote a letter to Neville Chamberlain on September 3rd, 1939 promising the Jewish Agency would support the British war effort, that was a Jewish "declaration of war" on Germany, and that Hitler was right to "intern" Jews in the concentration camps just as the Americans were right to intern the Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. To their credit, a great many German historians objected in the strongest possible terms to this monstrous thesis on the part of Nolte, which is completely wrong-a great deal of the Historikerstreit was about debating that particular thesis of Nolte's. You would never know that by reading this page, which gives the impression that Nolte is now in the historical mainstream and his many critics are all "discredited". This is quite wrong that the man who said that Hitler was only reacting to the "Jewish declaration of war" and was right to "intern" Jews is the historian whom everyone respects today while the people who objected to that are all "discredited". All said, a very slanted and inaccurate article.--A.S. Brown (talk) 02:30, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Nolte's defenders, whom have been very active both on this page and on his page keep on deleting any negative remarks about him under the grounds that it is a BLP violation. Curiously, those so concerned with defending Nolte's reputation have no such concern about the anti-revisionist historians in Germany, whom this article claims are "discredited". It is actually the other way around. For an example, do the majority of historians today believe that Chaim Weizmann's letter to Neville Chamberlain was a "Jewish declaration of war" upon Germany and that Hitler had the right to "intern" the Jews in concentration camps as a result of this alleged "Jewish declaration of war" upon the Reich? Merely to answer this question is to answer it. Which does bring up the question why this article is trying to claim that Nolte won the Historikerstreit and his critics are "discredited". It is nothing helpful that the article seems to suggest that to believe that the Holocaust was a unique evil is to somehow justify the crimes of Communism. Moreover, the debate is not over the moral equivalence of Nazism and Communism has the article claims, but rather over Nolte's claim that Hitler was forced by the fear of the Soviet Union to commit the Holocaust and over whatever the Holocaust should be viewed as an unique horror. The article on the Holocaust has an entire section entitled "Distinctive features"-which if you accept Nolte's thesis cannot possibly be true, and I would suggest that Nolte's defenders who are so active on this page go delete it if they really believe what they are saying. That only captures part of the debate. Nolte's article "The Past That Will Not Go Away" says it is all. Nolte's thesis is that Germans should not have to feel guilty about the Holocaust because 1) The Communists did worse and 2) The Nazis were forced against their will to exterminate the Jews out of a "rational" fear about the Communists were going to do to the Germans, so 3) Germans should not feel guilty about the Holocaust, so the "The Past That Will Not Go Away" should finally "go away". I checked the source for this claim, namely the book No Simple Victory by Norman Davies, who provides a rather distorted and misleading summary of the Historikerstreit that is rather sympathetic towards Nolte and seems to imply that the Russian Jews bear some of collective guilt for Communist crimes, but it says nothing about Nolte's critics being "discredited". Here is what Davies says:

"In the years before the fall the of the Berlin Wall, the quarrels in Germany were particularly acidic. They were graced with a special name-the Historikerstreit or "Historian's Row". At the time he published The European Civil War, Ernst Nolte worte an explanatory article "The Past Which Will Not Pass On", in which he described Fascism as a "defensive reaction" to Communism. The word "defensive" was a red flag to the red bulls. It was bad enough for Nolte to have suggested earlier that Fascism was a reaction to Communism. But to state that Communism had been the aggressor and Fascism the defender was too much to bear. What is more, in that same year Andreas Hillgruber published a book provocatively entitled Zweierlei Untergang or "Double Ruin" (1986). The subject was the expulsion of the Germans from the east in 1945-47. But the clear implication was that Germany had been victimized twice over-once by the military defeat and again by the expulsions. The explosion was immediate. Habermas and other left-wingers went into action with a flurry of articles and letter-writing. They claimed that the uniqueness of the Holocaust was under attack. They disliked comparisons, particularly between the tragedy of the Jews and the misfortunes of the Germans. And they vehemently objected to the idea that the Holocaust could in any way been seen as a reaction to the misdeeds of the Stalinists" (Davies, Norman No Simple Victory, pages 469-470).

