Richard Breitman

Richard David Breitman (born March 27, 1947 ) is an American historian who specializes in research into the Holocaust .

Life

Breitman studied at Yale College from 1965 to 1969 , graduating with a Bachelor of Arts . He then received a grant from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to continue his studies at Yale University . At Harvard , he obtained his Master of Arts in 1971 and his Ph. D. In 1975 , he then received a one-year postdoctoral scholarship from the Krupp Foundation .

In 1976 Breitman accepted an assistant professorship at American University , became an Associate Professor in 1981 and Professor of History in 1985. From 1995 to 1997 he was head of his department. From 2000 to 2007, he held the post of Director of Historical Research at the Nazi War Criminals Records and Imperial Japanese Record Interagency Working Group , a government agency dedicated to releasing US archival material on WWII war crimes under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act and the Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act .

Breitman is the editor-in-chief of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies and is one of the editors of the website "German History in Documents and Images" of the German Historical Institute in Washington DC. In his publications, among other things, he deals with the contemporary knowledge of the Holocaust among the allied governments and the problem of supporting this for European refugees.

Publications (selection)

• German Socialism and Weimar Democracy , University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1981.
• with Walter Laqueur : The man who broke the silence. How the world found out about the Holocaust . Ullstein, Frankfurt 1986 (Original edition: Breaking the Silence: The German Who Exposed the Final Solution , Simon and Schuster, New York 1986).
• with Alan Kraut: American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 , Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1987.
• The architect of the "final solution": Himmler and the annihilation of the European Jews , Schöningh, Paderborn 1996 (original edition: The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution , Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1991).
• Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew , Hill and Wang / Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York 1998.
• with Norman JW Goda and Timothy Naftali: US Intelligence and the Nazis , The National Archives Trust Fund for the Nazi War Criminals Records Interagency Working Group, Washington DC 2004.
• with Allan Lichtman : FDR & the Jews . Harvard University Press, 2013

Web links

• CV at the American University
• Info page at German History in Documents and Images