Where does Davies say Nolte's critics are discredited? --A.S. Brown (talk) 00:31, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

As part of my effort to improve this page, I have the following out: "A comparative approach to Soviet and Nazi crimes has gained momentum in much of Eastern and Central Europe following the Fall of Communism after 1989–1990. The debate was renewed in the western world in 1997, with the publication of The Black Book of Communism. The British historian Norman Davies argued in 2006 that revelations made after the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe after 1989-91 about Soviet crimes had discredited the left-wing position taken in the 1980s during the Historikerstreit debate. In recent years, the debate has arisen anew in the European Parliament and Western intellectual circles, notably resulting in the Prague Declaration of 2008." The dispute was all about the memory of Nazi Germany, especially the Holocaust with the conservatives like Nolte arguing in effect that: "Because Stalin was evil, there is no reason for Germans to feel guilty about the Holocaust". That is a different thing from saying Communist crimes are morally equivalent to Nazi crimes. If "the left-wing position" in the Historikerstreit was "discredited" in the 1990s, why is there a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin? --A.S. Brown (talk) 21:14, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Wiki editors do not invent controversies {"wehy is..."] and should not debate the reliable sources. If Brown has RS that say otherwise they should be included as well. Deleting ideas sourced to major scholars is a violation of NPOV rules. Rjensen (talk) 21:31, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

Correct, Dr. Jensen. I am not uncertain just do you that I have inventing "controversies". The Prague Declaration asserts that the memory of the crimes of the Soviet Union should be kept alive alongside the memory of the crimes of Nazi Germany. The position taken by Nolte is that there is no special reason for the Germans to feel guilty about the Holocaust because everything the Communists did was just even worse. Lumping in the Prague Declaration as somehow vindicating Nolte is both inaccurate and POV-pushing. Do the majority of historians agree with Nolte's statement that the Jews "declared war" on Germany in 1939 and Hitler was justified in "interning" them? That Hitler had "rational" reasons to hate the Jews and that Nazi antisemitism had a "rational core"? That genocide is an "Asiatic deed" that comes naturally to Asians, but not to Europeans? That the Jews who were murdered in the gas chambers at Auschwitz did not suffer unlike the Ukrainian peasants who staved to death in 1932-33, so Hitler was actually less of a bastard than Stalin? That what the Allies did to Germany in 1945 was the same as what the Germans did to the Jews (if that was the case, then the entire German nation would had been exterminated-a obivious point that both Nolte and Hillgruber were blind to)? That the "only" position open to the historian writing about the Eastern Front is to "identify" with the Wehrmacht? That the only reason why people remember Nazi Germany as evil is because Germany lost the war and the victors always write history, thereby implying that Hitler did quite a lot of good that has been unfortunately erased from history? Or that Hitler was forced against his will to exterminate the Jews out of an alleged fear of what the Soviets might do to the Germans? Merely to ask these questions is to answer them. Do most historians feel that the memory of "The Past That Will Not Go Away" should "go away" or that the Holocaust is not unique? If the left-wing position was "discredited" and Nolte's theories are the mainstream, then, Dr. Jensen, then why don't you go over to edit the Holocaust page to add in these important "facts" like that the Jews "declared war" on Germany in 1939? If Sir Richard J. Evans was "discredited" by his 1989 book In Hitler's Shadow, which is ferociously critical of Nolte and Hillgruber, then why don't you edit his page to say that? Odd that a "discredited" historian likes Evans should be knighted in 2012 by Elizabeth II for what she called his outstanding contributions to German history. Please forgive my sarcasm, but what was advanced by the conservative side in the Historikerstreit is not accepted by most historians and what I removed was taken out because it implies that they do. It is completely wrong to assert that the conservative side "won" just because most historians rightly feel that what Stalin was monstrous. Yes, Stalin was a bastard and contrary to a Mr. Nowak from Poland claims, I am not a Stalinist. But what German conservatives like Nolte were advocating in the Historikerstreit is not accepted by historians, and it is strange that these page should try to make it sound like they do. When you start reading what conservative historians like Nolte and Hillgruer were saying in the Historikerstreit, what is struck by how apologetic it is to Nazi Germany and most RS say this this is not accepted by historians Moreover, the majority of Israeli historians do take the position that the Holocaust was unique. Merely talking about the majority of historians in Central and Eastern Europe who feel the Holocaust is not unique is a bit of POV-pushing. Essentially, this page is saying that the opinions of people from Eastern and Central Europe count while the opinion of people from Israel does not. Why that is so is not explained, which makes it all the more egregious. I do have a RS that says as follows: "The Historians' Debate marked one of the few moments in the history of the Federal Republic in which elements of the right-wing, apologetic renditions of history of the Third Reich found their way into the mainstream print media media. Nolte's philosophical meanderings about Hitler's right to intern the Jews and his vivid descriptions of the Soviet threat perceived by Hitler and his followers can be distinguished from right-wing propaganda only after close scrutiny, if all all" (In Pursuit of German Memory History, Television and Politics after Auschwitz by Wulf Kansteiner, Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006 page 60). I do believe this is the majority position taken by historians, and this is actually about the debate, instead of what I cut out. To follow it up, please check out what two RS say, namely that Nolte's position is rejected by most historians Another Country by Jen-Werner Müller, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000 page 62. and "Historians, Unification and the "New National Paradigm" by Corey Ross pages 261-273 from Germany's Two Unifications edited by John Breuilly & John Speirs, Palgrave: London, 2005 page 264. Given these sources are actually about the Historikerstreit while the Black Book of Communism is not, I feel these RS are far more relevant to this page. I do have a RS (from a book published in 2001) right before me which does say quite clearly that Germans are obsessed with how best to remember the Nazi past (see pages 169-170 from Ambiguous Memory The Nazi Past and German National Identity, Westport: Praeger, 2001 by Siobhan Kattago). I will await your response before reverting.--A.S. Brown (talk) 21:47, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

You continue to argue with the scholars. Our job is to tell readers what scholars like Davies actually say. you deleted Davies' ideas [deleted text = The British historian Norman Davies argued in 2006 that revelations made after the Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe after 1989-91 about Soviet crimes had discredited the left-wing position taken in the 1980s during the Historikerstreit debate.] I have read a lot of Davies and a lot of reviews of his work and do not see the consensus against this argument. If you have some RS that say this about Davies then you should quote it and ADD it to the article. Rjensen (talk) 23:06, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

With all due respect, Dr. Jensen, your statement insinuating that I am engaging in OR is unfair to me, and you have not really addressed I wrote above by responding to any of my questions I asked above. So I will ask you again; is there a "consensus" by historians that the Jews "declare war" on Germany in 1939? A simple yes or no will do. I cited three different books here by scholars, so I am more than a little mystified by your statement that I am "arguing" with the scholars. The only evidence that you have brought forward is "lots of reviews" that you have not cited. We seem to be talking past each other here, so let me be clear. The point is not Davies per se. I have no problem if one wants to cite his views. It is merely that it is only his views being cited, which gives one a misleading impression that the left-wing side was "discredited" in the Historikerstreit. If one means Davies's claim there is no morally different between Hitler and Stalin, then I believe you are correct to say there is something of a "consensus". But at same time, you should read something by Yehuda Bauer whom it is my understanding is a perfectly respectable scholar who says that the Holocaust was unique. Davies's claims that the right-wing won the Historikerstreit is not correct and that the majority of historians accept the theories promoted by Nolte and Hillgruber is likewise not correct. If the right did the Historikerstreit as he is trying to say, then it must stand to reason what there is is "consensus" by historians that the Jews "declared war" on Germany in 1939, giving Hitler the right to "intern" them (Davies does not mention that part of Nolte's thesis in No Simple Victory). In which case, Dr. Jensen, please have the courage of your convictions and go over to the Holocaust page to add in the bit about Chaim Weizmann "declaring war" on Germany, if you believe there is a "consensus" in favor of that, and that those historians who are opposed to that thesis are "discredited". I have noticed that you have done that, and I know you won't do it because you know that the vast majority of scholars did not accept that claim. Furthermore, Nolte got that thesis from David Irving, a well known Holocaust Denier who is not considered mainstream at all. To be frank, I don't understand why you reducing this argument to me having a RS against Davies. The way that is written implies that the conservative side won the Historikerstreit. Yes, Davies thinks otherwise, but why are only his views being cited here? I already cited three scholars saying otherwise here. Leaving aside Davies, Dr. Jensen, I trust that if I added a number of RS saying that the conservative side lost the Historikerstreit, you would not object? That is my main concern. This is a very monstrous thesis on the part of Nolte that the Holocaust was something forced on Hitler and I would like it if this page to say that the majority of historians did not accept it. This is evidently something that is of no concern to you, but it is to me.--A.S. Brown (talk) 23:39, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

the far-left/far-right debate you deleted dealt with who was worse, Stalin or Hitler. Davies (who at heart is a Polish specialist) says it was Stalin, and a lot of scholars since 1991 (when Communism fell and archives opened) agree. You seem to disagree--ok--but state the issues and don't delete scholars who you disagree with.

My apologies for deleting that. I was wrong and I admit to my mistake. That line by Davies was written by myself on the Nolte page, which somebody cut and pasted here. It is not you, but it does anger me when I add something around here and it gets used in a sense that I never intended. I try to be fair and include a diversity of views, which is why I added Davies's views to the Nolte page. Contrary to what others have accused me of, I am not trying to write a "smear piece" against Nolte. All I have trying to do is make certain that the article on Nolte and here reflect what the majority of RS say. It must also be noted that Nolte made the outrageous claim in that 1986 opinion piece "The Past That Will Not Go Away" that is the only reason why the memory of the Holocaust is being alive is to place Jews in a "privileged position" with the Germans and to distract attention from the "genocide" the Americans were alleged to have waged in Vietnam. As someone who has read a fair bit on the Historikerstreit (see volume by Ernst Piper, In Hitler's Shadow, The Unmasterable Past and many other RS), the debate is was not really about who was worse-Hitler or Stalin? It was more whatever Germans should feel guilty about the Holocaust or not? The conservative historians were arguing that Germans needed a history to be proud of and should not feel guilty about the Holocaust because what Stalin did was worse. That is actually a logical fallacy-even if one accepts that Stalin was worse, it does not logically follow that Germans should feel no guilt over the Holocaust. Of course this question is subjective. Yes, Stalin killed more than Hitler, so in a purely quantitative sense, Stalin was worse. But it also true that motive matters as well. Let's say that a man is driving drunk and kills four children crossing the road while another man kidnaps, rapes, torture and kills one child. So which is worse? The former killed four while the latter killed one. But the drunk driver would be convicted of manslaughter while the rapist-torturer would be convicted of first-degree murder. So motives do matter when assessing a crime. The question of who suffered more; somebody in the death camps or the Gulag is meaningless because all human suffering is terrible. But motives matter as well. Hitler was unique in that he wanted to kill every single Jew in the entire world. Stalin murdered more, but he never tried to wipe out an entire people. The Chechens for example were deported en mass to Kazakhstan in 1944 amid scenes of great cruelty. It is estimated that about 85% of the Chechens deported to Kazakhstan died within a year. But the point is that it was never Stalin's intention to kill every single Chechen in the world. The Chechens were deported in 1944 and Stalin died in 1953-that's lots of time to kill the remaining 15% of the Chechen nation. Likewise, the suffering of the Vietnamese killed at My Lai was terrible, but My Lai is not considered to be morally equivalent to the Holocaust because it was the not the policy of the United States to wage genocide and kill every single Vietnamese man, woman and child in the world in 1968. Motives count when assessing a crime. I should really add to this page Nolte's claim that the Americans waged "genocide" in Vietnam, that there is no difference between what the Americans did to the Vietnamese and the Germans did to the Jews, that the Americans cleverly keep the memory of the Holocaust alive to distract attention from the "genocide" they waged against the Vietnamese and leave it with the quote from Davies implying that the critics of Nolte are all "discredited". Do you think that this might qualify as anti-American POV-pushing? Dr. Jensen, as an American historian you must know as well as I do that what Nolte is trying to claim here is nonsense. Almost every book I have read says the opposite, that the Americans committed war crimes in Vietnam, but not genocide. I am most concerned about the way this page ignores what are blatantly anti-Semitic statements by Nolte and then uses a statement by Davies to make it sound like Nolte's critics are all "discredited". But the way that Nolte maligns your nation does concern me as well. It is not just Stalin's crimes that were used to advance the thesis that the Germans should not feel guilty about the Holocaust. Nolte's American fans usually pass over in silence his statements about America in Vietnam, through if they had the courage of their convictions, they should be saying that their nation waged "genocide" against the Vietnamese people. Furthermore, this page does not mention this, but one of the arguments for the uniqueness of the Holocaust is that was done by the Germans, a First World nation deeply influenced by the Enlightenment. In other words, the Germans had reached a higher plane than what the Russians did, so it not fair to say there is a morally equivalent between Hitler and Stalin between Russia was less advanced culturally and economically. Nolte himself ties himself up in knots over that question, at one point asserting that genocide is an "Asiatic deed" that Asians come naturally to and Europeans don't. This seems to reflect a nasty strain of anti-Asian racism, with Asians (which for Nolte includes the Russians) as naturally cruel while Europeans are not. There is an essay by Hans Mommsen accusing Nolte of anti-Asian racism, which I will cite. Nolte uses this thesis about genocide as an "Asiatic deed" to prove that Hitler was really a "cultured Central European" who was not the genocidal type at all, and that the Holocaust was an understandable, if excessive response to Stalin. In other words, Germans don't naturally commit genocide, so it must be something exceptional forced on them. And then Nolte says Stalin's victims suffered more, so that proves that Stalin was worse. There are a number of RS saying this is trying to have it both ways. Let's pretend for a moment that Nolte is right and that Asians are naturally vicious and cruel while Europeans are naturally kind and gentle. Does not logically follow Stalin was just acting naturally as an Asian while Hitler's crimes as an European must be exceptional? In other words, the Holocaust is unique because Europeans don't normally act that way, so saying Stalin is worse than Hitler is like comparing apples to oranges. One cannot have it both ways, sneering at Russia as a backward, barbaric Asian nation as Nolte does and then saying Hitler is not so bad because Stalin did worse. Perhaps the best parallel might be the case of an American soldier who was convicted of war crimes in Iraq in 2007 after he executed a group of POWs in cold blood, which the defense tried to justify under the grounds that al-Qaeda did far worse. The court rejected the defense, saying that as an American, the standards by which he was judged were far higher than which al-Qaeda was judged. If Europeans are better than Asians, then the standards for judging Europeans must be higher, which is something that Nolte's fans try to get around (Davies has the same problem as he too likes to sneer at Russians as barbaric Asians, whom the heroic Poles are forever keeping at bay). I don't have a RS saying Davies is wrong here, but when Davies suggests that Nolte was right and the crimes of National Socialism were a "defensive" measure forced on the Germans, he is really wrong. As far as I am aware of, Davies is the only mainstream historian in recent years to say that, which makes me wonder just why Davies and Davies alone is being cited here. I have never read a single book about the Holocaust saying that the "Final Solution" was a defensive measure forced on Hitler. If one scholar saying something wrong and the majority of the other scholars say otherwise, is always necessary to just to find a RS saying the one scholar is wrong. I will do some work on this page and cite the proper books that I hope will help explain the topic better. Thank you for your constructive criticism. --A.S. Brown (talk) 01:02, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't think we differ too much. My own background is that as a student I was heavily influenced by Catholic refugees who escaped the Nazis--for example one was a Polish mathematician who helped crack Enigma. Later as a senior scholar I was involved in numerous US-Soviet historical exchanges--and I taught as a visiting professor of history at the leading Soviet university. They drenched me in the official Moscow version but I suspect they did not believe it themselves. The question "which was worse" suddenly became possible to study after 1989-1991 when archives opened and the ex-Communist historians overnight abandoned Soviet orthodoxy on 20c history. Today in 2016 I think the German debate re Nolte etc is an old historiographical episode of concern to PhDs. But the Russian side is very current today: Putin as neo-Tsar? or neo-KGB/Stalin? or what??? [see Dina Khapaeva, "Triumphant memory of the perpetrators: Putin's politics of re-Stalinization." Communist & Post-Communist Studies March 2016, pp 61-73.] [you mention Asianism--that is a lively issue among Putin supporters who boast that Russians are not really Europeans. see Natalia Morozova, "Geopolitics, Eurasianism and Russian foreign policy under Putin." Geopolitics 14.4 (2009): 667-686.] Today countries like Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics, & Georgia get VERY nervous about the Russian side of history repeating itself. That's an issue relevant to the deleted paragraph we're talking about. Rjensen (talk) 02:07, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Jensen, your Polish friends and colleagues must had quite interesting tales to tell. I used to know a Polish lady from Gdansk who had an activist in Solidarnosc (her husband worked in the Lenin shipyard while she worked in a restaurant for the workers) who used to tell me interesting stories about the struggle against the Communist regime and rather revolting stories about the restaurant she worked in that made me glad that I never had to eat at a restaurant in Communist Gdansk. My friend whom I will just call A. had to flee Poland with her husband and her son to escape arrest after the proclamation of martial law in December 1981, getting out via a leaky fishing boat in a night voyage across the Baltic to Sweden. I have heard similar things about the Soviet Union in last decaying days. I used to know a German historian who lived in the Soviet Union on and off in the 1970s-80s who told me that it seemed impossible that the system could last, but it seemed so entrenched it was impossible to imagine it was coming to collapse. Of course, it may been like that earlier. During what Russians call the Great Patriotic War, it is noteworthy that they really downplayed the Communist propaganda and really played the Russian nationalist line, even having Orthodox priests bless T-34 tanks before they went off to battle. It is striking that when confronted with the greatest challenge to its existence that to motivate its people to fight that the Soviet regime played up Russian nationalism at the expense of Communist ideology. There is a propaganda film from 1943 where there are various actors dressed up as figures from Russian history such as Alexander Nevsky, Peter the Great and Mikhail Kutuzov who are cheering on the Red Army-it is really hard to imagine such a film being made before 1941.

This is perhaps getting off-topic, but I have no love for Vladimir Putin and any of the things he stands for. Putin has been and is a disaster for Russia, a Chekist thug and a thoroughly retrogressive force dragging the nation very much in the wrong direction. I remember reading in The Economist the result of a survey from November 2011 where it was revealed that 49% of Russian university students said if they could have a job in the West at the price of leaving Russia forever, they would take it. It is not a good sign when nearly 50% of the best and brightest of the young people are willing to leave Russia forever, and things have not improved since 2011. Nobody noticed at the time, but in the 1970s, the Soviet Union become a petrol-state whose fortunes would fluctuate with the price of oil. In the 1970s, the profits from oil sales gave the Soviet system just enough lubricity to allow things to function, but when the oil prices tanked in the 1980s, so did the system. The same goes with modern Russia. To the extent that Putin has made things work, it has been because oil prices have been high rather because of any economic competence on his part, and as oil prices have sunk in recent years, so has the Russian economy.

Francesco Guicciardini once wrote about Nicolo Machiavelli's attempts to apply the lessons of ancient Roman history to modern Florence with the sage advice: "How wrong it is cite the Romans at every turn. For any comparison to be valid, it would be necessary to have a city with conditions like theirs, and then to govern it according to their example. In the case of a city with different qualities, the comparison is much out of order as it would be to expect a jackass to outrace a horse". In this sense, Putin is something new and is neither a return to Russia's Imperial or Soviet past. Which is not to deny elements of continuity to Putin's regime with the past. There is tradition of etatism in Russia with a strong state directing everything, and Putin very much belongs to that tradition. In many ways, modern Russia is a throwback to the NEP era where the "commanding heights" of the economy were owned by the state with private enterprise allowed the rest. Just like the NEP era, the "commanding heights" of the economy are all controlled either directly by the state or indirectly having friends of Putin, usually former Chekists running the big corporations. And of course, Putin plunders the Russian past, to appropriate those elements of the Russian history that suited him. And you correctly noted, Putin has brought about this whole ideology of Russia as an Asian nation, whose values are radically dissimilar to the West.

At the same time, Putin has embraced this whole message that feminism, gay rights and secularism have destroyed the West and Russia is the last hold-out of old-fashioned Christian morality in the world (which is a bit rich considering that only about 4% of the Russian people regularly attend the services of the Orthodox church today). This does not make any sense. How Russia be an Asian nation whose values are completely dissimilar to the West and at same time be the last hold-out of the Christian values the West has supposedly forsaken? That makes no sense. Putin is an opportunist whose only values are power and power alone and he will say or do anything to hold onto power. Putin wants a sphere of influence in the "near abroad" as Russians call the former Soviet republics and maybe even in Eastern Europe. The evidence does not support the thesis that Putin is working to restore the frontiers of Imperial or Soviet Russia. In February 2014, the Ukraine had only 6, 000 soldiers with aging equipment in its army. If Putin really wanted to conquer all of the Ukraine, it was certainly within his power to do so at the time, and he didn't. What Putin wanted was for the Ukraine to join the Eurasian Union, putting within the Russian sphere of influence. I by no means am aiming to defend Putin's aggression, which is I think is completely wrong, but I don't think that was his first choice. It was only after the Maidan revolution overthrow the Yanukovych regime that Putin annexed the Crimea and started the war in eastern Ukraine. Putin had a choice. He did not have to do what he did, which again is utterly wrong. With that in mind, annexing the Crimea and starting the war were Putin's plan b, in case the plan a of having the Ukraine join the Eurasian Union did not work out. I don't think that plan b was Putin's first choice, which is by no means is defend him or his actions; just to say that I think the original plan was to have the entire Ukraine in the Russian sphere of influence rather annexing bits of the Ukraine. What Putin is doing to the Ukraine is the worse sort of sour grapes. To join NATO requires the candidate country not to have any territorial disputes with its neighbors. Since Ukraine has a very big dispute with Russia right now over the ownership of the Crimea, it is impossible for the Ukrainians to join NATO, which is of course what Putin wants.

There is a long history of calling Russia an Asian nation, which to my mind is racist, since the use of the term Asian in this context is almost always derogatory. It does not matter if is the Marquis de Custine in the 19th century or Alfred Rosenberg in the 20th century-the use of the term Asian is always meant to suggest inferiority to the West, and in this sense is very different from saying China is an Asian nation. There is a striking if rather plotless Russian film from 2001 called Russian Ark where the narrator who is a ghost wanders the Hermitage with the ghost of an arrogant 19th century French diplomat who is not named, but is clearly meant to be the Marquis de Custine, when they encounter various people from different eras of Russian history, meeting Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Alexander I, Nicholas I, and Nicholas II. Pointedly, the only time that they visit the Soviet era is during the Siege of Leningrad in 1942. Anyhow, the French diplomat spends most of the film denouncing Russians as Asian barbarians who have no culture and cannot properly appreciate European culture as he can. The joke is on the Marquis de Custine who is totally oblivious to the cultural treasures of the Hermitage around him. I often wonder if that film could have made in the Russia of today, since its message is the total opposite of the Russia-is-Asian line being promoted by Putin today.

On one hand, there are Russians like Dostoevsky for whom the West is all corrupt and decadent, the very antithesis of a pure Orthodox Russia and on the other hand, there are Russians like Sakharov who saw Russia as part of the West, just unfortunately separated by Communist tyranny. I think it is noteworthy that the better sort of Russians like Sakharov always promoted the idea of Russia as part of the West while it is the worse sort of Russians who argue that Russia is not part of the West. In this regard, it should be noted that the concept of Europe and the West has always been a fluid ones. Look at the way in which people debate if Latin America is part of the West or not. There was the same debate in Germany with many Germans like Oswald Spengler and Arthur Moeller van den Bruck arguing for the Sondwerg, this whole theory of Germany as the great Central European power neither of the West or the East. Or in Britain, where there are still many people and judging by the recent referendum perhaps a majority who feel that the Britain is not a an European country, instead just being an island off the coast of Europe with a radically different culture from the continent of Europe. Personally, I think that Putin is promoting this theory of Russia as an Asian nation is a sign of desperation on his part, an indication that he can't offer his people a better alternative to the West, so he is resorting to Russia is Asian instead to dismiss the whole argument against emulating the West.

Getting onto to the topic at hand, I feel that Nolte's thesis simply does not make sense. How can one at one time assert Germany's cultural superiority over Russia as Europeans are always superior to Asians and at the same time say the greater death toll caused by Stalin shows that Hitler was not so bad? If Germany is an European nation and Russia is not, it stands to reason that the point of comparison for Germany cannot be Asian nations, but only other European nations. And as I already said, the way in which Nolte uses the term Asia and Asian as a by-word for all that is evil in the world is racist. One can see this most clearly in the way that Nolte and Hillgruber talk about Soviet atrocities against German civilians, where always portrayed as "Asiatic", or the way in which Nolte called the Holocaust "an Asiatic deed" forced on Hitler by the fear of the Soviet Union. One cannot have it both ways.

The crux of the matter is that there the popular belief that the Historikerstreit was about the moral equivalency of Hitler and Stalin is incorrect. If Nolte had just stated that he thought that Hitler and Stalin were morally equivalent, there not have been a controversy because a lot of people have been saying that for a long time. What caused the controversy was the claim that Hitler was forced to commit genocide by the fear of the Soviet Union, which is rather different thing. Anyhow, what the debate was really all about was not the question of the moral equivalency of Nazi Germany vs. the Soviet Union, but rather the place of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in German memory of the past. If one looks at the two article by Nolte that sparked the debate, namely the "Between Myth and Revisionism: The Third Reich in the Perspective of the 1980s" and "The Past That Will Not Go Away" are as their titles indicate about the Germans should remember Nazi Germany. These articles are not about the question of the moral equivalency of Nazism and Communism, but rather rather about finding a way to make "the past that will not go away" finally go away. The thesis that is being presented here is that Germans should not feel bad about Nazi crimes because Communists did much worse and Hitler was forced against his will to try to exterminate the Jews because so many Jews were Communists. Note the way in which Nolte makes much about how Hitler "humanely" had the Jews killed in gas chambers without pain and suffering (which is incidentally a lie-the Jews did suffer in the gas chambers) vs. the "cruel" way that Stalin let the Ukrainians stave to death. In short, Germans should not feel guilty about Hitler because Stalin did so much worse.

If one reads these articles, it is troubling the way in Nolte cites the way the memory of the Confederacy changed over time, so by the late 19th century Confederate generals like Robert E. Lee entered the pantheon of American heroes as how the memory of Nazi Germany should change. Nolte wrote those articles back in the 1980s, and since then the memory of the Civil War has changed since then. Leaving aside the question which is not relevant here of whatever there should be statues honoring the Confederacy or not, the parallel that is evidently here is the Nazis have unjustly maligned and it is time to end the "negative myth" as Nolte always it of Nazi Germany as being evil. In this regard, Nolte's statement had "rational reasons" to hate the Jews which is offensive in and of itself, takes on a particular sinister light. Nolte does not quite say that Hitler was justified in trying to exterminate the Jews, but that is clearly the point he was trying to make. It is true that a lot of people do think that Hitler and Stalin are morally equivalent, but that has nothing to do with the Historikerstreit. If the conservative side had won the Historikerstreit as is incorrectly stated here, the Nazis would been remembered in the same way that the Confederate leaders were remembered in the United States between roughly the end of Reconstruction and the civil rights movements as misguided but honorable patriots. If Nolte and other German conservatives had their way, the Holocaust would be remembered as something that Since that is evidently not the case, it is the wrong for the article to say the liberal side in Historikerstreit ended i[ getting "discredited".

Finally, I'm sorry for going on here at such length. I must confess that I disagree you over your statement the opening of archives really prompted a debate over which side was worse. It might have added fuel to the fire, but it was really well established long before the revolutions of 1989 that the Soviet leaders had committed terrible crimes. Robert Conquest, a historian whom I greatly admire (perhaps a sign of my supposed "Stalinism"?) wrote his seminal book on the Yezhozoschina back in 1968 and his book on the Ukrainian famine in 1986. Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was published in 1974. And there sorts of books by survivors of the Gulag published in the 1940s and 1950s. Maybe not all the details were known, but at least in general the truth was known. The opening of the archives after 1989 did not really change the fundamental picture since the point that the Soviet Union had carried out policies that caused the deaths of millions was already well established. I do agree that neighbors of Russia do have legitimate fears of Putin's Russia, but I not certainly relevant that is to a debate by German historians about the memory of the Nazi past in the 1980s. The question of whatever Hitler and Stalin were morally equivalent or not is a subjective one. But it is possible to have the viewpoint without having subscribing to this obnoxious view of history that portrays Hitler as having "rational reasons" for wanting to exterminate the Jews. That is clearly that objectively wrong. Yes, it is troubling that the way in the Putin regime portrays Stalin as a great leader who had to do harsh, but necessary things for reasons of state. I cannot disagree more with this distortion of history, but countering one distortion of history with another does not strike me as either moral or wise. Having that said, I'll keep your advice as I redo this page. Cheers and thank you for an intelligent and informed debate.--A.S. Brown (talk) 23:24, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

References

Remove first two articles

This article should be about the Historikerstreit only meaning the 1986 debate. Hence, the first article (Origins in post-World War II German historiography) and the introduction should go to something like Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Sonderweg or to an article on (West-)German remembrance policies. This would also do away with many of the points discussed here.Streifenleopard (talk) 19:44, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

And the quality of this first paragraph is VERY poor. I mean, all these simplifications, "right-wing historians led by Nolte", etc. really it's not Lord of the Rings... I also suggest to remove all mentions of the book Kattago, Siobhan Ambiguous Memory The Nazi Past and German National Identity. Either she hasn't got a clue or she is hugely misquoted. And what does Fritz Fischer have to do with it?Streifenleopard (talk) 20:28, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Orphaned references in Historikerstreit

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Historikerstreit's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "ReferenceC":

• From Karl Dietrich Bracher: Bracher, Karl Dietrich "The Role of Hitler" pages 211-225 from Fascism: A Reader's Guide Harmondsworth, 1976 page 214.
• From White Terror (Russia): Litvin, p. 176
• From French Revolution: Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, 92.
• From Andreas Hillgruber: Hillgruber, Andreas "Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Heinz Janßen, and the Enlightenment in the Year 1986" pp. 222-236 from Forever In The Shadow Of Hitler? edited by Ernst Piper, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1993 p. 223.
• From Cultural Revolution: MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, Chapter 22
• From Gerhard Ritter: Schwabe, Klaus "Gerhard Ritter" pages 83-103 from Paths of Continuity Washington, D.C. : German Historical Institute, 1994 page 101.
• From Martin Broszat: Broszat, Martin "A Plea for the Historicization of National Socialism" pages 77–87 from Reworking the Past edited by Peter Baldiwn, Boston, 1990 pages 85–86

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 15:00, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

• Russian Revolution of 1917.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 01:06, 11 October 2018 (UTC)

Better introduction/summary

Hi!

Without getting into the questions of bias that this talk page seems to enjoy discussing, would it be possible for someone who understands the breadth of the topic to write a lengthier introduction better summarising the rest of the page? In its current form, beyond understanding that the Historikerstreit existed and that there were two sides, the introduction says very little, while the rest of the page is so long and wordy so as to deter everyone apart from those who are already experts on the topic from reading it.Hentheden (talk) 13:49, 23 January 2019 (UTC)

Nazi propaganda

Many of the claims of Notle and Hillgruber seem to have been copied from Nazi propaganda. Why no mention of this in the article? buidhe 06:40, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

References

Piper sources seems meaningless

The Piper sources probably refer to the book: Ernst Reinhard Piper: Historikerstreit. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung. Piper, München/Zürich 1987

Piper (1993) seems to not map onto anything at all really. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.75.180.34 (talk) 21:31, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Why cite Evans for Nolte?

Why is "Der europäische Bürgerkrieg" so often cited with writings from Evans?

And why is there no mention of Nolte's words about the "transcendental" crime and the issue of singularity there? 88.77.80.245 (talk) 19:09, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Please add content about the transcendental crime! Zanahary (talk) 06:09, 2 June 2024 (UTC)